Burger King launched its plant-based burger on Monday, and accompanied it with the release of an April Fool themed video ad, showing customers eating meatless hamburger and not tasting the difference.
Silicon Valley-based Impossible Foods Company has been producing vegetarian patties for some time. Its chief executive Pat Brown says there is a growing awareness that large-scale meat production is harmful to the environment.
"There's a huge surge in consumer demand for these products that are healthier, delicious, better for the environment. And I think, you know, it's quite amazing to me, compared to when we started to see how much work is being done now to get into this space and we welcome it."
The question is how to lower meat lovers away from tasty beef burgers they are used to, the large size whoppers being among the most popular.
Burger King and Impossible Foods teamed up to create a plant-based patty. They claim tastes just like a beef burger thanks to a genetically modified yeast called yammi which makes the patty bleed and tastes like real meat.
There were other challenges some Impossible Foods veggie patties would crack during grilling.
"A month or so ago when we're almost finished working out a plan with Burger King, we got back the complaint that you know we can't have 5% of our burgers cracking when they formed the French cheese with nuts. And so we went on a desperate round of R&D and product development to figure out how to be able to make a whopper that didn't crack."
If the Saint Louis pilot test proved successful, the chain restaurant will make his plant-based burger available throughout the United States.
"For now, well over 6,000 restaurants. If the Burger King launches as successful as I expect it to be, and we go nationwide that will I had more than 7,000 restaurants that serve the Impossible Burger."
Burger king is not the first fast food chain to offer meatless patties. The Carl's Junior Chain rolled out its plant-based burgers in January, and McDonald's is testing soy based burgers in Sweden. Nestle is planning to launch the incredible burger in Europe.
Zlatica Hoke, VOA news, Washington