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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

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.

Mikuna Foods Hopes Its New Funding Will Take Its Superfood Chocho To New Heights

If there’s a category of superfoods that has the potential to surpass super, Mikuna’s line of chocho protein products aspires to claim that title. The competition is intense, but the uses for a clean, gluten-free, low-glycemic, multipurpose powder-like food go well beyond juices and smoothies.

“Chocho is the future of plant-based proteins, and as we look ahead to the brand’s product and innovation pipeline, Mikuna is poised to lead the plant-based industry back to its clean, whole food roots,” company CEO Tara Kriese said in a company statement.

 Chocho is a lupin that, once milled, becomes a protein-rich powder. It is indigenous to South America in the Andes Region, particularly in Ecuador and Peru (where it is known as Tarwi). Mikuna’s founder, Ricky Echanique, is a fifth-generation farmer from Ecuador who suffered from digestive issues. He found the answer in his backyard, discovering that this plant provided solutions to his ailments. After discovering the power of this superfood, it became Echanique’s mission to bring chocho to the world.

 Kriese, a former SVP for plant-based meat company Impossible Foods, brings her market knowledge and personal passion to the company. In an interview with The Spoon, the CEO spoke about her daughter, whose multiple life-threatening childhood allergies took her to the plant-based, clean food world long before it was fashionable.

 After being introduced to Echanique in 2020 and learning of Mikuna and chocho, Kriese knew she was on to something big. “I couldn’t believe that no one was using this amazing crop,” she said. And it’s no one-trick pony, something borne out by the company’s relationship with Erewhon, which features the protein in juices that it features in its in-house Tonic Bar and in juices it sells in the store.

 The well-known Los Angeles-area gourmet supermarket’s use of chocho is part of Mikuna’s current multipronged strategy, which will evolve with its new investment dollars. The company sells its original or pure product along with vanilla and cacao varieties direct to consumers via its website. They also are available at Amazon and in retailers and foodservice locations across Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and California.

Mikuna’s seed round investors include Olympians and World Champion athletes like Leticia Bufoni, professional skateboarder and six-time X Games gold medalist, professional surfer, and three-time world champion Mick Fanning; and professional snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Sage Kotsenburg.

“I’ve always wanted a protein powder that’s clean, and Mikuna is as clean as it gets with just one simple ingredient, chocho,” says Professional Surfer Mick Fanning. “With Mikuna, I’m investing in both the future of nutrition and our planet, and to join such an impressive community of individuals to support Mikuna’s growth was a natural fit for me.”

Backed by more than hype, Kriese senses that, like her, when consumers learn of the power and versatility of this Andrean superfood, they will have a “chocho moment” just as she did.

Beyond Meat Expands Its Chicken Tenders Footprint to Get a Leg Up

California-based Beyond Meat continues its drive to satisfy plant-based consumers by expanding the presence of its chicken tenders in high-profile retailers. Beginning April 12, Beyond will add Albertsons, CVS, Sprouts, and Whole Foods Market stores nationwide to its roster. Krogers and its brands (Fry’s, Food 4 Less, QFC, Ralph’s) will add the product throughout April. Beyond’s September 2021 announcement of the new product revealed an initial slate of retail partners led by Walmart.

The plant-based chicken market is highly competitive, given the riches at stake. SPINS, a data technology company, reported that the plant-based chicken market grew from $230.7 million in May 2020 to $271.8 million one year later. Others in this crowded space include Singapore’s TiNDL; Impossible Foods; Rebellyous Foods; Nowadays; Gardein; among others.

Beyond the supermarket shelf, food service in fast-food joints and restaurants has become a crucial channel to market for plant-based chicken. Beyond Meat’s poultry is in regional players such as Flyrite, Next Level Clucker; Plow Burger; Panda Express; and KFC (fried chicken). Globally, Beyond Meat products, including the Beyond Burger, Beyond Beef, and Beyond Sausage, are available at approximately 130,000 retail and foodservice outlets in more than 90 countries.

“Building on the positive momentum of our recent chicken launches, we’re excited to significantly expand the availability of our Beyond Chicken Tenders by showing up in more places for our consumers – from their favorite supermarket or drugstore to large warehouse clubs – making delicious, nutritious and sustainable plant-based meat more accessible than ever before,” said Deanna Jurgens, Chief Growth Officer, Beyond Meat in a company release.

