In April, when Burger King started running a regional test of the Impossible Whopper, its version of the popular plant-based-but-beefy Impossible Burger, it took only a few weeks before the fast-food chain announced that it planned to expand the offering to all of its 7,200 American restaurants. On August 8, that’s happening: If you want to try an Impossible Whopper, the burgers will be available nationwide.
For now, the chain says that the burgers will be available only for a limited time; it’s unclear whether that’s because of Impossible Foods’ challenges keeping up with demand or because the restaurant is still running tests of the product’s viability on its menu. The initial results, at least, were promising. In St. Louis, where Burger King ran its first pilot of the Impossible Whopper, the location data firm InMarket found that when the burger was added to local menus, visits to Burger King increased 16.75% over the previous month. During the same period, in other Burger King locations nationwide, visits dropped 1.75%.
If the burger can gain traction at the chain—and if the same thing happens at other fast-food restaurants that serve it or other plant-based alternatives like the Beyond Burger—it could make a material difference for the environment. A recent third-party analysis of the Impossible Burger found that it uses only a fraction of the land and water needed to make a beef burger of the same size, and it produces 89% fewer greenhouse-gas emissions.
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