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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

SKS Hot Seat: CocoTerra’s CEO on Why You (Yes, You) Should Make Chocolate From Scratch At Home

When you think about things you can make at home — bread, pasta, juice — chocolate is probably not something that jumps to mind. It’s a complicated, time-intensive process that takes skill and special equipment to master.

But what if there was a machine that could do it all for you? CocoTerra is a new startup lowering the barrier to entry to home chocolate making with the world’s first countertop chocolate-making machine. The device lets even the most basic home cooks create their own bespoke chocolate in just two hours.

We were so intrigued by this idea that we chose CocoTerra as one of the finalists for the SKS 2019 Startup Showcase, which just happened this week. In between giving out (very tasty) samples of chocolate, CocoTerra CEO Nate Saal sat down in the SKS Hot Seat to answer a few rapid-fire questions on his device, the potential of personalization, and how he envisions the future of the food ecosystem.

Check out the video below! And keep your eyes peeled for more videos from SKS 2019 coming your way soon.

SKS Hot Seat Interview: Nate Saal of CocoTerra

Israeli Startup Future Meat Technologies Raises $14M Series A to Grow More Meat from Animal Cells

Today Future Meat Technologies announced it has closed a $14 million Series A funding round led by S2G Ventures and Emerald Technology Ventures, with participation from Manta Ray Ventures, Bits x Bites, and investor Henry Soesanto. This brings Future Meat’s total funding to $16.2 million.

Israel-based Future Meat makes a variety of meats, including beef and chicken, directly from animal cells. The company made waves in 2018 when it snagged a $2.2 million investment from Tyson Ventures. Future Meat’s Series A is the second largest investment round in the cultured meat sector to date, after Memphis Meats’ $17 million fundraise in 2017.

According to a press release from the company, Future Meat will funnel their new funding into R&D as well as construction on what they call “the world’s first cultured meat pilot production facility,” which they hope will begin operations in 2020. The startup is aiming to start selling what it calls “hybrid products,” which I’m guessing will be a combination of cell-based and traditional or plant-based meat, at a competitive cost level with traditional meat by 2021. It’ll then follow that with cultured meat products priced at under $10 per pound by 2022.

Future Meat’s cell-based chicken vs. farmed chicken. (Photo: Yaakov Nahmias)

One thing Future Meat didn’t mention in the press release, however, is how it plans to deal with regulatory hurdles. As I discussed with Lou Cooperhouse of BlueNalu and David Kay of Memphis Meats at SKS 2019 this week, a lack of regulatory standards is the main thing standing in the way of bringing cultured meat to market. At least in the U.S., where the FDA and USDA will jointly regulate the new technology, we have a few years to go before we’ll be able to purchase cell-based meat.

But that’s where its location — Israel — could be a major boon. Israel is a leader in tissue engineering, which means it could be more willing to speed up the regulatory process and get cultured meat to market faster. The country also currently imports the majority of its meat, despite its prioritization of food security and safety. Accelerating the entry of cultured meat and seafood to market could help the country bring more of its protein development within its borders.

Israel has yet to establish any regulatory guidelines for the sale of cultured meat, though it’s currently home to two other later-stage cultured meat startups: the aforementioned Aleph Farms and SuperMeat. The latter company has partnered with Israeli meat producer Soglowek to receive a share of its profits for product development.

Building the world’s first cultured meat production facility in the next few years is an extremely ambitious goal. However, as someone who covers this space a lot, it’s refreshing to see companies deviate from the company line of “we’ll see” and give concrete go-to-market timelines and pricing details. Future Meat may be reaching for the stars, but at least they’ve got $14 million to help them get that much closer.

Wild Type Raises $12.5M Series A to Accelerate Production of its Cultured Salmon

Wild Type, a startup developing cultured salmon (that is, fish grown from cells outside the animal), announced today that it had raised a $12.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by CRV with participation from Maven Ventures, Spark Capital and Root Ventures, the last two of which had previously invested in Wild Type. This would bring the total amount of funding raised by the company to $16 million.

Founded in 2016, Wild Type currently has a team of 16. We spoke with co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein last week to learn more about how the San Francisco-based startup will leverage their funding. According to Kolbeck, who serves as CEO, their first priority is to continue improving the taste of their product and get it into “as many talented hands and palates as possible.”

