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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

Eat Just’s GOOD Meat Raises $170M, Brings Its Cultivated Meat to More Restaurants

Eat Just announced today that its GOOD Meat division has raised $170 million in new funding. The round included UBS O’Connor, Graphene Ventures, K3 Ventures, and others, and officially makes GOOD a subsidiary of Eat Just.

The company said today it plans to use the new funds to increase capacity of GOOD’s cultured meat production in addition to furthering research and development. 

Eat Just became the world’s first company to receive regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in December of 2020 in Singapore. It quickly followed that up with the actual sale of GOOD meat at the 1880 restaurant in the city-state. Since then, 1880 customers have continued to order GOOD’s cultivated chicken product at the restaurant, and can now even get it for delivery via foodpanda.  

With the new funds, Eat Just will expand the availability of GOOD’s cultivated meat from that single restaurant to another, the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach’s Madame Fan. Notably, the JW Marriott location has said it will outright replace its conventional chicken with GOOD’s cultivated version at certain times of the day. To start, GOOD meat will replace conventional chicken for delivery items ordered on Thursdays, starting May 20. GOOD will be available “for once-a-week dine-in starting soon.”

Eat Just CEO and founder Josh Tetrick has said before that he sees a world in which “restaurants remove conventional meat from their menu[s].” Eat Just’s plant-based egg products have already fully replaced their traditional counterparts at some restaurant chains, and more restaurants around the world are now exploring alternative protein as a regular staple on the menu.

For cultivated meat, the march into restaurants won’t happen overnight. Eat Just remains the only company in the world that can currently sell cultivated meat, and Singapore is still the only place in which the company can do that. However, other countries and companies are already in the process of granting and getting regulatory approval, which means in the next year or so, we’ll see more restaurant menus around the world debuting cultivated meat products.

Mosa Meat Achieves an ‘Over 65x Reduction’ in Costs for Its Cultured Fat

Dutch cultured protein company Mosa Meat said over the weekend it has reduced the cost of its fat media by 66 times thanks to the work of a group the company refers to as its Fat Team. Without listing actual price numbers, Mosa Meat said its fat medium now costs 1.52 percent of what it did less than two years ago, in September of 2019.

In the cultivated meat-making process, the nutrient-rich growth medium fed to cells triggers those cells to grow into muscle, fat, and tissue, all of which are put together to create a final end product. A company might grow fat cells for use in its own meat analogues, or it could sell the fat as an ingredient to other businesses. Fat is also a crucial component in achieving a “meatier” taste, texture, and mouthfeel when it comes to cultured protein.  

Mosa Meat, of course, is well known as the company that created the world’s first cultivated hamburger back in 2013 — for a cool $325,000. A huge part of this cost was (and still is for many) the growth medium, which at the time was made using fetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS is as expensive as it is controversial. As the Good Food Institute puts it, “The use of animal-derived components in cultivated meat production has prohibitive economic, food safety, and ethical constraints.”

In July of last year, Mosa Meat said it had achieved a more than 80x cost reduction for its growth media, a milestone largely driven by the company’s ability to develop FBS-free media. The company now uses an “animal component free” media that is part of the reason the Fat Team was able to announce its own cost reductions recently.

“We’ve definitely checked yet another box on our journey towards a product that meets the expectations of critical meat lovers,” company cofounder Peter Verstrate said in this weekend’s announcement. 

Mosa Meat’s announcement comes not long after MeaTech 3D, an Israeli company, said it would produce cultivated fat at a new pilot production facility. Additionally, last month Mission Barns raised $24 million to build up a production facility in San Francisco for its cultivated fat business. Meanwhile, multiple companies, from Avant Meats to Future Meat, have announced price slashes in production costs over the last several months.

Lowering costs, whether of fat, medium, or other components, will help the entire cultured meat industry get products closer to price parity with their traditional counterparts. Price parity is only of many other milestones that have to be achieved in order to make cultivated meat a commercial reality. However, it is seen by many as an extremely crucial step in the process. 

Mosa Meat doesn’t yet have a timeframe for when it might have burgers in front of customers, or how much they’ll cost once that happens. At last check, the company was working with European regulators to get approval for its products. 

A Mid-Year Assessment for Alternative Protein

More companies, more investments, and many more scientific breakthroughs. Those are just a few predictions for the future of alternative protein the Good Food Institute (GFI) sets out in its latest State of Industry reports. Three different papers — one each on plant-based protein, fermentation, and cultivated protein — go in-depth into the trends that drove alternative protein in 2020 and what we can expect for the rest of 2021.

