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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Allen Weiner

Millo’s New Motorless Blender Features ‘Magnetic Air Drive’

Millo is back.

Founded in 2015, Millo is a food tech appliance company that jumped into the market with an innovative small blender that produced smoothies and other blended concoctions with a quiet motor. As company Adam Trakselis, CEO, told The Spoon that the idea for the initial product came from the fact that the machine he used for his post-exercise blended beverages was so loud it woke his family. “So I would have to wait until everyone wakes up to use the blender.”

The noise issue led Trakselis to look for solutions to an appliance that hasn’t seen much innovation for decades. The first iteration of Millo sold around 1,000 units, but supply-chain issues with semiconductors forced the Lithuanian company to look for a new path. That new path is the Millo Air, the company’s next generation of the product which they just launched on Kickstarter.

Millo Air operates using a magnetic air drive (aka MAD). This axial flux stator generates magnetic fields, which turn a magnetic disc inside the blending lid without any physical connection. Without any turning parts inside the base, it is extremely quiet. In addition, the new model is smaller than the first generation making it even more portable. The drive, however, is more powerful than the original, with a top speed of 15,000 RPM.

According to the company, the first blender version received product innovation awards from IFA Berlin 2019 – the largest consumer electronics show in Europe, and was the SKS Startup Showcase winner in 2019. Moreover, in 2021 Millo received an award from Amazon as one of the top 20 most innovative products launching on its platform.

Trakselis has a vision for using a magnetic air drive far beyond his new blender. As he stated, “Our goal is to innovate the kitchen industry and to reduce electronics waste at its core by producing ten times fewer appliances. We are on a mission to establish magnetic air drive as a new sustainable kitchen standard – a home kitchen needs only one magnetic drive to power all the rotation needed devices.”

For example, a major appliance company can use the Lithuanian invention in a kitchen range. The stove can have a mix of induction burners and a magnetic air drive that can be used to power small appliances. Because of Millo’s successful use of MAD in its new product, other major manufacturers in the kitchen space have been in contact to explore use cases and partnerships. “You have one single cooktop that can have an induction for heating, and we have magnetic coupling fabrication. And if you combine them, you have one solution for all your needs in the kitchen, which is seamless,” he said.

Turning to the new Kickstarter, the company hopes to use some of the lessons learned from its initial campaign in targeting influencers and being more thoughtful about its channels. Five years of experience, the CEO says, has provided the company with some valuable marketing lessons. The campaign to raise £8,817 ($10,038) will last 30 days with the minimum pledge of £152 ($175) to land a Millo Air along with a smart blending lid, an on-the-go cup, drinking lid, charger, and magnetic hook. The Millo Air is expected to retail for $299 after the Kickstarter drive is over.

Better Meat Co. Serves Legal Foie Gras To Hungry Silicon Valley Workers

No trip to Silicon Valley would be complete without a visit to one of the sumptuous dining experiences at companies such as Yahoo, Google, Adobe, and LinkedIn. We’re not talking private dining rooms with white table clothes; employees and guests (especially employees) are treated to five-star dining every day, at no charge. And, if someone is hungry between scheduled meals—no worry; there are more snacks on hand than you would find at your neighborhood grocery store.

Thanks to its relationship with Bon Appétit Management Company, a Palo Alto-based café and catering service, Better Meat Co. is pulling a sleight of hand by offering foie gras to the employees at LinkedIn’s Sunnyvale officer cafeteria. The trick here is that foie gras is illegal in California, so Better Meat substitutes fungi for duck or goose liver. For good measure, Better Meat is showcasing its deli turkey slices, also made from mycelium called Rhiza. Rhiza (the Greek word for root) is a whole food, complete protein that’s allergen-free, neutral in taste, and has the texture of animal meat.

Showcasing is the keyword here. At this point in its lifecycle, Better Meat Co. is more of a supplier than a producer, offering its mycoprotein to partners such as Hormel for inclusion in its existing and new products.  As CEO Paul Shapiro explains, Better Meat Co. is focused on what it does best—“Our real expertise is in the fermentation and creating this extremely meat-like and versatile ingredient,” he told The Spoon, “But every once in a while, we like to showcase what the ingredients can do and the fact that it can make things as diverse as a turkey slice and foie gras really showed that. And so, in California, it’s illegal to sell foie gras, but now there is an option to enjoy that same delectable experience.”

Better Meat Co. walks a tightrope like others in the plant-based protein and cultured meat sector. Once a viable product has been developed, they face the option of taking their creations directly to the market (B2C) or taking the safer B2B route where a company offers its product to food manufacturers for their use in existing or new products. Shapiro, known throughout his industry as a visionary, realizes his company can take both paths to success.

