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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

ADM Partners With New Culture as Part of Growing Buildout of Alt-Protein Production Infrastructure

ADM, one of the world’s largest food processing companies, has inked a deal with New Culture, a startup developing animal-free cheese utilizing precision fermentation, to offer joint product development and scale-up commercialization services.

The deal will help New Culture scale up production of its animal-free casein (casein is the protein that gives cheese its stretchy and melty goodness) as it eyes the commercial launch of its animal-free mozzarella in 2023.

From the release:

The partnership will also include collaborations to advance the commercial scale-up of New Culture’s animal-free casein and dairy products. ADM’s global manufacturing assets and expertise will accelerate New Culture’s efforts toward commercializing their animal-free mozzarella in the U.S. food service market, beginning with pizzerias in 2023. As New Culture grows its commercial footprint, ADM’s production capacity for both fermentation and dairy operations will be made available to meet the demand for New Culture’s melty, stretchy cheese.

The partnership marks the latest in a flurry of new initiatives by the food processing giant to position itself as a scale-up partner for alternative protein startups. Earlier this month, the company announced a joint venture with Asia Sustainable Foods Platform (a subsidiary of Singapore conglomerate Temasek) called ScaleUp Bio. The new company will work A*STAR’s Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) to provide a lab for precision fermentation and scale-up services. ScaleUp Bio will provide access to 100L fermentation tanks for testing and optimization of future food products and high-scale production capabilities through access to a new facility with a 10,000L fermentation capacity.

The New Culture and ScaleUp Bio deals follow an announcement of ADM’s $300 million investment to build an alternative production center in Decatur. That move followed the acquisition of Sojaprotein in 2021. The company has said these two deals will increase its alt-protein production capacity by 30%.

ADM’s push into alt-protein scale-up services is part of a larger trend by big food to build-out infrastructure for the growing alt-protein industry. Beer giant AB InBev’s BioBrew, a division of the company’s ZX Ventures that provides scale-up for alt-protein startups, is working with Every Company (formerly Clara Foods) to help scale up its precision fermentation-derived egg products. Bitburger, a German-based brewery, is providing precision fermentation production capacity and sidestream byproducts as inputs for development of Mushlab’s mycelium-derived proteins for alternative meats.

Increased investment by big companies like ADM, AB InBev, and Bitburger is just the beginning of what will likely be a multi-billion-dollar alt-protein infrastructure build-out by big food over the coming decade. The Good Food Institute has said $27 billion is needed to meet demand by 2030 for plant-based meat alone. The tally will certainly be much higher when factoring in other alt-protein variants manufactured using cell-cultured and precision fermentation techniques. These investments come as a new wave of biomanufacturing startups building next-generation production facilities continue to pop up and receive funding.

 

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.

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?

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

The Weekly Spoon: Electrolux’s Kitchen of the Future & Taco Bell’s Reimagined Restaurant

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Electrolux Launches GRO, a Kitchen System Designed to Encourage More Sustainable Eating

Can a kitchen’s design help us eat more sustainable, plant-forward diets?

Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux thinks the answer is yes and, to that end, has launched an ambitious new kitchen system concept to help us get there.

Called GRO, the new system is comprised of a collection of interconnected modules that utilize sensors and AI to provide personalized eating and nutrition recommendations. According to the company, the system was designed around insights derived from behavioral science research and is intended to help encourage more sustainable eating behavior based on recommendations from the EAT-Lancet report for planetary health. The company will debut the new system at this week’s EuroCucina conference.

“How can a thoughtful kitchen slowly nudge you to more sustainable choices,” asks Tove Chevally, the head of Electrolux Innovation Hub, in an intro video to the GRO system. “To make the most of what you have, to buy smarter, and eat more diverse?

To see a video of the new GRO and to read the full story, head here.

Do you have the next big idea for the future of food & cooking? Apply to tell your story at SKS INVENT!