As we’ve written before, investment in alternative protein topped $3.1 billion in 2020, which is more than three times the amount raised by the sector in 2019. Driving those investments are, says GFI, numerous developments across the commercial landscape, investments, scientific and technological developments, and regulatory and government activity.

The State of Industry reports cover the obvious developments, such as the world’s first sale of cultivated meat and plant-based meat’s $7 billion in retail sales. But more interesting now is what we can expect in the future — that is, for the remainder of 2021 and on into the next few years. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of those developments:

Expect lots more pilot production environments for cultivated meat. Reaching pilot scale could be seen as the step that bridges a company’s proof-of-concept phase with its commercial phase. GFI notes that at this stage, companies would be producing “hundreds or thousands” of metric tons of cultured meat. (Millions would be required for a company to scale to an industrial level.) Reaching pilot scale would mean being able to supply “a limited number of high-end restaurants in the coming one to three years.” (Read more on why restaurants are critical to cultivated meat’s growth.)

As GFI points out, multiple companies are now transitioning into this pilot-scale phase, including BlueNalu, MosaMeat, and SuperMeat. The latter even turned its pilot production site (pictured above) into a restaurant where consumers can taste the company’s cultured chicken in exchange for leaving detailed feedback. Elsewhere, Aleph Farms and MeaTech 3D plan to have facilities running by 2022 and Avant Meats recently announced a pilot production facility for Singapore. UPSIDE Foods, formerly Memphis Meats, has also just broken ground on a facility.

Cellular agriculture will become its own field of study. One PhD candidate at Tufts University noted that we can expect cell ag to get its own degree program at universities, and have a “separate and distinct curriculum.”

Fermentation production will increase. “If we believe in the projection of 25%-30% CAGR, then for fermentation to even maintain its share of the market, there is a need for a 10x+ increase in capacity by 2030,” Jim Laird of 3F Bio states in GFI’s fermentation report. Of course, needing to increase and actually doing it are two different things, but one of the advantages of fermentation is that it is already seen as a ost-competitive, scalable, and validated process. Many, including the GFI, have begun calling it the “third pillar of alt protein.”

Meanwhile, a number of companies, including Solar Biotech, MycoTechnology, and Nature’s Fynd are developing technologies and processes that will make fermentation even more cost-effective, which could in turn increase companies’ ability to produce.

Fermentation could “revolutionize” the entire alt-protein landscape. It has the potential to influence other areas of alternative protein. As GFI’s report notes, “Fermentation can enable a new generation of proteins, fats, and other functional ingredients that combine with plant-based and cultivated components to create biomimicking whole-cut meats, egg replacements, animal-free dairy proteins, seafood products, and more.” 

Along those lines, the next few years could see hybrid blends of meat, where fermentation-derived protein could also include plant and animal cell components. Fermentation is also already part of a number of other “alt” products besides meat, including cheese and bee honey.

More restaurants will go plant-based. We’ve been mulling the future of the plant-based restaurant for a while. Now that the world is beginning to come out of its various stages of lockdown and people are returning to dining rooms, there’s an enormous opportunity for plant-based foods to take center stage at restaurants. More restaurants will move to full plant-based menus, such as those seen from Canada-based Copper Branch and, most recently, Eleven Madison Park in NYC.

Plant-based chicken will be a big part of this shift. Right now there’s a distinct lack of choices, both in restaurants and grocery stores, when it comes to poultry. Expect this to change rapidly, starting with restaurants. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is also important to keep in mind the many challenges the alt-protein sector still has to face, from improving the taste and texture of plant-based meat to bringing down the cost of cell-culture media. There are also heaps of regulatory approvals to be obtained before many of these companies and solutions can actually reach consumers.

Some of these challenges will be solved in 2021; others are years away from solutions. But if there’s one overarching takeaway we can glean from GFI’s report trio, it’s that everything — from number of companies to production levels to investment dollars — is going to increase astronomically this year for alternative protein.

More Headlines

MeaTech 3D Will Produce Cultivated Fat, Whole Steaks at Its Forthcoming Pilot Facility – The Israeli bioprinting startup this week announced a pilot production facility where the company will scale up production of its cultivated fat and continue work on whole cuts of cultivated steak.

