Impossible Foods: Addressing the Unsustainability of Animal Agriculture

In 2011, Dr. Patrick Brown had launched Impossible Foods after quitting his job as a Stanford professor. By selling plant-based products to meat-eaters, he hoped to reduce the severe environmental impacts associated with animal agriculture. A decade later, Impossible Foods was a category leader. However, it still faced serious challenges in the form of slow growth, increasing competition, high unit costs, and health concerns about its products. How could the venture scale faster and best deliver on its mission?

This case is meant to facilitate a discussion on business model innovation with a strong mission to achieve significant positive environmental impact, including mitigating climate change, preserving biodiversity and keeping use of earth’s land and water resources within the planetary boundaries. It examines how Impossible Foods is trying to develop and sell plant-based products that appeal to mainstream meat-eaters not through a moral argument that often has limited appeal for the mass market but through a value proposition that has the potential for encouraging wider adoption. Analysis of this case should help the students appreciate that maximizing one’s environmental impact often requires integrating learnings drawn from science, business and policy perspectives.