Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | Pressure Cooker | 1

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's 2008 and two men, both vegans, ponder what they can do to improve the climate. Though they’re on separate sides of the country and in different professions (but they coincidentally share a last name)— Ethan Brown is in the fuel cell business and Pat Brown is a lauded Stanford biochemist — they land on the same solution. They’re going to try and lessen the climate impact of animal agriculture by making meat from plants. Ethan calls his company Beyond Meat and notches the first commercial breakthrough, a fake chicken strip. Pat is not far behind, and launches Impossible Foods two years later, setting off a heated rivalry.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wundery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of Business Wars, ad free right now.
0:06.0	Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's June 2024 in New York City. In his office on Bussling Fifth Avenue, George Shea fiddles with his smartphone.
0:25.0	The thin gray-haired 59-year-old is the commissioner of Major League eating, the world's biggest competitive eating league.
0:32.0	And right now, he's sick to his stomach.
0:35.0	She searches his phone for a video he hopes will make him feel better. up one showing last year's Nathan's famous international hot dog eating
0:43.8	contest on Coney Island. In the video, Shee himself dramatically introduces
0:48.9	the defending champion of the him alone. The Nathan's famous 4th of July champion of the world.
1:07.0	Yowie Jesta! Shee,
1:13.8	Pause is the showeses the video and reluctantly reaches for his offices landline.
1:22.2	He dials 40 year old Joey Chestnut's number and prepares for a
1:25.9	confrontation with the biggest star in competitive eating.
1:29.4	Hey George, we're going to talk about impossible foods again?
1:33.1	I'm afraid so, Joey.
1:34.9	Chestnut recently agreed to become a brand ambassador for impossible foods,
1:39.3	a maker of plant-based meat products.
1:42.0	Shay wants Chestnut to chew that deal up and spit it out.
1:46.0	Now listen, Joey, you're the hot dog eating champion of the world.
1:49.0	I can't have you out in public endorsing another Are you going vegan or something?
1:56.0	No way, I ate 62 beef hot dogs in last year's contest
2:00.0	and I'll do it again this year.
2:02.0	Besides, Impossible Foods doesn't even market to
2:04.7	vegans and vegetarians. They want meat eaters to buy their stuff.
	...

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