Impossible Foods is a privately held American food company, founded in 2011, that makes plant-based substitutes for beef, pork, and chicken, sold through grocery retailers and restaurant chains. It is one of the best-known brands in 📝alternative protein.
Stanford biochemist Patrick O. Brown built the company around a single ingredient: heme, the iron-carrying molecule that gives meat much of its flavor, which Impossible produces as soy leghemoglobin from genetically engineered yeast through 📝fermentation. The Impossible Burger debuted in restaurants in 2016 and reached national scale when Burger King launched the Impossible Whopper in 2019. Brown handed the CEO role in 2022 to Peter McGuinness, a nine-year Chobani veteran, who repositioned the brand toward flexitarians by emphasizing taste and nutritional parity over climate claims; the company says it holds the second-largest share of the U.S. plant-based meat market, where its main rival is 📝Beyond Meat. McGuinness stepped down in January 2026, leaving a three-person executive team to run operations in a shrinking category — U.S. plant-based meat retail sales fell 7.5% in the year to April 2025.