Beyond Meat’s chicken nuggets are made primarily from faba (fava) beans with breading comprised of wheat and rice flour. They also contain pea protein, wheat gluten, spices, oil, and a mix of natural flavors. They are soy-free (although the label says they may contain soy from shared manufacturing facilities).

The plant-based chicken market has the potential to be a giant, ticking time bomb. While all matters of faux poultry hit grocery store shelves and eateries, not far off in the distance are a host of cultured products that will rival—and possibly outperform—their plant-based predecessors (provided the newer alternatives can scale). With governmental approval possible by the end of the year, companies such as Eat Just’s GOOD Meats division will be able to sell their cultivated chicken products in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company received approval from Singapore to sell its new product in Singapore, one of two countries where cultured or lab-grown meat is legal. The Netherlands recently allowed samples of this futuristic form of meat to be distributed.

As far as Beyond’s entry into the lab-grown or cultivated meat and poultry market, the company says its current commitment is to plant-based food. “We remain focused on our mission to create products that address the four growing global issues of climate change, human health, the constraint on natural resources, and animal welfare,” a company spokesperson told The Spoon. “We are incredibly proud of our approach to building meat from plants as an accessible and delicious way for consumers to make a positive impact on these areas.”

The EVERY Company Uses Iconic Product to Showcase Its Animal-Free Egg Whites

It’s common for musicians to play their most challenging piece to open a concert. Not only is the goal to calm the nerves, but it is also a way to showcase talent and let the audience know what they can expect. Using this model, EVERY Co. figures a great way to let the world know how exceptional its EVERY EggWhite is to have Bay Area’s Chantal Guillon, use it in its signature French macarons.

“From the day we founded the company, we have been asked by customers when will we get our hands on it (egg whites),” Arturo Elizondo, CEO, and founder of EVERY, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We wanted to launch it in the most iconic application that really is the holy grail of functionality and with a customer that lives or dies by the ingredients.”

Founded initially as Clara Foods in 2014, the company rebranded in 2021 to better illustrate its mission of providing animal-free proteins that can be used in a vast array of applications. Unlike cell-cultivated and plant-based proteins, EVERY uses a 3D model of an egg protein and puts it through a fermentation process to achieve three products that serve different high-value markets. Elizondo says the resulting fermented egg white has the perfect consistency and mouthfeel, an ideal substitute ingredient.

In addition to releasing its EVERY EggWhite, the company has EVERY ClearEgg. This clear, highly soluble protein can be used in beverages and fortifying agents. Elizondo said that his company has been partnering with AB InBev, which is experimenting with using ClearEGG in protein drinks and other drinks. EVERY has a similar relationship with cold-pressed juice and plant-based snacks brand Pressed to use its soluble protein in the juicer’s Pressed Pineapple Greens Protein smoothie.

The third product from EVERY is its EVERY Pepsin, a digestive enzyme that is Kosher, Halal, vegan, and vegetarian. Pepsin is often used in dietary supplements and food processing.

With no background in science, Arturo Elizondo brings an element of cache and evangelism to the company that is the backbone of every conversation. His passion for a global future of food security caused him to leave his job in Washington, D.C., and move to the Bay Area without a job or place to live.

“I didn’t want to just sit on the sidelines, and so once I learned about the impact of animal ag,” Elizondo said. “I felt I had to do something about this. “I was in D.C. and Geneva and realized that if we as a world were going to have a shot at averting this climate crisis, I need to at least try and give it a shot.”

Elizondo met his future partners at a conference in the Bay Area. Seven years later, the company hopes to provide a cruelty-free alternative to egg whites and products that use whites as a primary ingredient. The decision to go after the egg market was deliberate.

“The egg is in everything,” EVERY’s CEO said. “I remember when I first went plant-based and was in a grocery store, reading the label and saw eggs in everything. The egg is universally loved across cultures and in so many foods we eat. We wanted to be the first in the world to use this technology for one of the big multi-hundred million animal protein markets.”

