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OAKLAND — For those who are constantly looking for a veggie burger that tastes like the real thing, a new facility here is trying to make that search a little easier.

Impossible Foods, a company that develops meatless “ground beef” and other plant-based meat substitutes, is launching a production facility in Oakland, which will allow to make at least 1 million pounds of food per month.

It is the first large-scale production facility for Redwood City-based Impossible Foods, which currently provides animal-free meat to about eight restaurants, including Jardiniere and Cockscomb in San Francisco, and several in Los Angeles and New York. The new facility in East Oakland, which formerly housed production for baking company Just Desserts, will allow it to serve about 1,000 restaurants, and the company is looking into plans to expand into grocery, said Nick Halla, chief strategy officer.

This week, the company’s burgers, which it calls “Impossible Burgers,” will be available in three more Bay Area restaurants — Oakland’s KronnerBurger, Vino Enoteca in Palo Alto and Public House at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

“Our goal is to make uncompromisingly delicious, sustainable, nutritious and affordable meat,” said Patrick Brown, Impossible Foods CEO and founder, at an opening event Wednesday at the Oakland facility.

The new Oakland production facility will help the company do that on a larger scale, but the product’s development has been in the works for several years. It started in 2009 when Brown, a former biochemistry professor at Stanford, took a sabbatical from the university to research and develop plant-based meat. In 2011, he started Impossible Foods as a company, and the team got to work continuing research and development on the products. Burgers, or plant-based ground beef, are the first available product from the company, but it is also developing alternatives to chicken and fish.

The magic ingredient is a molecule called heme, found in living cells, Halla said. It’s what makes blood — and meat — red. But creating a beef-like burger also needs the right balance of water, a fat source, which Impossible sources from coconut oil, and potato and wheat proteins. The result is a product that tastes uncannily like a traditional hamburger.

Traci Des Jardins, a chef who owns and operates several restaurants in San Francisco, said the Impossible Burger has elicited a very positive response from diners at her restaurant Jardiniere, which has been serving the burger since October.

“It’s been a whole new crowd of people who come in just for the Impossible Burger,” Des Jardins said. She and other chefs at the event expressed how impressed they have been with both the product and the company’s mission to create sustainable food.

The burgers from Impossible Foods use 75 percent less water, produce 87 percent fewer greenhouse gases and require 95 percent less land than conventional ground beef, the company said. Nutritionally, the calories, protein content and other nutrients are similar to that of a standard beef burger, Brown said.

While the product is not available currently in grocery stores, the company said that expansion is the long-term goal.

“Scaling up and making the product available to everyone has always been part of the mission,” Brown said.

Opening the Oakland facility is part of that, and it comes as the city has been experiencing a renaissance in food production, with companies like Revolution Foods, Ocho Candy and Hodo Soy opening up facilities there in recent years.

The Impossible Foods facility will employ about 80 people by the end of the year as it ramps up to capacity.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said at the Impossible Foods event Wednesday that she is excited to see the food-manufacturing renaissance happening in Oakland, especially with companies that believe in sustainability, environmentalism and providing good jobs.

“To see manufacturing coming back to this city is so aligned with its legacy,” she said.