In October 2021, Better Meat Co. and Hormel’s venture division entered an exclusive partnership to bring new mycoprotein and plant-based protein products to the marketplace. “Companies like Hormel have dramatically larger product development teams than we do,” Shapiro said. “Once our ingredients are in the hands of experts at companies like Hormel Foods, we are confident that the next generation of alternative meats will be more convincing and economical than ever.”

Perdue is another partner of Better Meat Co. In June 2019, the Sacramento-based company launched a national partnership with Perdue Farms – a leading chicken producer in the U.S. The company will provide Perdue with plant-based blends mixed with Perdue chicken to create the Chicken Plus product line.

While relationships with Hormel and Perdue make sense in the short run, neither, at his point, shows the breadth of Better Meat’s possibilities. In-house products developed by its food scientists and chefs range from Rhiza-based beef to fish to pork and may lead to the company—at some point—going directly to consumers.  “I think you can expect to see that,” Shapiro said of such future plans. “We want to be able to bring our micro protein to as many people as possible, and we want to make it humane, easy to eat and affordable for everyone.”

According to Crunchbase, Better Meat has raised $9.6 million, the bulk of which came in a July 2020 round of $8.1 million. The new funding is led by Greenlight Capital and Green Circle Foodtech Ventures, and Johnsonville, the maker of Johnsonville Sausages. Another financing round would be expected for Better Meat Co to scale enough to bring its branded crabcakes and deli slices to hungry, healthy consumers.

Shiru’s Partnership With Puratos Adds Further Credibility to its Protein Discovery Platform

In the world of food tech, decisions made on viable data are good, and a lot of data is even better. But with Shiru, a functional ingredient discovery company, with a dataset of more than 450 million known proteins, you are in rarified air and a welcome partner to forward-thinking companies.

With that in mind, Shiru has announced a new partnership with Puratos, a Belgium-based company that supplies food ingredients for bakeries. Shiru’s Flourish platform will evaluate naturally occurring proteins that could serve as a next-generation egg replacement.

“At Puratos, we truly believe that collaborations can fuel innovation within the food ecosystem,” stated Paul Baisier, Chief R&D Officer at Puratos. “As a company rooted in biology and science, Shiru is the perfect partner in the Puratos’s journey to finding novel uses for proteins discovered by Shiru’s Flourish platform as functional food ingredients that are sustainable, healthy, and delicious. Together with Shiru, we will be able to accelerate our plant-based product innovation pipeline for the benefit of our customers and consumers.”

Julian Lewis, Shiru’s Vice President of Business Development, told The Spoon why his company is excited about this partnership. “(Puratos) will help us scale up these (egg replacement) proteins using their fermentation facilities to a large kind of food grade sample, where we can then do more extensive food application testing. And through this partnership, we have a clear path to fully scaling these ingredients and bringing them to market.”

At this stage of its life cycle, Alameda, Calif.-based Shiru lives for such a partnership. Its database Flourish Flourish uses AI and machine learning to analyze its database of nearly 450 million proteins found in nature. Each application—for example, a plant-based meat company that wants to add taste to its burgers—identifies ingredients that will solve that specific functional ingredient challenge. This business model, Lewis explains, might expand to his company by commercializing some of its discoveries.

“There’ll be other food categories where we might collaborate, or we might do it ourselves,” Lewis said of opportunities down the road. “We might end up in a hybrid where we’re doing some stuff ourselves and collaborating with experts in other fields just to accelerate its market path.”

Functionality is Shiru’s secret sauce, which is the ability to target a specific property of a particular food product. Lewis explains:

“There are three categories we can play in. There’s replace in which we substitute an ingredient for one that, for example, doesn’t work properly. A second is taste. And what we mean by that is some plant-based foods are not that good, and I have yet to find a vegan cheese that works. Lastly, it is to transform. What new foods could be generated in the future that is not replacing traditional products, which are just new things? And maybe we can do that by discovering new functional protein.”

One of the side benefits of working with a complex database is the ability to help food manufacturers get away from using relatively unhealthy ingredients in some plant-based products that give the impression of being a clean alternative. “We’re aiming to provide a much better toolkit of ingredients to the food developers trying to create plant-based foods,” Lewis said.

Lewis adds that while Shiru is currently generally focused on the plant-based world, there’s no reason it will not be a player as the cultured food business develops. “All food has, I would say, taste and texture challenges, so with cultured meats, some additional ingredients may be required. And we’re already working on the early stage with players in that space as well. Our goal is to create more sustainable food ingredients that are both required and interesting.”

Ground Control’s Cyclops Puts Pour-Over Economics on Notice

While waiting in line at Starbucks for your double Grande macchiato with extra foam, few people put their phones down long enough to contemplate the economics behind each coffee drink. Even those queued up for five-to-ten minutes anticipating a rich cup of pour-over caffeine have no idea the cost of each beverage in terms of labor and equipment.