Taco Bell’s Vision of the Future Includes High-Tech Dumbwaiters & Lots of Drive-Thru Lanes

I’ve always been fascinated with dumbwaiters. An elevator built specifically to deliver food between floors of a building, the dumbwaiter is an idea that is both ridiculous and fascinating.

And while I can’t be sure that someone like Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos doesn’t have dumbwaiters built into their homes (though Bezos would probably prefer robots and Trump manservants he could yell at), what I am sure of is the dumbwaiter has, for the most part, largely gone extinct as part of modern life.

Until now. That’s because Taco Bell sees them as a potentially integral part of their restaurant of the future. Called Taco Bell Defy, the taco chain’s new restaurant concept includes an elevated restaurant with multiple drive-thru lanes, food lifts, and a lot of digital integrations.

While I wouldn’t, unlike others, claim this new concept possibly “the most ambitious” prototype in restaurant history, I would say it makes a whole lot of sense for a restaurant chain that does most of its business through a drive-thru. While many chains have developed drive-thrus that have multiple order lines, the choke point always comes later when cars zip-up into a single line to get their food. By spreading out the hand-off of food to four lines, the choke point of a single window for food handover is eliminated.

You can read the full post here. 

Smart Kitchen

Meet Celcy, a Countertop Oven With a Built-In Freezer That Will Cook Meals For You

Say you’re leaving for work and want to come home to a fully cooked meal? Or better yet, you want to line up a work week’s worth of meals and just want them prepared when you get home?

You might be a good candidate for the Celcy, an autonomous cooking appliance that combines a countertop oven with a freezer that stores the meals until ready for cooking.

The Celcy, which is currently in development, will store up to four meals in a freezer. Cooking can be rescheduled via an app or on-demand via request. When it’s time to cook, the meal is shuttled from the freezer compartment on the left side into the cooking compartment side on the right. A built-in elevator lifts and deposits the frozen meal in the top upper right cooking chamber where it is cooked for consumption.

You can read the full post here. 

Food Retail Tech

Circle K Planning To Deploy Seven Thousand AI-Powered Self-Checkout Machines

Mashgin, a maker of computer-vision-based self-checkout machines, announced today it has signed a deal with Circle K parent company Couche-Tard to deploy seven thousand self-checkout machines at the convenience store chain over the next three years.

The move follows the initial deployment of Mashgin systems at nearly 500 Circle K stores across the United States and Sweden since 2020. The move by the second-largest convenience store chain in North America with almost seven thousand stores will represent one of the largest ever deployments of self-checkout systems to date.

For Mashgin, the deal represents its biggest customer win yet and is yet another sign of why the company was able to recently raise a $62.5M Series B round at an impressive $1.5 billion valuation. The move represents a 700% total increase in deployments over its current installed base.

The Mashgin self-checkout system is installed at the checkout counter and enables customer checkouts without scanning barcodes. As seen in the video interview from CES in January, customers can essentially toss their items onto the small checkout pad, and the system will automatically recognize and tabulate the products.

To read the full story, head here.

Future Food

Cocuus Raises €2.5M to Scale Industrial 3D Food Printing for Plant & Cell-Based Meat Analogs

According to a release sent to The Spoon, 3D food printing startup Cocuus has raised €2.5 Million in a Pre-Series A funding round to scale up its proprietary 3D printing technology platform for plant-based and cell-cultured meat analogs. The round was led by Big Idea Ventures, with participation by Cargill Ventures, Eatable Adventures, and Tech Transfer UPV.

Founded in 2017, the Spanish startup has developed a toolbox of different 3D printing technologies under its Mimethica platform to enable the printing of different types of foods. These include Softmimic, a technology targeted at hospitals and eldercare facilities that transforms purees into dishes that look like real food (think of a vegetable or meat puree shaped into a “steak”), LEVELUP, an inkjet printing technology that prints images on drinks like coffee or beer (like Ripples), and LASERGLOW, a laser printer platform that engraves imagery onto food.

