Oakland plant to make veggie burger that mimics meat
The Impossible Burger, also known as the “veggie burger that bleeds,” has drawn crowds of curious eaters and inspired dozens of think pieces.
Now Redwood City’s Impossible Foods, which makes this culinary curiosity, is rolling out the next phase in its ambitious plan to supplant animal agriculture with high-tech foods that mimic meat in every sense but the source. The company is moving into a factory in East Oakland that will soon be capable of producing 1 million pounds of the burgers every month. Impossible Foods is betting that the cachet the burger has earned will propel it into restaurants across the country.
On Wednesday, Impossible Foods held a ceremony, with Mayor Libby Schaaf in attendance, to open its 67,000square-foot factory at 550 85th
Avenue, last occupied by Just Desserts. The company expects to start commercial production by early summer.
CEO Pat Brown, who was a biochemistry professor at Stanford, founded Impossible Foods in 2011 because of his concerns over the environmental impact of meat production. If we couldn’t convince humans to eat less meat, he reasoned, why not create plant-based versions that tasted just like it?
Impossible Foods has raised $182 million, according to the startup database Crunchbase. Bill Gates and Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Khosla Ventures and Google Ventures have bought into Brown’s vision. In the grand tradition of VC-funded startups, Brown regularly calls animals “food technology,” one he’s eager to disrupt.
Impossible Foods’ initial rollout strategy has been to recruit a few well-known chefs as champions, including David Chang of New York’s Momofuku and San Francisco’s Traci Des Jardins (Jardiniere) and Chris Cosentino (Cockscomb). Since last summer, diners have lined up outside their restaurants to taste — and document themselves tasting — the Impossible Burger.
Rumors aside, the plantbased burger doesn’t exactly bleed. It is made primarily with wheat and potato protein larded with chips of coconut oil, whose melting point is similar to that of animal fat. It does not yet taste exactly like beef.
The “blood,” a substance that the company calls “heme,” is produced by genetically modified yeast cells. Heme gives the burger its deep-red color when raw, which fades convincingly as the burger heats up, as well as a subtly metallic character that meat eaters rarely notice until they eat tofu patties and complain about its lack.
Brown says other plantbased meats are also in the works.
The company’s Redwood City facility and a small plant in New Jersey currently supply eight restaurants on both coasts. With the new factory opening, three more restaurants will be added: KronnerBurger in Oakland, the Public House in San Francisco and Vina Enoteca in Palo Alto.
Even after expanding its production capacity more than 250 times, Brown said that the company’s strategy will still be to focus on restaurants. “In our long-term plan, we will be ubiquitous,” he said. “Anywhere that consumers go to buy meat, we intend to be there, competing side by side. In the near term, the market for ground beef in restaurants is humongous.”
The United States consumed 7.4 billion pounds of ground beef in 2016, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Almost twothirds of all beef served at restaurants is ground, representing $10.1 billion in wholesale sales. To replace all of that hamburger, Impossible Foods would have to open hundreds of plants.
The company’s expansion is well timed. In an October study, Lux Research estimated that the demand for meat alternatives should more than double in the next seven years, increasing 14 percent each year. Lux analyst Camilla Stice doesn’t foresee meat production decreasing. Rather, it may plateau, while soy, pea and oat proteins fill the remaining demand as the population grows.
“By 2054, we’re seeing that about one-third of the protein supply is going to be from alternative sources,” Stice said.
High-profile chefs have helped give the Impossible Burger its cachet, but the key to scaling up quickly will be so-called “better burger” chains, like Shake Shack and Five Guys. New York chain Bareburger, with 44 locations, currently serves the Impossible Burger at its flagship site, and Brown says the other locations will add the burger to their menus, too.
Cosentino, who has served the Impossible Burger at Cockscomb since October, said that though the product is no longer new, “we still have a pretty high demand.” Cosentino added that, even after the cult food becomes commonplace, he still plans to serve the Impossible Burger.
When at full capacity, the East Oakland plant should employ 80 workers, and company representatives say they are working with Oakland recruiters to hire locally “whenever possible.”
“One of the things we’d like to be — and the bar is very low — is the most transparent, tour-friendly meat-production facility on Earth,” says Brown. It may take until the end of the year, however, until the public will be allowed in for bloodless sightseeing.