Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Allen Weiner

Incredo Sugar: Redefining Sweetness, Delighting Taste Buds, and Nurturing Health

The intake of excess sugar in our diets is an epidemic that has no season or one that lies stealthily in refrigerators or airplane tray tables. Healthy Food America notes that the United States leads the world in the consumption of added sugars and ranks third in the world in sales of sugary drinks. All this sugar has consequences – the U.S. has one of the highest overall obesity rates in the world and the highest rate of childhood obesity, not to mention heart disease and diabetes.

Several attempts to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame and Saccharin have been mildly effective, asking consumers to give up taste to unsweetened diets. Natural options such as agave, monk fruit, and Stevia round out this list focusing on substitution rather than the complex approach of manipulating a sugar molecule. Enter Incredo (formerly DouxMatok), an Israeli company with an idea that maximizes the properties of sugar but limits its impact on the body.

Born out of necessity in World War II, the story is a part of history led by Prof. Avraham Baniel, a renowned chemist in Israel. The best retelling of the journey from concept to realization can be found in an episode of the Netflix series “Explained” (Season Three, Episode 1). In short, Prof. Beniel discovered that by adding starch to sugar crystals, consumers could use less sugar with the same taste. Fast forward to 2001 and then to 2013 and 2014, and Baniel brought his earlier discovery back to life with a significant improvement. Using a small “carrier” with the active ingredient (sugar) as part of the refinery process results in a cluster of sugars rather than a new molecule. These clusters will then linger on the tongue, optimizing flavor delivery.

Incredo CEO Ari Melamud

The Israeli food tech startup recently announced the close of its latest (and most significant) fundraising round to date, coinciding with the unveiling of a new company name, Incredo LTD, based on the company’s signature product Incredo® Sugar. In an interview with The Spoon, company CEO Ari Melamud discussed how Incredo is poised to create a healthier sugary experience.

Using a chocolate bar with 13 grams of sugar as an example, Melamud said Incredo could reduce the sugar content by 30 percent to 50%, which could be great news for those with diabetes and other related conditions.

“It changes from one application to another and even from one recipe to another because every recipe is very different depending on the other ingredients inside,” Melamud said. “So, on average, we can say we can drop 40%. And again, our technology is not a diabetes solution. But we’re a mass market solution to help everybody prevent becoming diabetic in many ways. Because if you look at the numbers and statistics on a global average, we’re consuming about three or four times more sugar than recommended. If we can drop it by 50%, 40 to 50%, that’s a big difference for a lot of people preventing people from becoming diabetic actually. This is our main mission and our main tasks.”

Even in its earliest stage, DouxMatok has developed significant commercial partnerships with Better Nutritionals, a supplement manufacturer; Batory Foods, a specialty ingredient company; and Blommer Chocolate Company, North America’s largest cocoa processor and ingredient chocolate supplier.

If the company’s Incredo Sugar has one Achilles heel, it will not work with liquid (preventing use in beverages) because it quickly dissolves, bypassing the product’s lingering taste experience. After hearing DouxMatok’s story, the issues with liquid are small hurdles that could be rapidly overcome.

Prime Roots Raises $30M Series B for Deli Meat Made With Koji Mycelium

The average supermarket deli is a sad carnival of sulfites, nitrates, and preservatives that go bump in your belly. There have been a handful of upstarts in the plant-based food space attempting to create a healthy alternative to sliced cotto salami or chunks of smoked roast beef. One Berkeley-based company believes it has a healthy, tasty solution.

Prime Roots, producer of deli-style meat made from koji mycelium, announced $30 million in Series B funding this month from True Ventures, Pangaea Ventures, Prosus Ventures, Top Tier Capital, Diamond Edge Ventures, bringing their total funding to $50 million. The fresh funding will enable Prime Roots to scale and expand to deli counters and restaurants. The company’s alternative deli product currently is available primarily in the San Francisco Bay area.

Growing up with family in the food industry, Prime Roots founder and CEO Kimberlie Le knew that the focus had to be a multi-barreled approach: taste was a must; nutrition was also a consideration, and sustainability also was vital.

“Because I come from a food background, I really wanted to emphasize taste,” Le told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure the products taste good first and foremost. When we started six years ago, we were also thinking about really the nutrition and the cleanliness of the products. At the time, legacy brands had long ingredient lists and a lot of unpronounceable ingredients. I really wanted to fix that because it wasn’t anything that my mom, who’s a chef, would want to serve in her restaurants or at home. And so really took it upon myself to find a solution that really met the consumer where they are and really solved a personal problem for conscience eaters.”

Prime Roots approaches the deli case with the identical microscopic texture of meat, along with its umami taste made from plants. Experienced chefs helped develop the most popular deli products-including cracked pepper turkey, black forest ham, hickory bacon, salami, and pepperoni to emulate the savory, meaty taste, and texture that consumers demand for meat substitutes. According to the company, Prime Roots’ turkey and ham have no nitrates, preservatives, cholesterol, soy, wheat and are lower in sodium than the leading brands.

