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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cultured Meat

Startups: Applications Are Open for Big Idea Ventures’ Alt-Protein Accelerator

Alt-protein food tech accelerator Big Idea Ventures (BIV) announced this week that it is now taking applications for its fourth cohort. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the five-month-long program will take place in three locations this time: New York, Singapore, and Paris.

For these accelerators, Big Idea Ventures looks for companies developing both plant-based and cultured protein products and ingredients. Food tech companies related to the alt-protein space are also encouraged to apply.

Beside $125,000 in cash investment and $75,000 on in-kind investment, chosen companies also get access to coworking space, including test kitchens, for the duration of the program, as well as mentorship and networking opportunities. Companies will also get to interact with BIV’s limited partners, a group that includes AAK, Bühler Group, Givaudan, Tyson Ventures, and others. 

Chosen companies will ideally have an initial product already validated through sales and ready to scale. On the program’s website, BIV says it is looking specifically for companies developing plant-based products, cellular ag companies, ingredient creators, and those making enabling technologies. 

Because of the pandemic, cohort four will be remote as of this writing. This is a tactic that’s been used by other food tech accelerators over the last year, and a trend that will likely continue for the foreseeable future. For BIV participants, this is actually advantageous, as the organization says companies can leverage resources from all three programs, even if they are only enrolled for one.  

Those interested in applying to BIV’s program can do so here. Applications are taken on a rolling basis, which means the sooner the better in terms of turning one in.

“Cell-Cultured” Is the Best Way to Describe Seafood Grown in a Lab, According to Key Industry Players

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published comments from key players in the cell-based seafood space around what to actual label the stuff when it is finally cleared for sale to consumers (h/t Food Navigator). Consensus is building around “cell-cultured” as the most effective descriptor.

The original call for comments was sent out towards the end of 2020, and yesterday was the cutoff date for responses. Among those who weighed in on the discussion were BlueNalu, Finless Foods, and Memphis Meats, all companies currently developing cell-cultured seafood or meat products. 

The comments underscore the importance of choosing the right name for a food type that still strikes many average consumers as something out of science fiction. When plant-based meat arrived in grocery stores, the labeling battle was usually less about convincing consumers and more about doing battle with Big Meat over use of certain words. Cultured meat’s big challenge, for now, is trying to concisely but effectively explain the concept of “protein grown from animal cells in bioreactors” to consumers. 

Whatever label is settled on will have to convey several things at once to consumers. It will have to make clear that the product is safe, that it is real meat (aka not vegan), but that it is different from traditional animal-based protein in terms of how it is produced (e.g., cell cultured versus wild caught). Based on the comments submitted to the FDA, labels for seafood should also factor in food transparency, adherence to food industry protocols (e.g., allergen alerts), and should not disparage traditional meat products. 

Of the companies and individuals that responded to the FDA’s call for comments, the majority back the term “cell-cultured” when it comes to labeling seafood products. Meanwhile, the majority of commenters suggested a move away from terms like “clean meat” and lab-grown meat.”

Finless Foods’ nine-pager of a comment concluded that:  

At the highest level, Finless Foods advocates for and strongly supports an accurate, non- misleading, and descriptive label that clearly outlines what the cell-cultured products are, including species and product form, and how they are made, in a way that is uniform within the cell-cultured seafood category and consistent across categories. Therefore, we recommend that FDA adopt and memorialize the use of the term “cell-cultured” through the mechanism of a CPG or a letter to industry to provide appropriate guidance.

Citing a forthcoming Halman and Halman study, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said:

Based on the results of the two Hallman and Hallman studies, CSPI finds that both “cell-cultured” and “cell-based” would inform consumers of material facts and not be misleading, as well as portray the product in a neutral fashion. FDA should closely consider these options, and other peer-reviewed studies, in addition to conducting its own studies before making a final decision on its final label phrase. 