Memphis Meats Rebrands as UPSIDE Foods, Announces Cultured Chicken Product – The company rebranded and also announced that its first consumer product, cultured chicken, will be available to customers this year, pending regulatory approval.

Solar Biotech Raises $2M for Its Fermentation Tech – The Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup will use the $2 million in a debt-financing round to scale up its renewable-energy-powered fermentation technology, which it licenses to other companies.

MeaTech 3D Will Produce Cultivated Fat, Whole Steaks at Its Forthcoming Pilot Facility

Israeli bioprinting startup MeaTech 3D this week became the latest cultivated meat company to announce a pilot production facility, which the company intends to have operational in 2022. The plant’s location is yet to be announced. MeaTech said they will use the facility to increase the production of cultured chicken fat from Peace of Meat, a Belgian company MeaTech acquired in December of 2020. 

MeaTech says cultured fat can “significantly enhance” the texture, flavor, and mouthfeel of plant-based meat alternatives, giving them an altogether “meatier” taste than is available with current plant-based meat analogues. MeaTech said in this week’s announcement that it plans to license its cultivated fat tech — including cell lines and bioprocesses — to other companies wishing to improve their plant-based products.

However, cultivated fat is only one part of MeaTech’s overall plan. In tandem, the company will continue to develop a process for whole cuts of cultivated meat — namely steak and chicken breast — using 3D bioprinting tech.

Developing full cuts of cultivated meat is far more difficult than making minced products for burgers or chicken bites. With full cuts of meat, the various cells, including those for muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue, have to grow together, on scaffolding, to achieve the desired cut of meat. This is a significantly more intricate process than simply growing the different cells then manually combining them at the end, as can be done for a patty or nugget.

Aleph Farms, also based in Israel, is the other notable company attempting to produce whole cuts of cultivated meat. Earlier this year, the company said they had developed a 3D bioprinted Ribeye steak from cultivated protein.

So far, MeaTech has printed a carpaccio-like layer of meat. A full steak or chicken breast is in all likelihood years away. While the forthcoming pilot production facility will first be used to scale up production of Peace of Meat’s cultured fat, it will eventually incorporate MeaTech’s bioprinting tech to produce the aforementioned whole cuts of meat.

Solar Biotech Raises $2M for Its Fermentation Tech

Raleigh, North Carolina-based Solar Biotech has raised a $2 million in a debt-financing round from a single, unnamed investor, according to WRAL Tech Wire, which first broke the news. The funds will go towards scaling up Solar Biotech’s renewable-energy-powered fermentation technology, which it licenses to other companies.

That technology consists of what Solar Biotech calls “SynBio Hyperintegration Algorithms.” These allow for customized plant architectures, dubbed “BioNodes,” for each synthetic biology product and can be used for, among other things, functional food ingredients.

The end goal is to provide a platform through which other companies can scale up and get their products to market faster without having to build their own technology platform. Solar Biotech claims its first working prototype, BioNode-1, will reduce products’ time to market “by 10-fold” for “a fraction of current costs.” Practically speaking, that means Solar Biotech wants to help companies get their fermentation products to market in months, rather than years, and eventually days.

It’s an ambitious goal, but one very fitting for the times. Fermentation is widely seen as “the next pillar of alternative proteins” alongside cultured and plant-based protein. 

Fermentation uses microbes to produce proteins and functional ingredients that can be used in meat and dairy alternatives. Unlike the nascent process behind cultured protein, fermentation is more or less a proven process that’s available to food companies now. The challenge for fermentation companies nowadays is more about scale than anything else. 

Fermentation has a lot of potential uses cases, from animal-free dairy a la Perfect Day to alternative bee honey to steak. Solar Biotech joins a number of other companies, including MycoTechnology, Nature’s Fynd, and HakkoBako, in focusing on the actual tech that will make fermentation more widely available at a lower cost. 

Europe? The U.S.? Israel? Which Country Might Be Next to Approve Cultured Meat

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Ever since Eat Just nabbed the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in Singapore (and followed that milestone up by actually selling it), myself and many others have wondered which market will be next. 

The question was asked again this week when an article from Food Navigator zeroed in on Europe, noting, “Europeans want to know when it will be their turn: when will cultivated meat be served on EU plates?” It seems the most probable answer is three to five years. 

With Singapore already selling cultured meat at restaurants, five years seems a long time. But David Brandes, the Managing Director for Belgium-based company Piece of Meat, noted to Food Navigator that “bureaucracy and political interest” hold back the regulatory process, and that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s risk assessment process alone takes nine months.