Koji is a strain of a fungus used for various culinary purposes, including the production of alcoholic beverages like sake or invaluable condiments like miso and mirin. In the case of creating deli meats, koji ignites the fermentation process when added to other base ingredients. Other companies such as Meati and Aqua Culture Foods use koji in their production of alternative proteins.

Le said that as part of her due diligence, she toured a number of delis across the country including New York, the center for all things corned beef and pastrami. The goal was to see how receptive these landmark eateries would be to a new product.

“When we were working on the concept, the deli concept,” Le recalled, “The first thing we did when we had initial prototypes was go to New York, which is really deli mecca and had prototypes which we would take into some of the most iconic delis and say, ‘Hey, try this’ to see how open and receptive these deli folks were and how the deli culture would be receptive to a plant-based product.”

 “Surprisingly, we didn’t get kicked out of a single place, and everyone was super excited to put the meats on their slicer. They were wowed by the texture, the slicing capabilities, and were just very open and excited.”

Breadwinner Launches Presale for Its Sensor-Powered Sourdough Starter Monitoring Tool

If you thought sourdough mania ended when the pandemic wound down, it’s worth scanning social media to realize nothing is further from the truth. The groups and rosters of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram overflow with topics as diverse as “Sourdough Starters – Sourdough Support Group,” “Sourdough Geeks,” and “Sourdough Bread Bakers India.”

Sourdough is about community; no one knows that better than Fred Benenson, the man behind Breadwinner, a sensor-driven tool that helps home bakers manage their sourdough starters. Breadwinner, a high-tech jar lid, launches its crowdfunding campaign today, hoping to hit $35,000 in pledges. This new entry to the crowd-funding arena is a data drive device that uses battery-powered sensors to measure a starter’s height and temperature; Breadwinner and its companion app seamlessly sync with the cloud to record the starter’s behavior over 36 hours. The crowdfunding campaign even includes an option for an add-on where Benenson and company will send you Benenson’s own Breadberry starter.

Once your starter hits its peak fermentation, Breadwinner lets you know it’s time to start making your dough and gives you a precise measurement of how long it took (e.g., “Your starter took 9 hours and 32 minutes to reach its peak.”)

Benenson’s interest in sourdough blossomed when he happened upon a cooking class where the guy teaching it “has a Ph.D. in yeast biology.” It became a learning experience for the tech veteran starting around 2010 when his journey began into the finer aspects of working with a starter. After immersing himself in his work at Kickstarter, Benenson took a break around 2018 and 2019 and dug into the social media sourdough world. Tickled when he learned that people named their starter cultures, Benenson was ready to make an impact in the space.

“It was really a little bit of a mystery when it behaved well and when it didn’t,” Benenson told The Spoon in a recent interview. “I knew if I kept on it, (the starter) would get into shape.” Deploying his refined data skills, he made a spreadsheet to help him track his starter’s behavior and learn its optimal time for baking.

Success with an early prototype of Breadwinner led to some positive feedback which encouraged Benenson to enlist the help of some hardware experts and build the product he brings to market on Kickstarter.

“I thought, okay, if I could make (the initial version) work, and people would spend $150 on it, there’s a market here,” Benenson said. “I thought I would sell a dozen, which would’ve been a successful beta. But we ended up selling three or four dozen of them, got some nice writeups, and got on people’s radar. And I was like, oh, okay. This is, there’s enough of a market for me to take it to the next phase.”

While other products manage or facilitate manipulation of sourdough starters, Benenson knew building a community around his Breadwinner would give it an edge. The role of community with Breadwinner is for users to share recipes, provide each other tips and tricks, and even if need be, offer tech support.

“There’s a couple of reasons I’ve decided to start with a community,” he explained. “First is it’s kind of just my intuition, and I spent a lot of time in that kind of open source and Wikipedia and Creative Commons world before I worked at Kickstarter. And when I worked at Kickstarter, I think one of the defining features of running Kickstarter projects was that you get a really great community at the end of it. And those people follow you, and if you treat them well and you’re honest and straightforward with them, they’re fans for life.”

You can check out the Breadwinner crowdfunding campaign here.

Introducing Breadwinner

Sourdough Savior: A New Machine Keeps Your Starter Fresh and Alive

One of the byproducts of the COVID-19 pandemic was the rise (no pun intended) of sourdough baking. Quicker than you can say, “cabin fever,” a nation of wanna-be bakers turned their homes into warm and crusty boulangeries. Key to the process is what’s known as a sourdough starter, a mixture of flour and water that has been fermented by naturally occurring yeast and lactic acid bacteria.