Rather than using its three products to go directly to consumers, EVERY wants to enable third parties such as bakeries, beverage companies, and any industry that uses egg whites. “The technology is only as useful as the impact that it has on products,” Elizondo added. “Our products must work in every application. They have to be able to perform across the board. We want to give eggs a run for their money.”

This takes us back to the iconic French macaron. Beginning today, March 23, the macarons, using EVERY’s EggWhites, will be available in-store at Chantal Guillon’s San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif. locations and for Bay Area delivery via partners like GrubHub, UberEats, Seamless, and Allset on Wednesday, March 30. It is interesting to note that products using these alternative egg whites won’t be labeled “plant-based” (a standard marketing term) but are vegan as no animal is used in their creation. Elizondo believes that vegans will, for example, welcome baked goods back into their lives that have been missing for years because of their use of animal-based eggs.

“I miss eating the angel food cake we used to eat at Xmas every year. Now I can eat that. There’s something really magical about that. We’re not guilting people into comprising. You can truly have your cake and eat it too.”

Podcast: Building The Star Trek Drink Replicator With Cana’s Matt Mahar

This week, Cana came out of stealth and announced their “molecular beverage printer”, a device the company says will be able to create almost any beverage from the same 80 or so flavor compounds.

In our conversation we talk about the development of Cana, drink personalization, the business model, the future of beverages and much more.

I’m glad I had this conversation because I had so many questions which Matt addressed, including:

Will the Cana beverage printer cartridge include alcohol and sweeteners, etc?

One thing I wasn’t entirely clear on from the initial announcement was whether the Cana will make a complete beverage, including alcohol, sweeteners, etc. According to Matt, the answer is yes. The Cana will make complete beverages, no matter if it’s a glass of wine, beer or whatever, complete with alcohol, sweeteners, etc.

Will Cana unlock personalized beverage market?

That’s their plan. I will write more about this later, but it looks like Cana not only will allow you to make whatever unique beverage you want (chocolate peanut butter coffee beer anyone?), but it seems they are also thinking about possibly partnering with drink and culinary creators to unlock special recipe concepts.

Pricing?

They addressed this in their initial posts, but Matt shed additional light on it for me when he said they expect their drinks to be 50% cheaper than anything you get at retail. The discount will be even steeper compared to bar and restaurant pricing.

Matt discusses a lot more details and their plans for the future, so give it a listen! You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voyage Foods is Creating the Future of Coffee, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate

I don’t want to live a world where coffee and chocolate don’t exist. First off, I love all of these things dearly. Secondly, I imagine if the supply of these precious items runs out, this will lead to utter chaos amongst self-proclaimed coffee and chocolate “addicts.” Unfortunately, climate change threatens the ability to continue to produce these crops to the extent that they are produced today. However, a company called Voyage Foods wants to “future-proof” these foods by creating sustainable alternatives that taste exactly like coffee and chocolate and peanut butter.

To understand how exactly Voyage Foods is doing this, I spoke with the CEO and founder of the company, Adam Maxwell. Founded about a year ago, Voyage Foods focuses on foods that pose environmental, ethical or health issues. Maxwell explained that there are already many companies making vegan products in response to a demand for sustainable products, and said “There is a tunnel vision kind of focus on really where we should put effort in the food system.” So many other parts of the food system are being ignored, and this is why Voyage Foods landed on coffee, cacao, and peanut butter.

The massive global demand for coffee and cacao has led to some negative consequences like illegal deforestation, child labor, and increased water usage. The land available for growing these crops (which can only be grown in certain regions) is shrinking. “The production of these things is going to go down and down,” Maxell said. “The world’s consumption is projected to go up, so part of it’s how can we archive these things for the future?”

While there aren’t necessarily environmental concerns associated with peanut butter, it has other problems; approximately 1 percent of the population in the U.S., or about 3 million people, are allergic to peanuts.

Voyage Foods sent The Spoon a sample of its bean-free coffee and cacao-free milk chocolate bar. I first took a swig of the coffee, and it tasted like a smooth cold brew coffee. It also had unique tasting notes that I had never tasted in coffee, leaving a slight smokey mesquite flavor in the back of my throat (for me, this was a good thing). I appreciated that the coffee had no acidity and thoroughly enjoyed it poured over ice with a splash of oat milk. Maxwell could not disclose what ingredients were in the alternative coffee but did say it still contained caffeine.