Memphis Meats said it supports “disclosure of the term ‘cell-cultured,’ in conjunction with the name of the conventionally-produced seafood product, in the statement of identity or name of cell-cultured seafood products.” The Berkeley, California-based company also noted in its comments that “Terms that specify the type of seafood product (e.g., ‘fillet,’ ‘steak’) should be permitted in the name or statement of identity of a cell-cultured seafood, as long as the term appropriately describes the particular product. “

The Vegetarian Resource Group brought up the issue of consumer education in its comments, stating that, “Use of a term such as ‘engineered using cultured seafood cells’ would help consumers understand that the product is based on seafood and that seafood cells are used in production. An educational program would need to be developed to inform consumers about the meaning of ‘cultured’ in this context.”

You can read the full comments here, many of which delve into some of the more subtle issues that existing in the labeling debate. For example, one anonymous commenter suggested “cell-built” seafood to factor in the use of 3D printing technology.

Interestingly, less than one year ago, Rutgers released a study that found “cell-based” to be the best descriptor for seafood products grown in a lab. “Cell-cultured” was a close runner up in that particular study, which suggests consensus has been building for some time around the evolution of “cell-cultured” seafood. 

 

Here’s What Needs to Happen for Cultivated Meat To Hit Price Parity in 5 Years

Our Future Food newsletter is back. Each week we’ll look at trends in cultivated meat, plant-based proteins, precision fermentation & more, so make sure to subscribe & get in your inbox.

Over the past year, more and more of those invested in the future of cultivated meat are saying price parity with traditionally farmed meat products is achievable in 5 years.

This includes Jim Mellon, who told me on a recent episode of The Food Tech Show that not only will meat derived using cellular agriculture hit price parity with traditionally produced meat in half a decade, but over time it will be more affordable than plant-based alternatives like the Impossible Burger.

This is a big deal, because while many of the earliest proponents of lab-grown meat may be motivated by environmental, food safety or animal cruelty concerns, the vast majority of consumers are much less idealistic. For most of us, the primary calculus when buying food remains a result of the same three variables: price, taste and convenience.

But can we really get to price parity in half a decade? I mean, it’s one thing to predict low-priced meat from a bioreactor, it’s another to have it widely available at the same price as farm-raised meat anywhere at anytime.

The short answer is yes, if we can build the infrastructure for the production of lab grown meat. This means moving beyond today’s bench top prototypes and pilot production facilities to fully scaled industrialized production facilities worldwide.

What will it take to get there? Experts agree there are a few major challenges to the development and industrialization of cultivated meat, including: Development of cell lines, cost and performance of growth media, bioprocess optimization and better bioreactor design, and production of complex meat cuts.

Cell Line Development

The process of manufacturing cultivated meat begins with acquiring and banking cell lines. According to Clare Trippet, the chief science officer for CPI who spoke at the Agrarian Revolution virtual event last week, finding cells that can be optimized for manufacturing is time and resource intensive, in part because these cells often times need to be adapted for growth in a biomanufacturing environment. The good news is over time many of these cell lines, once identified and developed, can be reproduced indefinitely.

Growth Media

In order to for cell cultures to grow and reproduce, you need to feed them energy and nutrients. In the world of biomanufacturing, the fuel for cell-cultured meat reproduction is known as growth media. One of the biggest challenges in the early stage of cultured meat production is much of the early growth media was fetal bovine serum – or FBS – which is both misaligned with the purpose of cultured meat production and is widely seen as not economically viable.

However, the industry has been working hard to move away from FBS towards more humane and scalable alternatives. Mosa Meat made news last year with an 80x reduction in the cost of its FBS-free growth media, and this week Avant said it’s achieved a 90% cost reduction in the production of its cultured fish maw using non-FBS growth media. Other potential growth media in the future could be based on innovation such as that from Solar Foods, which is creating low-cost protein out of “thin air” using gas fermentation processes.

Biooptimization

The process of taking stem cells from animals and getting them to reproduce at a big enough scale to produce enough for human-level consumption is perhaps the biggest lift of all. According to Trippet, cultivated meat companies need to optimize their processes to produce at high-volume commercial scale production. This means a lengthy, multistage biooptimization process goes from high-throughput screening to identify optimal cell cultures for manufacturing, to lab-scale demonstration, pilot plant production and finally commercial scale production.

Much of this early work – cell line screening and benchscale demonstration and optimization – has already happened at some of the more mature cultured meat startups like BlueNalu, Mosa and Supermeat, and now these companies are moving onto pilot plant buildouts and production. These companies (and those that follow them) will utilize the learnings and processes developed during pilot production and they prepare for the move into commercial scale production.

