Today, Impossible Foods cut the ribbon on a new facility in Oakland, California, to dramatically increase production of its Internet-breaking Impossible Burgers. I’m talking a 250-fold jump over current production rates. But that’s just the start.

“In twenty years, we want to be producing more than half of the world’s supply of all of the foods we’re getting from animals,” CEO Patrick Brown explained during my recent visit to the company’s headquarters in Redwood City. “We need to grow on that scale because the problem we’re addressing [i.e., climate change] is so urgent.”

In summary:





Phase 1 – Make delicious meat directly from plants: Check.

Phase 2 – Make enough of this product to meet more than half of the global demand for meat. Commencing this summer in Oakland.

While the Oakland facility won’t be enough to meet the company’s world-changing goal, it will be a critical testing ground for one of the biggest questions in the world of food tech: Can these brilliant solutions scale to meet their lofty aims?





Right now, Impossible Foods only has the capacity to supply eight restaurants. With the new facility, it will be able to supply 1,000 restaurants!



, economies of scale will propel companies like Impossible through this scale-up phase, bringing costs down as production is standardized and distribution networks grow more robust. As The Good Food Institute’s executive director, Bruce Friedrich, explained in The Washington Post last weekeconomies of scale will propel companies like Impossible through this scale-up phase, bringing costs down as production is standardized and distribution networks grow more robust.





But that’s not even touching on the most obvious advantage Impossible has over its factory-farming competition: Farm animals are simply bad converters of plant food into meat. Impossible is able to produce meat directly from plants, which represents a fundamental leap forward in efficiency for meat production.

We can’t wait to watch Impossible expand and grow the entire animal-free industry with it. As Bruce summed up for the Post, “This is brand new for the plant-based meat industry. It’s lifting the whole sector and inspiring other entrepreneurs and food scientists to get involved with it.”







To learn how GFI supports the animal-free future of food, read up on what we do

The next move for Impossible Foods is a physical one, but it’s also symbolic of something bigger: the startup’s bid to scale globally and transform the meat market.