Impossible Foods' Growth Accelerates as Restaurant Sales Rebound and Retail Orders Surge

• Retail sales reach record highs month after month, with Impossible Burger now on sale in more than 5,000 grocery stores across 48 states

• Restaurant sales rebound to pre-COVID levels with continued growth since April

• In addition to buying the product at brick-and-mortar stores, fans can order Impossible Burger directly from Impossible Foods’ e-commerce site; via grocery delivery platform Imperfect Foods; and, starting today, as a customizable add-on in Kroger’s Home Chef meal kit service

• Impossible Foods’ first-ever cookbook officially launches today — and the chart-topping cookbook is available online and at bookstores nationwide

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Impossible Foods has expanded its grocery store footprint by more than 30X — and the leading food tech startup is on track to increase retail availability 50X throughout 2020.

Impossible Burger was sold in only 150 grocery stores in March. Impossible Foods’ award-winning, plant-based burger is now available in more than 5,000 grocery stores across the 48 contiguous states, including the nation’s largest grocery chain, Kroger, as well as Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Gelson’s, Safeway, Vons, Wegmans and many others. 

Last month, Ahold Delhaize-owned stores on the East Coast – including Giant, Giant Martin’s and Stop & Shop – began selling Impossible Burger. And Impossible Foods’ flagship product will debut at more retailers throughout the summer.

While restaurant sales dipped in March when states imposed strict shelter-in-place orders and thousands of restaurants suspended dine-in service, Impossible Foods’ restaurant sales have seen steady week-over-week growth since April. In fact, May was the strongest month this year for restaurant sales — and then June set a new record.

“Impossible Foods’ goal is to transform the global food system. To do that, Impossible Burger has to be available everywhere people buy beef from cows,” said Impossible Foods’ President Dennis Woodside. “Impossible Burger has always been delicious and nutritious -- and this summer, we’re making sure it’s ubiquitous, too.”

Just last month, Impossible Foods launched its second product since the 2016 launch of Impossible Burger. Impossible Sausage Made From Plants is now on sale in more than 22,000 restaurants nationwide, including America’s leading chains and most beloved diners. 

To find out where to buy Impossible Foods’ products, click here.

Click, Cook, Repeat: the Convenience of Online Deliveries

In addition to buying Impossible Burger at more than 5,000 grocery stores coast to coast, fans can also buy convenient, family-size quantities directly from Impossible Foods’ e-commerce site, which offers packages starting at $49.99 (plus tax). 

The orders come with compostable and recyclable packaging, free shipping (for orders $75 and above) and home delivery. After launching the direct-to-consumer site in June, the company quickly received orders in all lower 48 states with no advertising. More than nine out of 10 buyers from the direct-to-consumer site say they intend to buy Impossible Burger from the site again.

As of last week, Impossible Burger became available through online grocery delivery company Imperfect Foods, which delivers weekly food to customers’ doorsteps. Known for eliminating waste by redirecting “ugly produce,” Imperfect Foods expanded in 2019 to include a wide variety of everyday and specialty items -- from coffee and canned goods to salsa and steak. When asked which additional items they wanted in their weekly delivery, Imperfect Foods’ loyal customer base overwhelmingly asked for Impossible Burger. 

Also this month, Impossible Burger debuts on the menu for Home Chef, a meal kit delivery company. Home Chef offers a variety of rotating weekly menu items and will now include Impossible Burger as a “Customize It” menu choice. Impossible Burger is available nationwide on homechef.com and customers can also order Impossible Burger from Kroger.com’s grocery delivery service. 

Inaugural Cookbook Already a Best-seller

Today marks the official launch of Impossible™: The Cookbook (Chronicle Books, $29.99), which features 40 Impossible dishes from some of America’s top culinary trendsetters.

Pre-orders have been coming in since May, and the cookbook was already named a No. 1 Best Seller in Amazon.com’s Burger & Sandwich Recipes category, and a No.1 New Release in Sustainable Living and Vegan Cooking. It’s now available to order online at Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Powell’s Books, and Bookshop. Consumers can also browse IndieBound to find a local independent selling the book.

The official Impossible cookbook highlights the ease and versatility of using Impossible Burger in the kitchen. In addition to an overview on the company’s mission to create a more sustainable food system, the book includes recipes for savory starters such as Impossible Moroccan Cigars, Churrasco Skewers with Chimichurri, and Jamaican Patties with Calypso Sauce -- as well as center-of-the-plate mains such as Thai Laab with Fresh Herbs, Turkish-Spiced Sandwiches with Garlic Sauce and Szechuan Mapo Tofu. The cookbook includes an entire chapter dedicated to burgers. 

The recipes — hailed as a “crowd-pleasing array that could help cure plenty of hangovers” — come from some of the world’s leading chefs and personalities, including Traci Des Jardins (Jardinière, San Francisco), Tal Ronnen (Crossroads Kitchen, Los Angeles), Michael Symon (B Spot Burgers, Cleveland), Chris Cosentino (Cockscomb, San Francisco), Brad Farmerie (Saxon + Parole, New York City), and May Chow (Little Bao, Hong Kong). The cookbook also showcases recipes and insights from experts in the culinary and beverage worlds such as Tanya Holland (Brown Sugar Kitchen, Oakland), Kwame Onwuachi (Kith and Kin, Washington D.C.), and Eric Wareheim (Las Jaras Wines, Sebastopol). 

For each Impossible™: The Cookbook sold on Amazon in 2020, Impossible Foods donates $3 to No Kid Hungry®, joining their efforts to help feed kids — during school closures and all year long. No Kid Hungry’s mission is to end child hunger in America by ensuring that all children get the healthy food they need every day to thrive.

Delicious, Nutritious, Ubiquitous

Named top plant-based burger by the New York Times and a favorite by Cook’s Illustrated, Impossible Burger rivals ground beef from cows for taste, and it’s also nutritious and versatile in all ground meat recipes, including stews, chili, sauces, braises, minces, meatballs, meat pies or any other beefy menu item. It’s easy to cook on an outdoor BBQ grill, flat top, Instant Pot, high speed oven, steamer or sauté pan. 

Impossible Burger has as much protein and bioavailable iron as a comparable serving of ground beef from cows. A 4-ounce serving of Impossible Burger has 0 mg cholesterol, 14 g of total fat, 8 g of saturated fat and 240 calories. (A conventional 4-ounce “80/20” patty from cows has 80 mg cholesterol, 23 g of total fat, 9 g of saturated fat and 290 calories.)

Impossible Burger contains no animal hormones or antibiotics, and is kosher, halal and gluten-free certified. And because it’s made from plants and bioengineered, it uses 96% less land, 87% less water and 89% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional beef from cows.

Home chefs can also log into Impossible Foods’ Impact Calculator to learn exactly how much land, water and emissions they’ve saved by using Impossible Burger instead of ground beef from cows.

About Impossible Foods:

Based in California’s Silicon Valley, Impossible Foods makes delicious, nutritious meat and dairy products from plants — with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The privately held food tech startup was founded in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Stanford University and a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Investors include Mirae Asset Global Investments, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek, Sailing Capital, and Open Philanthropy Project.

Impossible Foods was Inc. Magazine’s company of the year and one of Time Magazine’s 50 Genius companies. The flagship product, Impossible Burger, was named top plant-based burger by the New York Times and received the Food and Beverage (FABI) Award from the National Restaurant Association. 

Media kit: www.impossiblefoods.com/media

Media Contact: Rachel Soeharto (pr@impossiblefoods.com)