Beyond Meat's rival Impossible Foods will make its long-awaited grocery store debut Friday, in California. Customers looking to cook their own Impossible Burgers can buy a 12-ounce package of the plant-based meat at Gelson's, an upscale grocery store chain with 27 locations across Southern California. The Redwood City, California-based start-up joins other companies, including Tyson Foods and Nestle, that are looking to compete with Beyond in the grocery store aisles with their own realistic meat substitutes. Roughly half of Beyond's revenue came from grocery store sales last quarter. Impossible's meatless meats, like those of Beyond, will be stocked alongside meat from animals. At $8.99 per package, the Impossible Burger will sell for about three times the average cost of ground beef, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics compiled in August across Western states. Impossible CFO David Lee said meat eaters are willing to pay higher prices for the product. He added that Impossible intends to share cost savings with consumers eventually but first needs to achieve scale.

Restaurants first

While Beyond launched first in grocery stores before being added to restaurant menus, Impossible took a different route. New York's Momofuku Nishi, founded by celebrity chef David Chang, was the first business to sell the plant-based Impossible Burger in 2016. Other eateries soon followed, from fine dining restaurants in San Francisco to eventually Red Robin, White Castle and Burger King. Impossible recently cleared regulatory hurdles set by the Food and Drug Administration for its use of soy leghemoglobin — or heme — as a color additive, allowing it to start selling the product in grocery stores. Heme is the key ingredient in Impossible's meatless burger, giving the patty the smell, look and taste of a regular beef burger.pr The deal with Gelson's marks Impossible's first step into grocery. By mid-2020, the company plans to make its burger available in grocery stores in every region nationwide. The Impossible Burger will be available in East Coast grocery stores later this month. Lee said that the company has received "plenty of interest" from most major grocers to bring the product nationwide, but that is not Impossible's plan right now. "We can afford to be thoughtful and patient," Lee said. "We're not public. We don't have quarterly results to release." Despite investor interest, Impossible's founder and CEO Pat Brown has said that it is not the right time for the company to go public. "We're not actually at all thinking about an IPO at this point. We're just focused on pursuing our mission, getting the job done," Brown said on CNBC's "Closing Bell" Thursday. Impossible faced shortages earlier this year as a result of the soaring demand that resulted from partnering with large national chains. The company has since ramped up its own manufacturing, in addition to striking a deal with OSI Group, a large meat supplier that also makes patties for large fast-food chains. Lee said that Impossible can now support the nationwide Burger King launch in 7,200 stores, the 14,000 other locations serving Impossible Burgers and Gelson's stores.

Investors see huge potential