While hearty in nature, starters need a bit of TLC to do their thing optimally. Enter Sourhouse co-founders Erik Fabian and Jennifer Yoko Olson, two bakers who brought their skills as marketers and industrial design, respectively, to create Goldie, an appliance built to keep sourdough starters at an ideal temperature. The proper temperature for a sourdough starter is between 75-85°F (24-30°C), and this range provides the warm environment needed for the yeast and bacteria in the starter to thrive. Too hot and the starter may over-ferment, while too cold can slow or halt the fermentation process.

Fabian and Olson’s entry into the world of sourdough baking is called Goldie, as in Goldilocks of The Three Bears fame. Goldie is built to provide just enough warmth to keep a sourdough starter consistently in the “Goldilocks Zone” (as in not too hot, not too cold).

In a recent interview with The Spoon, Fabian explained that the idea for Goldie preceded the pandemic and was born out of his sourdough starter issues. “You know, New York apartment, it was getting down below 60, and it was just too cold for my starter,” he said. “I didn’t really understand the way temperature interacted with my starter at that point. So, I found a warm spot, which became a DIY trick. As I continued to bake, I found that my starter was kind of like always searching for a warm spot.”

Once COVID came along, with the assistance of Olson, an experienced product designer, discovery met opportunity.” We didn’t want to make something like smart technology. We wanted to be like dumb technology for marketing because there’s enough complexity to baking with sourdough, so we wanted to create something simple. My basic idea early on was like a warming base with a transparent dome,” Fabian said.

The next step was Kickstarter, where Goldie was introduced in April 2022. Ending in October, Sourhouse’s offering drew 1,007 backers who pledged $103,948, almost triple the $39,000 original ask. Along with the Goldie apparatus, the Kickstarter kit came with a cooling puck that a baker can keep in the freezer if the starter overheats and needs quick cooling.

With fermentation a thing now, what are the thoughts about the extensibility of Goldie? Would it work for other types of fermented foods? While Fabian wouldn’t be specific about such next steps, it’s clear he and Olson are on to something, given proper fermentation for everything from sauerkraut to kombucha works best with controlled temperatures.

“Our focus on bread is really because, from my point of view is like I think it’s one of the most accessible points to entry into fermentation,” Fabian commented, “probably along with sauerkraut. And you know, I think it’s just easier to launch a brand and a business around a more targeted kind of idea.”

Spoken like a true marketer.

New School Foods Swims Against the Current In Its Approach to Alternative Proteins

In business, the daring entrepreneurs zig when others zag. In the world of plant-based alternative proteins, Chris Bryson, CEO and founder of New School Foods, decided to zig his way into a new approach, introducing a new patented freezing process to create whole cuts of salmon.

New School Foods, based in Toronto, comes out of stealth mode with a strong ambition fueled by research, investment capital, and a mission. As Bryson told The Spoon in a recent interview, companies in the plant-based protein space have primarily focused on small cuts such as nuggets and burgers using a process that uses heat in the extrusion, which precooks the food.

Bryson described how New School differs on both counts.

“We always intended to be a company that focuses on what we call whole cuts, he said. “We see that as sort of the next frontier of alternative protein. “Burgers and nuggets are great, but there’s a much bigger opportunity, and I wanted to work on that. With alternative proteins, if you can create the equivalent of a Tesla for food, it becomes exciting for people to switch and feel like there’s no compromise, and we can create real impact.”

Bryson said that before diving into the company’s approach to alternative proteins, he funded a lot of research, much of which yielded inconclusive results. One, however, hit the jackpot. “One of those projects came up with this complete alternative to extrusion. And it doesn’t use heat to create texture, and it uses cold or freezing to create texture.” And it is with freezing that New School can more easily produce whole cuts and offer healthy fats.

High moisture extrusion, Bryson said, is used in products such as Beyond Burger. As such, the food is precooked and often “uses color tricks” to make the transition more closely resemble an aminal product such as a hamburger.

Another differentiator for New School is its scaffolding.

“We create a mold with empty slots– thousands of these small vertical channels that we fill up, and we turn those vertical channels into protein fibers because it’s a mold. It gives us the flexibility to work with different proteins. And based on the animal that we’re trying to emulate, we can pick proteins that transition or cook at the same temperature that the animal protein does”.

Bryson goes on to say that the company’s focus is to create a salmon that looks and tastes like the fish that swims against the current and provides the “right mouth feel.”

“We spent countless months, if not years, focusing on how we recreate that no feel. And that comes down to recreating muscle fibers. So, our technology allows us to tune the width of the muscle fiber, the length of the muscle fiber, and the resistance of the muscle fiber,” he said. It also provides a platform that can be used for other types of fish, seafood, and alternative proteins in general.

New School aims to have a product commercially ready in 2024, first for restaurants and then for consumers. Armed with $13 million in funding from Lever VC, Hatch, Good Startup, Blue Horizon Ventures, Clear Current Capital, Alwyn Capital, Basecamp Ventures, and Climate Capital, Bryson said the funds would be used to build out a pilot facility in the Toronto area.