Bigger and Better Bioreactors

A big part of this move into commercial scale production will be the transition to bigger and better bioreactors. The reality for today’s cultivated meat industry is that the currently available high-scale bioreactors for cellular agriculture were developed to produce high price-per-unit pharmaceuticals. However, since a cellag chicken burger at McDonalds will have a much lower price per unit than a vaccine, there’s a need to create better optimized high-volume bioreactors that can act as meat breweries.

The reason for optimization is pretty straightforward: replicating mammalian cells for food is immensely more difficult than replicating tissue for pharmaceuticals.

From the conclusion of Mark Post’s 2015 research paper at Maastricht University entitled “Alternatives for large-scale production of cultured beef: A review“:

Tissue engineering in large-scale is a difficult task and the scale of cell and tissue culture needed for food applications is orders of magnitude higher than for medical applications. Commercially available systems, microcarrier or cell-aggre- gate based are a good start but need to be optimized for bovine satellite cells, including but not limited to, specialized microcarriers.

Like we saw with the early days of the Internet, making the picks & shovels for the coming gold rush can be lucrative. That could mean riches for new entrants like Cellular Agriculture and for existing players like Thermofisher and Sartorius.

Interestingly, one of the industries that might move into this space is big brewing itself, as hinted at by Zoe Leavitt, an investment principal at ZX Ventures (the investment and innovation arm of brewing giant AB InBev), told The Spoon on last week’s Clubhouse live chat that the big brewing company has been evaluating how it could play in cultivated meat infrastructure.

Production of Complex Cuts

The types of cultivated meat that will likely reach price parity are unstructured meat, in other words products like ground beef. However, meat-eaters will want products like premium cuts of ribeye steak and filets of tuna to go with burgers, which means developing technology for structured cuts of meat.

One of the key technologies that will deliver structured cuts of meat is scaffolding. Scaffolding is that part of cultivated meat that allows the cells to adhere to and grow. Companies have been working to develop edible and biodegradable scaffolding technologies, including Matrix Meat which has created an edible scaffolding technology that they say will allow for a several millimeter thick cut of structured meat to grow.

Another key technology for structured meat production is 3D printing, which some companies like Aleph Farms has developed bioprinting technology to enable them to make complex cuts like ribeye. Other cultivated meat producers like BlueNalu are utilizing processing technologies like layering that have been optimized in the high-volume food production world.

Conclusion

These are no doubt exciting times for cultivated meat. Hundreds of millions of dollars of capital are pouring into the market, and the Good Food Institute has identified over 55 startups working in this space in Q1 2020 and some estimates have that at over 80 as of Q1 this year. Additionally, innovation visionaries like Bill Gates talk about converting nation states to cell-ag-based meat production in the future.

And while there is no doubt other hurdles outside of the technology and industrial optimization such as incumbent opposition and government regulations and policy frameworks that need to be considered, if progress continues on the pace we’ve seen over the past decade, I think a cultured meat value meal at my local fast food joint is not out of reach in few short years.

Food Tech Show Live: Shake Shack, Delivery Bots & Cultivated Meat

Listeners of the Food Tech Show podcast know that in addition to our regular interviews with smart leaders in the food tech space, we also like to get together once a week on the podcast to talk about the top stories in food tech.

And now, this weekly wrapup includes a live studio audience (kind of) on Clubhouse. Like many other food tech and future food nerds, we’ve been having lots of fun over on the social audio app, and one of the best parts is the live interaction with listeners.

If you’re on Clubhouse, make sure to join us weekly every Friday at 1 Pacific on Clubhouse by following the Food Tech Live club. Here’s the link to this coming Friday’s show so make sure to add it to your calendar.

But before you do that, you’ll want to check out last week’s show (with special guest commentator Zoe Leavitt). The stories we discuss on Friday include:

If you’d like to listen to our latest news wrapup, you can do so now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or just by clicking play below.

Aleph Farms Partners with BRF to Bring Cultured Meat to Brazil

Israeli startup Aleph Farms and Brazilian meat and food company BRF S.A. announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring cultured meat to Brazil.

