Impossible meat is closing in on the price of actual meat.

A major factor in the plant-based meat industry’s quest to reach equivalency with traditional meat is price. Meat manufacturers have already optimized their processes to the point they can offer their products at a fixed, relatively low cost. Plant-based meat is still a young industry, and its processes have not been optimized to that point yet, so its products are still more expensive. As plant-based meat distributors improve their productions, however, that price will gradually reach parity with regular meat; this is the hope of companies like Impossible Foods.

Impossible Foods, producer of vegan plant-based burger and sausage alternatives, announced today that they will be slashing their wholesale prices for commercial distributors by 15%. This is on top of a previous 15% slash that occurred back in March. At the moment, this reduction only applies to US market, but Impossible did clarify that international distributors located in Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau can expect drops of their own in the very near future.

Impossible Foods cuts prices for foodservice distributors, moving closer to parity with meat https://t.co/IZJKNp3hbY

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 6, 2021

As of the beginning of 2021, a traditional beef burger patty costs an average of $5.32 a pound according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With the price cuts enacted by Impossible Foods, an Impossible Burger patty of the same size and weight costs approximately $6.80 a pound. If Impossible could match the price of traditional meat, it could theoretically undercut the market and encourage consumers to purchase their products instead.

Representatives of Impossible have said that their production scale has increased six times since 2019, and in the past year, they have regularly set production records. It is Impossible’s hope that distributors pass the savings from the price cuts to restaurant operators who have lost business as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.