New Culture Believes Its Animal-Free Casein Will Help Grow the Alt.Cheese Market

It might sound like a scene from “Forest Gump,” but consumers love cheese–sliced, diced, shredded, spread, liquid, and chunked. Globally, according to Expert Market Research, we’re looking at a space that reached a value of about $75.46 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8% in the forecast period of 2023-2028, reaching a value of approximately $109.85 billion by 2026. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of cheddar.

While David-like com-compared to the Goliath dairy-based cheese world, alternative cheese—that is, “cheese” made without products that come directly from animals—is gaining steam and popularity. Future Market Insights states that the global cheese alternative market reached a  market valuation of $4.3 billion in 2022, accelerating with a CAGR of 8.3% by 2022-2032 to reach a value of $9.6 billion by 2032.

What alt.cheesemakers know is that one of the keys to producing animal-free cheese is the production of animal-free casein. Casein, which predominantly comes from cow’s milk, is a protein that is a critical ingredient in cheese-making. California-based New Culture has a solution that can make casein at scale without animal milk using precision fermentation. The company says its mozzarella will debut at pizzerias around the United States in 2023.

In a recent interview, New Culture told The Spoon about the company and its future trajectory.

How is your company different from Change Foods, which also says it is making animal-free casein?

At New Culture, we’ve proven our ability as the industry leader to produce animal-free casein at scale efficiently. This is critical in enabling us to produce delicious animal-free mozzarella, drive down cost, unlock broad distribution, and succeed in our mission to lead the change to an animal-free dairy future. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from a wide range of chefs, pizzaiolos, and pizza lovers who have been able to enjoy our melty, stretchy cheese cooked in ovens up to 800 degrees.

We’re focused on creating a future with delicious animal-free cheese that positively impacts the environment and the global food system, and we’re excited about the rapidly expanding ecosystem working toward that goal. 

Are you involved in the entire process, including making the cheese or animal-free protein?

New Culture makes animal-free cheese from end to end, producing our animal-free casein protein and then turning that casein into cheese. Beginning with our mozzarella,  we combine our animal-free casein with water, plant-based fat, and a touch of sugar, vitamins, and minerals. We use traditional cheese-making to create the final product. Unlike conventional cheese, ours is free from lactose, cholesterol, trace hormones, and antibiotics.

To make animal-free mozzarella that tastes like the real deal, we use only the best plant-based fats to produce the perfect mouthfeel and consistency and a dash of plant-based sugars to match the sugar content in cheese that comes from animal milk. We also mix good vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B to ensure our cheese provides the dietary profile that cheese eaters expect and the nutritional benefits they deserve.

Do you plan to be B2B or direct to the consumer?

New Culture’s first product is a melty, stretchy, animal-free mozzarella, which we’re planning to launch in pizzerias as our first market. Over time we will develop a complete portfolio of other cheese products, expand into retail (e.g., grocery stores), and sell our animal-free casein to food manufacturers as a B2B ingredient supplier.

How long before you have products in the market, and what will they be?

We are very excited that our first animal-free mozzarella will be available for consumers to taste in 2023. Mozzarella is the most consumed cheese in the US (13 Ibs consumed annually per person – everyone loves pizza!), and we will be the first to market with a pizza cheese made of casein from precision fermentation.

How do you think your product will fare with vegans, given it is animal-free but not strictly vegan?

New Culture cheese is free from all animal inputs and is entirely vegan. We are proud to make a product that vegans and cheese lovers will enjoy. We can do this by producing our animal-free casein protein – the essential protein that makes cheese cheesy – through precision fermentation. Instead of using a cow to produce milk that contains casein proteins, we get mighty microorganisms to make those same casein proteins, but without involving any animals. This food technology has been around for decades and is actually a method already used in the cheese-making process. 

Israel’s Brevel and Vgarden Team Up to Add Taste to the Alt.Cheese Market

Vegans would agree that cheese is one of the more difficult foods to put aside when entering the plant-based world. A decade ago, vegan cheese options were lacking, and even though the choices have skyrocketed, finding a smoked gouda cheddar. Mozzarella, or provolone’s taste closely approximates its dairy counterpart, has been challenging. Yes, some smaller artisan brands do a respectable job, but finding a creamy, melty vegan cheese that nails taste and texture is a tall order.

Israel-based Brevel is teaming up with plant-based food manufacturer Vgarden to tackle the cheese challenge head-on. In a press release ballyhooing the new partnership, the companies believe the combination of Brevel’s algae-based microprotein and Vgarden’s production exercise will yield a top-notch product.

In an interview with The Spoon, Eyal  Adut, Chief of Marketing and Business Development at Vgarden, and Yonatan Golan, Co-founder and CEO at Brevel, discussed how the two companies would change the face of non-dairy cheese.

What protein is Vgarden using now, and how will Brevel’s algae-based alternative change the product?

