Business Corpus: This Startup Launched A Delicious New Product At CES 2019Impossible Foods, a maker of plant-based meat, staged one of the most unusual product launch events in CES history late Monday when it introduced the very nontech Impossible Burger 2.0. The post This Startup Launched A Delicious New Product At CES 2019 appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

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LAS VEGAS — Impossible Foods, a maker of plant-based meat, staged one of the most unusual product launch events in CES history late Monday when it introduced a very nontech product: its Impossible Burger 2.0.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company hosted a media briefing and tasting party for its next-generation plant-based meat. Celebrated chef Mary Sue Milliken prepared a selection of dishes, including burgers, meatballs, tacos and empanadas, using the product at her restaurant, Border Grill at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

Impossible Foods said it expects to serve at least 12,000 free samples of the Impossible Burger 2.0 during CES 2019. It will dish out the product from a food truck parked outside the Las Vegas Convention Center Tuesday through Friday.

"CES has been around since the late 1960s and they have never launched a food product in their annual roster of change-the-world technologies — until today," said Rachel Konrad, spokeswoman for Impossible Foods.

The new recipe for the Impossible Burger represents the food startup's first major product upgrade since the meat alternative debuted in 2016. It is made with soy leghemoglobin or "heme," potato protein, soy protein, coconut oil and sunflower oil. The magic ingredient in the Impossible Burger is heme, which is responsible for the meaty flavors in the food.

Billed As Juicier, Beefier

Impossible Burger 2.0 is billed as juicier, beefier and more delicious than its predecessor, which is sold in more than 5,000 restaurants nationwide such as Wahlburgers, Fat Burger and White Castle. The company plans to launch the product in grocery stores later this year.

While the Impossible Burger is a nontech product, many of its investors are well-known in Silicon Valley. They include Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek, Sailing Capital, and Open Philanthropy Project.

Patrick Brown, founder and chief executive of Impossible Foods, said the company is well funded and has no plans to go public any time soon.

"It's not on the immediate horizon," he told Investor's Business Daily. "We have raised a lot of money from amazingly committed investors so we're not in an urgent need to raise money."

Another plant-based meat substitute company, Beyond Meat, is considering an initial public offering for this year, according to Renaissance Capital.

Cattle Production Inefficient

Brown founded Impossible Foods to create a healthy, delicious, eco-friendly alternative to beef, he said.

"Impossible Foods is developing an essential technology to save humanity from the greatest threat to the survival of the planet in human history," he said. "And that is the destructive impact of animal agriculture."

Cattle production is an inefficient method of producing protein for human consumption, he said. It also destroys the environment and is the greatest contributor to global warming, Brown said.

But people aren't going to switch from meat to plant-based alternatives for purely altruistic reasons, he said. It must taste great. Impossible Foods "cracked the molecular code of meat flavor," he said.

The company also continues to improve the product and is hard at work on Impossible Burger 3.0, he said. "Unlike the cow we are going to be getting better every single day," Brown said.

The post This Startup Launched A Delicious New Product At CES 2019 appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.