Wild Type has been doing quite a few private tastings lately, culminating in a tasting in Portland, Oregon this June. The startup can currently only make minced salmon and small lox-like pieces of the fish, but hopes to work its way up to full-size filets.

Kolbeck also wants to use the new funds to scale up their cell-based fish production. He told me their goal was to be able to supply a handful of restaurants on a regular basis. This would also drive down production costs. When I spoke to him after the tasting event in Portland, Kolbeck disclosed that one of their salmon sushi rolls would cost $200. Their goal is to get it down to $5 to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Cell-based meat and seafood companies have been attracting waves of funding lately, but Wild Type’s Series A is a whopper — especially in the cellular aquaculture space. “In terms of later stage funding for cell-based companies, it’s been more focused on poultry and meat,” said Kolbeck. “This is a Series A in the seafood space, which is interesting.” Indeed, cultured seafood companies like BlueNalu and Finless Foods have raised $4.5 million and raised $3.5 million seed rounds, respectively. Earlier this year Shiok Meats, which grows shrimp in a lab, closed a $4.6 million seed round. But Wild Type is the first cell-based seafood company to reel in such hefty funding.

Kolbeck still was hesitant to give a specific date for when they would bring their product to market. But with this new funding in hand, we’re all one step closer to having cell-based salmon sushi on our plates.

SKS 2019: 3 Things We Need to Create New and Better Forms of Animal-Free Protein

The future of alternative proteins is about way more than plants. That was the main takeaway from a talk my colleague Catherine Lamb hosted this morning at The Spoon’s SKS conference in Seattle.

Joining Lamb onstage were Dr. Lisa Dyson, cofounder and CEO of Air Protein; Morgan Keim, the Corporate & Business Development Manager of Motif FoodWorks; and Perumal Gandhi, cofounder of Perfect Day. All three are experts on the white-hot alternative protein space. All three run companies that are creating new forms of protein, using not animals or plants, but microorganisms, technology, and — in one case — the air itself.

Onstage, the three of them and Lamb discussed some elements we need more of to make alternative proteins more widely available to the average consumer and care for the planet at the same time.

1. Better Production Methods
As Dr. Dyson outlined in her talk, traditional protein, whether derived from animal or plant, requires land. As the recent burning of the Amazon forest illustrates, this way of farming is not sustainable for either the planet or the 10 billion people expected to be on it by 2025.

Air Protein’s solution is to remove land from the equation. Using a technology originally developed by NASA, Dr. Dyson’s company created a closed-loop system to feed microorganisms carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and nitrogen to create a carbon fermentation process that makes proteins.

You can read an in-depth profile of how the technology works here. Onstage, Dr. Dyson focused more on the possibilities a company like Air Protein could introduce into the food system, like saving land and preserving natural habitats. For example, a traditional soy farm would have to be the size of Texas to produce as much protein as an Air Protein farm the size of Disney World can make.

2. More Ingredients
Motif FoodWorks also uses a fermentation process to, as Morgan Keim explained onstage, create better versions of animal-based foods we know and love and, in many cases, are loathe to part with, doomed planet or no (ahem, cheese).

At SKS, Keim noted that one of the keys to making alternative protein more widespread is finding and including the kinds of ingredients that will help it function just as real meat (or egg or dairy) does. For example, is there something that can be added to alt protein that will help it maintain the right color once it’s in the form of a burger patty and cooking on the grill? What ingredients could make alternative proteins as digestible as their animal counterparts?

Motif is currently using custom microbes to try and answer some of these questions. As Keim noted during the panel, the possibilities are practically limitless with the right mindset.

3. Transparency
But all those custom microbes and genetic modification processes have to be disclosed to consumers, something Perfect Day’s Gandhi discussed onstage.

Perfect Day, for example, makes a point of calling out that its products are “flora-based” — that is, they’re made from genetically modified microflora (a.k.a. bacteria). But as Gandhi explained onstage, even when discussing GMOs, people are actually more receptive to the product when you don’t try to hide information like that. If companies can effectively explain to the average consumer (read: not vegetarians or vegans) why and how a product like flora-based ice cream is better for them, people will generally be more open to the product.

That’s the hope, at least, and so far over the last few years, consumers have shown an increasing appetite for alternative forms of proteins, even those with genetically modified elements. We’ll be digging more into this movement towards over the next day and a half, so stay tuned for more on new forms of proteins and the role they’ll play in our future food system.

