Impossible Foods Hires Marketing Officer

Nov. 8, 2022

Alt-meat company claims to be growing even as the category declines.

Impossible Foods has hired its first-ever chief marketing officer, in a sign that it is trying to increase its product penetration, especially in retail.

Leslie Sims will fill the new role of chief marketing and creative officer, effective at the start of next year. She was hired away from Deloitte, where she was chief creative officer at Deloitte Digital.

Sims told the Wall Street Journal that Impossible’s focus will be on getting meat-eaters to try the company’s plant-based analogue ground meat, burgers, sausages and other retail products. She says Impossible has achieved only about 5% household penetration to date.

“We’re really going for not being the best plant-based meat — we’re going for being the best meat,” she told the Journal.

Impossible, which is privately held, says it has grown sales by 60% over the past 52 weeks. The alt-meat category as a whole is slowing down, with a 12% drop in sales for refrigerated plant-based meat products in the 52 weeks ended Oct. 9, according to IRI.

About the Author

Pan Demetrakakes | Senior Editor

Pan has written about the food and beverage industry for more than 25 years. His areas of coverage have included formulations, processing, packaging, marketing and retailing. Pan worked for Food Processing Magazine for six years in the 1990s, where he was operations editor (his current role), touring dozens of food plants of every description. He has also worked for Packaging and Food & Beverage Packaging magazines, the latter as chief editor, during which he won three ASBPE awards. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a BA in communications.