Oakland, Calif-based Ground Control has developed what it believes not only solves the labor issue associated with pour-over coffee—generally regarded as a premium process that provides an excellent cup—but does so without sacrificing taste. Eli Salomon, Ground Control’s Founder and CEO, sums it up succinctly, “The quality is second to none, while the business value is very meaningful.”

“We’re talking about an industry that has very little innovation when it comes to large-scale brewing,” Salomon told The Spoon in a recent interview. “And so, our inspiration was really to create a machine that filled all the gaps left by a lack of new ideas. It’s sorely needed by cafes, especially, you know, as we see lots of small cafes struggling during this current economic climate.”

The economics of offering pour-over coffee is difficult to sustain in the long run, Salomon noted. “Our customers are able to reduce their labor costs three to five hours a day; in addition, instead the baristas are interacting with your customers and are selling more coffee and giving them a better customer experience. It’s really a game changer for their business model.”

The machine in question is called “Cyclops.” It is a customizable, programmable batch brewer, which means it can make a large amount of coffee using a multiple filtration process—or, in industry parlance. Tranches. Ground beans are put through multiple cycles, each one bringing out another element of the beans from sweetness to body. The resulting brew offers cafes, convenience stores, and other customers a superior product on par with pour-over with far less labor.

The current Cyclops, in many ways, hasn’t changed from the model set up in Eli Salomon’s kitchen in 2013. “Until today, the process is almost identical,” he said. “We launched our first production-grade, Ground Control, in 2017, and then we launched our current model, the Cyclops, in 2018.”

Salomon, who sports an MBA from Wharton and a law degree from Harvard, says he wasn’t always a great student; coffee pushed him academically and began his love for the noble bean.

“I was a freshman in high school and a terrible student,” he recalls. “My dad instituted a new policy. He said, ‘Look, whenever you want to do your homework, I’ll take you to Starbucks, and you can do your homework there. And that was my first exposure to coffee really in a Starbucks. And so, I became a great student and was also very caffeinated.”

The Ground Control CEO began a coffee roastery business while studying for the bar exam. “My friends and I started a website that sold espresso on the web,” Salomon said. “We had the largest selection of espresso beans at the time and over 50 different origins.”

Ground Control has sold over 500 of its Cyclops coffee machines, each for $10,900. It has installs worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Is a home version in the works? “Our goal is to replace every brewer in the world,” Salomon said. “

Israeli Startup Mermade Gets Seed Funding for Its Lab-Grown Scallops

Mermade is more than just another food tech startup with a laboratory-oriented process to manufacture an alternative protein. The Jerusalem-based company’s method of using algae to create scallops has set it apart and attracted significant early-stage investment.

The company has announced an oversubscribed $3.3M seed round as it showcases a circular cellular agriculture technology for producing cultivated scallops. In doing so, Mermade attacks two problems at once: bringing sustainable, good-tasting scallops to the public at a below current market price. Most cultured meat companies struggle with the economics of meeting or beating the cost of beef, chicken, or conventional seafood.

In an interview with The Spoon, company Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Einhorn explained the differences in his company’s business and technology approach. “We thought is why not pick some meat product that eliminates as much as possible of that food engineering challenge and just focus on those huge biological challenges,” Einhorn said. “Scallops, they have a fairly similar size, and each unit is a fairly similar size and shape. And texture taste is the same all throughout the cuts. Those are huge unfair advantages compared to our direct competition– other startups trying to replicate the more complex meat products.”

Mermade says it is the first company in the world to produce scallops using cellular agriculture. The company intends to develop a product and reach laboratory-scale production by 2023, reaching consumers and restaurants after that. Mermade will use the funds to employ more stem cell and algae researchers, accelerating the company towards this goal. The scallop is the first product the company will develop out of a diverse seafood portfolio that will gradually arrive on the market.

The use of algae to recycle the cells’ growth substrate is a clear distinction for Mermade. This cellular interpretation of traditional aquaponics was termed by the company Cytoponics, and the company has filed several patent applications related to this circular production method.

Related to the cost issue, Einhorn states, “It’s a big market segment and one that it has a very high price point, which is important because the main challenge right now is driving costs down. We’re trying to integrate all parts of our design into this prototype to bring cost even close to market parity.”

“In the next few years, consumers worldwide will be able to buy cultivated scallops (Coquilles Saint Jacques) made by Mermade in a supermarket or restaurant, at an affordable price and with the same quality and taste as the original food. Using Cytoponics as our production platform, we could also produce a variety of other cultivated seafood products such as calamari, shrimp, crab meat, and more.”

