Behold the Beefless ‘Impossible Whopper’

— Would you like that Whopper with or without beef? This week, Burger King is introducing a version of its iconic Whopper sandwich filled with a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods. The vegetarian burger made by Beyond Meat has been available at over a thousand Carl’s Jr. restaurants since January and the company is now moving toward an initial public offering. White Castle has sold a slider version of the Impossible burger in its 380 or so stores since late last year. Machado said. Burger King is initially making the Impossible Whopper available at 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area. Mr. Machado said. The Impossible Whopper creates an interesting alliance between a fast-food chain that promotes its devotion to beef on every Whopper wrapper (“100% Beef With No Fillers”) and a start-up that is committed to getting people to stop eating beef. Brown, who is 64, was motivated by his discomfort with the ethical, health and environmental costs of meat. But he said he came to believe that consumers would make a change only if they had a product that satisfied their cravings for beef. “Our whole focus is on making products that deliver everything that meat lovers care about,” Mr. Brown said in an interview at Impossible’s production facility in Oakland, where he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a cow floating in space as an astronaut. Several companies are now chasing plant-based foods that imitate meat. Or Was That Really a Plant Beverage? 31, 2018

Impossible’s biggest innovation has come from its use of heme, an iron-rich protein that the company believes is responsible for much of the distinctive taste of meat. The heme is blended with a combination of other vegetarian ingredients that are intended to have the slightly nutty texture of ground beef. Credit

The company’s success has not been without controversy. A small but vocal group of environmentalists has said Impossible rushed its novel ingredients to market without adequate testing. At the same time, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals slammed Impossible for testing its product on rats. Cattle ranchers have also criticized Impossible for calling its product meat and have promoted state-level legislation that would limit how Impossible and other alternative meat companies can market themselves. But Impossible has broadly delivered on Mr. On the health side, the Burger King version of the Impossible burger will have about the same amount of protein as the regular Whopper, with 15 percent less fat and 90 percent less cholesterol. CreditMatt Edge for The New York Times

The more important results for Impossible have come from early interactions with consumers. After White Castle added Impossible’s food on a test basis in September, sales were strong enough that the chain announced in December that it would permanently add the Impossible slider to its menu. “It was a nice surprise how many different kinds of customers wanted to try it.”
Now Impossible will face the challenge of scaling up its production to feed the new demand. On the same day that Burger King introduces the Whopper in St. Credit

Mr. Brown believes the 350-person company will be able to handle all of the demand from its current 68,000-square-foot production facility in an industrial area near the airport in Oakland. It also has added a second production line dedicated to Burger King patties. Brown said during a tour of the factory, with stacked boxes of frozen patties moving around him on forklifts. The plant-based meat for Burger King will be made with the same recipe as Impossible’s other products, but it has been reformulated to resemble the broad, flat shape of the Whopper patty. When the company was negotiating with Burger King, it had one of the chain’s flame-broiling machines shipped overnight to its headquarters to ensure that the burgers would not break apart in mass production. Similar to White Castle, Burger King will charge about a dollar more for the meatless version of its burger. The introduction of the Impossible Whopper does not mean that Burger King is relaxing its commitment to producing meat, as its recent marketing for Chicken Fries and the Bacon King sandwich make clear. But Mr. Machado said the company had seen the rising numbers of consumers looking to cut back on meat, especially beef. In Impossible, he said, Burger King found a way to satisfy that demand without the trade-offs that have traditionally come with vegetarian alternatives.