Aleph Farms Says it Has Grown Meat Cells in Space

Israeli lab-grown food company Aleph Farms on Monday claimed a world’s, or rather, a galaxy’s first, announcing that it has successfully grown small-scale muscle tissue on the International Space Station, which the company points out is “248 miles away from any natural resources.”

Aleph Farms says it uses the natural process of muscle-tissue regeneration in a lab setting to grow its steaks. The Sept. 26 experiment was conducted in the Russian segment of the ISS, using a 3D bioprinter developed by Russia’s 3D Bioprinting Solutions. The U.S.’s Meal Source Technologies and Finless Foods also collaborated on the experiment.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka conducting the experiment on the ISS. (Courtesy Aleph Farms)

Not only does the experiment prove that astronauts may one day grow their own steaks, the company says, but it shows that Aleph’s technology could be used anywhere on Earth, despite access to water and other resources. Growing cows for slaughter is one of the most resource-heavy food production processes for the planet, which is why many startups are seeking to replace beef, whether through cultivated or plant-based meat.

“In space, we don’t have 10,000 or 15,000 liters of water available to produce one kilogram of beef,” Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, said in the press release. “This joint experiment marks a significant first step toward achieving our vision to ensure food security for generations to come, while preserving our natural resources.”

While Aleph had Earth’s climate crisis in mind when conducting this experiment, 30 Japanese companies launched a consortium this year to figure out how to feed people in space. But hopefully, all of the solutions currently in the works will mean we won’t have to flee to another planet for survival.

Future Food: Is Chipotle Right to Snub Plant-Based Meat?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Greetings all! Here in Seattle we’re hard at work putting the final touches on next week’s Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS). This year we’re devoting a significant chunk of programming to alternative protein. We have speakers from Memphis Meats, Tofurky, Perfect Day, JUST, BlueNalu, Motif FoodWorks and more talking about everything from making protein out of thin air to the legal issues around alt-meat labeling.

If you’re interested, it’s not too late to get in on the action. Get one of the last few tickets and join the fun! You can use code NEWSLETTER to get 25 percent off.

Food with integrity — but without plant-based meat

But not everyone is as jazzed about new alternative protein offerings as our SKS speakers. In a recent interview with Barron’s, Brian Niccol, the CEO of Chipotle, said he sees the plant-based foods movement as a “real trend” but isn’t sure if it will last long-term. He also reiterated Chipotle’s stance that the current trendy meat alternatives, such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, are “too processed” for the fast-casual chain to use.

Our team had some strong reactions to this article. We were skeptical about Niccol’s claims that the plant-based movement lacked staying power. Data points to growing demand for faux meat. According to the Good Food Institute, sales of plant-based meat grew 23 percent from 2017 to 2018. As alterna-meat options get better and better tasting and grow their reach into more retail outlets and fast-food menus, I’m guessing their popularity will only increase.

Chipotle’s main beef with plant-based meat is how processed it is. But when it comes down to it, I’m not sure how much a Chipotle diner actually cares.

True, a Chipotle consumer may not necessarily be the same as a McDonald’s or Taco Bell consumer. They likely do care more about where their food comes from, how it was made, and how sustainable it is. But the thing consumers care most about is taste. As Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and the like continue to iterate to make their products taste more and more like meat, it’s unlikely that many Chipotle consumers would actually turn their noses up at it. Especially since it has a smaller environmental footprint than beef.

Chipotle competitors, however, have no problem hitching their wagon to the plant-based meat trend. Qdoba has Impossible ground “beef” on their menu while Del Taco has embraced Beyond Meat, and both have seen a corresponding uptick in sales and ticket amount. Maybe Chipotle is taking a page from Arby’s book and hoping that by snubbing plant-based meat, it can stand out from the crowd?

A bold strategy.

McFlub?

Chipotle and McDonald’s may not share the same consumer pool, but both chains have one thing in common: a well-documented skepticism towards plant-based meat (at least in North America). However, all that changed last week when McDonald’s announced that 28 locations in Ontario, Canada would be testing out a plant-based burger made with a Beyond Meat patty called the P.L.T. (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato).

We’d been eagerly waiting to see when Mickey D’s would follow suit with its fast-food brethren and embrace the plant-based meat trend. But the longer I thought about the name of the burger itself, the P.L.T., the less sure I was that this venture would be as viral a success as, say, the Impossible Whopper.