Still, the European Commission has a clearly defined process for bringing cultured meat to market that is known as the Novel Food authorization, which makes it a logical market to try and bring a product into. For example, Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands, has said it is focusing on Singapore and Europe for its first launches, specifically citing Europe’s Novel Food authorizations as a reason. Europe is also home to many other cultured meat companies, including Blue Biosciences, Mirai, and CellulaREvolution.

On the other hand, many have their sights set on the U.S. as the next destination for the sale of cultured meat. In 2019, the FDA and the USDA issued a formal agreement to jointly oversee regulation of cultured meat using existing frameworks. (The framework does not apply to cultured seafood, which is regulated exclusively by the FDA.)

U.S.-based companies are still leading the cultured meat industry, too, and have attracted huge amounts of investment in the recent past, including Memphis Meats’ $161 million round in 2020, BlueNalu’s $60 million fundraise, and, of course, Eat Just’s recent $200 million fundraise. The latter — still the only cultured meat company in the world cleared to sell a product — hasn’t explicitly said it will next launch commercially in the U.S. In a recent conversation, Eat Just founder and CEO Josh Tetrick only hinted, saying “I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll see clearance sometime in the next two years. I hope it’s this year — we’re going to be ready if it is. But it’s hard to tell.”

Additionally, California-based BlueNalu has said its products will launch in the second half of 2021, though it hasn’t yet said where. And an organization known as the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, which includes Memphis Meats, New Age Meats, Eat Just, and others, is dedicated to advancing the reach of cultured meat in the U.S.

Let’s also keep one eye on Israel. While its a smaller market than the U.S. or Europe, the country is like Singapore in that its government is very keen on advancing cultured meat. That includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, who in December of last year became the first head of state to taste cultured meat. He noted at the time that Israel will “become a powerhouse for alternative meat and alternative protein.”

Israel is also home to the world’s first restaurant dedicated to cultured meat, SuperMeat’s The Chicken. No products are sold their. Rather, consumers apply to gain entry then give detailed feedback in exchange for tasting the company’s cultured meat product. (Spoiler alert: it’s chicken.) 

There are also a growing number of companies coming from Israel, including Aleph Farms, Future Meat, and MeaTech 3D, which already publicly trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. 

Worth noting is that MeaTech 3D has also filed to go public in the U.S., which may suggest where its sights are set in terms of initial commercialization. Future Meat, too, has also said it plans to launch in the U.S. by 2022 via restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales. So while Israel may not necessarily be host the world’s second commercial sale of cultured meat, it may well provide the companies doing so elsewhere. Say, in the U.S.

Other Headlines

Tyson’s Raised & Rooted Expands into Plant-Based Burgers, Brats and Italian Sausage. Tyson Foods’ plant-based protein brand, announced today that it is expanding its lineup with three new offerings: burgers, Bratwurst and Italian sausages. 

Sweden: Stockeld Dreamery Launching First Plant-Based Cheese This Week. Plant-based cheese startup Stockeld Dreamerly, will launch its first product, Stockeld Chunk, at select stores in Stockholm, Sweden on May 6. 

OmniFoods Plans to Launch Its Plant-Based OmniPork Products in the U.S. This Year. OmniPork, the plant-based meat line from Green Monday subsidiary OmniFoods, will launch in the U.S. later this year.

Sweden: Stockeld Dreamery Launching First Plant-Based Cheese This Week

Plant-based cheese startup Stockeld Dreamery (formerly Noquo Foods) will launch its first product, Stockeld Chunk, at select stores in Stockholm, Sweden on May 6. Daniel Skaven Ruben, an early investor and advisor to Stockeld and now the company’s Head of Strategy and Special Projects, published a Medium post today announcing the news.

Stockeld Chunk is made from fermented peas and fava beans and can be crumbled onto either hot dishes or on salad like a feta cheese. It has a similar nutritional composition to feta, with 13 percent protein, 1.5 percent carbs and 20 percent fat. Skaven Ruben is quick to point out in his post that Stockeld isn’t trying to create a “fake” version of feta, only that the product be used like feta.

Stockeld is certainly launching its first plant-based cheese product at the right time. Recent data from the Good Food Institute shows that U.S. retail sales of plant-based cheese rose 42 percent from 2019 to 2020, with 54 million units selling last year making the category worth $270 million.