Adut: Currently, Vgarden’s meat and fish alternatives contain high levels of pea or wheat protein. The challenge with these widely used plant-based proteins is in mild-tasting products such as cheese when a certain aftertaste is notable in these products when using those proteins. This fact, combined with Vgarden’s cheeses being allergens free (our products do not contain nuts, oats, soy, etc..), creates the situation that most of our plant-based cheeses are high in calcium, fiber and other nutrients yet contain no protein.   We   have   successfully developed cheddar and parmesan cheese with 10% pea protein, which was possible due to the relatively strong flavor of these cheeses

Vgarden intends that all of our cheeses will contain plant-based proteins, and that is why Brevel’s protein,  being taste and color neutral,   can provide us with the required solution for mild-tasting cheeses.

Golan: In terms of functionality – Brevel tries to be as inert as possible – increasing the protein of Vgarden’s cheeses without changing taste, color, or texture. Brevel has been described as a “ghost protein” – it increases protein content without noticing it is there

Will Brevel’s product be used for more than cheese, given Vgarden’s product line?

Adut: Vgarden is constantly researching novel ingredients and will continue to use other plant-based proteins for its meat and fish alternatives, as these serve different purposes, such as texture. The main challenges for novel ingredients in the plant-based industry remain taste, cost, and scale. As more consumers demand solutions for highly nutritious products, we are working with the industry to scale up novel ingredients. Vgarden’s goal is to provide healthy plant-based foods at price parity with the   animal-based   alternative, and   that   is   what   will   drive gardens ingredients choices in the future

Any chance of moving into the B2C space?

Adut: Vgarden has been active in the Israeli B2C space for nearly a decade under the Mahu Mashu™   brand, and its products are being sold in most retail stores in Australia under other brands (powered by Vgarden). Vgarden recently announced its joint venture with Cale  &   Daughters and established garden Australia, which will manufacture locally-made products for retail and food service in Australia. We are aiming to occupy any white spaces in the worldwide market with the right partners on board

What specific cheeses will Vgarden make? More of its hard cheeses and soft cheeses?   Are there certain cheeses better suited for Brevel’s protein?

Adut: That is something Vgarden is exploring and researching. The Brevel protein shows promising qualities, and we hope to incorporate it in all of our cheeses. Vgarden has developed prototypes of mozzarella and cheddar with previous versions of Brevel’s protein, which taste groups received very well.

How will you enter the U.S. market? Any chance for direct-to-consumer?

Adut: Vgarden recently announced it had formed a presence in the U.S.; Vgarden carried out thorough research of the plant-based market in the U.S. and developed its penetration strategy.   Vgarden is   currently under negotiations with some of the leading sales and distribution companies in the U.S. food sector to be able to provide for any future and current demand for Vgarden’s plant-based offerings

Re-Nuble Aims to Use Food Waste To Make Indoor Agriculture More Sustainable

The role of indoor growing, ranging from small indoor vertical farms to large greenhouses, is vital to sustaining the world’s food supply. Controlled Environmental Agriculture is essential for growing crops in underused spaces, rooftops, and rows of vertical gardens. Seizing upon this vital resource, Tinia Pina, Founder & CEO of ReNuble, has taken up the challenge to help this idea scale. With a best-in-class nutrient and growing medium, Pina’s company has created organic compounds sourced from food waste for sterile, technology-driven hydroponic and soilless systems.

For the dynamic Pina, her vision for what became Re-Nuble started more than six years ago in the New York school system. “I also saw our outreach educational classes for this program were from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.,” she recalled in an interview with The Spoon. “I noticed what the kids were bringing for class for lunch, and those options were very processed. With that diet, you see a direct impact on their level of attention. And I felt, from a systemic perspective, that will immediately impact the type of productivity and retention of the information we’re teaching. So overall, I always felt that people with better access to nutrition are spending more time being able to be fully immersed and retaining the information. And they are calling less out of work with fewer sick days.”

The genesis of Re-Nuble’s solution, Pina goes on to explain, came from her observation of how food waste was disposed of. “At that time, New York was spending $77 million to export its food waste to China, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And that’s simply because we don’t have the composting infrastructure to handle it,” Pina said.” I wondered how we could make food waste a consistent alternative for conventional synthetic fertilizers by doing it for soils or hydroponic systems. So, we focused on using food waste as a viable alternative for chemical fertilizers in indoor grow environments.”

Specific to its product lines, Re-Nuble’s Head of Business Development & Strategy, Riyana Razalee, said in a company press release, “CEA is a large part of the future of farming, and so, we have to prioritize its role in decarbonization. Solutions need to address the gamut of the food supply chain, decarbonizing as many parts of it as possible. This vital issue is what our team is focused on”. The company states that for every acre of an indoor farm that uses Re-Nuble’s organic hydroponic nutrient, Away We Grow, the company can remove up to 5 metric tons of carbon emissions annually. That’s approximately one home’s energy use for a year.

