In other words, it costs almost twice as much just to make meatless meat as they're able to bring in when they sell it.

That clearly is not a workable business plan. For the business to succeed, the numbers would need to be almost the exact opposite, bringing in almost twice what it costs to produce the product.

But that's going to be quite a hard sell if they need to nearly double the price of the meatless meat just in order to break even - forget about making much profit on it without raising the wholesale price so much that the stores end up tripling or quadrupling the retail price.

I just checked the prices of walmart 80% ground beef ($5.73/lb) vs impossible burger ground beef ($9.04/lb -but it's sold in a 12 oz package, so the individual package is priced at only about $1 more than you'd pay for 33% more real meat.)

Target is already charging nearly twice the price for fake meat - $5.29 for 8 oz of meatless burgers, $5.99 for 16 oz of 80% real ground beef.

The only people who are buying it at those prices are the ones who are guilted into it by their vegan ideology, and a desperate craving for something similar to real meat.