Why wasn’t McDonald’s leveraging the brand recognition of Beyond Meat by including it in the sandwich name? Why evoke bacon (B.L.T.) without actually including any bacon, plant-based or otherwise? Why make the very first word in the product name “Plants” if you’re trying to appeal to flexitarians who want to cut down on their meat consumption without going full-on veg?

Then again, there could be a much simpler strategic reason that McDonald’s chose to keep the word “Beyond” out of the name of its P.L.T. burger. As I mentioned above, this trial is a way for Mickey D’s to dip its toe into the plant-based meat waters and see if it’s worth a deeper investment. If they decide to move forward on a larger scale, they might well move away from Beyond Meat and go with another faux burger brand — maybe Nestlé’s Awesome burger? — or even develop their own patty internally.

For all its recent embracing of technology and data, Mickey D’s is certainly dragging its feet when it comes to plant-based meat. But they’re not stupid. If the PLT is as big a success as other fast-food faux burgers have been, it’s only a (short) matter of time before we see a new plant-based meat offering on McDonald’s menus south of the Canadian border.

Hopefully they come up with a better name for it.

Protein ’round the web

That’s it from me. Look out next week for coverage of the alternative protein content from SKS 2019!

Eat well,
Catherine

Newsletter: Mapping Food Tech in 2019, Startup Accelerators to Watch

It was less than 100 years ago that the food industry figured out how to mass produce things like baby carrots and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

Nowadays the buzz is around robots that make pizza and cashierless food stores, but that drive to reinvent food has fundamentally remained the same. They may have more technologically sophisticated tools now, but engineers, scientists, food producers and upstarts alike still look for the same thing Krispy Kreme did in the 1950s: how to cost-effectively create consistently good (tasting) food at scale.

Brita Rosenheim, a Partner at Better Food Ventures, captured the current spirit of innovation in food tech this week with an enormous market map she published at The Spoon. Her map lays out the dozens of early-stage startups, mature companies, corporations, B2B technologies, and consumer-facing tools changing the way we eat in the home, at restaurants, in the grocery store, and across many other areas of the supply chain.

Brita included a number of important takeaways from the map around things like the role of personalized eating, whether we need connected content in the kitchen, and where investors are currently funneling their cash. But if there’s one major takeaway from her map, it’s that the food tech landscape is . . . absolutely enormous. And getting bigger every month.

Now we’re at a point where we’re starting to see the landscape shift to be less about tech for tech’s sake and more companies coming to market with solutions that address some of the world’s biggest food challenges. Brita’s belief that “technology will prove to be the single biggest catalyst to solving critical problems across the global food ecosystem” and her inclusion of categories on the map like Food Waste, Sustainability Tracking, and Nutrition suggest we’re slowly but surely trekking towards a more productive future for food tech.


Flavors of the Future
One thing food companies did not have in the 1950s was an AI-powered crystal ball to tell them exactly what consumers were interested in buying.

We don’t have the actual crystal ball yet, but Spoonshot came pretty darn close this week by announcing its AI-powered flavor recommendation platform, which combines data science and machine learning to understand what flavors are currently popular with consumers all over the world (though the company is currently focused on North America) and which ones will be popular in future. The goal? Get this information to CPGs so they can use it for new products and stay ahead of the competition in terms of what consumers want.

Spoonshot is actually one of a few companies now riding the flavor-prediction wave, among them Analytical Flavor Systems and Tastewise. We’re bound to see many more players come to market over the next couple of years, as CPGs look to skip the cost of hit-or-miss product development.


Startup Accelerators to Watch in October
Startups, of course, are a vital part of the food tech landscape, and as Brita’s map above shows, there’s a seemingly endless number of them these days. Part of the reason for that is the huge number of food tech accelerator and incubator programs out there that mentor early-stage companies (and line their pockets) as they develop prototypes, products, and solutions for the food industry.

Like lots of areas of food tech, many of these programs now look for companies grappling with major issues in the food system: reducing waste, finding cleaner meat, and tracing food safety, to name a few. And while the end of the year is a little quieter, there are a handful of these programs taking applications in the month of October. Check them out here.