The company was founded in July 2021 by Daniel Einhorn (CEO), Dr. Rotem Kadir (CTO), and Dr. Tomer Halevy (COO). Investors in the seed round include the investment platform OurCrowd, Israel’s most active venture firm; Fall Line, an American VC fund specializing in AgTech; and prominent Dutch investor Sake Bosch.

Alternative seafood—both plant-based and cell-cultured—is a hot area. As The Spoon reported in April, Good Food Institue’s report, which looks at the entire alternative seafood category across plant-based, cell-cultured, and fermentation-based products, said 2021 investment brought the total invested in the category to $313 million from 2013 through 2021. Cultivated seafood startups commanded two-thirds of all investment in alt-seafood last year at $115 million, compared with $58 million invested in plant-based seafood startups and $2 million in fermentation-based seafood.

Among the companies active in this space are Wildtype, UPSIDE Foods, Gathered Foods, and Finless Foods. With all the activity in this forward-looking space, the United States—in the form of the USDA and FDA—has yet to give the green light for sales of these lab-grown alternative proteins. Only Singapore, Qatar, and to some degree, The Netherlands have given their stamp of approval.

Zero Acre Farms Launches a Healthy Cultured Cooking Oil That Tastes Good and Saves the Planet

By his own admission, Zero Acre Farms founder Jeff Nobbs is a thinking man’s entrepreneur. And while he has taken a somewhat circumventous route to the world of healthy food and environmental well-being, diet and nutrition have always been at the forefront of his life.

“Looking backward, even in middle school, I was, you know, the weird kid who brought in chicken breast and radishes for lunch,” Nobbs told The Spoon in a recent interview. “And because I thought that was just the healthiest thing. And I didn’t drink sodas growing up because I thought they were bad. So why would I do something bad? Even then, it always kind of puzzled me that there was so much conflicting advice regarding diet and nutrition.”

Years later, with e-commerce and food industry successes under his belt, Nobbs’ Zero Acre Farm is bringing to market a cultured cooking oil (actually a multipurpose oil) that checks all the boxes. Not only is it healthier than alternatives such as corn oil, soybean oil, and canola oil, Nobb’s new entry into the market uses less water in its production and engages in no deforestation.

Some of the benefits of Zero Acre Farm’s oil include a higher smoke point than heart-healthy olive oil; heat-stable monounsaturated fats (35% more than olive oil; and low linoleic acid (aka 10x less “bad fats” than even avocado oil). By comparison, one cup of corn oil, one of the more common cooking oils, contains 28 grams of saturated fat and 199 grams of polyunsaturated fat.

Moving from e-commerce Extrabux to starting a healthy restaurant in 2015 in San Francisco allowed Nobbs to tap into his lifelong passion for food and forced him to “turn on the fire hose” and gather as much information as he could from varied sources.

“I did not want to make the same mistakes that others have made and learn from others,” Nobbs said. “So I gathered knowledge from my co-founders and a long list of people that each contributed a little bit. And I kind of take each conversation and create my own mosaic.”

One of the lessons Nobbs learned, which has been steadfast in his restaurant, Kitava, and now with Zero Acre, is that creating good-tasting food is as essential as providing health benefits and helping with climate change.

”We’re not going to bring products to market where people must make a sacrifice or where they feel like to do the right thing to the planet,” Nobbs explained. “I think it’s unrealistic to expect consumers to make a sacrifice on one of those critical areas such as taste, and we focused on that from the start of our product.”

Zero Acre Farms employs a fermentation process Nobbs says is between precision fermentation and biomass fermentation. Using his business acumen to its fullest, Zero Acre uses a third party to produce its product at scale, which the founder states will allow it to hit the ground running with a substantial supply of products.

“We’ve seen some companies start with the new product and have 150 units available for sale. We’re not taking that approach; we’re making thousands of units available for sale, and we’re at a commercial scale,” Nobbs says.

After its launch, Nobbs believes there are opportunities to produce food products—such as snack foods—that use cultured oil and a solid fat variety that could take the place of butter or margarine.

While Zero Acre Farms’ product is available today exclusively on its website, in the future Nobbs hopes to bring the product to retail.

With European Governmental Approval, Ynsect Moves Forward With Its Plan to Feed the World, Save the Climate

Will bugs save the world?

Save may be a strong word, but Paris-based Ynsect, a producer of insect protein and natural insect fertilizers, believes in the dual mission of feeding the world and protecting our diminishing climatic resources. That vision moves a step forward with backing from a European food safety agency and data that supports a change in consumer attitudes toward a diet containing bugs and insects.

According to Ynsect’s CEO Antoine Hubert, approval by the European Food Standard Agency for Ynsect’s Lesser mealworm for human consumption will allow his company to quickly move forward with its efforts to create its line of insect-based products as well as work with third-part food manufacturers.

