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Future Food

‘Premium’ Cultured Meat Company Orbillion Bio Joins Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 Class

Startup accelerator Y Combinator has made its first investment in a cultured meat company with the addition of Orbillion Bio to the Winter 2021 cohort. Prior to joining YC, Orbillion participated in both the Brinc accelerator and Big Idea Ventures NYC program.

Orbillion’s focus is on cultivating higher-end meat products such as elk, lamb, and Wagyu beef. To develop these products, the company runs multiple cell lines through bioreactors, screening the cells and isolating those best suited to commercial food scale production. Machine-learning software helps pick out the best tissue and media combinations with which to make meat analogues.

The company told TechCrunch this week that its first product will be a Wagyu beef product that will be more of a minced product than a whole cut of steak. Orbillion plans to get that product into the market in 2023, though in what capacity (e.g., a restaurant) the company did not say, nor did it elaborate on which market.

The goal is to eventually provide the kinds of craft meats one would purchase not from the grocery store but from a high-end butcher shop. 

The focus on high-end meats may allow Orbillion’s products to reach price parity with their traditional counterparts sooner than other cultured meat companies. The company also says it wants to bring the cost of its products down even further, so that they actually become more affordable than traditional high-end meats. That idea is in keeping with recent comments entrepreneur/investor Jim Mellon shared with The Spoon, that meat made via cellular agriculture will eventually become more affordable than traditionally farmed meat.

Nor is Orbillion the only company veering away from the usual chicken, pork, and beef staples and developing premium cultured meats. Vow, in Australia, develops cultured meat products from a library of cells that includes kangaroo, alpaca, and lamb, among others. The company raised $6 million at the beginning of 2021.

For its part, Orbillion aims to get a pilot plant up and running by the end of 2022, which the company says will take roughly $3.5 million.

Alt-Protein Could Be a $290B Market by 2035. Parity Matters for That Growth

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The market for alternative protein, including meat, eggs, dairy, and seafood products, could reach at least $290 billion by 2035, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Blue Horizon Corporation (BHC). The report, entitled “Food for Thought: The Protein Transformation,” was released this week and finds that the market for alternative proteins — including plant-, microorganism-, and cell-based analogues — will grow from its current 13 million metric tons per year to 97 million metric tons by 2035.

In a best case scenario, the report also said alt-protein will make up 11 percent of the overall protein market by that time. However, to hit that point, and to realistically compete with the multi-trillion-dollar traditional meat market, alt-protein sectors have more work to do when it comes to reaching parity, and not just around price, either.

Parity, both in terms of price and in the taste and texture of the products, is essential for alt-protein gaining wider acceptance among mainstream consumers, and “Food for Thought” sees the sector achieving it in three different stages: 

  • Plant-based alternatives, including meat, dairy, and egg substitutes, will achieve parity in 2023 or possibly sooner.
  • Alt-proteins made from microorganisms, such as fungi, yeast, and algae, will reach parity by 2025.
  • Cultured proteins are slated to reach parity by 2032.

Price parity comes up a lot in conversation these days. The plant-based protein sector, for example, is well on its way to achieving it, as evidenced by Impossible’s recent price slashing of its products and its chief rival Beyond Meat doing something similar last year.

For cultured meat, too, many are saying products will reach price parity with traditional meat sooner rather than later. Longtime investor and entrepreneur Jim Mellon, for example, recently told The Spoon he believes cultured meat will achieve price parity with traditional meat within five years. And we have seen a few announcements from cultured meat makers in the recent past about bringing production costs down. At the beginning of this month, Hong Kong-based Avant Meats said it had achieved a 90 percent reduction in the cost of producing cultured functional proteins. Earlier this year, Future Meat’s CEO Rom Kshuk told me his company has decreased production costs “by 1,000 times over the last three years,” with a quarter-pound serving of its cultured chicken breast now costing $7.50 to produce.

Lower production costs can lead to lower prices for consumers, but it’s important to reiterate that in the context of BCG and BHC’s new report, parity encompasses more than price. Speaking of the report, in it BCG managing director and partner Benjamin Morach referenced taste and texture in addition to price when discussing parity. “Alternative proteins must taste and feel as good as the conventional foods they replace and cost either the same or less,” he said.

Hence, cultured meat not reaching full parity until 2032, according to the report’s predictions. While this is definitely longer than five years, it’s actually shorter than the “north of 15 years” figure Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick offered up last year when talking about the time frame for cultured meat being available everywhere and for a low cost.

Expect more, not fewer, predictions around parity as investment in alt-protein, and especially cultured protein, continues and more companies bring products out of the lab and into the consumer realm.