Last Chance to Snag SKS Tickets
We’re less than one week out from The Spoon’s SKS North America show in Seattle. If you want to attend on October 7–8, now’s your last chance to grab a ticket. And if you want to talk about the evolution of Krsipy Kreme and other restaurant-tech-related topics, hit me up. I’ll be running around the show with the rest of The Spoon crew next week.

Stay cool,

Jenn

From Nestlé to Trader Joe’s, Six New Plant-Based Burger Brands Have Popped Up in the Last Month

A year or two ago, when you wanted to taste one of the new, ultra-meat plant-based burgers you could basically choose between Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — assuming you were in one of the areas where one or both was available. A few months ago, you’d have a couple more options, like Lightlife and Meatless Farm.

But over the past four weeks alone (yes, just September), the faux burger space has virtually exploded with new players, all trying to take advantage of consumers’ burgeoning desire for plant-based meat. Six, to be exact. To help you keep track and figure out which alt-meat burgers to keep an eye out for in the grocery aisle, we’ve rounded ’em up for you:

“Protein Patties” from Trader Joe’s
A few weeks ago a Trader Joe’s employee posted on Facebook that the beloved grocery chain would soon launch its own meaty plant-based burger called “Protein Patties.” According to VegNews, the patties will contain 18 grams of protein each, and two-pack of the 4-ounce burgers will cost $4.99. The price is notable: the vast majority of meaty plant-based burgers out there, like Lightlife and Beyond Meat, cost $5.99 for a two-pack. Trader Joe’s can push its faux burgers in its store, which attract droves of consumers — especially millennials and Gen Z — because of its low prices, cheery staff and cult-status snack products.

“Better Than Beef” from Don Lee Farms
News broke last week that Costco would start selling Don Lee Farms’ Better Than Beef plant-based burgers in select locations. According to a press release, the new burgers will be available at Costco stores in six Western states, Texas grocery chain H-E-B and other retailers. No numbers were provided, but the same release stated that the burgers will have “the lowest calories, fat and saturated fat compared to other leading brands.” Don Lee Farms was one of the original copackers for Beyond and is now involved in a lawsuit with the plant-based meat company.

“Incogmeato” from MorningStar Farms
Earlier this month MorningStar Farms, a subsidiary of the Kellogg Company which has been making meat alternatives for over 40 years, announced it would launch a new line of meatier plant-based meats in retail in 2020. Called “Incogmeato,” the new line includes faux beef burgers as well as frozen chik’n tenders and nuggets. Though MorningStar Farms has been in the alt-meat biz for quite a while, their Incogmeato burger will be its first cook-from-fresh product, which will be sold in the refrigerated section of the grocery store.

The Awesome Burger by Sweet Earth Foods (Photo: Hardy Wilson)

“Awesome Burger” from Sweet Earth Foods (Nestlé)
Just last week Sweet Earth Foods, a U.S. company owned by CPG giant Nestlé, announced it would start selling its meaty plant-based Awesome Burger in foodservice and retail on October 1st. This is Nestlé’s first foray into more realistic alt-meat burgers in the U.S., but in Europe the Swiss company already sells the plant-based Incredible Burger to a variety of foodservice spots, including McDonald’s locations in Israel and Germany. The Awesome Burger has 26 grams of protein and a two-pack of the patties will likely retail for $5.99.

“Simple Truth Plant Based” by Kroger
At the Good Food Conference earlier this month Kroger, the largest grocer in the U.S., announced that it would soon debut its own line of plant-based products under its Simple Truth brand. In addition to alt-meat staples like burgers, the Simple Truth Plant Based line will also include cookie dough, creamy dips, and more, all with a pea protein base. The animal-free product line will debut at 1,800 Kroger stores this fall.

“Happy Little Plants” by Hormel
It’s not a pre-formed burger per se, but this month Hormel Foods, owner of brands like Skippy peanut butter, announced the launch of its Happy Little Plants line. Its first product will be a plant-based ground “meat” product that can be turned into meatballs, tacos, pasta sauce and, yes, burgers. Happy Little Plants are currently available in Hy-Vee grocery stores in select states.

If you want to know more about the plant-based revolution and the eater of the future, you better get one of the last tickets to the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} in Seattle next week! We’ll see you there. 

Lisa Dyson Says to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, Eat “Air-Based Protein”

We’ve all probably seen research on how plant-based protein has a lower environmental impact than protein from animals. But what if an even more sustainable source of protein was quite literally all around us?

