Imagine a greener future. Can you? Not the way we’re going about things! Impossible Foods is tackling resourcefulness for a better tomorrow.

For the time we are here on Earth, we are solely responsible for our own environmental footprint. We can turn things around by changing our diet - replacing meat with plant-based food. Dr. Patrick O. Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, back in 2009 wanted to tackle a problem that was getting out of control – climate change.

Because he knew that the production of meat was responsible for 15% of Greenhouse gas emissions and close to 25% of the world’s freshwater was being used. By making meat from plants, the use of land, water, and energy is immensely reduced.

The process was long and hard, but Dr. Patrick O. Brown knew that he was on to something. Stick around and see how one man can make a change in a big way!

Humble Beginnings

Patrick O. Brown studied at the University of Chicago, where eventually he got both of his degrees, a Bachelor’s degree, and a Doctorate, in 1976 and 1982, respectively.

While Patrick was studying DNA topoisomerases, he was under the complete guidance of the great Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, a renowned biochemist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

After he got his degree in 1982, Patrick proceeded to the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago where he did a 3-year pediatric residency. Patrick always thought that he can do more, that he could make a bigger impact; that is why, in 1985, Patrick enrolled at the University of California where he completed a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship.

In 1988, young Patrick became an assistant professor at the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was also appointed an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he investigated retroviral replication.

As time went by, in the late 90s, Patrick was beginning to voice his concerns about scientific publishing. He thought that scientists that published their research under publishing houses that later charged people subscriptions to read the study were completely wrong.

In 2001, together with other fellow scientists and professors like Michael Eisen and Harold Varmus, Patrick co-founded the Public Library of Science. This non-profit organization was created to make published scientific research available to everyone in the scientific community.

Something’s Cooking!

In 2009, Brown wanted to take some time off and took a year and a half sabbatical. The researcher in him couldn’t be on a break, so while he was thinking about how will he spend his life after retirement, he was thinking about how can he help out and dive into the world’s biggest problem – global warming.

He knew that our environmental footprints were a part of it, so he organized a conference for spreading awareness. Although the conference was a success, and it brought some of the great minds together, it still didn’t make a big enough impact.

Patrick pondered on ways to reduce animal agriculture and the best way to bring an eye to the problem was by giving people a competing product. Over the span of his sabbatical, Patrick managed to get some things together, and wanted to recruit other scientists to work on why meat smelled, tasted, and cooked like meat.

With all the tests that they made, almost everything pointed towards heme. Heme is an iron-containing molecule in blood and it is found in every living organism. At the end of the day, the theory was, if he could get enough heme produced by a plant, he could recreate the same taste of meat. It might sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, but Patrick was sure he was on to something groundbreaking.

Time lingered on, and Patrick didn’t have much data, however, he had enough to go around different venture capital companies to ask for some money to be put into the research. Impossible Foods was created in 2011, and it took almost five years to come out with its first product - the Impossible Burger, reeling in more and more curious customers.

Removing the ‘Im’ in Impossible

As mentioned, Impossible Foods was brought to light in 2016, with its first-ever product the Impossible Burger coming out. Of course, at first, the company started to produce small quantities, and it was only available in certain restaurants in California.

At the same time, while Patrick’s company was working hard to include its Impossible Burger in menus in various restaurants, the company also worked on other projects like making chicken, pork, fish, and dairy products out of plants.

In 2017, Impossible Burger was already a standard item on the menu in numerous restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The one big breakthrough was made when the famous fast-food chain White Castle added the Impossible Burger to their menu in April 2018. It’s considered a humongous headway because White Castle had offered the Impossible Burger in all of their 377 locations around the nation. As 2018 came to a close, over 5000 restaurants across the US were serving the Impossible Burger.

As more and more people were becoming interested in the new alternative known as the Impossible Burger, the king of fast food, Burger King, started testing out the Impossible Whopper. In April 2019, Burger King placed the product on the menu in St. Louis. By the end of April, results showed that people actually liked the burger, which made the company start implementing it in menus all over the country.

Impossible Sausages were also implemented in restaurants across the US, with Little Ceasars leading the way in early 2019. Today, you can find the Impossible Sausage in Burger King and Starbucks, as well.

Looking back at the beginning, lots of restaurants declined to have the Impossible Burger on their menus, many wouldn’t give it a chance. But, once it got the recognition it deserves, it also got some backlash from the meat industry, which fought for Impossible Foods to not call the product meat, since it wasn’t of animal origin.

Cash Flow Makes the Dream Go

Over the years, Impossible Foods has raised $75 million from funding rounds, and more than $100 million from investors like Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, Viking Global Investors, Horizon’s Ventures, Bill Gates, and more.

Rumors were going around back in 2016, that Patrick allegedly turned down a bid of $300 million from someone that wanted to buy the business.

Some massive leaps were made in 2017, and that sparked investments coming in. Bill Gates alone poured in close to $75 million. In early 2018, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital, invested $114 million, pushing Impossible Foods to reach a massive $372 million in raised funds.

Overall, after numerous rounds of funding, 12 to be exact, over the years, Impossible Foods has raised more than $1.3 billion.

Is the Impossible Possible, Yet?

While the company has grown immensely, it will always maintain its objective and pursue to convince more and more people that eating meat like burgers, chicken, pork, fish, and dairy products made entirely from plats will save our planet in the long run.

From day 1, Impossible Foods have turned the impossible into possible, baffling everyone that meat could be substituted by a plant-based product. Throughout the years, besides drawing the attention of a growing number of customers, Impossible Foods paved the way for other companies to enlarge the meat-alternative industry.

Companies like Beyond Meat, Perfect Day, and Next Level Burger are some of the competitors Impossible Foods has to fend. The headquarters of the company has stayed in the same place from the beginning, in Redwood City, California. Today, over 800 people have been employed and became part of Impossible Foods.

All in all, from the moment Patrick came up with the idea, he was determined to make it work. With hard work, patience, and surrounding himself with like-minded people, the idea of creating products that will eventually help out the world we live in, can come true. Like the company states, even little actions can bring big changes to our world. Imagine a world where meat is made from plants…imagine a world with only a speck of carbon footprints… Isn’t that a lovely sight?

Are we doing all we can to make our precious Earth survive not just another day, but keep it nice and green for future generations as well? Think twice.