Impossible Foods
- Impossible Foods is laying off 20% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported Monday.
- The plant-based meat maker has also been offering buyouts to employees since late 2022.
- It's the third time in a year that Impossible has made cuts as plant-based meat sales slow down.
Impossible Foods is gearing up for its third round of layoffs in roughly a year.
The plant-based meat brand plans to eliminate 20% of its employees, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an unnamed source. Going into the layoffs, Impossible employed about 700 people.
Impossible also tried to reduce its headcount at the end of 2022 by offering voluntary buyouts, Bloomberg reported.
A spokeswoman for Impossible Foods did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Just three months ago, the company laid off 6% of its workforce. At the time, CEO Peter McGuinness said in a message to employees that the reductions were part of a reorganization meant to set up the company to "continue to hyper grow."
In January 2022, Impossible let go of a smaller group of "fewer than 15" employees, Bloomberg reported at the time.
Layoffs have been one part of a shakeup over the past year at Impossible. Several executives have left the company, and founder and former CEO Pat Brown is on leave from Impossible until this spring. Brown stepped down from the CEO spot in April.
McGuinness, his replacement, is trying to inject more marketing savvy into the brand.
Plant-based meat sales growth has flattened over the last several months, causing analysts to question the future of the category. Impossible took out a full-page ad in the New York Times earlier this month to counter a Bloomberg Businessweek story's assertion that plant-based meat is "just another fad."
But McGuinness acknowledges that Impossible faces real challenges. A majority of US consumers haven't even heard of the brand, and supermarkets don't always give Impossible's products ideal placement in their stores, he told Time Magazine.
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