Read the full post at here.

SCiFi Foods Raises $22M With Andreessen Horowitz’s First Investment in Cultivated Meat

SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area-based food tech startup, announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), making it a16z’s first investment in the growing cultivated meat market. The company, formerly known as Artemys Foods, also announced that it will be adding a new board member, Myra Pasek, the General Counsel of IronOx, who will be utilizing her expertise from Tesla and Impossible Foods to help SCiFi Foods bring its novel plant-based and cultivated meat hybrid through regulatory approval to the market. 

The new funding raises SCiFi Foods’ total funding to $29 million and will primarily be used to scale R&D efforts, build out the leadership team, and market the company. 

The Spoon sat down with CEO and co-founder, Joshua March, to learn more about SCiFi Foods’ new name, a hybrid meat product, and what it looks like to raise funding from one of the most famous venture capital firms during a recession.

Read the full interview with Joshua March here.

Food Robots

Xook Raises $1.3 Million to Roll Out Robotic ‘Food Courts in a Box’ in The US

If you’ve ever visited a cafeteria at a tech giant like Google or Facebook, you probably found that the food is just as tasty (or tastier) and often better for you than what you might order at a corner restaurant or make in your own kitchen.

But according to Xook CEO Raja Natarajan, this kind of access to an abundance of tasty, healthy, and free food is more the exception than the rule for US office workers. This is very different from countries like India, said Natarajan, where most corporate employers provide access to cafeterias stocked with food options for employees. This is why, after trialing a prototype for what he and cofounder Ratul Roy describe as a “food court in a box” in Bangalore, they are eyeing the US for the rollout of their robotic kiosk.

“In countries with high labor costs and high food costs, it is very hard to offer this kind of experience unless it comes with automation,” Natarajan told The Spoon in a recent interview.

To read the full story, click here!

Meati Adds Steak Filets to Its Roster of Mycelium Alt-Meats

Meati co-founder Tyler Huggins radiates the right blend of entrepreneurial enthusiasm and practical knowledge to catapult common mushroom threads into a popular staple for healthy consumers. Huggins walks the walk as a visionary in the future of food space with a diverse background that includes a stint as a field biologist for the U.S. Forest Service, a research engineer, a consultant in the wastewater industry, and a co-founder of a healthy snack company.

“I really dedicate my life to harnessing nature’s power and beauty and then guiding it to help produce sustainable food,” Huggins told The Spoon in a recent interview.

With initial success from the launch of Meati’s mycelium-based alt-chicken and alt-beef cutlets, the company has announced a new product, Meati Steak Filet, which will be available on May 23 directly to consumers through the company’s website. Four steak filets, which should be prepared much as one would cook a steak, will sell for $35.

Like other Meati offerings, the steak fillets are a whole food rich in nutrition. A single serving has only 0.5g of fat and zero cholesterol. It is 120 calories along with 14g of protein, 9g of dietary fiber, and a host of micronutrients such as Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Vitamin B12, Zinc, and Copper.

The fermentation process from mushroom roots to the finished product has evolved to become a smooth, sustainable effort, but years of hard work are behind Meati’s success.

“There was a lot of trial and error. We spent over two years and millions of dollars of government grant money to figure out the cultivation and the fermentation part of this process,” Huggins explained.  
And then it was, how do you take all these mushrooms and actually make meat out of it? That was a whole other couple of years because what we do is we make sure we ensure wholesome nutrition. The mushroom roots are actually alive during the entire process. We gently form and orientate the root structure in different ways to mimic different muscles and give you different textures.”

Huggins said that Meati is in the midst of a significant physical expansion, but in doing so, the company looked at other industries for ways to scale without reinventing the wheel. “We looked into other industries and found several analogs. Our existing processes are already scaling, and we said, okay, we’ll take one from here and another from food processing. And we’ve created this unique sort of hybrid of industrial processes where we don’t need some sort of technological breakthrough to be successful.”