“Our company was born from a passion for helping tackle climate change through real solutions. Insect protein, which can easily be incorporated as a powder into a whole range of products, is healthier than plant protein and more environmentally friendly than traditional animal proteins,” Hubert told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We’re excited to see the EFSA approval come through in line with consumer demands; conscious consumers become increasingly informed of better choices for both them and the environment.”

Coinciding with the EFSA green light results from an independent research firm gave further credence to Ynsect’s timing. OnePoll, a British market research company, surveyed consumers to gauge their willingness of participants to consume insects as an alternative source of protein. At first, only 59% were open to the idea, but after learning the benefits of insect consumption, over 70% responded favorably. More than half of vegans and vegetarians responded favorably once the benefits were explained.

Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm and Buffalo beetles, an insect that Hubert says is rich in protein and fat. The mealworm as a bug has been part of Southeast Asian diets and can reproduce prolifically. Ynsect uses vertical farming techniques to “grow” these insects and deploys chemical-free produce to turn them into a range of products, including fertilizers and pet food. Recently, Ynsect expanded its footprint by acquiring Protifarm, a Dutch mealworm producer, and then by incorporating Nebraska-based Jord Producers, a start-up mealworm farm, into its portfolio.

Ynsect’s consumer product is called AdalbaPro, a minimally processed ingredient line offering meat replacement and protein fortification solutions. Working with European partners, AdalbaPro products are already in several baked goods, sports nutrition, pasta, and meat alternatives. AdalbaPro contains all essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals as a high-quality animal protein.

As Hubert chronicles his company’s path, not only has it shown organic growth by evolving from a fertilizer/aquaculture company to pet food and then to a product for humans, but Ynsect’s approach has also overcome the issue other alternative protein companies face in building infrastructure. The company has carefully conducted its mealworm growing processing plan, which allows it to remain nimble for an opportunity in Europe and, hopefully, after governmental approval, the U.S.

To date, Ynsect has raised more than $400 million from such companies as OurCrowd, SuperNova Invest, and Caisse d’Epargne. The company also has captured the imagination of the real-life Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. The actor/investor recently touted Ynsect’s product on Steve Colbert’s late-night show.

(Extract) Robert Downey Jr - The late Colbert show with Stephen Colbert

Supergut’s Marc Washington Believes the Way to Better Health Is Through Our Stomachs

The Spoon recently sat down with Supergut CEO Marc Washington to hear about his company’s mission and the inspiration that drives him.

To call Supergut Marc Washington’s passion project is a gross understatement. The former Princeton University football player and Harvard MBA built on his background in the health and fitness industry to create a company whose sole aim is to improve our health through our stomachs. It was more than a noble mission that inspired Washington to start this now two-year-old company; his work is inspired by loss.

“Her name was Monica,” Washington told The Spoon. “She had an unbelievable personality. You know, she was the party and an amazing mom, I’d say, you know, hilarious, even inappropriately. But she was like the life of the party. And she was my little sister. And the biggest challenge throughout her adult life was health.” As Marc Washington said, battling several chronic conditions, Monica died during childbirth, a tragic event that shook him to the core.

And so, the idea for Supergut (formerly Muniq) was born. And the term “resistant starches” (starches such as green bananas that feed your good gut bacteria by fermenting in your large intestine) became a mantra for Washington. Available through its website, Supergut is a proprietary blend that contains unripened green bananas, resistant potato starch, oat beta-glucan, and soluble vegetable fiber. Currently, it comes in the form of a shake (four flavors), bar, and fiber mix.

How did Monica’s death lead you to start your company?

It lit a fire that just never has never been extinguished. It’s like this didn’t have to happen. There had to have been better ways to get better control of her health, which could have let her down a different pathway. And this kind of built up over time. And there’s a point where if you want to make a difference, it’s like ‘If not you, then who?  If not now, then when?’

Looking at the masses, it’s not as though we’re getting healthier. And despite all the advances in science and technology and food, there’s got to be a better way to move the needle and bend the curve of health outcomes and actually potentially impact public health, and things like that could have changed Monica’s trajectory. And so, yeah, that was my inspiration to throw my hat in the ring, and I started this company a couple of years ago. 

How did you get from the desire to improve our health to an actual product?

I like to describe it as the moments in the Matrix where Neo has decisions to make. I think it was an awakening to see just how pervasive the impact of the gut is on our overall health and that it was actually a pathway to activate this vision that I had. You could reorient your body more healthily, and the gut could be that pathway. So I credit some scientific and medical experts, along with my original investors, for helping me with the approach taken with resistant starch.

How do you use resistant starch to formulate Supergut?

