A-list celebs help pump $300M in funding into Impossible Foods

Silicon Valley’s hottest new veggie burger startup, Impossible Foods, is beefing up its coffers with an additional $300 million in funding, including from A-list celebs like Katy Perry.

Perry, Serena Williams, Jay-Z and Trevor Noah were all part of the latest funding round for the fast-growing plant-based burger company, which needs the cash to keep up with demand for its patties, which have been in short supply.

High-tech veggie burgers that taste and feel like meat have become all the rage in recent months as restaurants scramble to get the plant-based foods on their menus. Appetites for the burgers only grew last week when Perry dressed up as an Impossible Burger at the Met Gala fashion gathering in Manhattan.

“We don’t pay for promotions or have an agency that seeks celebrities,” Impossible Burger chief financial officer, David Lee, told The Post. Perry’s decision to wear a costume featuring buns, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and pickles at the Gucci after-party “was completely organic,” he said.

Impossible Burger has raised a total of $750 million since it launched in 2011 with a mission to eliminate the need for animals in the food chain over the next 16 years with a meat substitute that tastes like the real thing.

Some 5,000 restaurants, including Qdoba and Red Robin, are already selling Impossible burgers, and Burger King recently announced plans to add the burgers to all of its 7,200 restaurants this year.

The demand has been taxing, however, for the company’s manufacturing facility in Oakland, Calif., which now needs to hire an additional 50 staffers, including 16 in manufacturing, eight in

finance and accounting and eight in product development roles in advance of a likely initial public offering.

Its chief rival, Beyond Meat, which also makes a plant-based patty, went public two weeks ago.

“We are not in a rush to be public,” Lee said, adding that Impossible Burger is trying to stanch the shortages it’s experiencing across the board.

“There will be times,” he said, “when synchronizing our supply and demand will be challenging and we are going through that now.”