Impossible Foods plans to debut its meatless sausage crumbles on Little Caesars pizza starting Monday at 58 restaurants in Fort Myers, Florida; Yakima, Washington; and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The plant-based burger maker said the $12 pizza also comes with mushrooms, caramelized onions and green peppers.
If the test goes well, Detroit-based Little Caesars could expand availability nationwide.
Meat substitutes have been on the rise recently in both product and popularity, with stock in both Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat more than tripling since the IPO.
Even fast food restaurants such as Burger King are testing an Impossible Whopper and could sell it nationwide by the end of this year. Tim Hortons announce this week that it’s testing a Beyond Meat breakfast sausage in Canada. Even U.S. meat producers like Tyson Foods are investing in plant-based meats.
Impossible’s sausage is made in the same way as its burger. The company uses heme — the protein molecule that gives meat its juicy texture — from the roots of soy plants. Instead of harvesting it from individual plants, Impossible makes batches of heme by fermenting yeast that is genetically encoded with the soy plants’ DNA. To make “meat,” heme is mixed with other ingredients like soy protein, coconut oil and sunflower oil.
Impossible Foods was founded in 2011 and started selling its burgers to restaurants in 2016. They aren’t yet sold at grocery stores. The company has raised more than $750 million in multiple rounds of funding from investors including Bill Gates, Serena Williams, Trevor Noah and Jay-Z.
Source: Associated Press
