1/2020 Spotlight 37Foto: PR
LIFESTYLEA tale of two burgers
Burger ohne Fleisch? Der Trend zu extrem schmackhaften Fleischalternativen ist ungebrochen,
wie man an den Angeboten von zwei führenden kalifornischen Unternehmen sehen kann.
TALITHA LINEHAN berichtet aus LA.ADVANCED US AUDIOLIFESTYLE
A
t the trendy new Honey-
bee Burger in Los Feliz,
Los Angeles, I take my
first bite of the food
before me, and a scene
from the 1971 film
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory comes
to mind. In this movie, Wonka invites
visitors to his factory to lick pictures of
fruit on a wall, telling them, “The straw-
berries taste like strawberries! The snoz-
berries taste like snozberries!” In my
mind, however, I’m changing Wonka’s
quote to say, “The burgers taste like
burgers! The cheese tastes like cheese!,”
because what I’m eating contains neither
meat nor milk. That’s because Honeybee
Burger is a vegan restaurant that opened
in April to bring to customers California’s
two new famous meatless burgers, the
Beyond Burger and the Impossible
Burger. They might as well be as novel as
the fictional “snozberry” for all the excite-
ment they’ve caused.A meatless revolution
Served up as they are here, on a bun with
lettuce, tomato, pickles, and a slice of
vegan cheese, it is almost impossible to
believe that these burgers are not made
from beef. Adam Weiss, who describes
himself as “the founder and head dream-
er of Honeybee Burger,” tells me that
he and his co-dreamers spent months
perfecting the cooking method for theBeyond Burger and the Impossible
Burger. That might explain why they taste
so much better and more “meat-like” than
those I’ve tried at non-vegan restaurants.
It might also explain why the response of
customers has been “pretty exceptional.”
Weiss tells me that the local population
is very passionate, not just about plant-
based food, but also about animal rights.
“We knew we’d do well locally,” he
says. “What we didn’t realize was that
we’d have customers driving in from 20,
30 miles away, and that’s quite a thing in
LA.”
This meatless burger revolution began
about a decade ago with the founding of
two companies in California that had the
same mission: to produce plant-based
meat substitutes. Beyond Meat was start-
ed in 2009 in LA by Ethan Brown, and Im-
possible Foods by Patrick O. Brown, who
founded it in 2011 in Redwood City near
San Francisco. Both companies released
the first version of their star product, a
meatless burger, in mid-2016, and a new,
improved version in January 2019.
At first, the Beyond Burger was sold
mostly at grocery stores and the Impos-
sible Burger at restaurants. Now both are
being sold at tens of thousands of places
across the US, and in a growing number of
other countries, too. The Beyond Burger
began selling in Germany through Lidl
in May, and reportedly sold out in some
stores within hours.billionaire [)bIljE(ne&r]
, Milliardär(in)
bun [bVn]
, Brötchen
grocery store
[(groUsEri stO:r]
, Lebensmittelladen
impact [(ImpÄkt]
, Auswirkung
lettuce [(letEs]
, Blattsalatnovel [(nA:v&l]
, neuartig
pickles [(pIk&lz] N. Am.
, hier: Essiggurken
replicate [(replIkeIt]
, reproduzieren
tale: a ~ of two burgers
[teI&l]
, Wortspiel mit dem
Roman „A Tale of Two
Cities“ von Charles
DickensBetter for the environment,
better for health?
Today, both Beyond Meat, which went
public in May, and Impossible Foods are
backed by billionaire Bill Gates, among
other investors, and are worth billions of
dollars. The key to their success, the com-
panies say, is that, unlike meatless prod-
ucts in the past, their burgers replicate
the taste and consistency of hamburgers.
They appeal not only to vegetarians and
vegans, but to meat eaters as well.
Adam Weiss of Honeybee Burger tells
me that most of his customers are meat
eaters who choose meatless burgers for
humanitarian, environmental, and health
reasons. Beyond Meat and Impossible
Foods have commissioned studies that
say the environmental impact of their
burgers is about 90 percent less than that
of hamburgers, when it comes to the use
of land and water and the emission of
greenhouse gases.