Plant-based cheese is a tough product to create, as you have to get the taste, texture and melting properties just right. There have been a number of companies making vegan cheese over the years, but a new wave of startups is looking to elevate the product to new heights, and hopefully more widespread acceptance. Grounded Foods and GOOD PLANeT‘s plant-based cheeses are already available, and the more early stage Climax Foods is using machine learning to combine various plant ingredients into different types of cheese.

If you are in Stockholm and want to try out Stockeld’s take on plant-based cheese, it will be available both as part of a dish and a standalone CPG starting May 6 at Pom & Flora, BAK Bakery and cheesemonger Wijnjas Grosshandel.

Givaudan and Bühler Open “Protein Innovation Centre” in Singapore

Flavor/fragrance company Givaudan and food processing company Bühler, announced this week they have opened the doors on their APAC Protein Innovation Centre at the existing Givaudan Woodlands site in Singapore. The facility will serve as a place to develop plant-based protein tailored to Asian consumers tastes and preferences. 

The goal is to bring together food processing companies, startups and researchers to develop more and better ways to produce alternative proteins. The Centre includes Bühle’s extrusion and processing equipment and a kitchen and flavor laboratory by Givaudan. The two Switzerland-based companies said that initially the facility will be able to produce 40 kilograms of plant proteins per hour.

The space includes a wet and dry extruder, a product development kitchen, storage facilities, and a viewing area where visitors to the Centre can watch live demonstrations. 

Givaudan and food processing company Bühler first announced the Centre back in February of 2020. Much has happened since then, and I’m not just talking about the pandemic. Over the last year or so, alternative protein companies from around world have flocked to Singapore to establish various innovation and R&D centers. That list now includes Perfect Day, Oatly, ADM, Avant Meats, and Eat Just. 

Singapore is currently trying to make more of its food production local. Currently, about 90 percent of the city-state’s food is imported. The government has set up the 30×30 initiative, which aims to produce 30 percent of Singapore’s food locally by 2030. These factors make Singapore an especially innovation-friendly environment when it comes to the development and regulation of alternative proteins.  

Givaudan and Bühler’s new facility will specifically focus on helping companies from the APAC region develop and scale their alternative protein solutions.

So I Guess I Should Move to Singapore

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I’m not sure how to break this to my wife, but the family needs to pack up and move to Singapore. Because let’s face it, if you want to experience the future of food today, Singapore is the place to be.

This isn’t a new idea, and it’s something we’ve touched on before at The Spoon. In fact, we held an entire panel on Singapore as a food tech superpower at the 2020 Smart Kitchen Summit back in October. Since that time, however, Singapore seems to have stepped on the gas.

The world really took note in December when Singapore granted an alt-protein company, Eat Just, the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat. A couple of weeks following that announcement, that cultured meat went on sale in a Singapore restaurant. More recently, Eat Just teamed up with delivery service foodpanda to offer home delivery of cultured meat, marking another first for the industry.

In addition to having its own bustling startup scene featuring companies like Shiok Meats and Next Gen, Singapore is also quickly becoming a go-to place for outside startups to build out R&D facilities. Perfect Day, which uses fermentation to create animal-less dairy proteins, announced in December that it was building an R&D facility in Singapore. And just this month, Liberty Produce, Avant Meats, and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) each announced they were building their own innovation centers in Singapore.

What’s worth noting about all the new facilities announced this April was that they all address different areas of food tech. Liberty Produce is developing controlled-environment agriculture systems. Avant Meats is working on cell-based fish. And ADM’s facility will further develop plant-based protein. Not only that, but all three of those companies are building facilities that will also produce food, not just research it.

So what’s behind Singapore’s sprint towards the food of tomorrow? As my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote back in October:

Arguably the biggest driver is that, at the moment, Singapore imports 90 percent of its food. That’s a precarious position to be in during the best of times, never mind during a pandemic that’s disrupted the global food supply chain. In response, the Singapore government launched a $21 million grant fund this year as part of its 30×30 initiative, which aims to have 30 percent of Singapore’s food produced locally by 2030. 

Because of that initiative, Singapore’s regulators are a lot more open to innovation without lobbying from entrenched, protectionist legacy players. This means Singapore really has the power and flexbility to push the food tech envelope.

There’s an old saw in business that dominance perpetuates itself. Singapore has quickly established itself as a dominant force in the food tech space, which means that it will be shaping the global future of food for some time to come.

