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.
Although still early in development, blockchain technology, Web3, also known as Web 3.0 has been getting a lot of attention from some top tech names lately. Web3 is based on blockchain technology, which powers NFT’s and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. With Web3, users would ideally control their own data, rather than have it be controlled by a few large companies. But, Tesla CEO Elon musk isn't buying into Web3 just yet, tweeting over the weekend that the decentralized iteration of the internet seems more like a marketing "buzzword" right now than reality. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also chiming in to the conversation, expressing doubt over whether or not Web3 would actually be decentralized if ownership still belonged to venture capital firms. Parker McCurley, co-founder & CEO of Decent Labs explains the significance of Web3 catching the eye of the tech giants, and what Web3 could mean for the future of the internet.
The FDA has granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer's pill to treat covid-19. The treatment, called Paxlovid, is the first antiviral covid-19 pill that people can take at home.
Pfizer says the pill can reduce the risk of severe illness by 90 percent and is intended for people at high risk for severe disease, including those over 65, people with obesity, diabetes, or a weakened immune system. Professor Peter Pitts, Founder, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest & Former FDA Associate joined Wake Up with Cheddar to discuss.
On December 20th, the TSA reported that for the fourth day in a row, it had screened more than 2 million people through its airports as the Omicron variant continues to rage and spread rapidly throughout the country. The CDC now reporting that roughly 73% of all covid cases are caused by the Omicron variant ahead of President Biden’s remarks aimed towards curbing the virus and helping hospitals battle rises in hospitalizations. Dr. Nasia Safdar breaks down the latest on traveling during the pandemic.
Ahead of a four day week for the markets due to the upcoming Christmas holiday, investors hoping for a quiet end to the year, or even a Santa Claus rally, may not be in luck. Investors are still digesting the latest from the Fed regarding a quicker than expected taper, as well as ever increasing blow back as the Omicron variant spreads. Octavio Marenzi, CEO of Opimas LLC, explains why the markets have been so volatile ever since the emergence of the latest variant and what to expect going forward into 2022.
Carlo and Baker cover the heartening news on the Covid front ahead of the holiday, plus President Biden punting student loan repayments again, a new space telescope and Love, Hate, Ate: Christmas Eve Eve Edition!
Stocks closed lower Monday as investors continued to price in COVID-19 omicron variant fears. Reopening stocks like airlines, financial companies, restaurants and hotels, and more, dragged on the major indexes as businesses and events took a pause over the weekend amid rising case numbers in metropolitan areas. This comes a week after the Federal Reserve announced it plans to speed up its asset tapering timeline in January and institute three rate hikes next year. Is that plan aging well? Robert Conzo, CEO of The Wealth Alliance, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss market movement, how stocks could close out the year, what the Fed could do in 2022, and more.
After a vote in one Buffalo, New York-area Starbucks created the first workers union in the coffee chain's history, the company has announced that it is ready to negotiate in good faith with the new bargaining unit. But a tense process where labor organizers leveled accusations of anti-union activity at the coffee giant may make that difficult. Cortlin Harrison, a barista at the unionized store, spoke to Cheddar about making a deal. "We can move past all the dirty tricks, the union-busting, the captive audience meetings," he said. "I'm ready to go to the table, and my fellow baristas are ready to go to the table, and just move forward."
