While reports of COVID-19 outbreaks have shut down factories or disrupted supply chains for the traditional meat industry, plant-based meat company Impossible Foods has found itself expanding its reach -- this time through a new partnership with Starbucks.
The coffee chain announced this week it will be featuring the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich on its summer menu.
"Something like one-third of all the 18- to 29-year-olds in the country hit a Starbucks at least once a quarter," David Lee, Impossible Foods' chief financial officer, told Cheddar. "And so for us to be available in this way, to have nearly 20,000 locations serve our Impossible Sausage products, is a wonderful milestone for us."
Lee explained that Impossible's co-manufacturing partnerships, such as the one it shares with food supplier OSI Group, provides enough scalability to supply the market for its meat alternatives.
"It means that we can meet the large demand we expect from Starbucks, Burger King, many other partners, but also a really rapid rollout in grocery stores, which we began to speed up sometime around March or so this year," he said.
The CFO was also confident the company was addressing challenges from the coronavirus pandemic by selling Impossible Burgers that can be delivered straight to customers' homes. He reported that grocery sales of its products had grown 30 times over since March when most stay-at-home orders began, in addition to the orders made directly to Impossible.
"The theme has been scaling to meet unprecedented demand. As a result we feel relatively well-prepared to handle how this current pandemic has changed the way meat-eaters like to get their meat," he said. "We're seeing folks order it directly from us to be shipped to their home, which is why we created our direct-to-consumer business."
Still, Impossible Foods has had to weather the pandemic like many other businesses, including the meatpacking industry. According to Lee, however, the stark differences in the businesses give plant-based meat an advantage.
"Unlike many of those unfortunate meat plants, we bypass a lot of the problems they face," he noted. "We don't grow animals, slaughter them, transport them, process them, so we don't have the same challenging conditions the meat industry faces."
Lee also agreed with Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown, who predicted on Tuesday that the meat industry will be facing its own extinction in just 15 years.
"I believe in the meat-eater," Lee said. "We meat-eaters are pretty sophisticated. You give us a better product that hits the spot, that's better for our health, that's better for the world -- we vote with our stomachs."
"I think the consumer will determine the future and will determine it pretty quickly."
In March, Impossible raised $500 million in Series F funding but despite the aggressive scaling and partnerships Lee described, he said there are no current plans to join fellow plant-based meat company, Beyond, as a public company.
Driver assistance monitoring systems are meant to keep the driver's eyes on the road, but according to a report from AAA, different ways of monitoring provide significantly different results. The study found that direct camera-based systems that scanned the driver's eye movements were faster and more reliable than those indirect systems that looked at steering-wheel input. Megan McKernan, the manager of automotive services for the Automobile Club of Southern California, joined Cheddar to discuss the findings. "Triple-A is recommending that automakers include both direct and indirect systems just to really prevent consumers from trying to misuse these systems," she said, noting that neither system on its own is not foolproof.
"Sing 2" has overthrown "Spider-Man: No Way Home" as the number one film at the UK box office. The animated sequel brought in $8.1 million, in just its two first weekends. However, "No Way Home" is still on track to beat "Avatar" as the number one grossing movie of all time.
Pinterest recently added augmented reality to its portfolio. The image sharing and social media platform's new e-commerce tech will allow consumers to interact with retailers and visualize online products inside their homes.
On this episode of Cheddar Reveals, Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, breaks down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics; Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, discusses the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Predicting a Pro'.
Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, joins Cheddar Reveals to break down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics.
Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential.
Jason Chinnock, CEO of Ducati North America, discusses ways demand has changed over the last year and what supplying race bikes for the MotoE World Cup series means for Ducati's future.
The value of most cryptocurrencies have plummeted in recent months since reaching all-time highs in November, wiping out more than $1 trillion in value globally. The steep crash has some talking about the possibility of a crypto winter, a term referring to a prolonged bearish period where asset prices persistently fall over many months. This all comes as the Fed is expected to raise interest rates, and the Biden administration is working on an executive order to regulate Bitcoin and other assets. Josh Goodbody, COO of Qredo, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss the crypto crash, and how the industry might recover from it.
Logitech posted better-than-expected earnings in its third quarter, reporting sales of $1.63 billion dollars, down 2% from the year ago quarter, but well ahead of the Wall Street consensus of $1.48 billion dollars. The PC and gaming peripherals company also raised its annual guidance for both sales and profitability. Bracken Darrell, Logitech CEO, joined Cheddar to break down his reaction to the results, how the pandemic played a role in its growth, and where he wants to take the company next.
