After last year’s successful launch into New Zealand, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, the Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets and Impossible Sausage Patties make their first foray into the European market.
Impossible Foods products arrived in New Zealand restaurants and other outlets in late 2021. The burger product went on sale at Countdown in March this year. Now Impossible’s nuggets and sausage patties will be available from 19 Mayat restaurants across the United Kingdom, offering Brits a plant-based chicken nugget that the brand claims tastes better than the animal version. The owners say they are hoping to cash in on the UK’s “unique and unrivalled” chicken shop culture.
“We’re confident our nuggets will compete…because first and foremost they taste better, and they’re also better for you and better for the planet,” said Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness.
Impossible Foods will celebrate its UK debut with a launch party hosted by fictional TV character Chabuddy G, played by Asim Chaudhry, from hit BBC mockumentary ‘People Just Do Nothing’. The event will take place 18 Mayat Maison Bab, a popular London restaurant offering modern gourmet kebabs.Later this year products will be rolled out in supermarkets as well as in 250 Hungry Horse pubs, owned by the UK’s biggest pub owner and brewer, Greene King.
Plant-based options are more popular than ever, and Impossible’s announcement follows a trial month in which Burger King in Leicester Square, London served only vegan food. Meanwhile SMART PROTEIN, an EU-funded project found that between 2013 and 2020 the plant-based food industry grew by 49 per cent.
An Impossible Food study found that chicken is the most commonly consumed meat per capita in the UK, with three-quarters of UK consumers reporting that they eat animal-based chicken on a weekly basis, and nearly 90 per cent saying they eat it on a monthly basis.
Carbon emissions from meat agriculture are double that of the entire US according to researchers at the University of Illinois. Chicken farming meanwhile has been associated with toxic algal blooms in the UK.
Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets require far less resources to produce, using 55 per cent less water, 24 per cent less land, and 24 per cent less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than animal chicken nuggets. Meanwhile Impossible Sausage Patties use 88 per cent less water, 77 per cent less land, and 47 per cent less GHG emissions than animal pork sausages, the brand says.
Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets first launched in the US late last year, and quickly became the fastest-growing brand of plant-based chicken nuggets in the category. A version of the company’s plant-based Impossible Sausage patty was launched in 2020 at Starbucks locations in the US.