We do have our proprietary blend that is resistant starch and other prebiotic fibers as well as other plants. And a lot of that was based on clinical evidence, like literally looking through close to 200 different studies to show what kind of impact that you can have and what form factors, what dosage levels, what concentration levels, what other things you to combine with it, etc. to get to what we felt like was the most productive.

The first thing was, let’s put it into a shake, which was our first product. We had a prototype within a few months, but it tasted like shit. So, for the next year, modulating the taste work with our suppliers or flavor experts, etc., to get to a shake that would work and that you could enjoy. So we did lots of iterations to get a shake that we’re incredibly proud of and our customers love the taste of. And we now find that in bars and other products.

What was behind the name change from Muniq to Supergut?

Muniq is a combination of Monica and Unique. We looked at many names, but one of the benefits of Supergut is that it just reads as if people get it right away. Since we’ve introduced it, I talk to people like, what do you do? I founded this product that creates nutrition for a super gut. With today’s attention span and the shorter and shorter range, you’ve got like 3 seconds to get across. So (the name) Supergut is helping us open doors and open conversations because it says we are all about gut health.  

Your website proudly states that Supergut is a Black-Owned business? Is there a message there?

My aspiration for what we aspire to do is to impact public health significantly. We want to move the needle; if we do that, we can play an important role in closing health disparities disproportionately affecting black and brown communities. When you look at all the factors that make up our public health crisis, 70% of people are overweight or obese. You know, 50% have some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. 50% some form of cardiovascular health risk. Keep in mind the, African American, Brown, and Latino communities have a 50% higher incidence of almost every single one. This health disparity gap has been something that has led me to create a solution from the very outset. My goal is to help close that gap.

Germany-Based Mushlabs Scores An Infrastructure Partnership with Bitburger Brewery Group

Hamburg-based biotech startup Mushlabs may have created the perfect storm in its approach to creating a clean, nutrient-rich plant-based meat alternative. The company can hit the ground running without worrying about costly infrastructure and potential distribution partners by applying its proven technology and a sound business approach.

Mushlabs has announced a relationship with Bitburger Brewery Group, a large private brewery in Germany. Bitburger will provide capacity and sidestream byproducts from its beer production as raw materials. Mushlabs intends to enhance and use these local byproducts to cultivate edible mushroom mycelium in a precision fermentation process. The mycelium will be used to produce nutrient-rich, minimally processed foods.

“(Bitburger) has a valuable sidestream that would otherwise get burned to produce energy or go to cattle, but is also not necessarily super stable,” Thibault Godard, Chief Science Officer at Mushlabs, told The Spoon in an interview. “So we are offering them a solution to upcycle in a way that is also better for the planet.”

Godard boils the complex process down to a simple example: “I like the example of coffee. For instance, coffee has 80 to 90% of waste from the crop to the cup. And this is also something where you have valuable nutrients there that you can recycle and produce food. So we are basically taking the leftovers and injecting them into the food system.”

The approach—that is, using mycelium, which has a property that acts as a natural decomposing agent in precision fermentation to create a healthy plant-based protein is what Mushlabs called fulfilling the goal of a “circular economy.”

“In natural ecosystems, fungi recycle nutrients through a specific fermentation process that digests their surrounding biomass,” the company explained in a blog post. “At Mushlabs, we harness this process to produce food from agro- and food industries’ side streams (i.e., spent coffee grounds, fruit peels, and sugarcane bagasse). This is a unique form of food production with many potential applications for the circular economy, yielding tasty meat-alternative products.”

And then there’s the smart business angle. While other companies in similar adjacencies struggle to raise large sums of capital to scale out their facilities with large fermentation tanks, Mushlabs’ partnership with Bitburger will accelerate its growth. Using often underutilized brewing tanks, Mushlabs avoids the cost of new infrastructure. CEO and founder Mazen Rizk acknowledges collocating with Bitburger gives his company a giant boost.

“And not only saving the cost, but it’s also saving the time. Because if we now decide we want to build the facility, I think ordering steel would take you probably a year and a half because there are delays in even ordering steel. Then building a facility is very costly and takes time,” Rizk says.

“When you’re talking about food products. It would be best if you did it in the most economically viable way possible so we can find a sidestream that the mushroom can grow on,” Rizk says. “So part of it is understanding what kind of product you can do, what kind of taste, what kind of nutrition they provide. The other side is understanding which one is economically feasible. How can you produce it at a high yield and low cost to ensure that you have a food product that can go into the market at a price that people can afford?”

In June, the company also boasts a huge financial acknowledgment from the EU’s prestigious EIC Accelerator Program. More than 1,000 startups and small businesses from Europe applied to receive a share of €382 million in total capital. Seventh-four companies each will get funding of up to 17.5 million Euros, with Mushlabs receiving an eight-digit figure. Through the EIC Accelerator program, the EU aims to support technology startups that address societal challenges and drive breakthrough European innovations.

