ENCORE: Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | Beefing Up, Chowing Down | 3

This series originally aired in 2024. One period. It's a warm summer's day, 2019, in Redwood City, California. Inside a brightly lit conference room at Impossible Foods headquarters, a sweaty Pat Brown tugs at the collar of his t shirt. It's emblazoned with a no cows logo. Pat, the biochem professor who is this company's founder, isn't just hot. He's bored. He and a team of executives are attending an employee review. The executives wanna promote some employees who have been working hard to get the impossible burger into grocery stores for the first time. But Pat just wants to get back to his research. Hey. Let's move this along. We have a lot of work to do in the lab that's more important than yammering about job titles. Pat's outburst momentarily silences the meeting's leader. He's Dennis Woodside, a square jawed, gray haired, middle aged attorney turned executive who left his job as chief operating officer at Dropbox to become president of Impossible Foods and ramp up the company's operations ahead of its grocery store debut. Woodside glares at Pat. I'm sorry, Pat, but this management stuff is important too. We've got 10 people who've done a great job here and need to be recognized with raises and new titles. But why do we need tiered titles at all? That's how IBM does things. We're not IBM. No. We're not IBM, but we can still be a professional organization. I mean, just look at the working title you chose for this year's annual report. That's not exactly what IBM would choose. A wry smile comes across Pat's face. I love that title, the meat industry. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. We're on a mission to push the beef industry in with death spiral. And after we do that, we'll tell pork and chicken that they're next and send them into bankruptcy too. Pat pushes his chair back from the conference table and stands up. He points at Woodside. What we should care about is making sure we double our production every year for the next fifteen years. To beat the meat industry and become the most impactful company in the history of the world, we need to scale up 30,000 fold. An exasperated Woodside clasps his palms together and squeezes tight as he tries to keep his cool. After just a few months on the job as Impossible Foods president, he's already learned that his boss loves to start an argument. He tries to diplomatically diffuse the situation. Pat, we're all on board with your big ambitions. But if we're going to achieve all that growth, we should probably start by wrapping up this meeting. Can you please please just approve these new titles? If I say yes, can I go back to the lab? You can. Then fine. Yes. I approve. Pat picks up a white lab coat and quickly heads back to his research. Whether in spite of or because of his unusual …