Brown is leading Impossible Foods in battles against meat industry giants.
- Meat giants like Nestlé and Tyson are jumping on the plant-based "meat" bandwagon, following the success of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.
- Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown told Business Insider that some competitors are rolling out "awful" products, which can hurt other plant-based meat alternative makers.
- "Every time someone uses one of those products and it sucks, it's a setback" for Impossible Foods, Brown said.
- Impossible Foods is rolling out the Impossible Burger at 100 Wegmans locations and two Fairway Markets in the northeast US on Wednesday.
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Impossible Foods' CEO Pat Brown is a rare executive who says he wishes that competitors' products were actually better.
"Some of these products are awful," Brown told Business Insider on Tuesday. If customers group Impossible Foods' products with competitors' plant-based offerings, Brown says, it "reinforces this idea that these products suck."
The plant-based "meat" space is increasingly crowded. Nestlé recently debuted the plant-based "Awesome Burger" after a year and a half of development. In June, Tyson Foods introduced Raised & Rooted, its first line of plant-based products. Pork giant Hormel debuted its plant-based brand Happy Little Plants in September.
Brown is leading Impossible Foods in a battle against meat industry giants on their own turf, with the Impossible Burger hitting the shelves at 100 Wegmans locations and two Fairway Markets in the northeast US on Wednesday.
"My feeling is these big players, big, established companies, are not where changes ever come from," Brown said. "When they see there's consumer demand, they will try to jump in and take advantage of that."
According to Brown, who declined to single out any particular brand, some of these companies are simply jumping on the plant-based "meat" bandwagon without taking the time to perfect a product that can actually compete with meat.
"On the one hand I feel like it's great," Brown added. "It's a great sign about the demand. On the other side, I feel like - and it may sound ironic to say this - I wish they would make better products, basically."
"Every time someone uses one of those products and it sucks, it's a setback" for Impossible Foods and plant-based meat alternatives more generally, Brown added.
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Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown holds up an Impossible Burger 2.0.
While meat giants are now rolling out plant-based options, Impossible Foods' buzziest rival is Beyond Meat.
The two plant-based meat alternative companies have seemingly spent the last few years battling for partnerships with restaurant chains. Impossible Foods has penned deals with chains including Burger King and White Castle, while Beyond Meat works with brands like KFC, Del Taco, and Carl's Jr.
Beyond Meat executives have similarly slammed rivals' products.
"I joked before that the veggie burger was a conspiracy by the meat industry to discourage people from becoming vegetarians," Beyond Meat executive chairman Seth Goldman told the audience at the Groceryshop conference earlier in September.
When asked if he considered Beyond Meat's options to be some of the "awful" products on the market, Brown responded: "I would say for them and for any of these other products, if you like it and you want to have that instead of eating beef from a cow, please keep doing it."
"We will go after the people that aren't satisfied with that and try to create something that they love," Brown continued.
Brown and other Impossible Foods executives emphasize that their real competition isn't Beyond Meat or other plant-based "meat" makers, but the meat industry. Brown says Impossible Foods' dedication to creating a product that is as good or better than meat in terms of flavor, nutrition, and price will be what wins over most shoppers - not whether it is better than its plant-based rivals.
Impossible Foods has the advantage over meat makers in that it can continue to tweak its products. Products will get less expensive as the company builds out its supply chain. The company rolled out the Impossible Burger 2.0 earlier this year and is now developing the Impossible Burger 3.0, which will meet new targets of deliciousness, nutrition, and affordability, according to Brown.
"10 years from now, we're still going to be working on making it better," Brown said. "When the first automobile could outrun a horse, they didn't just say, 'Okay, well we're done.'"
If you have perspective or a story to share about Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, or another plant-based "meat" maker, contact this reporter at ktaylor@businessinsider.com.