Impossible Foods
Operational Audit / Product Commercialization / Innovation Strategy
Taking an impossible idea and making it an industry reality.
Prior to launching today’s ubiquitous product, Impossible Foods spent years in formulation, attempting to match the beef consumption experience for consumers.
To be successful in the foodservice channel, Impossible had to do more than be appetizing to consumers. It had to be as usable as beef in every restaurant kitchen.
Foodservice kitchens were tentative about adopting the new protein, because it responded differently than traditional beef in storage, handling, and cooking.
What happens when your meat sticks to your hands more than to itself? When it won’t grill? When, aroma, texture, and done-ness are all very different from traditional beef?
The Opportunity.
Our Insights.
To accelerate Impossible’s adoption in foodservice kitchens, we had to build empathy between Impossible’s non-culinary team, and their future foodservice clients. We became an industry relationship coach, test kitchen, and consumer advocate for the emerging megabrand.
We started by investigating every element of working with Impossible meat - equipment, method, temperatures, seasoning methods, defrosting, oxidization, handling and forming. Applying our insight into the product’s strengths, we collaborated with Impossible to ensure success in a critical pitch to a major QSR. We ensured the product was optimally cooked, served, and presented in an operator-accessible way.
We built on this success over the subsequent 12 months, through collaborating on operator friendly messaging, training and marketing materials, and working with Impossible on product development and feedback. We supported Impossible in pitching and winning the critical first foodservice accounts.
Our Results.
Since launch, Impossible foods has spread its footprint to more than 8,000 restaurants in every state in America – as well as Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau.
Through our collaboration, the product itself has taken leaps and bounds, to behave ever more like traditional beef. Further, the work on operator messaging and training remains at the core of Impossible’s foodservice engagement.While the product has evolved rapidly, much of Impossible’s culinary guide today derives directly from our original guides on how to handle, how to patty, tips and tricks.