As to why we need all this alternative protein, the BCG/BHC report highlights some important factors, including its role around more environmentally responsible production and consumption. According to information provided to The Spoon by BCG/BHC, a $290 billion alt-protein market will free up 240,000 square kilometers of land, decrease the number of chickens in factory farms by 50 billion, reduce water use by 38 billion tons, and drop CO2 emissions by 1 billion tons. Producing more alternative protein is also in alignment with multiple of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The BCG/BHC report comes on the heels of recent numbers from The Good Food Institute, which found that $3.1 billion was invested in the entire alternative protein sector in 2020. That’s triple the amount invested in 2019, and an encouraging sign for a sector whose role in the global food system is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have in order to feed 10 billion people while attaining net-zero emissions by 2050.

In Other Alt Protein News . . .

Netherlands-based cultured meat startup Meatable raised $47 million in Series A funding this week. It will use its new funds to advance small scale production at the Biotech Campus Delft and diversify its product lineup.

Eat Just closed a $200 million funding round and will use the new funds to build out its cultured meat products as well as accelerate research and development while expanding internationally.  

Alt-protein investment firm Big Idea Ventures is taking applications for Cohort Four of its startup accelerator program. Companies developing either alternative proteins or supporting technologies and ingredients are encouraged to apply.

Eat Just Goes Further Into Foodservice With a Major Canada Expansion

Eat Just, maker of both plant-based eggs and cultured meat, announced a major expansion today that brings its popular JUST Egg product into foodservice formats across Canada. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, that includes distribution at restaurants, hotels, universities, and government and corporate cafeterias.

Foodservice businesses in Canada can now order the JUST Egg — a frozen folded “egg” made from mung bean — through their distributors and sell the product on their menus. The move into foodservice follows Eat Just’s retail debut in Canada, which happened earlier this month. The launch also includes a partnership with Copper Branch, one of the largest plant-based restaurant chains in the world.

Today’s news is also the latest in a string of moves Eat Just has made in the last few months specifically around restaurant distribution. Since January, the San Francisco-based company launched the JUST Egg product at Peet’s and Starbucks in the U.S., and struck a deal with Discos in China to outright replace traditional egg offerings with Eat Just’s plant-based items. 

These partnerships are part of a larger trend happening in the restaurant biz right now as more brands expand the number of fully plant-based meals they offer in response to an uptick in demand from consumers. The ubiquitous breakfast sandwich — sausage, egg, and cheese — is a good example. Previously, only one component (usually the sausage) of that offering was plant-based. Now, restaurants like Starbucks and Peet’s are vegan-izing the whole sandwich, which means other QSRs and fast-casual chains will follow soon. It’s a similar pattern to the original rise of plant-based protein in QSRs that happened a couple of years ago.

However, Eat Just is also developing cultured meat products through its GOOD Meat line, and so clearly has bigger ambitions for the restaurant industry than simply selling its plant-based egg products. At the end of 2020, the company became the first in the world to be granted regulatory approval to sell cultured meat. Actual sale of GOOD chicken bites followed shortly after, at a restaurant in Singapore.

Restaurants will be a major part of cultured meat’s expansion from lab prototype to mainstream staple — a point Eat Just’s CEO Josh Tetrick confirmed to me at a talk last year. So while this rapid expansion into restaurants around the world is good for the company’s plant-based wares, it’s vital for the expansion of its GOOD line. 

That expansion won’t happen immediately, of course. Like any other company making cultured meat, Eat Just will have to gain regulatory approval for every single market it plans to enter with its GOOD products, and it is unclear how long that process will take. However, once said regulatory approval is granted, existing partnerships with major foodservice businesses could give the company a big head start when it comes to cultured meat.

Startups: Applications Are Open for Big Idea Ventures’ Alt-Protein Accelerator

Alt-protein food tech accelerator Big Idea Ventures (BIV) announced this week that it is now taking applications for its fourth cohort. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the five-month-long program will take place in three locations this time: New York, Singapore, and Paris.

For these accelerators, Big Idea Ventures looks for companies developing both plant-based and cultured protein products and ingredients. Food tech companies related to the alt-protein space are also encouraged to apply.

Beside $125,000 in cash investment and $75,000 on in-kind investment, chosen companies also get access to coworking space, including test kitchens, for the duration of the program, as well as mentorship and networking opportunities. Companies will also get to interact with BIV’s limited partners, a group that includes AAK, Bühler Group, Givaudan, Tyson Ventures, and others. 

Chosen companies will ideally have an initial product already validated through sales and ready to scale. On the program’s website, BIV says it is looking specifically for companies developing plant-based products, cellular ag companies, ingredient creators, and those making enabling technologies. 

Because of the pandemic, cohort four will be remote as of this writing. This is a tactic that’s been used by other food tech accelerators over the last year, and a trend that will likely continue for the foreseeable future. For BIV participants, this is actually advantageous, as the organization says companies can leverage resources from all three programs, even if they are only enrolled for one.  

Those interested in applying to BIV’s program can do so here. Applications are taken on a rolling basis, which means the sooner the better in terms of turning one in.

Deep Branch Raises €8M to Turn Air Into Animal Feed

Deep Branch, which calls itself “a carbon dioxide recycling company,” announced today that it has completed a Series A investment round of €8 million (~$9.5 million USD). The round was led by Novo Holdings and DSM Venturing and also included participation from Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures and Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital. 

