Meat+Poultry - December 2017 - 23

rants because we can," says Rachel Konrad,
chief communications officer at Impossible
Foods. "Impossible Burger is the only plantbased meat that is served in acclaimed
restaurants owned by award-winning chefs,
including David Chang, Traci Des Jardins,
Chris Cosentino, Chris Shepherd, Brad
Farmerie, Michael Symon and others. These
chefs would only serve food that's delicious,
and they put their significant star power behind
the product as well."
Konrad goes on to say starting off with
the product exclusively in restaurants,
"establishes your reputation and gets as
much traction as possible," due to half of the
total beef in the US market being purchased
in restaurants, and 70 percent of that being
served as burgers. "Starting with a burger
served in American restaurants is a great way
to do it," she adds.
Although no animals are used to produce
the Impossible Burger, tooling and machinery
at the Oakland, California, manufacturing
facility are not unique, according to Konrad.
"The plant contains off-the-shelf
equipment that you would see in many food
manufacturing facilities, from industrial-sized
mixers to conveyor belts and packaging
equipment," she says. Also like traditional food
manufacturing facilities, Impossible Foods
takes safety seriously.
"Safety is always our No. 1 priority and
that includes the safety of our plant and
manufacturing processes. We are currently
ramping up our first large-scale manufacturing
facility, in Oakland, California," Konrad says.
"We start without slaughterhouse contaminants
because the product contains no animals -- and
then we employ state-of-the-art manufacturing
and safety processes. In fact, we just passed
our first external, accredited Quality and Food
Safety audit (required by many customers and
future customers) with a 98 percent score."
Another plant-based burger producer, El
Segundo, California-based Beyond Meat, has
seen substantial growth with its Beyond Burger
product in recent months. The company's
burgers are available at more than 11,000
retail stores in the US. Its success even got
the attention of Tyson Foods Inc., Springdale,
Arkansas, which invested in a 5 percent
ownership stake of the company in the fall of
2016. Monica McGurk, Tyson's vice president

of strategy and new ventures and president
of foodservice said, "We're enthusiastic about
this investment, which gives us exposure to a
fast-growing segment of the protein market. It
meets our desire to offer consumers choices
and to consider how we can serve an evergrowing and diverse global population, while
remaining focused on our core prepared foods
and animal protein businesses."
In September of this year, food distributor
Sysco chose Beyond Burger as part of its
Cutting Edge Solutions program. Since that
time, over 2,000 foodservice outlets have
added the Beyond Burger to their menus.
Foodservice outlets now offering the product
include restaurants, hotels, college campuses
and professional sports teams' training camps.
David Friedman, founder and CEO of Epic
Burger in Chicago and existing Beyond Meat
partner talked about his business growth.
"In the first three months, we've sold
more than 20,000 Beyond Burgers
which equates to about 10
percent of burger/sandwich
sales and is exceeding our
sales expectations. Those
numbers continue to grow
each week."
That growth on an
individual level mirrors
the growth of the plantbased burger category
overall.

San Francisco-based
Impossible Foods
constructs its Impossible
Burger entirely from
plants. Leghemoglobin
(heme) gives the product
its meat-like qualities.

REAL MEAT, NO ANIMALS
Another Bay Area company, Memphis
Meats, has taken another approach by
creating real meat, but in a lab. Memphis
Meats produces beef, chicken and duck
directly from animal cells, without the need to
raise and slaughter animals.
Earlier this year, Memphis Meats
announced support from a group of investors
that included DFJ, a venture capital firm,
Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson as well as
multiple research institutions. The company's
Series A fundraising round raised $17 million.
"We're going to bring meat to the plate in
a more sustainable, affordable and delicious
way," Uma Valeti, M.D., co-founder and CEO
of Memphis Meats, said in a statement. "The
world loves to eat meat, and it is core to many
of our cultures and traditions. Meat demand is
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