By CultureBanx Team
- The Impossible Whopper is available nationwide at 7K locations
- Serena Williams and Jay-Z invested in Impossible Foods latest $300M funding round
Burger King just rolled out its “Impossible Whopper” made by the Impossible Foods company to 7,000 locations nationwide. With many cultural tree huggers like Serena Williams, Jaden Smith, Trevor Noah and Jay-Z investing in Impossible Foods, will they be able to help line their own pockets, along with increasing same-store sales growth at Burger King?
Why This Matters: The burger giant may want to take a page out of True Food Kitchen’s playbook with its investor Oprah Winfrey, who also serves as an endorser for the brand. They could perhaps get some of the notable celebrities for Impossible Foods to promote the new whopper to their huge social media base to increase sales. It’s important that Impossible Foods not bite off more than it can chew with this Burger King rollout, because many customers reported shortages of the bleeding meatless burger in around 300 locations.
When the fast food chain originally rolled out its vegetable-based faux meat whopper back in April, traffic went up by 18%
When the fast food chain originally rolled out its vegetable-based faux meat whopper back in April, traffic went up by 18% at its restaurants. Burger King had seen slowing same-store sales growth. During the first quarter of the year, the chain reported same-store sales growth of 2.2%, down from 3.8% a year earlier, but in Q2 2019 they saw system wide sales grow 9.8%.
Impossible Foods has deals with big restaurant chains in addition to Burger King, including Red Robin (RRGB +1.60%) and White Castle, with plans to launch in retail stores later this year. In its latest funding round they picked up another $300 million from investors with a new valuation of $2 billion, as they aim to completely remove animals from the food system by 2035.
Situational Awareness: There’s stiff competition for faux meat, back in May Impossible Foods biggest competitor Beyond Meat (BYND +1.03%) went public, its shares gained 163% on day one. They now command a market share of $5.1 billion. Not to mention former McDonald’s CEO (MCD +1.44%) Don Thompson’s venture-capital firm Cleveland Avenue was an early investor in Beyond Meat. Also, its products are already in grocery stores around the country, while Impossible only just received FDA approval and won’t hit aisles until September.
CBx Vibe: “Taste” Tyga Feat. Offset