The future for Meati includes testing retail distribution in the second half of 2022 and a continued effort to create a brand sanction between itself and the countless other alt-meat products. Beneath it all, Huggins’ passion for delivering a clean, healthy, nutritious product is his and Meati’s north star.

“I look at nature as sort of a toolbox, you know,” Huggins said. “Three billion years of evolution have designed all sorts of different tools. And I believe that most of our problems can be solved by looking into nature because nature’s problem is already solved.”

Front Of House Takes an NFT Program to Smaller Restaurants

If you’ve ever taken home a souvenir menu or ashtray from your favorite restaurant, you will understand the role NFTs play in the hospitality industry. The same goes for attending a restaurant theme night or local pop-up of a new dining establishment. As Front of House (FOH) co-founder Phil Toronto eloquently puts it, a restaurant establishing a successful NFT strategy is “a beautiful merging of the digital and physical experience.”

Launching on May 18, Front of House (FOH) is a marketplace for NFTs of digital collectibles and experiences for independent restaurants. Co-founders Phil Toronto (VaynerFund), Colin Camac (former restaurateur), and Alex Ostroff (Saint Urbain) represent a mix of people with backgrounds in digital technology, advertising, and the hospitality industries. Initial clients include Wildair and Dame, with upcoming partners such as Rosella, Niche Niche, and Tokyo Record Bar.

The company’s business model is for the restaurant to keep 80% of the sale of digital collectibles. If an establishment uses a collectible as an invite to a unique dining experience, the restaurant will keep all the money from the food event.

Toronto stresses that FOH’s digital collectibles will be the digital analog to buying swag (such as a sweatshirt or tote bag) from your go-to dining establishment. Over time, he adds, the digital representations can grow to become interactive experiences that can be shared and/or enjoyed as a personal keepsake. “It’s a passport of sorts from your favorite restaurant,” the FOH co-founder told The Spoon in a recent interview.

The early adopters of using NFT as a marketing and sales tool are “scrappy entrepreneurs,” Toronto added, who had to get creative to stay afloat during the pandemic. “The commonality is that every restaurant owner interested in our program is entrepreneurial and looking to go outside the box,” he said.

Marketing and being on the cutting edge are only part of it. The impetus for jumping on board the growing NFT trend is about money. In addition to their regular dining business, an owner can collect revenue from digital collectibles, but the aspect with the most upside is creating memorable dining experiences. A key to all the possibilities is to make it simple for the customer to engage. A key to FOH’s success will be what the co-founder calls creating a frictionless experience, making it a little more than a typical eCommerce check-out experience.

“One of the avenues we’d like to explore is ticketed experiences where Front of House will work with a restaurant to buy it out for the night and have a special ticketed experience,” Toronto said. “That experience is sold through a digital collectible that lives on as a memory and a digital ticket stub you can take.”

Toronto said he is surprised that 65% of the customers he approaches get the idea and understand its value but might have a wait-and-see attitude. Once the pioneers prove NFTs successful and more than a “get rich quick” concept, he believes any reluctance will disappear. Also, Toronto commented that the NFT opportunity for restaurants isn’t limited to New York, Los Angeles, and other coastal towns. Given the hospitality business’s everyday issues, the concept will work just as well for Des Moines or any eatery wanting to explore a new business opportunity.

WNWN’s Alt-Chocolate Could Be A Win-Win-Win for the Planet, Workers, and Consumers

Willy Wonka has nothing on food futurists Ahrum Pak and Dr. Johnny Drain. While there may be no golden tickets inside their alt-chocolate, they promise all of the taste of the real thing without any environmental harm and labor abuse. It’s not a trick—it’s pure science with more than a touch of creative artistry.

