Impossible Foods' Next Meatless Meat Product Is Sausage

Redwood City (KPIX 5) -- First there was the Impossible Burger, now there is the Impossible Sausage.

KPIX 5 went inside the test kitchen at the Impossible Foods headquarters in Redwood City, where the plant-based startup cooked up meatless sausage patties for breakfast sandwiches.

The sausage is made from the same platform as the burger, but with mildly different ingredients. The company uses heme, a protein molecule from soy plants that gives meat its juicy texture. The fat is from sunflower oil.

The sausage is meant to be versatile. A variation can be made into a pizza topping, or it can be put into dim sum or pot stickers.

Little Caesars is the first to test the Impossible Supreme Pizza in select markets. If it goes well, it will expand nationwide. The company has already launched a partnership with Burger King to serve the Impossible Whopper in 7,000 locations nationwide by the end of the year.

"In the US, in every single place that we sell the Impossible Burger--that's schools, that's stadiums, that's restaurants, that's fast food restaurants--the sales are doubling," said Celeste Holz-Schietinger, Impossible Foods Director of Product Innovation.

The company says demand for their product is massive and global, so it is rapidly adding more staff and it's more than doubling its production capacity at its Oakland plant.

"We expect that there is some shortage that is taking place currently, or could take place in the next month as we really are ramping up our manufacturing," she added.

Investors are also salivating. The company raised $300 million in its latest round of funding. This month, competitor Beyond Meat saw its stock surge, making it the most successful IPO of the year. The market for substitute meat is expected to reach $5.2 billion globally by 2020.

"Meat made from cows is really destroying our planet right now, so we need to be a solution so that people, consumers have a choice to eat more sustainably and nutritionally but not sacrifice on the delicious product," said Holz-Schietinger.

The company expects to launch its product in retail stores later this year.

Impossible Foods says its ultimate goal is to remove animal agriculture by 2035.