Featured image for Burger King Makes the Impossible Burger Available Nation-Wide

Burger King Makes the Impossible Burger Available Nation-Wide

by Shawn Binder on 08/01/2019 | 3 Minute Read

Nothing is impossible!

Starting August 8th, you’ll be able to walk into any Burger King across the nation and order a plant-based patty.

Following an immensely successful test run in St. Loius this year, the fast-food behemoth launched Impossible Whoppers in other test markets such as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Baltimore, Columbus, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama. According to a report from inMarket, Burger King locations with the Impossible Whopper saw significantly more traffic than the company's national average after introducing the plant-based burger.

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When companies take the time and effort to listen to their customer base and be inclusive to all types of dietary needs, the public responds by turning up in droves.

According to Impossible Burger’s official website, the burger comes from soy and potato protein which deliver that juicy bite while the heme in the patties gives it a memorable, meaty flavor.

The only catch for vegans? With the rollout is that Burger King has no plans to separate the broilers on which they cook their Impossible Burgers. For flexible eaters, this won’t be a problem, but for vegans, it will render the meat alternative useless. Vegan eaters can request that burgers get cooked separately, but Impossible as a company has no control over how their product gets prepared once they pass it off to the fast-food chain.

The wrapping for the burger incorporates both brands onto its green and white paper, with ‘Impossible’ and ‘Whopper’ utilizing the text of their parent companies. The result is something familiar, yet new, like the impossible burger itself. The branding and identity for the Impossible Whopper were created by Jones Knowles Ritchie, with more work coming down the pipeline soon enough.

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Restaurant Brands International Inc.-owned Burger King says 90% of the people who ordered the Impossible Whopper during a trial run this spring were not strictly vegans, meaning that the average person wouldn’t mind their plant patty cooked alongside meat.

Given that in a study for the journal Public Health Nutrition people are interested in eating less meat, this adds up.

With a fast-food giant like Burger King offering meat-alternatives, we could potentially see enormous changes in the way the general public views the beef industry. Furthermore, by bringing plant-based options to the masses, the environmental impact has the potential to be immense.

Livestock farming contributes 18% of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and if all grain were fed to humans instead of animals, we could feed an extra 3.5 billion people.

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Despite the evidence that beef alternatives are the right move for the planet and our collective health, meat fans may be cocking their heads in confusion. Burger King has thought one step ahead and is offering a partnership to test your pallet; alongside Doordash, Burger King is offering a “taste-taste” where eaters can receive one impossible patty and one regular beef patty for a whopping $7.

If you’ve thought giving up meat would be impossible, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is.