Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness speaks with Yahoo Finance Live about expanding the plant-based food business into the UK, inflationary pressures, and potentially taking the company public at some point.

Video Transcript

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- Welcome back, everyone. As the market rout continues to deepen and worries over consumer spending may persist, inflation as well as the rising cost of food production are also in focus. Meatless alternative maker Impossible wants to do and defy the impossible. Well, not do the impossible-- but perhaps do the impossible. Anyway, they announced plans to expand into the UK. Joining us now to discuss those efforts is Peter McGuinness, who is the Impossible Foods CEO. And we know you want to defy the impossible here, Peter. But particularly here, as you look across the environment, consumers both in the restaurants and in the retail section of the categories that you play within-- what are you seeing in terms of the activity and the purchasing patterns?

PETER MCGUINNESS: Yeah, we're seeing an increase in sales. We're happy with our performance. If you look at our last two quarters, we're kind of averaging in that 60%-65% growth in sales. So that's really good. And some of that is just our base business continuing to increase. Some of that's new distribution. Some of that's new innovation, like some of our pork products and our chicken nuggets. And we have been able to keep prices steady, despite inflation, due to our redundancy in our supply chain, due to the efficiency and productivity in our plants, and due to just the growth we're experiencing in our operating leverage. So we feel great about the category. We feel great about our business. So we're feeling good right now.

BRIAN SOZZI: Peter, I'm trying very hard not to ask you about yogurt. I know that is now your former life. But look, I went to the supermarkets recently--

PETER MCGUINNESS: Brian, how are you?

BRIAN SOZZI: I'm hanging in there. I'm just trying to survive the week. Look, I went to the supermarkets recently, and I'm starting to see discounts on plant-based food. That is not something I have come to see from you and your largest competitor. What is it about the marketplace right now? Are consumers just trading back to meat? Or has there have been some kind of shift in the marketplace?

PETER MCGUINNESS: No, I think planned promotions are a good thing. They're good for trial, right? And when we look at our business, we have relatively low awareness and relatively low trial. But we have high repeat because people are pleasantly surprised about how good our products taste. So for us, it's about trial and awareness. And planned promotions are a good thing. What you're seeing in the aisles is actually animal products going way up. If you look at beef, it's gone up 30%-40% in the last year.