Under the agreement, Aleph and BRF will co-develop and produced cell-cultivated meat using Aleph’s BioFram technology platform. BRF will also distribute Aleph’s meat in Brazil.

This is the latest move in what has been a busy year already for Aleph. In January, the company announced that it was bringing its cultured meat to Japan via a similar Memo of Understanding with Mitsubishi. On the product side, last month, Aleph announced that it had made the first cultivated and 3D bioprinted ribeye steak.

The entire cultivated meat space has actually had an incredible start to 2021. In addition to Aleph, CellMEAT, Mirai Foods, Mosa Meat, and Future Meat, are just some of the companies that have raised funding for their approach to cell-based meat.

Despite all this activity, price remains a big hurdle for widespread adoption of cell-based meat. Creating and scaling cell-based meat is still an expensive proposition, though the price is coming down. In a Spoon podcast interview this week, Jim Mellon, author of the book Moo’s Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution, said:

“At scale, and we’ve got a pretty good scientific advisory board, we think that it will be 2.5 milliliters [of stem cell material] from a cow will produce the equivalent of seven or eight cows worth of meat in 40 days. So if you can do this in 40 days, we think the input costs will be 2.5 to one. And that compares to as you all know, a cow twenty five to one, a chicken nine to one.”

How quickly cell-based meat reaches price parity with animal meat remains to be seen. Even if price parity is achieved, however, there are still regulatory issues around cultured meat that must be ironed out. But deals like the one between Aleph and BRF will help the cultured meat industry scale up and reach the mainstream.

Jim Mellon Has Done the Math and Thinks Cultured Meat Could Hit Price Parity in 5 Years

While some future food leaders like Pat Brown don’t believe the economics of cultured meat make sense, longtime investor and entrepreneur Jim Mellon thinks exactly the opposite.

In fact, Mellon thinks that in the future, cultured meat will be more affordable than both factory farmed and the plant-based alternatives.

“The price of plant-based foods has been coming down – Impossible has just lowered its price by 20% in the US – but there is a limit to that,” said Mellon, whom I recently interviewed for The Food Tech Show podcast. “I think you’ll get parity [with traditionally produced meat], possibly in 18 months time, with some of the plant based foods. But I don’t think it’s going to go a lot below that.”

In contrast, Mellon believes meat made via cellular agriculture will eventually be more affordable than that of farmed meat prices.

“At scale, and we’ve got a pretty good scientific advisory board, we think that it will be 2.5 milliliters [of stem cell material] from a cow will produce the equivalent of seven or eight cows worth of meat in 40 days,” said Mellon. “So if you can do this in 40 days, we think the input costs will be 2.5 to one. And that compares to as you all know, a cow twenty five to one, a chicken nine to one.”

In short, Mellon believes the raising of animals through traditional farming is hugely inefficient. By moving meat production to cellular agriculture – or what will essentially meat brewed in a bioreactor – Mellon believes we’ll see what is effectively a 10x increase in efficiency.

So when does he think we’ll see pricing drop to parity with traditionally farmed meat? Sooner than most think.

“In the US, 60% of your meat is bought in the form of ground meat, sausages, patties, etc. I think we’ll be at price parity within five years,” said Mellon. “Five years is not a long time in the history of mankind. Within five years, the whole of the intensive farming industry will face a very dramatic threat to its existence.”

Mellon’s understanding of the cultured meat space was shaped in part by his conversations with many of the early leaders in the market, which he talked to for his new book, Moo’s Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution. I suggest you check it out, but before you do that you can listen to my full conversation with Mellon for the Food Tech Show via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by clicking play below.

Mosa Meat Closes $85M Series B Round

Mosa Meat announced today it has raised $10 million in a third and final closing of its Series B round, bringing the round’s total to $85 million. Nutreco and Just Eat Takeaway.com CEO Jitse Groen participated in the third closing, while the entire B round was led by Blue Horizon Ventures.

The closing follows a $55 million fundraise in September 2020, which was also part of the Series B round. The company’s total funding to date is $96 million.

