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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

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.

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.