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Following in the footsteps of other international Burger King franchises, Israel has added plant-based options to its menus.
The fast food chain is working closely with local alternative protein producer Meat. The End (MTE), which has developed beef-free patties and vegan chicken nuggets for widespread rollout in the coming weeks.
A pop-up restaurant was recently opened in Dizengoff Center, a shopping mall in the capital of Tel Aviv. It debuted the new vegan menu items, including a plant-based Whopper burger, standard hamburger, and chicken nuggets.
Meat-free options are now being rolled out in all nine Burger King locations in the Gush Dan region of Israel.
Enough to fool meat-eaters?
While US and European diners have sampled patties and nuggets from Impossible Foods and Unilever-owned the Vegetarian Butcher, Israeli Burger King fans will get a homegrown product that claims to be inherently different.
Describing the texture of conventional plant-based meat as a “roadblock to consumer satisfaction,” Dr. Yishai Mishor, founder of MTE, previously claimed that meat-eaters can always tell when they are served it. As a result, he set out to develop more comparable textures for the Burger King products.
“The goal we set for ourselves was not just to improve texture, but to improve texture in a way that is effective and is easily adopted by the industry,” he told the Times of Israel.
Burger King’s plant-based takeover
Israel is the latest in a long line of countries to embrace plant-based initiatives under the Burger King banner.
Most recently, Bristol in the UK welcomed a temporarily all-vegan restaurant to showcase the ever-increasing number of meat-free menu options. It came after the flagship restaurant in Leicester Square, London, was transformed into a plant-based location for one month in March.
Earlier this year, Burger King Germany announced that it now offers a vegan version of everything on its standard menu. The move was attributed to a desire to capture the growing flexitarian market.
Austria, Spain, and Switzerland have all also played host to vegan Burger King restaurants in the last year. This aligns with the company’s pledge to turn all of its restaurant menus at least 50 percent plant-based by 2030 for environmental reasons.