Coming Out of Stealth, Paleo Unveils Six Animal-Free, GMO-Free Varieties of Heme

In 2024, imagine walking into Burger King and ordering a mammoth burger. No, not one that is bigger than your head; this Whopper will taste like the extinct proboscideans that roamed the earth millions of years ago. It’s all part of the magic from a Belgium-based food ingredient company called Paleo.

After two years, Paleo has come out of stealth mode to announce its technology to bring the authentic taste and aroma of meat and fish to plant-based meat and fish alternatives with a non-GMO, animal-free heme. As part of that announcement, the World International Property Organization has published Paleo’s patent application, finally allowing Paleo to share details of its precision fermentation technology. 

Hermes Sanctorum, CEO and co-founder of Paleo: “When we set out to create the ultimate animal-free meat or fish experience, we quickly zeroed in on heme. Without exaggeration, we can say that we cracked the code of heme, allowing us to produce GMO-free heme that’s bio-identical to the most popular meats and tuna – as well as mammoth.”

More about the mammoth burger shortly.

Heme, a precursor to hemoglobin, is an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal. In short, it makes meat taste like meat, giving it its mouthfeel and umami sensation. Paleo has created a bio-identical heme that, through precision fermentation, can be adapted to add a specific taste to beef, pork, chicken, and even fish. Heme is essential when it comes to resembling conventional meat products. Heme is responsible for the taste and color of meat. Before cooking, heme will give meat alternatives a red color that turns brown during cooking. Heme also offers superior nutritional value. The iron in heme is easier for the human body to absorb than iron in vegetables.

In an interview with The Spoon, CEO Sanctorum explains the process: “We make the yeast release the protein to the environment, which means you can separate your protein. It’s a pure protein that you have separated from the yeast cells, making it a non-GMO product. We can produce an animal protein identical to what you find in nature but on top GMO-free. So that’s, I think, our unique proposition.”

“It’s like basically like brewing beer,” Sanctorum goes on to explain. “Instead of making alcohol, it makes a protein that you want. Instead of brewing or making wine, it’s producing the animal heme.”

Although the company has been working on its technology since 2020, its patent announcement is a significant step forward that inches closer to realizing a finished product. Sanctorum expects to have market-ready products in 2023, even with the number of steps that need to be tackled. Given precision fermentation at scale is a cap-ex-heavy investment, one reason to share their patent with the world is to attract investors. To date, Paleo has raised $2.5 million in seed funding and $ 2.5M in seed funding and is working on a Series A round to bring its products to the market and broaden its portfolio. 

Another issue is the breadth of products. The ability to create a variety of hemes may sparkle in a press release, but, as Sanctorum acknowledges, focusing on one area to start is a more prudent approach for a young company. Part of that B2B process is working closely with prospective customers. “A lot will depend on demand from our clients,” he said. “We are talking to big and small food manufacturers like small ones, and it will be all about testing those heme proteins and to see how they behave in their commercial recipes.”

Opening its technology kimono also brings potential challenges for Paleo from other companies working on similar approaches. Impossible Foods filed a lawsuit against Motif Foodworks, claiming the company’s HEMAMI protein derived from precision fermentation infringed on Impossible’s patent for making plant-based burgers containing 0.1% to 5% heme protein. Sanctorum calls the legal battle a “side event” and refuses to let it impede his or Paleo’s vision moving forward.

Back to the mammoth burger. Creating hemes for popular foods of today’s world is obvious, but reaching back hundreds of centuries—the question is why?

“Well, it was basically it started as a challenge to us,” Sanctorum said. “I mean, we were thinking, okay, if we can make the obvious ones, can we do that for an ancient protein that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Perhaps the better answer is, why not?

Jellatech Announces Successful Production of Animal-Identical Cell-Based Collagen

From connective tissue, skin health, lunchroom JELLO, and your inner ear to injections to create fuller lips, collagen is one of a body’s vital chameleons. Until now, the best way to introduce this protein to your everyday health is by eating animal products or substitutes such as Keratin and other amino acid supplements.

Raleigh-based Jellatech has announced the development of a full-length, triple-helical, and functional collagen made from their own proprietary cell lines. Others have worked on a solution to create lab-based collagen, but Jellatech’s stands alone as bio-identical to the animal-based variety.

In a recent interview with The Spoon, Stephanie Michelsen, Jellatech CEO, explained that, like others wanting to make an impact in the alt-protein space, she looked for a white space that was undeveloped and in need of a solution.