Netherlands-based Mosa Meat is credited with having created the world’s first lab-grown hamburger back in 2013 to the tune of $325,000 in production costs for that single burger. The company brought that number significantly down last year when it achieved an 80x reduction in the cost of their product’s growth medium, which is typically the most expensive part of the cell-based meat-making process. A big part of this reduced cost was removing the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS), the expensive and highly controversial growth medium from which many cell-based meat companies are now distancing themselves.

The funds from Mosa’s Series B round will go towards extending the company’s pilot production facility in Maastricht, Netherlands, as well as towards developing “an industrial-sized production line” and building out the Mosa Meat team.

 The end goal, of course, is to get its meat products to customers. No date has yet been announced for that. Currently, the company is working with European regulators to demonstrate the safety of cell-based meat and get regulatory approval.

Mosa’s Series B round is the latest development in what has already been a busy year in the world of cell-based meat investments. In February alone, Israel’s Future Meat raised $26.75 million, New Age Meats extended its seed round by $2 million, and Redefine meat closed a $29 million Series A round.  

Food Tech News: Food Waste Protein Powder and Nike Coffee Sneakers

It’s that time of week! Food Tech News is here, and stories on protein powder made from food waste, a cell-based protein ingredient for skin care, and Nike’s new coffee sneakers.

Nutrapharma is making protein powder from food waste

Nutrapharma, a UK-based pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and agri-tech lab, shared this week that they are creating a protein powder made from food waste. The company is using excess fruits and vegetables and produce scraps and turning them into a protein-rich powder that can be added to a variety of different supplements. It was undisclosed if the company is using any particular types of fruit or vegetables, but it did share that some of the first samples of the protein powder are higher in protein than whey protein. Because the powder is made from dried and milled fruit and vegetables, it will also contain nutrients like a variety of vitamins and minerals.

Photo from Zellulin’s website

Avant Meat enters skincare industry

Avant Meats, which produces cell-based fish maw and sea cucumber alternatives, announced this week that it has entered the skincare industry with a new anti-aging ingredient product. The company is using its cell-based biotechnology to create marine protein peptides, which are typically found in supplements, face creams, and other beauty products. The product is called Zellulin, and will be used as an ingredient for anti-aging skin care products. Like Avant’s other cell-based products, the cell-based protein-peptide does not require any animals to be slaughtered or harmed. The company shared that they will be able to commercialize the cell-based marine protein-peptide product faster than its cell-based seafood products because it does not require pre-market approval.

Photo from The Drop Date website

Nike’s coffee themed shoes

Maybe this isn’t directly tied into the world of food tech, but it’s still neat. Nike unveiled a new line of shoes called the “Coffee Pack” on the website called The Drop Date this week. There are three styles, including the Daybreak, the Air Max 97, and the Air Force 1 Low. Each shoe showcases the different colors of coffee beverages, like the dark brown of black coffee and the creamy tan color of a latte. A cat sitting in a coffee mug is printed on the insole, while the heel and tongue of the shoe read “Roasted by Nike”. The shoes are currently only available in Asia, but will launch in the US at some point as well.

New Age Meats Raises Another $2M Seed Extension Round for ‘Hybrid’ Meat

Berkley, California-based New Age Meats (NAM) has raised another $2 million seed extension round following a previous extension of the same amount last year.

This round was led by “a very large, significant industry player” in Asia that must remain confidential, NAM said in a press release. The round also included participation from Litani Ventures’ Peter Rahal, ff VC, SOSV, and Innovating Capital, as well as new investments by San Diego Tech Coast Angels, BeniVC, Oceanic Partners, Deep Ventures, and Climate Capital.

NAM, a graduate of the IndieBio accelerator program, is currently developing what the company calls “hybrid cultivated and plant-based meat” that for now includes pork sausages and dumplings. Its current process is to grow meat from cells collected from the animal, then adds plant-based elements for additional taste, texture, and nutritional profile.

The blended approach to cultured meat is arguably one that can both get companies’ products to market faster and help them reach price parity with traditional meat products. Another company, Israel-based Future Meat, also uses this tactic, and in a recent interview with The Spoon, CEO Rom Kshuk called it “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to price parity and scalability. 

