TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Impossible Foods is making its award-winning, plant-based burger available to home chefs in Canada in nearly 600 Sobeys Inc. banner stores beginning this week, including Sobeys, Foodland, Safeway, Thrifty Foods, IGA, IGA Extra, and the retailer’s online home delivery platform, Voilà by Sobeys.
Sobeys is the exclusive retailer of the Impossible Burger until February 2021, at which point the product will be available to purchase in all of Sobeys 1,500 family of stores across Canada.
The Impossible Burger cooks like ground beef from cows and can be easily included in any recipe that would otherwise call for ground meat. It will be sold in 340 gram packages, available for $11.99 CAD and found in the fresh and frozen aisles of Sobeys Inc. stores.
“We are proud to be the first national retailer to bring Impossible Foods to Canada,” said Paul MacLeod, Vice President, Merchandising at Sobeys Inc. “We are always looking to find innovative products to keep our assortment interesting and innovative for families across Canada and the Impossible Burger is a great-tasting choice for customers seeking plant-based meat.”
Just one month ago, Impossible Burger debuted in a dozen of Canada’s top restaurants. Today, Impossible Burger is available in more than 450 restaurants across the country, an incredible pace of growth for the company’s newest international market.
For the complete list of locations offering Impossible Burger, visit impossiblefoods.ca/hello-canada.
Tasting is believing
Named top plant-based burger by the New York Times and a favourite of Cook’s Illustrated, Impossible Burger rivals ground beef from cows for taste. It is kosher, halal and gluten-free certified. It’s nutritious and versatile in all ground beef recipes, including stews, chili, sauces, braises, minces, meatballs, meat pies or any other beefy menu item.
While the average Canadian eats 25.4 kilograms of beef per year, a growing percentage of them are looking for delicious, nutritious foods without cholesterol, hormones and antibiotics. They’re also buying foods with a smaller carbon footprint. Half of Canadians eat animal meat every day -- but younger generations are leading the shift to a sustainable, plant-based food system.
“From Chef Craig Wong to Chef Connie DeSousa, our entry to Canadian restaurants was made possible by the talented and diverse group of launch partners that brought the product to life,” said Nick Halla, SVP of International at Impossible Foods. “This next phase of growth for us will be driven by the millions of home chefs across the country who are looking for delicious and nutritious plant-based meat. We can’t wait to see the amazing dishes that Canadians create with Impossible Burger.”
Canadians have long been enthusiastic champions of Impossible Foods’ mission and products, which rival their prehistoric, animal analogs for taste and nutrition. In fact, people in Canada have asked for Impossible Burger on social media and in passionate emails thousands of times. More Canadians have requested Impossible Burger than people in any country other than the United States, where Impossible Foods is based.
Science, sustainability, sizzle
Impossible Burger is the flagship product from Impossible Foods, Inc. Magazine’s company of the year and one of Time Magazine’s 50 Genius companies. The company’s mission is to halt biodiversity collapse and reverse global warming by eliminating the need for animal agriculture, which has led our planet to the brink of environmental collapse.
Impossible Burger has as much protein and bioavailable iron as a comparable serving of ground beef from cows. Each 100 g serving of Impossible Burger is a good source of iron and dietary fiber and provides 17 g of protein, 0 mg cholesterol, 12 g total fat and 7 g saturated fat. In Canada, a 100 g serving of 80/20 ground beef from cows contains 65 mg cholesterol, 25 g total fat and 10 g saturated fat.
Impossible Burger uses 96% less land, 87% less water and creates 89% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional beef from cows. Home chefs can also log into Impossible Foods' Impact Calculator to learn exactly how much land, water and emissions they’ve saved by using Impossible Burger instead of ground beef from cows.
Silicon Valley heads north
Impossible Foods’ flagship product made its worldwide grocery store debut in 2019, when it immediately rocketed to the No. 1 item sold at some of America’s favorite grocery stores, outselling all ground beef from cows at many outlets. At one supermarket in Southern California, Impossible Burger outsold all brands of ground beef from cows -- and it outsold the next most popular single product by 6X.
Impossible Foods is one of America’s fastest-growing brands and the leading driver of growth in the overall plant-based food category. Nine out of 10 people who buy Impossible Burger regularly eat animal-derived foods.
According to the US analytics company Numerator, the vast majority of Impossible Foods’ sales come at the direct expense of animal-derived meat: 72 cents per dollar comes from consumers who are shifting their purchases to Impossible Burger from other categories of animal-derived meats -- proof that Impossible Burger is displacing Old Meat.
Have it your way, have it our way
This year, Impossible Foods launched its first official cookbook: Impossible™: The Cookbook (Chronicle Books). Following its initial release, the cookbook was named a #1 Best Seller in Amazon's Burger & Sandwich Recipes category, as well as #1 New Release in Amazon’s Sustainable Living and Vegan Cooking categories. Canada shoppers can purchase the book online from Indigo and Amazon.ca, as well as many independent bookshops such as McNally Robinson (Winnipeg), Argo Bookshop (Montreal), A Different Booklist (Toronto), Another Story Bookshop (Toronto), A Novel Spot Bookshop (Toronto), Russell Books (Victoria), and Pages On Kensington (Calgary).
Impossible™: The Cookbook highlights the convenience and versatility of the Impossible Burger -- and it shows how switching to plant-based meat can transform the global food system. In addition, the book includes recipes for savory starters such as Vietnamese Imperial Rolls, Pan-Fried Chive Dumplings and Jamaican Patties with Calypso Sauce -- as well as center-of-the-plate mains such as Thai Laab with Fresh Herbs, Turkish-Spiced Sandwiches with Garlic Sauce and Szechuan Mapo Tofu. The cookbook includes an entire chapter dedicated to burgers.
The cookbook features expert tips and 40 recipes from some of the pioneering chefs and personalities who introduced the product to the world, including Toronto born-and-raised chef May Chow (Little Bao, Hong Kong), who was named Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2017. It also includes recipes from acclaimed chefs like Traci Des Jardins, Tal Ronnen, Michael Symon and beverage pairings by writer, director and winemaker Eric Wareheim.
About Impossible Foods:
California-based Impossible Foods makes delicious, nutritious meat and dairy products from plants — with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The privately held food tech startup was founded in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Stanford University and a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Investors include Mirae Asset Global Investments, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek, Sailing Capital, and Open Philanthropy Project.
Impossible Foods was Inc. Magazine’s company of the year and one of Time Magazine’s 50 Genius companies. The flagship product, Impossible Burger, was named top plant-based burger by the New York Times and received the Food and Beverage (FABI) Award from the National Restaurant Association.
About Sobeys
Proudly Canadian, with headquarters in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, Sobeys has been serving the food shopping needs of Canadians since 1907. Sobeys Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Empire Company Limited (TSX: EMP.A), owns, affiliates or franchises more than 1,500 stores in all 10 provinces under retail banners that include Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, Farm Boy and Lawtons Drugs as well as more than 350 retail fuel locations. Sobeys, its franchisees and affiliates employ approximately 127,000 people. More information on Sobeys Inc. can be found at www.sobeyscorporate.com.
More information:
impossiblefoods.ca/hello-canada
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