“I came across collagen and its roots and gelatin because it’s a unique protein only found in animals. And we use it for such, I mean, a crazy number of different applications,” Michelsen said. “So, I saw it’s going to be a future problem, so let’s try to solve it using cellular agriculture.”

Jellatech’s process differs from the fermentation approach to building alternative proteins. “It’s not fermentation because fermentation is more like yeast or bacteria using big vats,” Michelsen explained. “We use mammalian cells and those cells, so in that way, it’s different.”

Given its role in health and pharma, it’s no surprise the global collagen market size was valued at USD 8.36 billion in 2020, according to Grandview Research. It’s a space that is precited to grow at a 9.0% rate from 2020 to 2028, and much of that growth comes from increasing demand from the cosmetics markets. With that in mind, Michelsen sees pharma as low-hanging fruit and why taking the business-to-business approach is the best way to start.

Rob Schutte, Head of Science for Jellatch, emphasizes that what gives his company an advantage over possible competitors is the two years’ worth of work they put in to build a perfect collagen replica. “We’re thrilled to see that our cell-derived collagen appears bio-identical to collagen derived from animals. Because of this, we have a wide range of exciting applications from biomedicine to cosmetics to food and beverage.”

Jellatech will face the same issues as other companies creating either plant-based or cell-based proteins—cost. The number of bioreactors and the infrastructure to support a complex process can be enormous to build at scale. Without being specific, Michelsen believes that smart growth and innovation can play a crucial role in managing capital expenses.

We hope to do some innovation on our own to try to drive those costs down,” she said. “It’s true; there’s there are a lot of steps to get there. We are soon moving into the pilot and commercial-scale sometime after that. But, you know, I think there are a lot of avenues to explore to be able to cut those costs down.”

SuperMeat Believes An Open Source Approach to Cultivated Meat Will Benefit All

Lab-grown or cultured meat is a sexy topic that fulfills the dream of healthy eating while saving the planet’s precious resources. Most of the headlines focus on the companies in the four corners of the world waiting for regulators to wave the checkered flag. The more interesting story—at least for those who enjoy looking under the hood—is in the processes, supply chain, and partnerships vital to this promising industry.

To understand the drill-down of what it takes to go from harvesting animal cells to creating consumer-facing products, it’s valuable to speak with visionaries such as Ido Savir, CEO of Israel’s SuperMeat. In addition to his knowledge of cultivated meat, Savir’s background in IT provides him with a panoramic view of the infrastructure needed to build a successful B2B company.

While it might not qualify as an awe-inspiring announcement, SuperMeat recently received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to establish an open-source high-throughput screening system for optimizing cultivated meat feed ingredients. As an analogy, think of it as a system that ensures cows or chickens receive only the best quality feed to produce larger quantities of high-grade meat or chicken. But there is a significant difference.

Savir explains that animals are inefficient producers of their products. “It’s just done more efficiently (in cultivated meat),” the SuperMeat CEO told The Spoon in a recent interview. “In traditional meat production, 70% to 80% of the cost comes from the feed, and animals are just not very efficient conversion machines.” To put it into perspective, the cost of animal component-free (ACF) feed can make or break those vying to play in this space.

Rather than compete with consumer-facing brands such as Future Meat, Eat Just, and Mosa Meat (to name a few), SuperMeat is taking a B2B approach. Working with established meat and poultry providers to build production facilities where companies with existing supply chains can quickly enter the future of the alt-meat market. SuperMeat has announced deals with Germany’s PHW Group and Migros in Switzerland. The Israeli firm is in discussion with potential U.S. partners to reach the stateside market by the end of 2023.

The decision to build a platform for cultivated meat rather than build its own consumer brand directly results from Savir’s tech background, and it is also why the new feed screening system is in the open-source approach. “From my background, and I really believe in open source, and I really believe in sort of a platform approach that can help bring not just one company but the industry forward,” Savir stated.

Also, speaking to his tech background, it’s clear Savir has learned the relationship between capital expenditures and profit. It’s not about cost; it’s about having the right model.

“The way I look at this, and it doesn’t matter how much the infrastructure costs,” he said. “What matters is how efficient and the return you can get from that money. Right. And if you can get that return in a reasonable time, it makes sense, no matter what the cost is. We have our cost of goods models that demonstrate that that makes sense.”

A trip to SuperMeat’s facility in Israel will yield more than a view of lab equipment and many steel fermentation tanks. The facility includes a small restaurant-like space called “The Chicken,” where potential business partners, consumers, and others can taste the lab-grown animal protein. Savir says it’s more than just a pretty place to show off.

“We’re trying to do things a bit differently,” Savir said. “We thought it was important for us and our potential clients, which are food companies, to have that full transparency and traceability.”

See video of the makeshift eatery below:

World's First Cultivated Meat Blind Tasting Full Reel