Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are served in almost 20,000 restaurants across the country, and the list of restaurant chains responding to perceived consumer demand is growing daily: TGI Fridays, Carl’s Jr, Del Taco Restaurants and Red Robin also now plan to offer pea- or soy-based burgers. Consumer interest is so strong that Impossible Foods has been struggling to keep up with an unprecedented surge in demand.
Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown recently had to recruit more than 100 volunteers from Impossible’s R&D ranks to work 12-hour shifts in production, packing burgers into boxes and manning conveyor belts in 40-degree temperatures. The company has plans to increase its 70-employee workforce at its sole manufacturing facility in Oakland, California, add a third shift and build a second production line. It also is setting up a European production arm.
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Rob Leclerc, a founding partner at foodtech venture capital firm AgFunder, says that the current food industry’s success has been in part predicated to finding a combination of cheap raw ingredients for its kitchens. Companies able to handle complexities in the kitchen …. will ultimately win.
Read full, original article: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are in a fast-food alternative-meat arms race as demand swells
