Business Wars: ENCORE: Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | Pressure Cooker | Part 1

Host: David Brown
Release Date: December 31, 2025

Episode Overview

The episode launches a four-part series chronicling the meteoric rise—and subsequent challenges—of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. It examines their fierce rivalry, their mission to disrupt the meat industry for the sake of the planet, and the personal stories of their visionary but very different founders. The episode sets up the business, scientific, and cultural context of the plant-based meat boom and introduces the immense hurdles these companies faced, including shifting consumer tastes, industry resistance, and the daunting challenge of making “fake meat” actually taste like the real thing.

Key Discussion Points & Timeline

1. Changing Trends & The Meatless Meat Market

• [00:00] The episode opens with a reflection on the fall in popularity of plant-based meats. Once seen as a revolutionary bet for investors and environmental advocates, Beyond Meat’s stock fell 95% from its peak and Impossible Foods faced layoffs, even as Beyond Meat briefly became a meme stock.
• The framing device features competitive eater Joey Chestnut being banned from the Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest for becoming an Impossible Foods ambassador, illustrating not just the cultural collision but the marketing opportunities in the meatless meat war.

Notable Quote:

“Impossible Foods doesn’t even market to vegans and vegetarians. They want meat eaters to buy their stuff.”
— Joey Chestnut (fictionalized), [01:55]

2. Origins & Motivations of the Founders

• [06:33] David Brown sets up the context: ten years ago, plant-based meat that truly mimicked animal meat was a novelty.
• Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods were both shaped by founders who became vegan due to ethical reasons and a desire to help the climate. Both Browns (Ethan and Pat) originally loved meat but changed due to environmental and animal welfare concerns.

Host insight:

“Both companies say their products require fewer environmental resources than animal agriculture, and both suggest that replacing meat with their burgers and sausages will make the world a cleaner, better place.”
— David Brown, [08:34]

3. Ethan Brown (Beyond Meat): The Practical Visionary

• [10:27] Ethan Brown’s turning point comes during a celebratory dinner with fuel cell company colleagues. Frustrated by their climate inaction around food, he recognizes the impact meat has on the environment and is inspired to create a business that could spark meaningful change.
• He seeks scientists (at the University of Missouri) capable of transforming soybeans into convincing plant-based meat using an industrial food extruder.

Notable Quote:

“Our fuel cell business creates clean energy... But the worst thing for the planet isn’t cars, it’s livestock.”
— Ethan Brown (fictionalized), [12:01]

• [16:46] Ethan sees the breakthrough in plant-based chicken and immediately looks to license the technology.

4. Pat Brown (Impossible Foods): The Radical Scientist

• [13:00] In parallel, Pat Brown, Stanford biochemist and vegan, wants to solve climate change by eliminating animal agriculture—specifically, cows—due to their massive greenhouse gas emissions.
• Pat fixates on “heme,” the molecule that gives meat its unique taste and color, and theorizes that recreating this in the lab could produce plant-based meat that’s indistinguishable from animal products.

Notable Quote:

“If we get rid of these frigging cows, nature can recover.”
— Pat Brown, [12:56]

5. The Capitalist Path & Seed Funding

• [21:00] Both founders pursue investment, knowing science alone won’t shift global food systems:
  • Ethan Brown pitches “a Prius for the plate” and wins $2 million seed funding from Kleiner Perkins with Twitter’s Biz Stone’s support.
  • Pat Brown secures $3 million from other VCs for Impossible Foods.
• [32:20–34:07] Ethan’s “chicken” fools even Bill Gates in a taste test, who invests and blog-boosts the company, leading to greater funding and the start of a national Whole Foods rollout.

Notable Quote:

“This is the future of food. I’m happy to pay to be a part of that future.”
— Bill Gates (fictionalized), [34:07]

6. Making Fake Meat Taste Like the Real Thing

• [35:18] To create a plant-based burger, Beyond Meat engineers eat real In-N-Out burgers to identify what their prototypes are lacking.
• [36:46] Through trial and error, a combination of cooking methods and ingredient tweaks finally yields a plant-based patty with real “chew.” The “Beast Burger” prototype is born.

Notable Moment:

“Holy hell. This is it. This is it. We did it.”
— Tim Geitschlinger, Beyond Meat engineer, [36:31]

7. Impossible’s Laboratory Breakthrough

• Pat Brown realizes that field-harvesting heme is inefficient and turns to biotech, genetically engineering yeast to produce soy-based heme in the lab, finally delivering the breakthrough flavor Impossible needs ([30:21–31:13]).

8. Setting Up the Rivalry

• By 2014, both companies are readying major market pushes—Beyond Meat with chicken and burger products, Impossible with its heme-rich burger—and the plant-based meat rivalry is set.
• The stage is set for broader cultural and business warfare, with meat industry resistance looming.

Noteworthy Quotes & Moments

• “I want to disrupt the oldest food technology there is, the animal, by replacing it with plants.”
  — Ethan Brown, pitching to Ray Lane, [23:59]

• “The only way to beat Big Beef is to give people something better to buy. It’ll be a form of legal, economic sabotage.”
  — Pat Brown, [20:35]

• “If you can do that, then what I’ve tasted today isn’t just some clever meat substitute...”
  — Bill Gates (fictionalized), [34:07]

Structured Timeline of Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–03:45 | Joey Chestnut, Impossible Foods sponsorship, meme-stock rally, stakes | | 06:33–10:13 | Host context: rise of plant-based meat, founder backgrounds | | 10:27–13:00 | Ethan Brown’s climate awakening, vegan story, initial skepticism | | 13:00–16:46 | Pat Brown’s sabbatical, identifying cows as climate villains | | 16:46–18:39 | Missouri lab: Beyond’s extruder breakthrough | | 21:00–24:43 | VC pitches: Biz Stone, Kleiner Perkins, laying the business foundations | | 32:20–34:07 | Bill Gates taste-test and investment | | 35:18–36:46 | Beyond engineers crack the burger code | | 30:21–31:13 | Impossible: lab-made heme breakthrough |

Tone & Storytelling Style

The episode uses dramatized dialogue, humanizes each key player through personal anecdotes, and sets up conflict, ambition, and scientific discovery with cinematic flair—without comedic exaggeration but with a “battle” mentality. The focus is on ambition, mission-driven entrepreneurship, and the collision between idealism and the harder realities of consumer tastes and business pressures.

Conclusion & Lead-In

The episode closes with Beyond Meat’s lab breakthrough and a teaser for part two: restaurant interest, the Impossible Burger’s debut, Beyond Meat’s IPO, and impending industry backlash. The business, environmental, and cultural stakes are all set for the next episode in this food industry “war.”

For more details or to listen, find Business Wars by Wondery on your favorite podcast app.