Burger King, a U.S.-headquartered brand of Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International (RBI) since 2014, said Monday it becomes “the first quick-service restaurant in Canada to put the award-winning, plant-based Impossible Foods patty on its menu nationwide.”

Burger King, which has sold Impossible Whoppers at its U.S. stores since 2019, said it started serving the plant-based burgers at “participating” stores in Ontario effective Monday, ahead of a “cross-Canada rollout” planned for April 12.

California-based Impossible Foods, whose investors include Bill Gates and Google Ventures among others, has had relatively little exposure in the Canadian QSR market so far, mainly through the Qdoba chain of Mexican fast food outlets.

Ingredients in the company’s Impossible ground beef substitute — used to make burger patties, meatballs and chili and taco filling — include soy and potato protein, coconut and sunflower oil and, as binders, methylcellulose and food-grade starch.

“The Whopper is an icon, and we know how much our guests love its unique, flame-grilled taste. But, we also know those guests — and really, all Canadians — are always looking for more choice, and are increasingly interested in options without beef,” Burger King Canada general manager Matt Wright said in a release.

“Our mission is to sell Impossible products everywhere conventional animal meat is sold today, and that includes Burger King, whose huge footprint and affordable prices can make delicious plant-based burgers accessible to more Canadians than ever before,” Impossible Foods president Dennis Woodside said in the same release.

Burger King Canada quoted RBI’s Restaurants Brands for Good 2020 Year in Review report as saying that U.S. consumers who chose the Impossible Whopper in 2020 “avoided the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of driving about 520 million miles in an average passenger vehicle.”

RBI, which also owns the Tim Hortons and Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen chains, had previously tested the plant-based burger market in Canada starting in mid-2019, selling products at Tim’s made by Impossible’s California-based rival processor Beyond Meat.

By early 2020, though, Tim’s had withdrawn the Beyond Meat products from its menu across Canada. An RBI spokesperson told Reuters at the time that the product line “was not embraced by our guests as we thought it would be.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The coffee chain said last week it aims to add more plant-based food and drinks to its menu as part of the company’s latest plan to become more environmentally friendly.

A company spokeswoman previously declined comment on potential suppliers.

Over the past year, with the rise of companies including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, “plant-based” has become a food industry buzzword and several major brands and restaurants have raced to offer such products.

— Reporting for Reuters by Uday Sampath in Bangalore.

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The quick-service fried chicken restaurant will nationally roll out the vegan menu items, produced by U.S. processor Beyond Meat, based on the customer feedback from the Atlanta test, Yum said.

Yum is the latest big-chain restaurant jumping on the vegan bandwagon, a growing market as more fast-food chains tweak their menus to add new options for vegans and “flexitarians.”

Plant-based meat alternatives have seen booming interest from consumers and restaurants, supporting startups such as Beyond Meat and its competitor Impossible Foods, and even sparking interest from veteran meat companies such as Tyson Foods and Perdue Foods.

Beyond Meat has already partnered with other chains including Subway, Del Taco, Carl’s Jr., Dunkin’, Tim Hortons and A+W; Impossible Foods is working with chains such as Burger King, White Castle, Qdoba and Red Robin.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nivedita Balu in Bangalore.

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Tyson is betting that meat eaters wanting healthier diets will see their blend as offering a meat taste and vegetable health.

It joins other food companies vying for a share of the U.S. alternative meat market which analysts estimate to be worth US$100 billion by 2035 as consumers seek to reduce meat consumption amid growing concerns over health risks and environmental hazards of industrial animal farming.

Tyson will sell blended protein burgers made from beef and pea protein, and sausages and meatballs that combine chicken with plants including chickpeas, black beans and quinoa, the company said in a statement. It also will offer vegetarian nuggets.

California upstarts Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods each sell 100 per cent plant-based meat alternatives to retailers and fast food chains across the United States.

Tyson sold its 6.5 per cent stake in Beyond Meat in late April, just days before the company went public, to focus on the development of its own plant-based products.

Tyson shares were up around one per cent at $82.65, while those of Beyond Meat were down 4.4 per cent at $135.68.

Tyson’s plant-centered products, under its new Raised + Rooted brand, will be sold through its customers, sales outlets and foodservice operators, Justin Whitmore, head of Tyson’s alternative protein business, said in an interview, declining to elaborate.

