Impossible Foods was founded by Stanford University Professor Patrick O. Brown in 2011. He wanted to switch the course of his career to address climate change by making the global food system more sustainable. The company debuted its first product, Impossible Burger, in 2016. While this interview with Nick Halla, SVP, International at Impossible Foods was conducted in November 2019, the company has since debuted Impossible Pork Made from Plants and Impossible Sausage Made from Plants in January 2020.

Business Today (Richard Yang): To start off, Impossible Burger prides itself in that it is more sustainable and eco-friendlier, but do you think this narrative is what has given the product its explosive demand? In other words, how would you attribute the success of the product?

Nick Halla: The general response to eco-friendly and sustainability has been increasing, but I would say that is a small point of success for Impossible Foods. This is because number one, it does not matter what type of food you are. Unless you are absolutely delicious, nothing matters. I think going to a plant-based world means that we need to try to find ways to create products that consumers like better just based on taste. If we were to just preach on sustainability, people are not going to come back unless it tastes good and enjoy the experience. By far, the biggest driver of our success is the product itself.

BT: Going along the lines of that, as the International Senior Vice President of Impossible Foods, how do you see the company possibly expanding to other countries. Moreover, what regulatory challenges—like soy leghemoglobin approval—will the company face with this expansion?

NH: I am actually in Singapore right now where we have launched internationally in Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore markets. We have seen the explosion of growth here just as much or in some ways more than the US, and we are already in more than 500 restaurants between those three much smaller markets. Here in Singapore, we launched in March, and we are already in more than 250 restaurants.

One of the big benefits of Impossible meat is that it’s a ground meat product made from plants that you can use in anything - dumplings, meatballs, burgers, samosas, tacos – Breadstreet Kitchen even has created the Impossible Wellington. If we look at our mission to replace animals in the food system by 2035, we are creating products that consumers like better and then applying that delivery to the consumers. We are learning more and more how to do that as we build our market. From a market size, the US is 11-12% of the global meat market, which means we have another 88% of the market to go internationally. I’m from the International team, and we are hiring the team internationally to help accelerate this to achieve the mission.

BT: As you are expanding, do you see the Impossible Burger growing by expanding its presence in grocery stores or partnering with more food chains?

NH: Definitely both. We just started selling our Impossible Burger meat in grocery stores this year. We launched at Fairway in New York City, Wegman’s in the northeast, Gelson’s Market in LA, and within Gelson and Fairway, which are city-centric retailers, we outsold all ground-beef for the first week. We can see the demand and excitement for the product, and as we continue to expand, we expect them to come back.

When consumers take the product into their homes, it’s the first time that consumers are now getting to experience the magic of cooking with Impossible, just like the magic of meat from animals. It transforms as you cook it as it creates all those flavors and aromas. If you cook it well-done vs. medium-rare, it performs quite differently as it would with a conventional meat product. It has been very fun to see, so we will continue to push retail as an important category and channel for us. At the same time, we are still in 17,000+ restaurants in the US and 500 internationally and are just getting started in the food service world too. There’s a lot more demand and interest, so we will continue to grow in the food service, push in retail, and the next frontier is international.

BT: That makes sense. Impossible Foods is definitely expanding its presence, but how do you see the company growing its product line in the future?

NH: That’s one of the fun things and challenging things of being in a company like Impossible. For the first few years, we really were focused on a product that was understanding and building a platform to build anything animals are used for food, but we would do it better. We decided that the ground beef platform and burgers is what we would launch initially, because it has a huge environmental impact. It is iconic in culture, a big category, and a technical challenge to build something that works in so many different applications. We have been in market now for a little bit over 3 years, and this is just the start. We have not announced anything about future products, but we definitely have a lot of different things in the works.

BT: Yes, and having that ability to grow so much is, I’m assuming, really exciting for you. Going along those lines, I know you used to work in businesses in the clean technology sector, but what inspired you to join Impossible Foods?

NH: I grew up in an agricultural family, and we had a dairy and meat farm. When I left that, I thought about the impact I could have on agriculture from the environmental side. When I went to undergrad, I studied engineering and then I worked at General Mills in the food world because I was a front-line researcher in new product and manufacturing systems. However, when I went onto grad school, I focused on renewable energy because that is where I saw the connection of great science and technology and global environmental positive impact, which is what we have to do. We look at the environmental challenges today between climate change, water pollution, overwater use, land degradation, biodiversity loss, so we have to change the systems that have caused these problems. I didn’t see these connections initially. Then, when I was working on a bunch of things within clean energy, one of the people I was working with quite well, talked with Dr. Brown, our founder. When I met him, we started talking about this and looking at the numbers: agricultural use is approximately 25% of the global arable land surface and 30% of the freshwater. The vast majority of water pollution has been by the industry. More greenhouse gasses with the transportation. No one was really talking about it two and a half years ago. I thought this makes sense; I never thought about it this way. Animals are just so inefficient at taking plant-based nutrients. Fundamentally, we should be able to create a much better system, and so that really inspired me. There is no place better to make an impact than Impossible Foods. 

BT: How do you think the food industry is changing as a whole to become more environmentally friendly?

NH: When I was in the food industry earlier in my career, the sustainability conversation focused more on how we decrease our energy use in waste and manufacturing lines, which is definitely beneficial. I think what is changing now is that people are starting to look at it and say, the fundamental way we produce food has some inherent flaws that need to change, so how can we change them. The drivers are partially due to the environmental need, but more driven by consumers. Consumers are starting to see this and make choices based on what they believe in, and they actually do believe in the environmental piece.

Within the last three years, the consumer choice is changing to make decisions based on environmental impact. I think the food industry is starting to notice this and leading companies to change their product portfolio. We need to start looking at this differently and change the way we make our food to the way consumers are demanding.

BT: One thing I was wondering is that a lot of critics of the Impossible Burger are quick to point out that it is highly processed. What do you have to say to those people?

NH: I think for us, we are always extremely transparent about everything we do and why we do it. If you look at all food, it is all processed in some regard. The way we look at this is what makes up meat: a mixture of fats, proteins, and micronutrients that give an extra sensory flavor performance and portfolio that people love. You look at a cow; a cow is a process. If we look at that process, is there a better way to do this? For us, we are going to be very transparent about the process and we are proud of it. We can make very nutritious products that are much better sustainably, for the world, and people. There are a lot of good foods we eat that go through some transformational process, and we just have to think about it and try to do it in a really good way for people and the world.

BT: The last question I have is how has Impossible Foods balanced research and development in the food technology industry and the consumer industry arm of the business?

NH: At the end of the day, it comes down to what we are as a company. We are both a food and technology company. We are creating new technology to better understand and create better foods. We are a food company because we are making delicious, nutritious food for consumers and delivering it globally.

However, we are also a planet company. We only exist to make the planet better and more sustainable. We want to help people globally get better food with much lower environmental impact, so everything goes behind that. We look at how we make decisions and trade-offs because we know we cannot do it all at once, but in reality, we are just getting started and encourage everyone to keep an eye on us as we continue to achieve our mission of reversing climate change.