Little Caesars will be the first restaurant to feature the ‘meat-free sausage’ by Impossible Foods.
Impossible Foods is the company behind the plant-based Impossible Burger which has more protein, less total fat, no cholesterol, and fewer calories than a similar-sized hamburger patty made with beef.
The sausage will be available as a pizza topping on the $12 Impossible Supreme Pizza at Little Ceasars. It will be available starting today in 58 restaurants across four locations: Yakima, WA, Albuquerque, NM, Ft. Myers, FL and Naples, FL.
If the rollout is successful, the sausage could be made available more widely by the end of the year. Impossible Foods says it has a “platform” for its plant-based products, which involves using different ratios of ingredients to create very different foods. The company is using very similar ingredients to the company’s burger and still relies on heme from soy plants for its meaty flavor. They removed the potato protein to give the sausage a more springy texture, which shows they put a lot of thought to how they put together these plant-based meat alternatives.
Impossible Foods choose the 4 locations to learn how different areas respond to the new meat-free option based on their familiarity with Impossible Foods. The Florida location are believed to have high awareness, while Yakima in Washington is supposedly less familiar. Little Caesars has over 5,000 locations across the US, making it the third-largest pizza chain in the country. If Impossible Foods has a well preforming trial run at the 4 locations, anything can happen going forward.
The plant-based sausage has zero cholesterol, an eighth of the saturated fat, and about 20 percent fewer calories.
What is next to go plant-based?
Impossible Foods is very confident that the Little Caesars test will go just as well as its recent trial with Burger King. Less than one month after announcing that the Impossible Whopper would be coming to 59 locations in the St. Louis area, the chain announced that it would be making the burger available nationwide by 2020.
