Burger King Plans To Take The Impossible Whopper Nationwide This Year [Updated]
Update, May 14, 2019: Following its rollout in in the St. Louis area, the Impossible Whopper will debut today at locations in Miami; Columbus, Georgia; and Montgomery, Alabama, per a Burger King press release. An Impossible Whopper Tour Bus with games, merchandise, and music will visit those three markets this month; track it via Burger King's Facebook.
Original story, April 29, 2019: At the beginning of this month, Burger King announced that it was rolling out a testing phase for the Impossible Whopper at 59 locations in and around St. Louis, Missouri. As we noted, this marked the Impossible product's "first appearance at a coast-to-coast fast food restaurant."
Not even a month later, Burger King now announces that that testing phase was so successful, it is expanding the Impossible Whopper's domain. The company announced that "Burger King Restaurants in St. Louis are showing encouraging results and Impossible Whopper sales are complementing traditional Whopper purchases." According to that same statement, more test markets will see Impossible Whoppers "in the very near future." Looking further ahead, Burger King targets nationwide availability of the Impossible Whopper by the end of 2019.
As Chris Finazzo, president of Burger King North America, described to CNN Business, the Impossible Whopper gives "somebody who wants to eat a burger every day, but doesn't necessarily want to eat beef everyday, permission to come into the restaurants more frequently." The Impossible Whoppers are using a new Impossible recipe that's designed to look and taste even more like meat.
The sandwich's success suggests further popularity of meat substitutes and the vegan diet, which many are turning to not just for health reasons, but also for environmental ones: CNN recently called a plant-based diet "the ideal diet to save the planet." Unsurprisingly, other fast food giants are also following suit: White Castle has the Impossible Slider, McDonald's is trying out Vegan McNuggets in Europe, and Taco Bell is testing out vegetarian menu options throughout 2019.