London-based WNWN (that’s Win-Win), the company behind this cacao-free treat, uses a version of fermentation that’s been around for thousands of years instead of precision fermentation, a more complex and costly process that is challenging to scale. “Our approach is rooted in traditional fermentation techniques.  We use a suite of microbes and a process that is not too dissimilar to how a baker might work or how a winemaker would work,” CTO Drain told The Spoon In a recent interview.

In WNWN’s approach, a substrate (in this case, British Barley) is combined with an assortment of microbes to produce a brown paste that skips the shelling and roasting process of traditional chocolate making. The paste then goes through the standard chocolate-making process, which includes running the paste through a melanger machine and placing the finished product into individual molds.

While British Barley is being used initially as a substrate, Drain says that other cereal grains (including ones that are non-gluten) and other plant-based ingredients can be used for the alt-cholate fermentation.

“The more you learn about some of the things you love, the more you learn horrifying stories,” Pak, a former executive in the finance industry, says of her company’s dual mission. “Because of the global food chain, the way we grow food now is unstable and unethical in many ways.”

“Chocolate has a truly dark side with more than a million child laborers estimated to work in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where three-quarters of the world’s cacao is grown, and more CO2 emissions pound for pound than cheese, lamb or chicken,” CTO Drain said.

Pak and Drain landed on chocolate partially by accident but also because of the limited number of companies tackling this popular treat. Drain, a master fermenter, who went to school in Bournville, the company town built by Cadbury, recalls the aroma of chocolate when he would head out from his classes and feels it’s part of his legacy. That makes him a lot more like Willy Wonka than the fictitious Ronald Dahl character. Before his work with WNWN, Dr. Drain traveled the world, working with noted restaurants and developing new flavors based on his fermentation skill.

“We are in a golden age of food science,” the company CTO said. “We’re just starting to break down what is in a bar of chocolate to characterize it and create a chemical fingerprint. We explored how we end up getting a chocolate flavor profile that is in a cocoa bean.”

For possible legal and marketing reasons, Drain and Pak said they cannot call their product chocolate and have toyed with a few names, including “chok.” Beyond selling it in retail, initially in the form of a thin or wafer, Pak believes there is a solid B2B play where WNWN’s “chocolate” can be used by companies that use chocolate on cookies, cakes, or anything that currently uses cacao-based chocolate.

WNWN won’t stop with revolutionizing the world of chocolate. The company plans to explore how other foods can be safe from changing climates, biodiversity loss, and poor working conditions. These include coffee, tea, and vanilla, which have supply chains mired in unethical and unsustainable practices.

WNWN’s alt-chocolate will be available starting May 18 exclusively on the company’s website. Each box sells for £10 GB (about $12.50 U.S.), on a par with premium dark chocolates. 

Melt&Marble Raises €5 Million For Fermentation-Derived Fat That Tastes and Melts Like the Real Thing

In the first wave of plant-based “meat,” the marketing challenge was about convincing customers that giving up meat needn’t create a hole in their regular diet. For the Impossibles, Beyonds, and others, developing a reasonable, tasty facsimile to the beef or chicken experience got them into millions of homes and in demand on grocer’s shelves. For plant-based meat products to become a savory choice rather than a substitute requires innovators to “kick it up a notch.”

 While the horse race to alt-burger dominance is on, off to the side, innovators have been working on plant-based beef fat that would offer the mouthfeel and umami taste to a host of faux meat products. Included in the alt-beef fat space is Swedish company Melt&Marble which secured a €5 million Series Seed financing round to scale-up production and expand its team.

 Melt&Marble uses precision fermentation to create its plant-based beef fat. Like others in the alternative protein, dairy, meat, and seafood world know, precision fermentation is a robust process but requires a lot of capital to build a proper scalable infrastructure. CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Anastasia Krivoruchko told The Spoon that her company is currently at a lab-scale but will start scaling up in the coming months. It will still be a couple of years until it is fully industrial scale.