In addition, its grow medium, ReNu Terra, supports the anti-peat movement. Companies, activists, and governments are demanding the reduction of drained peatlands. When farmed for agriculture needs, peat changes from a carbon sink to a greenhouse gas emitter, releasing approximately 1.9 gigatonnes of CO2e annually. This amounts to 0.4 billion gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for a year.

Pina said Re-Nuble has three customer segments now. First is the consumer market. Away We Grow could be part of a kit offered for an indoor growing system. “Consumers are eager to find more environmentally and people and animal-friendly solutions,” Re-Nuble’s CEO noted. The second segment is commercial farms such as Gotham Greens. The third, she said, is “disruptive farms.” For the last group, she stated, “There are severe supply shortages globally, and so there’s a lot of urgencies to find something that could be more sustainable, but even more importantly, something that they can afford.”

In the World of Food Tech, The Big Guys Innovate Just Like Everyone Else. Sometimes

Two Stanford grads starting a Fortune 500 computer company in 1939 in their garages is a more than a twice-told tale. Same with a group of Harvard students coming up with a foundation to build Microsoft or Facebook. Less sexy, but equally important, are the innovations that happen at those same giant powerhouse organizations.

During the recent SKS Invent virtual conference, a pair of leaders from two such giants, Electrolux and BSH, spoke about the challenges and rewards that come with sparking innovation at a large, global brand. This post is a look back at my conversation and key insights gleaned from Tove Chevalley, Head of Electrolux Innovation Hub, and Lars Roessler, Head of Corporate Venturing for BSH Startup Kitchen.

What’s it like when a large, established organization pursues innovation? How does it happen? How does it start? Does it just kind of come to somebody in the shower?

Lars: No matter what type of innovation you’re talking about, it’s got to be consumer-centric, has to be customer-driven, customer focused. Suppose you innovate in a space where the consumer is not at the center of your thinking. You can do many things. But it won’t be successful.

Again, it starts with the consumer; we think about how we can improve quality of life, which is our old mantra, but how can we improve the consumer journey across the customer lifecycle? Of course, we are a big corporation and have resources and smart people. But in the end, you need to have the garage mentality is somehow getting inspiration from the outside world.

Tove: I don’t think it’s that different than what it is in the startup community. You know you need a good idea; you need an entrepreneurial spirit; you need to be a bit gutsy and be able to drive that forward.

Ensure you have availability for funding if you have ideas. We know which areas that we are interested in, in driving innovation. So we get to focus on everything that we do, which I think is critical for us when we crack that, that made a huge difference in our innovation funnel

What role does market research play?

Lars: Having market data is super important, but I think we all know typically, market research is kind of like backward-looking. Right? So, we know what happened in the past and what sales have been and what users might be thinking about. But you got to be more forward-looking as well. You could call it foresight management. Also, you can be more experimental, thinking about new needs.

Tove:  We also have a foresight team that helps us look at the biggest opportunity spaces in the future. Because I think that is key. What Lars is mentioning is, as a startup community, you need to look at the market right now as well. But it would help if you looked at other signals that are happening on and going on, you know, economically, politically, consumer, what’s happening around the world. And that gives us signals of where the future growth areas are.

Let’s talk about money. How are your projects and innovation financed? Or do you get kind of a budget? Is it a free flow of cash? Does it come with strings attached? And how do you set up goals and milestones?

Tove: We struggled with this setup because we started funding projects. That had a higher uncertainty. We realized quite quickly, of course, that that kills off ideas very quickly. What we did is we started looking at what the startup world looks like and venture capital. And how can we structure our funding, not only the funding we do with startups, but the funding that we do with their projects, in the same way, and looking at how you move through the funnel, you have different funding rounds. I think it takes a lot of training for leadership and how you look at projects, but also training for people internally and being comfortable in working that way. But that has given us risk mitigation and how we do risk in the company is a lot better.

Lars: When it comes to funding new innovation projects and startup collaborations, we run a very decentralized approach, meaning that money needs to come from business. So, we have had a learning curve on our end and many discussions. For projects, it depends, of course. How far out are you looking with the innovation you want to develop and a new business model you want to develop? But typically, if you don’t have a landing spot, how can you convince anyone within the company to fund, like the first couple of steps of an innovation project? How would you ever be able to convince them to do it by you when you got to be writing the really big checks?

What’s it like to pull the plug on a project?

Lars: No one likes to do it. When people work together, they form some bond. Right? But at some point in time, and that’s, I guess, also the role of units like ours, to be that mediator, buffer in between the startup, the external partner, and the internal innovation team. So I mean, in the end, it’s like a failed relationship, where hopefully, all come to the same conclusion. But in the end, it’s to the benefit of all parties to move

Tove: It’s about killing your darlings, and I think we all have the darlings we work with. I think for us, it’s a lot of building that culture internally and ensuring that we have, you know, mental security coming into these projects because you are working with a lot of uncertainty. And we want people to be comfortable being uncertain. And one of the most important things when you work with uncertainty, is to feel trust in each other and that you trust both the stakeholders that you work towards, but also the team that you work with, and trust that we all have the same goal in this and that we do this together. And I think for us, it’s a muscle that you need to train over and over again to ensure that you have this trust among yourselves, but also trust with your managers. So, we worked a lot on the kind of governance of projects and working with leadership to ensure that they provide that trust to the people who work with us. Also, looking into our, you know, Swedish heritage, we come from a culture where we do work as a team, and we don’t look and celebrate an individual accomplishment; we celebrate team efforts.