The largest U.S. meat processor, known for its Ball Park hot dogs and Jimmy Dean sausages, will launch the nuggets in the summer and the blended burgers in the fall.

Whitmore said it was too early to estimate revenues, calling Tyson’s plant-based business highly incremental, but he noted that could change.

“The double-digit growth in the sector is largely driven by meat eaters who want the health and nutrition that they perceive to come from plants along with the taste they’ve always had from animal protein,” Whitmore said, adding that the company was working on additional plant-based products.

Analysts at Mizuho Securities USA cast doubt on the company’s blended protein approach.

“We’re less confident in blended meat/plant products as we believe in the early stages of alternative meat, consumers want to make a simple binary decision between eating meat or not,” the analysts said in a note.

Tyson CEO Noel White said in a statement the company remained firmly committed to expanding its traditional meat business, but is shifting toward becoming a protein company.

Other companies following a similar path include Canadian packaged meat producer Maple Leaf Foods, whose vegan “ground beef” and burger patties, sold under its LightLife brand, will be on U.S. store shelves this summer.

Nestle, the world’s biggest packaged foods group, is aiming to sell a pea-based veggie patty called Awesome Burger under its U.S. plant-based Sweet Earth brand in the fall.

— Tina Bellon is a business reporter for Reuters in New York, covering consumer goods, health, science and litigation.

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To mark the launch on April Fool’s Day, the burger giant released a hidden-camera-style promo video showing the serving of plant-based Whoppers instead of meat to customers who marvel that they cannot tell the difference.

“We wanted to make sure we had something that lived up to the expectations of the Whopper,” said Burger King’s North America president, Christopher Finazzo. “We’ve done sort of a blind taste test with our franchisees, with people in the office, with my partners on the executive team, and virtually nobody can tell the difference.”

The Impossible Whopper comes at an extra cost — about US$1 more than the beef patty Whopper. But Finazzo said research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

Plant-based meat substitutes have been gaining popularity as more attention is focused on the environmental hazards of industrial ranching. Finazzo said his research shows customers mainly like it for the health benefits. The Impossible Burger patty has zero cholesterol.

Impossible Foods, based in Redwood City, California, launched its first faux meat patty over two years ago. A genetically modified yeast creates the key ingredient, called heme, which makes the patties appear to bleed and taste like real meat.

Burger King is not the first to serve up a no-meat burger. Smaller U.S. chains including White Castle, Red Robin and Fatburger have already included Impossible burgers on their menus.

Also, Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat launched a plant-based Beyond Meat Burger last July at Canadian burger chain A+W, and in early January announced a similar burger at U.S. fast-food chain Carl’s Jr.

A+W sold out of the burger at many of its Canadian restaurants that summer, but by October pledged a consistent supply. Earlier this month the chain — Canada’s second-biggest burger chain by number of stores — also launched a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich featuring plant-based breakfast sausage.

Beyond Meat counts actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Microsoft founder Bill Gates as investors. It filed for an initial public offering in November.

Finazzo said Burger King also researched Beyond Meat, but decided that Impossible Foods’, which also counts Gates as an investor, offering was a better fit. “Around the taste, around the brand recognition, around the price, all those things were important factors in choosing Impossible,” he said.

Impossible Foods tailored a patty specifically for the Whopper, CEO Pat Brown said.

“We’re now in well over 6,000 restaurants. If the Burger King launch is as successful as I expect it to be, and we go nationwide, that will add more than 7,000 restaurants that serve the Impossible Burger,” Brown said.

Impossible also counts Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Horizons Ventures and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek as investors. Impossible has been making inroads in Asia as well.

Last year total U.S. retail sales of plant-based meat substitutes grew over 23 percent to exceed $760 million, according to Nielsen sales data analyzed by The Good Food Institute, a non-profit promoting plant-based alternatives to animal products.

Burger King rivals, food conglomerates and meat packers are cooking up more plant-based burgers. McDonald’s, the world’s biggest fast-food chain, sells soy-based burgers in Finland and Sweden. Tyson Foods has a stake in Beyond Meat.

Nestle is planning to debut its “Incredible Burger” soon in Europe. Unilever late last year announced its acquisition of The Vegetarian Butcher to build out its plant-based portfolio.

— Jane Lanhee Lee is a writer and producer for Reuters in San Francisco. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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