Dr. Kriviruchko believes the opportunity for Mouth&Marble is now and in the future based on conversations with plant-based meat providers. “We have talked with many companies about the challenges they are facing with their existing fats,” she said. “When designing our yeast strains, we have been looking into the structure of beef fats and asking ourselves what elements are important for overcoming these challenges. Our prototype has a similar mouthfeel and melting profile to beef fat, which is extremely important for replicating the taste of beef.”

This begs the obvious question about the health-related issues, such as high cholesterol and heart disease, that come with consuming “real” beef fat. Dr. Kriviruchko says such concerns are not present with plant-based beef fat.

“Generally, our fats don’t contain cholesterol, trans-fats, and contaminants. With our technology, we could also potentially integrate healthy bioactive fatty acids into our fats, and this is something that we are keen to explore,” Melt&Marble’s CEO explained.

Melt&Marble’s technology platform was spun out from research work conducted over the past decade by co-founders Dr.  Krivoruchko,  Dr.  Florian  David, and  Professor  Jens  Nielsen at the Chalmers  University of  Technology in  Sweden.  Lever VC led the latest round; an early-stage venture capital firm focused on technologies and brands in the alternative protein space. Lever has previously invested in Good Plant, The Good Spoon, A Dozen Cousins, and others.

If it appears that plant-based beef fat (and other related healthy fats) is a niche market, the number of trailblazers in this emerging sector speaks otherwise. Among Melt&Marble’s competition are Meat-Tech, Mission Barnes, Nourish Ingredients, Hoxton Farms, and Cubiq Foods.

According to Grand View Research, Inc., the global plant-based meat market size will reach $24.8 billion by 2030. A likely scenario, familiar to most emerging tech markets, will be when a few of the best alt-beef fat companies survive by being purchased by either a mega food processor such as Tyson or Cargill or merge with a plant-based market leader like Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat.

Israel’s Remilk Heads to Denmark With Plans for Precision Fermented Milk Production Facility

The challenge for companies focused on developing fermented alternatives to milk-based products that come from cows is to replicate the scale of a dairy farm. A large farm can have up to 15,000 cows, while a small farm will have between 1,000 and 5,000 animals. Cows are milked two to three times per day, with each producing between six and seven gallons daily.

Do the math, and you understand the enormous task facing this new breed of innovators in the alt. dairy space. Among companies in this space, the race is on to build out giant fermentation facilities to meet the potential demand. Remilk, a Tel Aviv-based firm using yeast-based precision fermentation to create a non-animal milk product, announced it would go big in tackling future production needs by securing 750,000 square feet at Kalundborg Denmark’s Symbiosis Project. The company says construction will begin by the end of 2022.

“Remilk has already started high-volume production in several locations around the world. The Danish facility will be our first fully owned facility, and production at this facility, the largest of its kind in the world, will begin as soon as the build-out is complete,” Remilk CEO Aviv Wolff told The Spoon. “Remilk is committed to reinventing the dairy industry in a kind, sustainable way. Eliminating the need for animals is the only way to supply our world’s growing demand without destroying the process.”

While Wolff didn’t provide specifics, he said that Remilk is working with leading consumer brands to craft recipes made with Remilk and believes the end products resulting from those collaborations will be available to consumers soon.

Wolff points to Remilk’s ability to create sustainable animal-free products that do not compromise on taste. Rather than compare his company’s efforts to competitors such as betterland farms, Wolff thinks his competition is milk and milk products that have been around for more than 10,000 years.

“To a large extent, we benchmark ourselves against traditional dairy proteins because that’s what we are looking to replace,” Wolff said. “Remilk can seamlessly replace cow-milk-based ingredients in consumer products because Remilk has the same characteristics, nutrition, and flavor profile with the advantage of being non-animal, thus free of lactose, cholesterol, hormone, and antibiotic residues.”

Remilk is far from alone in the world of precision-fermented dairy. Others include Real Deal Milk, Change Foods, Imagindairy (also in Israel), Formo, and betterland foods. A list of plant-based milk startups would be run several pages.