You can watch the full season below.

Vienna’s LIVIN Farms Receives €6 million to Upcycle Food Waste Into Insect-Powered Protein

Turning food waste into a usable commodity might seem like magic, but it’s a reality for companies such as Vienna-based LIVIN farms. The company has announced a €6 million Series A round led by venture Investor Peter Luerssen, allowing it to expand its team and solution.

As a player in the alternative protein space, LIVIN Farms developed HIVE PRO, a modular system for fully automated insect processing. HIVE PRO allows waste management companies and large-scale food producers to upcycle organic waste and by-products into valuable proteins, fats, and fertilizers.

In an interview with The Spoon, Katharina Unger, Founder of LIVIN Farms, explained her company’s process. “Livin Farms customers are largely food and feed processing companies and agricultural players that have access to at least several thousand tons of organic by-products every year. They typically make a loss on it by having disposal costs. Generally used feed substrates include by-products, surplus production from the bakery, potato, vegetable, and fruit processing industry, and pre-consumer wastes from retail and grain by-products.”

One of the critical elements of the LIVIN Farms solution is the use of black soldier fly larvae in its “plug-and-play” solution. A module is set up at a customer site, after which, as Unger says, her company operates it as a Farming as a Service (FaaS) model. The first step is when the organic waste of the customer is recycled on-site by being processed and prepared as feed for the insects. After that is completed, using a robotic handling machine moves the feed made from the organic food waste into pallet-sized trays. The machine then inserts seedlings (baby larvae) and empties the harvest-ready larvae from the trays.

At this point, insect Larvae are fed on recycled organic food waste in a climate-controlled environment. The insects are then ready to be harvested within seven days only. The final step is processing the insect larvae into protein powder and oils. The end product is three animal feed types high in protein, antibacterial, and antiviral properties.

LIVIN Farms LIVIN farms recently opened a fully up-and-running 1,400 square meter pilot site in Vienna where the HIVE PRO is demonstrated to interested customers.

Unger began her journey to building LIVIN Farms in 2013, she said. “The idea for Livin farms started when I developed the first device to grow the entire lifecycle of the black soldier fly larvae in a kitchen device to turn kitchen scraps into proteins ready to harvest. This prototype was patented and then turned into a tabletop farm for mealworms (The Hive) later on that was sold in the hundreds to more than 45 countries worldwide. Since 2019, Livin Farms has used our years of R&D to focus on industrial insect farming technologies.”

The company is working on projects throughout Europe, Unger said. LIVIN Farms hopes to have several installations over the next several years.

LIVIN Farms has previously secured a Seed investment round, grants, and subsidies from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Austrian Promotional Bank (AWS), and the European Innovation Council (EIC) under the European “Green Deal,” totaling more than $4 million €. The company believes its latest investment will lead to the “further growth of the company and will be used for expanding the LIVIN farms team, standardization of the technical solutions, and driving the initial scale-up phase.”

Israel’s Profuse Technology Raises $2.5M for Technology That Lowers Cost of Cultured Meat

As the world awaits the arrival of cultured meat, manufacturers and their suppliers strategize to cope with the realities of this potentially mammoth market. Infrastructure and product scaling for growth remain a challenge from the supply side. Still, concerns over the pricing of lab-grown meat, poultry, and seafood might be the most significant roadblock to consumer acceptance.

Israeli-based Profuse Technology believes it has a solution to bring manufacturing costs down to a point where a pound of cultured beef could achieve price parity with meat from a live animal. A step forward, the company has announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed funding round (and a total of $3.75m since its establishment). The round is led by New York-based investment firm Green Circle and existing shareholders – OurCrowd, Tnuva, and Tempo. Other new investors include Siddhi Capital, a leader in investments in cultivated meat, and Kayma, the investment arm of De-Levie, a meat industry specialist.

According to the announcement, the company will use the funds to collaborate with cultivated meat producers, obtain FDA regulatory approval, and expand the research and development team and its laboratories. The funds will also position the company to source significant capital raising at the end of the second quarter of 2023 to commercialize its customer collaborations.

Profuse’s solution is based on what it calls “a cocktail” that is added during the period when a harvested animal stem cell begins its proliferation process. As founder and CTO Dr. Tamar Eigler-Hirsh told The Spoon: “You would start with a biopsy, and it could be directly from the muscle tissue or an embryonic stem cell harvested from an animal. The cultivated meat companies would take these cells, bank the most successful ones, and optimize them. They would grow them in bioreactors and expand and expand and proliferate these cells until they have hundreds of millions of cells per milliliter. And then, at some point, they have to differentiate the cells to become muscle tissue or muscle fibers. This is where our media supplement comes in.”