Dr. Lisa Dyson, CEO of Air Protein (a spinoff of Kiverdi), is making edible protein out of — you guessed it — air. Specifically carbon dioxide. (For more info on the logistics of how they do this, check out our post from this summer.)

Dyson will be speaking about this innovative new protein source onstage at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} next week alongside Perumal Gandhi of Perfect Day and Michele Fite of Motif Foodworks. Check out our quick Q&A with Dyson below then grab your tickets now — there are only a few left!

What gave you the idea to experiment with making protein out of carbon dioxide?
My colleague Dr. John Reed and I discovered NASA research conducted on long space flights, where they investigated closed-loop carbon cycles that could feed astronauts and sustain them for the length of their missions. My team and I took this technology off the shelf and developed several closed-loop carbon solutions that are scalable for the global marketplace.

Here on earth, our current way of producing cannot sustainably keep up with the demand of our growing population. And we will have to sustainably feed 10 billion people by 2050. I see this as one of our most significant global issues, which is why we launched Air Protein, which, we believe, is one of the most sustainable solutions to feeding our growing population without putting a strain on natural resources.

How will Air Protein change the way we eat?
We are already seeing a shift from animal-based protein to plant-based protein diets for both environmental and health reasons. Air Protein provides an additional step in the right direction: from land-based protein to air-based protein. Air Protein is sustainably produced from the elements found in the air we breathe and requires minimal land and resources. In fact, an Air Protein farm the size of Walt Disney World would make as much protein as a soy farm the size of Texas.

So if consumers want to minimize their footprint, eating delicious foods made from Air Protein will be the way to do it in the (near) future. And, it does this while being nutritious, having all the essential amino acids needed for a healthy diet and the same amino acid profile as animal protein. It is also rich in vitamins and minerals, including vitamin B12 which is lacking in a vegan diet. One in three Americans considers themselves a flexitarian. Air Protein will enable consumers to make the choices they are increasingly interested in making: eating delicious, healthy foods without the footprint.

Do you see Air Proteins main application being in space, or here on Earth?
It can (and likely will) be for both. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have paved the way for consumer awareness and excitement about meat alternatives with plant-based products that replicate the flavor and texture of meats. We believe air-based foods is the next evolution of the planet-based movement and to feed 10 billion people, we are in need of radical new food solutions — ones that use less of our planet’s resources. Air Protein offers such a solution.

Want to hear Dr. Dyson speak about her futuristic vision of feeding the world with protein made from thin air? Make sure to see her TED-style talk at SKS in just over a week! Tickets here.

Perumal Gandhi of Perfect Day Thinks that Yeast and Bacteria Can Help Feed the Planet

The temptation of ice cream can be a killer for even the most devout dairy-abstainers and flexitarians. So much so that Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya were motivated to create Perfect Day, a company that makes animal-free dairy products with the exact same proteins as the real thing, thanks to fermentation. Their debut product, a suite of ice creams, disappeared as soon as they were released (I can personally attest that they were very, very delicious).

We reached out to Perumal Gandhi to learn more about his motivation behind co-founding a company that makes dairy from microbes. It’s just a snippet of what he will discuss onstage at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} on October 7 & 8 in Seattle, so get your tickets now!

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

What inspired you to create Perfect Day, a company that makes dairy without the cows?
For me it all comes back to the animals and the environment. My entire life, I’ve always been a nature lover and been conscious about humanity’s impact on the world. Although I was raised eating meat, dairy, and eggs, I decided to go vegetarian when I was young. This first transition was pretty easy, I just ate more dairy and eggs to compensate. Fast forward to grad school, I learned that dairy and eggs are part of the same problematic system of industrial farming, so I changed to a 100% plant-based vegan diet.

This second transition was far from easy — I found that I really missed cheese and dairy products. Given my scientific background, I knew that there had to be a way to make real milk in an environmentally friendly way, so I looked into it. Then, thanks to a coincidental twist of fate, I got connected with Ryan Pandya through our mutual friend, Isha Datar of New Harvest. New Harvest is a nonprofit research institution dedicated to funding cellular agriculture research. Isha told Ryan and I that we were the only two people who had ever approached her with the idea to make dairy without animals.