The milk chocolate bar was fully vegan and made from a base of grape seeds, shea butter, sunflower meal, and a few other ingredients. It certainly tasted like chocolate and reminded me of the milk candy bars I would eat as a child, like a Hershey’s bar. I am someone who typically only eats dark chocolate, but was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and was sad when it was all gone.

When asked about how Voyage Foods makes all of its products, Maxwell responded with “A lot of our process and our technology is, how do we manipulate different feedstocks into the same outputs? How do you roast something that is not a cocoa bean, to make it taste like cocoa?”. Voyage Foods starts with whole food ingredients, like sunflower meal or grape seeds, and manipulates them in a certain way to achieve flavors found in the products they are trying to mimic. Maxwell also said the company’s facilities look similar to existing chocolate, coffee, and peanut butter production facilities.

Although I did not get to try it, Voyage Foods’ peanut butter product is made from various grains and seeds. This product is slated to be the first to launch and available for consumers to purchase in early 2022. The chocolate will likely launch in mid-2022. I would love to get my hands on more of Voyage Foods’ coffee, but we will all, unfortunately, have to likely wait until 2023 for this product.

Is Home Fermentation The Next Big Kitchen Tech Opportunity?

There’s been a fermentation boom in restaurants over the past decade. Chefs everywhere are using the age-old technique to make everything from kimchi to katsuobushi, and nowadays, it’s not out of the ordinary for high-end restaurants to have a head of fermentation on staff.

And now, thanks in part to the pandemic and the rise of experimentation in food making, more people than ever are doing fermentation at home. Anyone who’s tried to create a sourdough starter, brew kombucha or make sauerkraut has dabbled in fermentation whether they know it or not.

Still, fermenting is still viewed as something of a black art. Part of it is the weird and slightly creepy terminology (mother, anyone?). Mostly, though, it’s also because the act of farming bacteria to create tasty and healthy new foods is a far cry from the usual activity of assembling and cooking our meals in our kitchen.

The New Sous Vide?

But what if it wasn’t? What if, like other pro cooking techniques that have entered the consumer kitchen, fermentation got an assist from technology to help would-be home fermenters with their craft? Could some innovation and little cool hardware help make fermentation more mainstream, like the sous vide wave that started nearly a decade ago?

That is the hope of a couple of entrepreneurs I caught up with recently at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Fred Benenson’s Breadwinner helps home bread bakers know when their sourdough starter is ready. Tommy Leung’s company Hakko Bako is making a fermenting appliance for the home.

Both see a big future for home fermenters, a future that starts with making the process a little less mysterious.

“I remember I was talking with a close friend of mine when I was starting work on Breadwinner,” said Benenson. “I could tell he was like a little sketched out by the idea that there was this jar of goo.”

Benenson knew that his friend wasn’t alone. There are millions of people around the world who see these jars as mysterious and a little scary. If he could just provide a little more clarity, they wouldn’t be as scared of fermentation. They’d also end up making better bread.

That’s where Breadwinner comes in. Originally conceived as a “social network for yeast” where home cooks could share their stories of loave-making, Benenson also started working on a hardware device that monitors starters. The idea behind both was to give more information.

“Humans have had kind of an innate relationship to fermentation for a long time,” said Benenson. “In terms of making it more approachable, you think of any situation that’s got a lot of uncertainty and confusion, and you’re trying to learn it for the first time, the more you can reduce that uncertainty, the better you feel about engaging with it.”

Leung also wants to make fermentation more approachable. To do that, he is creating both a home and professional kitchen appliance to bring precision to the process.

“Our goal is just to make fermentation easy,” said Leung. “So it means to provide temperature control and then use the technology to make the process easier.”

That precision and control is necessary, in part, because fermentation is so different from the usual act of cooking in the kitchen.

“Most of the things you’re doing in the kitchen, then you’d like to be prepping in the morning and then like serving and cooking it,” said Leung. “Fermentation happens over hours, days, weeks and months.”

Both Benenson and Leung are bullish about fermentation as being potentially the next big professional kitchen technique that could be mainstreamed through innovation.

“The top chefs are already fermenting,” said Leung. “They’re already creating these like amazing flavor experiences. I think like with food usually starts in the Michelin restaurants and then it moves to more like casual dining, and then to the home. So I definitely think it’s going to be a huge part of the future.”