Fermentation May Be Centuries Old, But It’s Attracting a Whole Bunch of New Money ($1.69 Billion to Be Exact)

You know what they say: everything old is new brewed again.

At least that’s true when it comes to fermentation, that ancient food and beverage production process that is currently an overnight sensation. It is going well beyond the time-honored probiotic-rich staples of sauerkraut, kefir, pickles, miso, yogurt, and kombucha. The process of fermentation is being utilized in the creation of alternative, sustainable proteins to take the place of meat, eggs, seafood, and dairy. And it’s projected to get even more significant in its scope and revenue.

Data in The Good Food Institute’s 2021 State of Fermentation Industry Report points to the growth of fermentation as a traditional means to create probiotic-rich foods and plant-based products. According to the report, a total of $1.69 billion was invested in 54 fermentation-based startups in 2021.

Other data from GFI’s report:

  • Fifteen known startups dedicated to fermentation for alternative proteins were founded in 2021, along with new suppliers focused on fermentation-enabled alternative protein ingredients.
  • Eighty-eight known companies are now dedicated to fermentation-enabled alternative proteins, increasing 20 percent from the number of known companies in 2020.
  • 2021 saw the first growth-stage fundraising in the fermentation industry, including three deals >$200 million.

It’s important to understand that fermentation is not a single process but is three separate processes. Traditional fermentation (used to make pickles, kombucha, and sauerkraut) uses live organisms (such as the fungus Rhizopus to make tempeh or a SCOBY to brew kombucha) to modulate ingredients to create a product rich in flavor and texture. One established company, Miyoko’s Creamery, uses fermentation to make its line of alternative protein dairy products.

 A second process, biomass fermentation, takes advantage of the properties of certain microorganisms that quickly create large quantities of protein. The resulting protein can be used as a standalone product or an ingredient, which is the focus of most companies in this area. An example of a company employing biomass fermentation is SACCHA, a  German company using spent brewer’s yeast to create an alternative vitamin-rich protein that can be used to develop animal-free metal. Colorado-based Meati Foods uses mycelium (a mushroom root) to create a fibrous material that resembles meat.

 Precision fermentation, the third method, is perhaps the segment in this area with tremendous potential and is a focus of major investments. In precision fermentation, microbes create “cell factories” to build specific functional ingredients. Precision fermentation can produce enzymes, flavoring agents, proteins, vitamins, natural pigments, and fats. EVERY Company is an example of this process in which precision fermentation creates a substitute for traditional egg whites.

The GFI chart below shows the different types of fermentation as they relate to alternative proteins and highlights different possible products enabled by each.

One of the most significant stumbling blocks for the more advanced fermentation methods is the buildout of large-scale facilities to tackle production. A growing number of companies are in the process of recently completing or midst such construction, which points to 2023 as a timeframe in which production could begin to fulfill a growing market.

GFI’s report points to these as examples of completed projects and ones in the process of buildout:

  •               The Protein Brewery, Netherlands, completed 2021
  •               The Better Meat Co., California, completed in 2021
  •               Nature’s Fynd, Chicago, targeted for 2022-2023
  •               Mycorena. Sweden, expected to be completed in 2022
  •               Solar Foods, Finland, to be completed in 2022        

 With all the noise about the more advanced forms of fermentation, the value and growth of products in the “traditional fermentation” space have been overlooked. The kombucha market has skyrocketed with a focus on health, especially during the COVID-19 scare. According to Absolute Reports, the global Kombucha market size is estimated to be worth $2.1 billion in 2022 and is forecast to be $6.1 billion by 2028, with a CAGR of 19.7%.

 And an old fermented standby, sauerkraut, also brings in big dollars. According to Verified Market Research, the sauerkraut market was valued at $8.7 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $14.1 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 5.74% from 2020 to 2027.

