Impossible Foods partners retailers in SG and HK for Asia domination

Impossible Foods is looking to grow its presence and penetration in Asia, partnering up with nearly 200 grocery stores across Hong Kong and Singapore. In Singapore, Impossible Beef will start rolling out this week at nearly 100 NTUC FairPrice stores, including FairPrice supermarkets, FairPrice Finest and FairPrice Xtra hypermarkets. In addition, in Singapore RedMart will be selling Impossible Beef for home delivery. In Hong Kong, Impossible Beef will roll out at nearly 100 PARKnSHOP banner stores across Hong Kong, including PARKnSHOP, FUSION, TASTE, food le parc, and Great Food Hall. It’s also available for delivery through parknshop.com.

According to Nick Halla, senior vice president for International, Impossible Foods, the demand from these two markets has been incredibly high, and also on their radar in Southeast Asia are markets such as Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand which has seen an increase in demand. Calling Singapore and Hong Kong market expansion “immensely successful”, Halla added that revenue has nonetheless been smaller because of the smaller size of market.

Halla added that given Asia has higher number of meat eaters, the company expects revenue from Asia to be much bigger, and how the team plans to grow awareness and penetration of its products is through “taste trials”, such as cooking classes given trials generally show high repeat purchase.

According to Impossible Foods, sales of Impossible Beef increased by more than six-fold in Asia last year and COVID-19 dramatically altered the shopping and cooking habits of consumers worldwide, with more residents dining at home resulting in its decision to launch in partnership with retail partners. The move comes two years after Impossible Beef debuted in Asian restaurants.

“The world’s most respected chefs consistently tell us that the Impossible Burger blows them away. And we can’t wait for Hong Kong and Singapore’s home chefs to experience the same magic in their own kitchens - whether using Impossible Beef in their traditional family favorites or inventing new recipes that go viral,” said Impossible CEO and founder Patrick O. Brown.

According to Richard Ruddy, chief retail officer and head of grocery, Lazada Singapore, in Singapore, RedMart has seen the plant based trend grow year-on-year with customers searching for plant based items, and this has resulted in sales across several categoris. He added that Impossible Foods has been one of the biggest search terms in Redmart platform, so there is an “enormous demand”, moreover, customers are buying into other categories such as dairy free milk – increase awareness and buying patterns have changed with a savvy customer base.

The company’s mission is to halt biodiversity collapse and reverse global warming by eliminating the need for animal agriculture, which has led our planet to the brink of environmental collapse. Impossible is one of America’s fastest-growing brands and the leading driver of growth in the overall plant-based food category. Nine out of 10 people who buy Impossible Burger regularly eat animal-derived foods. According to the US analytics company Numerator, the vast majority of Impossible sales come at the direct expense of animal-derived meat: 72 cents per dollar comes from consumers who are shifting their purchases to Impossible Burger from other categories of animal-derived meats.

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