“I’m bullish there,” said Benenson. “I think it will be a while before we have all of our ducks in a row to make the case but it’s what I’m hoping for. I think fermentation is gonna start to sound a lot less scary.”

So is home fermentation the next big kitchen tech opportunity? You can decide for yourself after watching my full conversation with Benenson and Leung below.

“Have Your Bagel and Eat It Too”: Better Brand CEO Aimee Yang Wants To Change Our Relationship With Carbs

So many of our favorite foods contain refined carbohydrates like white flour and white sugar. These ingredients reliably produce delicious foods, but they’re also associated with health problems like Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

California-based startup Better Brand is on a mission to hack refined carbohydrates, recreating their flavor without the health consequences. The company’s first product, the Better Bagel, has the carbohydrate content of two banana slices, the protein content of four eggs, and the sugar content of a single stalk of celery.

In a Zoom interview this week, company founder and CEO Aimee Yang told The Spoon that she set out to develop products that would make healthy eating easier while improving consumers’ relationships with food.

“We have always lived with this underlying belief in pre-imposed limitations,” says Yang. “That the foods that we crave can’t be good for us, and we have to deprive ourselves. We’re posing the thought that you don’t have to do that anymore. You can have your cake—well, your bagel—and eat it too.”

Better Brand CEO Aimee Yang


That cycle of craving and self-deprivation has personal significance for Yang. “It was the largest pain point that I felt throughout my life,” she says. “I’d always been on the cycle of wanting to eat something and questioning if I should. It consumed so much of my mind space and was just so anxiety-inducing for me.”

As she worked toward her M.B.A. at The Wharton School, Yang realized that that personal pain point could also be an opportunity to make an impact in the food space. During her second year of business school, she delved into research on the science of food.

Yang says that upon founding Better Brand, she chose the bagel as the company’s flagship product because “turning the most carb-heavy food, which is the equivalent of multiple slices of bread, into the carb equivalent of two banana slices is so exciting. When you’re a consumer and you hear that, it promotes a mind shift in terms of what’s possible.”

Using some of the insights from Yang’s research, Better Brand collaborated with food labs to develop a bagel dough with novel ingredients. “If you brought this dough to a bagel manufacturer or a bakery, they would have no idea what to do with it,” says Yang. “If you tried to use it in the conventional way, it would be impossible.”

After the dough undergoes some processing (the details are a trade secret), Better Brand’s enzyme technology is applied. The company extracts its enzymes from plants, and adds them to the dough to improve the flavor, mouthfeel, and texture of the finished product. Though the enzymes are the last part of the ingredient deck, and are used sparingly, Yang says that without them the Better Bagel “would be a completely different product.”

The Better Bagel launched over the summer on the company’s online store. Rather than waiting to perfect every detail in the lab before launching, the team wanted to introduce the product quickly and make improvements based on consumer feedback—which Yang says is a focus point for the organization, right up to the investor level.

“Our investor base is a group of incredible people who care about more than the bottom line,” says Yang. “That’s never a point of conversation; it’s always about how we’re driving impact, what the product is like, and how we can improve the customer’s journey.”

By launching online with a direct-to-consumer model, Better Brand hopes to take advantage of reviews and sales data. “If a product is on a grocery shelf, there are so many levels in between you and that purchase point that you don’t really get a complete data set,” says Yang. “It’s important for us to be consumer-first because we need that feedback in real-time. There’s also an element of wanting the consumer to have a certain experience, and it’s a lot easier to control that experience if you’re DTC.”

The company is working on building strategic partnerships, starting with Ojai Valley Inn, a luxury resort in Southern California. The team is also in talks with a few large food service companies, considering relationships that would mirror Impossible Foods’ symbiosis with Burger King. Yang says that they plan to work closely with partners to maintain some control over branding and keep a close eye on consumer experience.

In the future, Better Brand plans to expand its product offerings, keeping a focus on refined carbohydrates. Having hacked the bagel, titan of carbohydrates, Yang says the company will be able to replicate other carb-heavy foods more easily.

“If it’s something that you crave and feel guilty about eating,” she says, “we’re going to be innovating in that space.”