NAM’s own CEO, Brian Spears, said in a statement today that his company is “relentlessly focused” on driving down costs and scaling production. “Ultimately, we will fail if our products are too expensive and low volume to be served anywhere but luxury restaurants,” he said.

This new funding will allow NAM to continue building up its team, which includes former staffers from Impossible Foods. The company is also preparing for a Series A round “in the coming months,” though no detailed timeframe was given.

NAM has raised a total of $7 million to date.

Aleph Farms Makes a Cultivated 3D-Bioprinted Ribeye Steak

Israel-based startup Aleph Farms and its research partner, the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology, said today that they have developed a cultivated 3D-bioprinted ribeye steak. The steak contains muscle, fat, and structure identical to what would be found in a steak from a cow, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

To create the cultivated ribeye steak, a technique called 3D bioprinting was used. This is different from 3D printing because living cells, which have been extracted from living animals, are actually printed. Once the living cells are printed, they are incubated to grow and interact to form tissues and structures identical to those found in a steak from an animal. Other companies that use 3D printing to produce meat alternatives, like NovaMeat and Redefine Meat, print plant-based proteins and fats.

In 2018, Aleph Farms unveiled a cultivated thin-cut steak. At the time, the steak was not produced using 3D bioprinting, and Aleph Farms was limited to making its first product just a few inches long and a few centimeters thick. At the end of last year, the company shared that it had created a platform for the commercial production of its cultured meat, called BioFarm, which the company hopes to have fully operational by 2022.

It is still early into 2021, and in addition to Aleph Farms’ news, there has already been a plethora of cultured meat news. At the end of January, NovaMeat announced that it had created the world’s largest piece of 3D-printed cultivated meat. Mirai Foods raised $2.7 million a few weeks ago to accelerate the commercialization of its cultured meat. Eat Just made headlines at the end of last year with its first commercial sale of cultured meat.

Aleph Farms says now that it has successfully created an entire steak it can essentially create any shape and type of steak. In the press release, the company shared that it will continue to expand its portfolio of cultivated meat products.

Hoxton Farms Raises £2.7M For Production of Animal-Free Fat

UK-based startup Hoxton Farms announced today that it has raised a £2.7 million (~$3.7 million USD) seed round for its animal-free fat. The round was led by Founders Fund with participation from Backed, Presight Capital, CPT Capital, and Sustainable Food Ventures (hat tip: TechCrunch).

Hoxton Farms is currently in its R&D phase and will use this funding to grow its research team. The company recently built a new lab in London in which it will develop a prototype of its cultured fat. The company aims to have a scalable prototype within 12 to 18 months.

Plant-based meat alternatives often do not contain the fattiness of animal meat. A black bean burger doesn’t sizzle in its own fat while cooking, and a seitan steak doesn’t boast marbled fatty deposits like a ribeye steak. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods use canola oil, sunflower oil, and coconut oil to achieve a certain degree of fattiness in their products, but it is still not the same as animal fat.

Like other cultured meat companies, Hoxton Farms extracts cells from a living animal without harming or slaughtering the animal. Cultured meat companies extract muscle cells, while Hoxton Farms extracts fat cells. These cells are then grown in a bioreactor to create fat that is identical to animal-fat. The company did not disclose if it will be selling its cultured fat to cultured meat or plant-based alternative companies once it is able to bring production up to a commercial scale.

There are certainly competitors in the cultured meat space, but there are fewer companies solely focused on developing cultured fat like Hoxton Farms. Barcelona-based Cubiq Foods also produces cultured fat, and last year raised $18.4 million USD to scale-up production. Meat-Tech, a start-up based in Israel, announced near the end of last year that it had successfully created a 3D-printed cultured beef fat structure.

If Hoxton Farms is successful in its R&D development, its animal-free cultured fat may be the ingredient that unlocks a new level of plant-based meat alternatives.

Rise of the Plant-Based QSR

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Those of us of a certain age will remember a time when eating “vegan” at a QSR meant the Wendy’s salad bar. 

Fast forward to 2021, and advances in both food technology and the restaurant biz have made the concept of eating vegan (which we now call “plant based”) much more palatable to the mainstream. The names “Beyond” and “Impossible” are on most major QSR’s menus today. Eat Just’s plant-based egg products are in a growing number of fast-food breakfast items. And recently, two more announcements from major QSRs dropped that indicate we’re at fast approaching a major turning point for menus in the QSR realm.

