Impossible Foods Quickly Expands to Canada's Favorite Restaurant Chains

• Only two weeks after its launch in Canada, Impossible Foods’ flagship product debuts at the country’s home-grown “better burger” restaurants, including White Spot, Triple O’s, Cactus Club Cafe and Burger Priest

• Popular American chains are also adding ImpossibleTM Burger to their Canadian restaurants, including QDOBA, Red Robin and Wahlburgers

• Starting next month, all restaurants in Canada will be able to order Impossible Foods’ award-winning, plant-based meat 

TORONTO, Ontario — Impossible Foods’ flagship product debuts today at hundreds of Canada’s favorite “better-burger” restaurants and popular international chains.

The award-winning, plant-based Impossible Burger premiered Sept. 8 at Canada’s most cutting edge, high-credibility culinary establishments, with fans calling it a “reason to celebrate” despite global challenges. Based on exceptionally strong demand and keen anticipation from Canadians, Impossible Foods plans a “rapid rollout” throughout Canada.

Starting today, Impossible Burger is available at nearly 200 additional restaurants coast to coast. In addition to these world-class individual restaurants such as Joe Beef, Bymark, CHARCUT and others, Canadians can now order the plant-based Impossible Burger at the country’s home-grown favourite chains, including:

• White Spot and Triple O’s, British Columbian restaurant chains that are reaffirming their 92-year commitment to guest satisfaction, burger leadership and menu innovation. Starting today, the restaurant group will be serving Impossible's plant-based meat at 100 participating locations. White Spot guests can pick up the The Avocado Impossible™ Burger or head to Triple O’s for The Original Impossible™ Burger. 

• Canadian cult-favorite Cactus Club Cafe is adding the Impossible Burger to its menu as a new item: a delicious plant-based patty topped with red relish and plant-based mayo. Impossible Burger will also be available as a substitute in the popular Feenie Burger, named after Chef Rob Feenie. Known for its classically delicious comfort food, the Test Kitchen at Cactus is helmed by Vancouver's Rob Feenie and Toronto's Cory Vitiello. The Cactus Club Impossible Burger is available today at Cactus Park Royal (West Vancouver) and Cactus Broadway + Ash (Vancouver), and Cactus Southpoint (Surrey) starting tomorrow. Starting next week, fans can head to any of the 32 Cactus Club Cafe locations across the country to try the new menu item.

• Burger Priest, the Eastern Canada chain following the culinary commandments of quality, purity and simplicity. Canadians have lined up for more than 10 years at Burger Priest outlets, and the launch of the Impossible Burger throughout the organization symbolized the company’s mantra of “burger redemption. Customers today can head to the closest Burger Priest to try The ImpossibleTM Priest, an Impossible Burger patty topped with vegan High Priest Sauce, shredded lettuce, diced onion and pickles. 

In addition, longstanding Impossible Foods’ corporate customers are now rolling out Impossible Burger at their Canadian locations, including: 

• QDOBA, the fast-casual Mexican restaurant, which launched Impossible Burger in more than 700 locations across the United States, following a limited regional test in Michigan. Starting today, Canadian guests can now add plant-based Impossible meat to their entrees at QDOBA, or enjoy the chef-crafted Impossible™ Fajita Bowl, packed with ground Impossible Burger, hand-sliced and sautéed fajita veggies with cilantro lime rice, black beans, salsa verde and chile corn salsa.

• Wahlburgers was one of the first “better burger” chains in the United States to launch the Impossible Burger back in 2017. Wahlburgers began serving Impossible Burger after the owners visited Impossible Foods’ California headquarters for an episode of the A&E reality TV show Wahlburgers. The casual dining restaurant brand founded by Chef Paul Wahlberg with brothers Donnie Wahlberg and Mark Wahlberg has introduced the Impossible Burger to its Canadian menus with the coveted Mark’s Choice endorsement. 

• Red Robin, an American chain known for superb burgers and a lengthy menu of soul-satisfying comfort foods. Red Robin features Impossible Burger in all 500 US locations. It will bring the ImpossibleTM Cheeseburger to its Canadian locations: a delicious, fire-grilled patty made from plants topped with Red's pickle relish, onions, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, mayo and cheese.

Starting next month, all restaurants in Canada will be able to order the Impossible Burger through their distributors. 

To find the Impossible Burger closest to you, please visit impossiblefoods.com/ca. 

Impossible Momentum

Impossible Burger made its global debut in 2016 at Momofuku Nishi, the New York City restaurant of Chef David Chang. It quickly became a featured menu item at restaurants of world’s top chefs, including David McMillan, Frédéric Morin, Mark McEwan, Matty Matheson, Ivana Raca, David Myers, Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, May Chow, Traci Des Jardins and Chris Cosentino.

Impossible Burger is served in about 30,000 American restaurants and more than 11,000 grocery stores in the U.S. Stay tuned for additional locations in the months to come throughout North America.

Canada is Impossible Foods’ first international market outside of Asia and will soon become the company’s largest market outside of the United States. 

In fact, people in Canada asked for Impossible Burger on social media and in passionate emails thousands of times; one fan even created a Twitter account to track when Impossible Burger would arrive on Canadian soil. More Canadians have requested Impossible Burger than people in any country other than the United States, where Impossible Foods is based.

Impossible Burger contains no animal hormones or antibiotics, and is kosher, halal and gluten-free certified. It has as much protein and bioavailable iron as a comparable serving of ground beef from cows. A 113 g serving of Impossible Burger has 0 mg cholesterol, 14 g of total fat, 8 g of saturated fat and 240 calories. A 113 g serving of “regular” 80/20 ground beef from cows has 75 mg cholesterol, 28 g of total fat, 11 g of saturated fat and 330 calories.

Impossible Foods’ Secret Sauce

Named Inc. Magazine’s company of the year and one of Time Magazine’s 50 Genius companies, Impossible Foods makes meat from plants -- with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The company uses modern science and technology to create wholesome and nutritious food and feed a growing population sustainably.

To satisfy the global demand for meat at a fraction of the environmental impact, Impossible Foods developed a far more sustainable, scalable and affordable way to make meat, without the catastrophic environmental impact of livestock. 

Shortly after its founding in 2011, Impossible Foods’ scientists discovered that one molecule — “heme” — is uniquely responsible for the explosion of flavors that result when meat is cooked. Impossible Foods’ scientists genetically engineer and ferment yeast to produce a heme protein naturally found in plants, called soy leghemoglobin. 

The heme in Impossible Burger is identical to the essential heme humans have been consuming for hundreds of thousands of years in meat — and while the Impossible Burger delivers all the craveable depth of beef, it uses far fewer resources because it’s made from plants, not animals.

Impossible Burger 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:

California-based 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: Esther Cohn (pr@impossiblefoods.com)