Guess I should start packing my bags.

More Headlines

Beyond Meat to Launch Newest Version of its Burgers in U.S. Stores Next Week – New version no longer uses mung bean protein and promises to be “meatier” and “juicier.”

Finally! Prime Roots’ New Koji Bacon is a Really Good Vegan Bacon – Our resident vegan tried (and liked!) this plant-based breakfast meat.

Clara Foods Teams Up With AB InBev to Make Animal Protein at Scale – The partnership will combine AB InBev’s “centuries of expertise in scaled, food-grade fermentation and downstream processing gained from large-scale brewing processes” with Clara’s technology to develop more sustainable protein at scale.

ADM Launches Plant-Based Innovation Lab in Singapore

Global food processing company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) announced at the tail-end of last week it had opened an innovation lab in Singapore dedicated to plant-based protein. The lab will help the company increase production of alternative proteins “to meet growing food and beverage demand in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The new facility is located ADM’s Biopolis research hub, which contains a number of different labs, including one for flavor analytics, a sensory evaluation center, labs for sweet, savory, and dairy foods, and a customer innovation center. The plant-based innovation lab will house experts working with texture, flavor, and other key areas of alt-protein development.

“The lab will help us capture key insight and learnings to help drive exciting new solutions for the Asian market, but also help us better serve customers around the world looking to incorporate Asian flavors and preferences into their latest plant-based food and beverage innovations,” Marie Wright, chief global flavorist and president, Creation, Design & Development for ADM, said in a statement. 

Singapore continues to be a key location in Asia for the development of alternative proteins. Just today, cultivated meat company Avant Meats announced its own R&D and pilot manufacturing facility in the city-state. Perfect Day announced its Singapore facility in December of 2020, and the city-state made history in December 2020 by granting the world’s first regulatory approval to a company, Eat Just, to sell cultured meat. There is also a growing number of local players, including plant-based meat maker Next Gen and cell-based seafood maker Shiok Meats.

Singapore is a natural spot for food innovation. Currently, it relies on exports for about 90 percent of its food. The government’s 30×30 initiative is attempting to change this by aiming to make 30 percent of food production local by 2030. 

At the same time, Asia is one of the key regions for the growth of alternative proteins. A recent report from DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences found that demand for plant-based protein in the Asia-Pacific markets is expected to grow 200 percent over the next five years.

A Plant-Based Restaurant Redefines the QSR

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I’ve been writing a lot about the plant-based QSR lately, so when I recently got the chance to visit the new location of Copper Branch, a plant-based restaurant company from Canada, I jumped at it. 

Across its franchise locations, which span Canada and are now making their way into the States, Copper Branch offers quick-service food that’s entirely plant-based. The company’s latest location to open, and its second in the U.S., is in Nashville, Tennessee — conveniently down the street from my house. 

Upon visiting, however, it became clear that food is only one part of Copper Branch’s mission. The company is, it seems, less about selling plant-based foods and more about reinventing what it means to be a quick-service restaurant (QSR). 

Despite the popularity in recent years of items like the Impossible Whopper and the Beyond Taco, the average QSR is better known for greasy burgers, salty fries, and sodas drunk out of non-recyclable cups. I love an occasional trip to the drive-thru as much as the next person, but those indulgences come with health and planetary costs that are becoming increasingly more problematic in light of climate change and chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity.

Copper Branch’s model is compelling because the company’s goal is bigger than simply making plant-based foods accessible to mainstream consumers’ palates. Over a recent call, CEO Trish Paterson talked about the company’s “triangular focus” when it comes to sustainability. The goal is to strike a balance between human health, animal welfare, and planetary health when it comes to food, packaging, operations, and everything else it takes to run a restaurant. The bigger-picture mission is to “change people’s mindsets of what fast food really is.”

In the case of Copper Branch, fast food means partnerships with companies like Eat Just (eggs) and Field Roast (cheese, meat) to recreate scrambles, burgers, chili, and other dishes made entirely from plants. At the same time, the company also prioritizes local partnerships for certain items, which is itself a form of sustainability. For example, the Nashville location serves coffee from Bongo Java, a beloved local roaster and one of the oldest independent coffee shops in town. Paterson says the local partnerships are intentional and a means of supporting local business and communities surrounding each Copper Branch location. Franchisees are expected to spend “a percentage of their revenue on local activities and giving back to their own communities,” which includes sourcing coffees, desserts, and other items from around town.