Ryan, like me, had a background in biomedicine, loved the natural world, and had struggled to completely give up dairy foods. We started trading our ideas for making dairy using well-known fermentation techniques. The rest is history! Five years later, we now lead a team of nearly 70 people, have begun to commercialize and scale our technology, and we plan on working with food companies around the world to help evolve what is possible for dairy foods and beyond.

You call your animal-free dairy “flora-based,” instead of plant-based or cell-based. Why is that?
Microflora refers to microorganisms collectively. We use flora as a shorthand way to refer to the fungi, yeast, algae, bacteria and other organisms commonly used across the world to produce ingredients via fermentation.

Not only can fermentation using microflora address the world’s nutrition needs — and our demand for animal products — without the significant environmental and climate impacts caused by animal agriculture, it can also allow for a climate- and geography-agnostic way to produce nutritious food.

Protein made using our flora-based approach is identical to that from animals, but also fundamentally and functionally different than plant-based proteins. We use the term “flora-based” rather than plant- or cell-based because it’s the most scientifically accurate term. We’ve found that it differentiates us from both plant and animal products and describes the origin of our protein in a concrete way.

Perfect Day recently launched its first product: flora-based ice cream (which was delicious). Where is it available now/when will it be on grocery shelves?
We’re so glad you liked the ice cream! This launch was very limited and was only available for purchase through our website. However, we’re working hard to get products made with our protein into stores in the near future. For now we’re directing people to sign up for our newsletter at our website — subscribers will be the first to know when, where, and what the next product will be!

What other products can we expect to see from Perfect Day?
It’s too early for us to share any details about future product launches – but we can say that we’ll have another announcement before the end of this year. Stay tuned!

What a tease! Come see Perumal speak about next-gen protein at SKS on October 7th and maybe you can get some more details out of him. Get your tickets here!

Is McDonalds Canada Making a Huge Mistake Naming Its New Plant-Based Burger ‘The PLT’?

Yesterday McDonald’s announced that select locations in Canada would be testing a new plant-based burger called the PLT (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato) made with a Beyond Meat patty.

The move makes a lot of sense from a trend perspective. My question is: What’s with the name?

First of all, McDonald’s chose to make an entirely new plant-based offering, instead of introducing an alternative to, say, a Big Mac. That’s a totally different approach than competitors like Burger King and Carl’s Jr., who debuted the plant-based Impossible Whopper and Beyond Famous Star Burger, respectively, based off of their most popular sandwiches.

The choice to introduce a totally new product could speak to McDonald’s hesitation to dive headfirst into the alternative meat trend — a perspective that was voiced by CEO Steve Easterbrook to CNBC earlier this year. By launching an entirely separate product they don’t risk alienating any consumers who are wary of the idea of eating an alt-meat burger and might be put off by the concept of Big Macs going vegetarian.

The bigger issue, at least in my mind, is the use of “plant.” I started thinking about this after reading a tweet from Matt Hayek, an NYU Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies.

There’s a reason that other fast-food companies aren’t including the world “plant” in their alt-meat menu offerings: it situates the product as something other than “meat.” If McDonald’s is trying to appeal to flexitarians — that is, folks that are trying to reduce their animal consumption but don’t want to go full-on vegetarian or vegan — that could be offputting.

I’m also a little unclear about the decision to call the new McDonald’s offering the “PLT.” To me, PLT –> BLT — that is, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. But there’s no bacon, plant-based or otherwise, involved in the product. That could be a source of confusion for consumers who see the PLT on menus, in-store or online, and are surprised when the burger shows op sans bacon.

Perhaps most interestingly, McDonald’s Canada doesn’t use the word “Beyond” or even “burger” anywhere in the name, which I think is a missed opportunity. By contact, ‘The Impossible Whopper’ is able to take advantage of Impossible’s brand recognition to draw in consumers who may have heard about the plant-based patties from the news, or even tried them elsewhere. ‘PLT’ could feature any old plant-based patty, or even just be a bunch of plants piled on a bun.

In short, it’s huge news that McDonald’s is experimenting with a plant-based burger in Canada, so close to the U.S. But they seem to be doing it in a way that sets themselves up for failure — or at least not in a way that would attract the maximum amount of new consumers, flexitarian and otherwise.

The PLT pilot will begin on September 30th in select McDonald’s locations in Ontario, Canada. Soon enough we’ll be able to see if McDonald’s is shooting itself in the foot with the name, or if consumers are eager enough to try plant-based options that they’ll look past an odd name and try the PLT anyway.