UPSIDE’s New Investment Dollars Pushes The Company To the Front of the Cultivated Meat Line

Picture this: It’s late 2023, or perhaps 2024. Renowned Austin pitmaster and entrepreneur Aaron Franklin finishes up tending to his smokers after a long night of preparing to feed the onslaught of barbeque fans. Those queued up along Branch Street in East Austin are in for a surprise; that day, instead of the usual prime brisket rubbed with Aaron’s secret coffee-based rub, the star of the day is meat that comes from a place other than a ranch and slaughterhouse. Welcome to the world of cultivated meat.

In such a scenario, UPSIDE Foods is likely to be at the forefront of cultivated meat choices for restaurants and later consumers. Armed with an additional $400 Million in Series C financing, the Berkeley, Calif.-based company is among the leaders in the cultivated meat, poultry, and seafood industry. With these new funds, UPSIDE (formerly Memphis Meats), reaches the milestone of a $1 billion valuation. The funds will be used to expand its production footprint, additional R&D for the next generation of products, consumer education, and enhance its supply chain.

Yes, it is a gamble to fund companies in the cultivated meat space given the lack of governmental approval in the form of the FDA and USDA. Amy Chen, UPSIDE’s COO, admits she has no crystal ball, regarding when cultivated meat will get the green light in the U.S., but is confident the market demand will encourage governments-not just in the U.S.—to provide thoughtful oversight without becoming a roadblock.

“We have had years of extensive dialogue and collaboration with the regulators,” Chen told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We are fully confident that globally there is a market for it and there are eager governments that will pursue it.”

The Series C round is co-led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, and the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (ADG), a new investor. Other new investors include Baillie Gifford, Givaudan, John Doerr, SALT fund, and Synthesis Capital. They are joined by existing investors Bill Gates, Cargill,  Cercano Management, CPT Capital, Dentsu Ventures, Singapore-based global investor EDBI, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Norwest Venture Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, SOSV’s Indie Bio, and Tyson Foods.

Chen is especially proud of the large cross-section of investors that represent varied interests from venture firms to companies entrenched in the agricultural space that produce conventional meat and poultry. It is that wide range of support, she believes, that will help in consumer education as well as a long-term presence in the new food chain.

That said, there’s a lot of work that goes into convincing consumers to bite into a new type of food that is, to say the least, unconventional. Chen suggests that there is a group of early adopters in place ready to sample something new that offers a premium taste while providing the start of a solution to creating a more sustainable global food supply.

“When I think about the adoption of any new technology,” UPSIDE’s COO commented, “There are always the cutting-edge early adopters. Folks who have two characteristics – one is they love food and are open to the next thing in food with an openness to innovation and new things. The other trait is being aware and an interested in addressing some of the challenges of conventional meats.”

The bottom line for Chen is the fact that her company’s cultivated meat has the taste of the real thing. “One of the things I am super passionate about, coming from the food world, is the taste of the Product,” she said.  “Ultimately, if it doesn’t taste good when the consumer puts it into their mouth, we have lost the journey.”

UPSIDE is not alone in this quest to bring cultivated meat to the masses. There’s Brazil’s JBS, Israel’s SuperMeat, GOOD Meat, and Mosa Meats, just to name a few. There are also other companies offering technology to aid in the process that facilitates the cultivation process. According to the Good Food Institute, 21 new companies in the cultivated meat space launched in 2021, a 32% increase from the previous year.

 Approval from the FDA comes in the form of a “no questions” letter from the FDA, followed by the USDA’s investment in plant inspection and labeling guidelines. Beyond those hurdles, there are other questions: will cultivated meat be considered Kosher/Halal (given there is no ritual slaughter)? And how will this new product be merchandised in stores? Does it belong in the current meat section alongside 80/20 ground round? Lastly, how will vegans react? No animal is killed, so how will those avoiding all things steak, hamburgers, et al react?

Only time will tell.