“What we’ve basically found a way was to target this natural biological mechanism of regeneration by understanding the biological pathway that that that’s responsible for that,” Dr. Eigler-Hirsh continues. “There’s one protocol to make muscle, and everybody follows it, and it’s very inefficient. Right now, we’re hearing numbers being reported about between 10% to 30% efficiency in converting stem cells into muscle. And using our technology, we can bump that number up from 30% well to over 90% efficiency in conversion of stem cell to muscle.”

Greater efficiency yields more muscle which in turn leads to cultured meat. The math is simple: a more significant and efficient supply can bring down manufacturing costs, which can be passed on to the consumer.

Profuse founder and CEO Guy Nevo Michrowski goes into further detail on the issue of price parity. . First, you won’t need as many cells to start with because your efficiency of using the cells will be 95%. So instead of going for 30 days, you’re going for only 25 days. And most important, the most expensive days are being saved. So, in the last ten days, where over 85% to 90% of the median cost is consumed, those days are cut by half because you don’t need as many cells. And then also, the differentiation and fusion maturation phase of creating them is now reduced to two days instead of ten. Your overall process is only 27 days versus 40 days, which means your factory can produce 33% more yearly.”

Using technology developed at the Weitzman Institute, the company started in 2021. In 2022 it began collaborating with cultivated meat companies and others who potentially would be our distribution partners. Michrowski said that Profuse is working with the major players in the cultured meat and poultry space” And I would say that of the ten leading companies worldwide, we are working with the vast majority together “to demonstrate and quantify the effects of our cocktail on their specific production environment. We operate with different customers to demonstrate our value in different viable development environments and methods.”

Israel’s BioBetter Gets Funding for its Tobacco Plant Protein Technology

Analysts predict the value of the cultured meat market will reach $2.8 billion in 2030, which isn’t bad for a sector that has yet to produce a viable mass consumer product. While many global regulatory agencies decide if/when to give lab-grown beef, chicken, fish, etc., the green light, there is no shortage of companies working on supporting this nascent space.

Among the latest to see the merit in providing the underlying technology for the cultured meat space is Israel-based BioBetter, which has landed $10 million in  A-round funding. This significant injection of capital will be instrumental in further building out its company, which uses tobacco leaves to develop growth factors (a material that stimulates cell production) to lower costs and increase lab-grown meats’ production.

BioBetter has developed a unique protein manufacturing platform for producing growth factors (GFs) using tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum) as natural, self-sustaining, animal-free bioreactors. The field-grown tobacco plants offer a new, sustainable, efficient, and flexible response to the market need for more competitively priced GFs, specifically insulin, transferrin, and FGF2. These compounds are necessary to make cultivated meat commercially viable.

“Tobacco plants actually have many advantages, including large biomass and fast-growing rate, their ability to yield multiple harvests year-round. Tobacco is not a food crop, and its foul-tasting alkaloids prevent it from being eaten by any animals, which makes it especially suitable for the production of growth factors,” Amit Yaari, PhD, CEO of BioBetter, told The Spoon via email. “No nutrients are extracted from the plants, but the tobacco plant cells are turned into small bioreactors, each manufacturing growth factor, according to the DNA sequence inserted into their genome.”

A bioreactor is defined as a vessel in which a chemical process is carried out which involves organisms or biochemically active substances derived from such organisms. For many plant-based foods and beverages, a bioreactor is a physical tank, such as that used by a brewery. Inside, genetically engineered microorganisms are cultivated with a substrate to create a mycoprotein burger, beer, or kombucha. Using a self-contained abundant available bioreactor lowers the cost of lab-grown meat. Every company in the world of lab-grown meat would agree that product pricing is a significant obstacle.

The $10 million round is led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), with additional investment from Milk and Honey Ventures, and the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA). Erel Margalit, founder and executive chairman of JVP & Margalit Startup City, a Jerusalem-based innovation space, explains the economic advantage of using tobacco for growth factors. “Growth factors form the key building blocks for cell-cultured proteins. But costs currently run anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000 per gram of FGF2 (basic fibroblast growth factor). BioBetter’s technology can lower these costs to just $1 per gram.”

With its, investment BioBetter will expand to a larger pilot plant within the Tel Hai Industrial Park in the Upper Galilee Region of Israel. The new site will increase its tobacco plant-processing capacity, enabling it to meet its current global pool of commissions from cell-based meat cultivators. Shoseyov said that BioBetter is speaking to several companies in the cultured meat space but wouldn’t name any potential partners.

As for its immediate future, Yaari said, “We plan to scale up our production facility during 2023 and begin sales and supply of food-grade growth factors in Q1 2024. The tobacco plant suffers from a bad reputation, but we put it to good use.”