Packaging is another important part of the operation. Copper Branch has used compostable straws and cutlery for years, as well as compostable water bottles. A little more challenging are the to-go boxes for the food, which have to be lined with plastic to keep food hot during transport. Paterson said the company has considered a “bring your own container” program, though for the moment that’s on hold due to the pandemic. 

All of this sustainability doesn’t come cheap, though. Paterson said right now the biggest challenge for her company is the price point of menu items. For instance, a “Copper Burger Deluxe” at the restaurant costs $8.95. An Impossible Whopper is $5.89 by comparison.

“The ingredients that we use will never lend themselves to put us on that price point,” she says of the standard QSR menu. Instead, Copper Branch sees its job as helping consumers to understand the higher price points as “investing” in their own health and that of the planet.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Getting consumers in front of actual products, preferably eating in the restaurant, are important parts of educating consumers. That education doesn’t have to be preachy, either. A good meal speaks for itself. If that meal can be got as quickly and conveniently as the experience at a place like McDonald’s, consumers may be willing to pay a little more. 

Even if they’re not, the price point for plant-based, sustainably packaged foods may yet come down. For her part, Paterson believes we’ll get closer to that point. “The more advanced research and development gets, the lower the cost structure becomes, and those products will become more mainstream.”

Restaurants ‘Round the Web

CloudKitchens, the uber-secretive startup from ex-Uber boss Travis Kalanick, is reportedly Uber all over again, and definitely not in a good way. Business Insider recently reported on tensions and a mass exodus of staffers from the company.

Speaking of food delivery, a group of food delivery workers in NYC, known as Los Deliveristas Unidos, recently took to the streets to protest working conditions. The city’s largest union of service worker supported. Eater NY has the full story.

The latest Yelp Economic Average report recently found that restaurant openings were up in the first quarter of 2021 compared to one year ago. However, they fell short of 2019 levels. 

Food Tech News: Carbon-Negative Cutlery at Target, Upcycled Food Label Launches

Welcome to your weekly Food Tech News round-up! Many companies in the food tech space made efforts to honor Earth Day, so this week all of our news is relevant to sustainability. We have stories on AirCarbon cutlery launching in Target, a new upcycled food certification, BlueNalu’s essay contest, and Perfect Day’s new advisory council.

Restore AirCarbon Cutlery launches in Target nationwide

Newlight Technologies‘ brand Restore produces carbon-negative cutlery from its proprietary material called AirCarbon. At the beginning of this week, the cutlery launched in Target locations nationwide. The cutlery is carbon-negative because its created from biodegradable plastic made from absorbed greenhouse gases. The straws and cutlery are dishwasher safe and, if disposed of, will decompose in a landfill. A 24-piece pack of wrapped straws costs $2.99 and a three-piece cutlery pack with a natural fiber carrying case costs $4.99. The products are available on Target’s website and in stores.

Upcycled food label officially debuts

Vegan, organic, non-GMO, and gluten-free food labels exist, and now a label exists for products comprised of upcycled food ingredients. The Upcycled Food Association officially launched the “Upcycled Certified” label this week. The certification can be used to signify if food, beverages, pet food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, or household cleaners contain upcycled food ingredients. The organization defines upcycled food as essentially any food using ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption and ended up in a food waste destination. The organization’s goal with the newly debuted certification is to empower consumers to make climate friendly purchases through upcycled food products.

BlueNalu announces scholarship winners

BlueNalu, producers of cell-based seafood, held a contest called the Eat Blue Essay Contest in collaboration with the Research Chefs Association (RCA). The point of the contest was to prompt discussion around sustainable seafood and ocean conservation goals set forth by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Culinary students of RCA from around the world were encouraged to submit essays. This week the three finalists were announced, and the essays can be read on the Eat Blue website. BlueNalu is awarding the finalists with scholarships to support educational expenses.

Perfect Day forms advisory board

Berkley, California-based Perfect Day, pioneers in fermented animal-free dairy, announced this week that it has formed a Sustainability & Health Advisory Council. The advisory board includes former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, Leonardo Di Caprio, and several other leaders in the food, agriculture, and nutrition space. The council members will help guide Perfect Day on decisions regarding health and the environment. Perfect Day recently commissioned a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental impact of its non-animal whey protein, and the report found that it generates at least 85 percent and up to 97 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional production methods.