Future Food: McDonald’s Goes Beyond (in Canada) — is the U.S. Next?

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It’s good to be back! I spent the past week up in the Last Frontier for a wedding (thanks for covering, Chris).

Alaska is preeeeeetty darn close to Canada. So when I read the news this morning that McDonald’s Canada will be testing out a new PLT (Plant, Lettuce, Tomatoes) burger made with a Beyond Meat patty, I wished I could have stayed a little longer and flown through Ontario to give it a taste.

How long we have been waiting for this day! I mean, we knew it would come. In the U.S. McDonald’s has been all coy, saying it would wait to see more evidence that the plant-based trend was here to stay before jumping on board. Canada isn’t exactly the U.S., but it’s pretty darn close. I’m betting if the PLT does well during its initial trial period — and if the trends we’ve seen with other plant-based fast food product launches hold true, it will — it won’t be too long before we see a plant-based burger in the Golden Arches stateside.

The question then becomes: what brand of plant-based patty will it be? Since Canada is going with the Beyond burger, it would make sense that that choice would hop across the border when the time comes.

The Awesome Burger (Photo: Hardy Wilson)

But I’m not going all-in on Beyond just yet. Earlier this week Nestlé-owned Sweet Earth Foods announced it would start selling its plant-based Awesome burger in stores starting in October. This perked up my ears since Nestlé already sells its Incredible burger at McDonald’s in Germany and Israel.

To be clear, the two products are totally different: The Awesome burger is made with yellow pea protein, the Incredible burger with soy. But the fact that Nestlé already has an established relationship with McDonald’s, even overseas, could give them an advantage if they bid to get on Mickey D’s menus stateside.

True, the Awesome burger hasn’t built up the name recognition and fan base that Beyond has — but that could potentially be a good thing. Plenty of fast-food spots already have a Beyond product on their menu: Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, etc. etc. Having an Awesome burger could distinguish McDonald’s from its competitors.

Really, though, it will all come down to taste. It’s too early to say if the Awesome burger can stand up to Beyond in that category. Maybe we’ll have to make a trip up to Canada to find out.

More in Burger-mania…

Jeez, this week has been one for the burgers — er, books. In addition to the aforementioned Awesome burger announcement above, the Meatless Farm, the UK-based company which recently hopped across the pond onto Whole Foods shelves in the U.S., struck a rather unusual investment deal earlier this week.

You can read the full story here, but the jist is that British broadcaster Channel 4 invested an undisclosed seven-figure sum in the alt-protein company and also snagged a piece of equity — in exchange for air time.

What I found interesting about this story was a) it shows that a wide variety of players are investing in alternative meat, beyond just VC firms, and b) it demonstrates a very creative move on Meatless Farm’s part to try and get an edge on its competitors. The grocery aisles, especially in Britain, where most major supermarkets have launched their own vegan product lines, are filling up with plant-based meat options. Meatless Farm is smart to invest in ways to get its brand in front of more consumer’s eyeballs, even if they have to give up some of their equity in the process.

If you love alt-protein and you know it, come to SKS

In case you didn’t already know, the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} will be returning to Seattle for its fifth year on October 7-8th (we are very, very excited). In addition to topics like food automation, restaurant tech and connected cooking, this year we’re really diving into the alternative protein space. Here’s a preview of what content you’ll see in Seattle:

    • Building a Cell-based Meat Startup with Lou Cooperhouse, President and CEO of BlueNalu and David Kay, Senior Manager of Communications (and first employee!) at Memphis Meats
    • Eater of the Future: The Plant-Based Revolution with PK Newby, a researcher from Harvard, Bjorn Öste, the Co-Founder of Oatly, and Daniel Scharff, Director of Strategy and Analytics for JUST
    • Growing Protein: The Emerging Food Tech Ingredient Market with Dr. Lisa Dyson, CEO of Air Protein (a subdivision of Kiverdi), Perumal Gandhi, co-founder of Perfect Day, and Michele Fite, Chief Commercial Officer for Motif Foodworks

Yeah, it’s going to be awesome. If you want to join in the conversation and meet these amazing folks in person, grab your tickets to SKS now. You can use the code NEWSLETTER to get a cool 25% off!

Photo: Adam Baxter

Protein ’round the web

That’s it from me! Talk to you all next week.

Eat well,
Catherine