On its most recent earnings call, Starbucks said it had turned one of its Seattle, Washington locations into a test area for a “100% plant-based food menu.” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson suggested that this test site is in response to what he sees as “the most dominant shift in consumer behavior,” which is the move to plant-based foods. The shift, said Johnson, is evident in both food and beverages. 

The move to offer plant-based meals to customers isn’t entirely new for Starbucks. The chain debuted Beyond Meat products in China last year and carries Impossible sausage sandwiches at its stores in the U.S. It also offers a number of plant-based milk alternatives. 

But this new test store in Seattle is the first time the chain has gone full-tilt on a plant-based menus. All food items on the Starbucks menu will be vegan, with animal-based proteins being replaced by plant-based counterparts. 

Also recently, McDonald’s announced it’s finally testing its McPlant burger, a vegan offering the mega-QSR developed with Beyond Meat. While this is less of a monumental change than overhauling an entire menu, McDonald’s has up to now has made few moves when it comes to introducing plant-based foods to its menus. (A brief trial in Canada is the exception.) Though this McPlant pilot is pretty limited right now — Denmark and two cities in Sweden — it is also likely also in response to a growing consumer demand for plant-based proteins.

All that said, demand shows up differently in different parts of the world. Sweden and Seattle are obvious choices to test plant-based wares, given the demographics that reside in those areas. In the U.S., at least, seven in 10 people classify themselves as “meat eaters,” according to recent data, and there are undoubtedly parts of the country where a plant-based Starbucks would fail harder than the Wendy’s salad bar expansion did in the ‘90s. 

For now, that is. As more tests like that of Starbucks are conducted, and major chains like McDonald’s introduce more plant-based items, the concept of a full-vegan fast-food meal will grow less foreign to more customers. I doubt it’s long before we see plant-based QSR locations popping up in certain markets like, NYC, San Francisco, and even newly popular cities like Austin and Denver. How the plant-based QSR fares in these markets will tell us a lot about when it will head to other parts of the country.

The Restaurant Robots Are Coming

Of course we’ll know we’ve really hit a turning point when vegan Starbucks locations start delivering our plant-based breakfast sandwiches via robot.

I just made that up, but as The Spoon’s Editor in Chief Chris Albrecht points out in his new Spoon Plus report, we will soon see these delivery bots rolling about our sidewalks, college campuses, and city streets.

Chris’ report breaks down the different companies currently leading the space, including Starship, Kiwi, Nuro, and Refraction, and where these players’ opportunities lie in making robot delivery more common for the average consumer.

In the restaurant realm, there are a few advantages to robot delivery. It’s first and foremost a more contactless delivery method, which is an obvious plus at a time when COVID-19 vaccines aren’t widespread. Robots can also work continuously without the need for a break and could potentially be cheaper for restaurants. The flip, of course, is that widespread robot deployments would take jobs away, a point that cannot be ignored in any discussion about restaurant robots.

Chris delves into all of this and much more in his report, which you can access by becoming a Spoon Plus member. Spoon Plus members get access to all of our market reports, maps and deep dives that give you an advanced understanding of where the food tech industry is headed. Get the goods right here.

Restaurant Tech From Around The Web

Luckin Coffee, one of China’s largest coffee chains and Starbucks’ main competitor in that market, is filing for bankruptcy. The company is still dealing with the fallout from a fraud scandal from 2020. Luckin said that stores would remain open for business.

The California Supreme Court has declined to hear a lawsuit filed this week seeking to overturn Proposition 22, the controversial ballot measure that passed in November and exempts companies like DoorDash and Uber from classifying workers as employees. the Court suggested plaintiffs refile the case in a lower court. 

If it feels a little off to you that third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats are spending millions on themed Super Bowl ads (Cookie Monster and Wayne’s World, respectively) while restaurants and restaurant workers continue to struggle, check this quick read from the folks at Eater Chicago. In the words of Eater writer Ashok Selvam, “can you imagine Wayne and Garth using a third-party service to order from Stan Mikita’s Donuts? Game off.”