The funding will go towards completing Deep Branch’s Scale-Up Hub, a production facility at the Brightlands Chemlot Campus in the Netherlands where the company will make the first pilot-scale batches of its Proton product.

Proton is Deep Branch’s alternative protein ingredient for animal feed, and a product that aims to help make the animal farming industry more sustainable. Via a gas fermentation process, the company turns CO2 into a protein ingredient that Deep Branch says is comparable in nutritional profile to fishmeal, which is a standard in the animal feed industry. It is also, the company says, cost-competitive with other types of animal feed on the market.

Batches of Proton will first be validated nutritionally with Europe’s leading feed producers BioMar (a large aquafeed producer) and AB Agri (a poultry feed producer). 

The new funding will also go towards designing the UK-headquartered company’s first commercial-scale production facility. For now, Deep Branch is focused on finding the right location for that facility, with Norway a top contender. The goal is for the company to reach commercial production of Proton by 2023. 

Creating protein ingredients via gas fermentation is small-but-growing space that also includes Air Protein, Solar Foods, and NovoNutrients. Like Deep Branch, NovoNutrients also makes alternative animal feed by turning industrial CO2 waste into protein.  

Deep Branch has also in the past received funding from Innovate UK, Municipality of Rotterdam, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program.

“Cell-Cultured” Is the Best Way to Describe Seafood Grown in a Lab, According to Key Industry Players

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published comments from key players in the cell-based seafood space around what to actual label the stuff when it is finally cleared for sale to consumers (h/t Food Navigator). Consensus is building around “cell-cultured” as the most effective descriptor.

The original call for comments was sent out towards the end of 2020, and yesterday was the cutoff date for responses. Among those who weighed in on the discussion were BlueNalu, Finless Foods, and Memphis Meats, all companies currently developing cell-cultured seafood or meat products. 

The comments underscore the importance of choosing the right name for a food type that still strikes many average consumers as something out of science fiction. When plant-based meat arrived in grocery stores, the labeling battle was usually less about convincing consumers and more about doing battle with Big Meat over use of certain words. Cultured meat’s big challenge, for now, is trying to concisely but effectively explain the concept of “protein grown from animal cells in bioreactors” to consumers. 

Whatever label is settled on will have to convey several things at once to consumers. It will have to make clear that the product is safe, that it is real meat (aka not vegan), but that it is different from traditional animal-based protein in terms of how it is produced (e.g., cell cultured versus wild caught). Based on the comments submitted to the FDA, labels for seafood should also factor in food transparency, adherence to food industry protocols (e.g., allergen alerts), and should not disparage traditional meat products. 

Of the companies and individuals that responded to the FDA’s call for comments, the majority back the term “cell-cultured” when it comes to labeling seafood products. Meanwhile, the majority of commenters suggested a move away from terms like “clean meat” and lab-grown meat.”

Finless Foods’ nine-pager of a comment concluded that:  

At the highest level, Finless Foods advocates for and strongly supports an accurate, non- misleading, and descriptive label that clearly outlines what the cell-cultured products are, including species and product form, and how they are made, in a way that is uniform within the cell-cultured seafood category and consistent across categories. Therefore, we recommend that FDA adopt and memorialize the use of the term “cell-cultured” through the mechanism of a CPG or a letter to industry to provide appropriate guidance.

Citing a forthcoming Halman and Halman study, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said:

Based on the results of the two Hallman and Hallman studies, CSPI finds that both “cell-cultured” and “cell-based” would inform consumers of material facts and not be misleading, as well as portray the product in a neutral fashion. FDA should closely consider these options, and other peer-reviewed studies, in addition to conducting its own studies before making a final decision on its final label phrase. 

Memphis Meats said it supports “disclosure of the term ‘cell-cultured,’ in conjunction with the name of the conventionally-produced seafood product, in the statement of identity or name of cell-cultured seafood products.” The Berkeley, California-based company also noted in its comments that “Terms that specify the type of seafood product (e.g., ‘fillet,’ ‘steak’) should be permitted in the name or statement of identity of a cell-cultured seafood, as long as the term appropriately describes the particular product. “

The Vegetarian Resource Group brought up the issue of consumer education in its comments, stating that, “Use of a term such as ‘engineered using cultured seafood cells’ would help consumers understand that the product is based on seafood and that seafood cells are used in production. An educational program would need to be developed to inform consumers about the meaning of ‘cultured’ in this context.”

You can read the full comments here, many of which delve into some of the more subtle issues that existing in the labeling debate. For example, one anonymous commenter suggested “cell-built” seafood to factor in the use of 3D printing technology.

Interestingly, less than one year ago, Rutgers released a study that found “cell-based” to be the best descriptor for seafood products grown in a lab. “Cell-cultured” was a close runner up in that particular study, which suggests consensus has been building for some time around the evolution of “cell-cultured” seafood. 

 

Here’s What Needs to Happen for Cultivated Meat To Hit Price Parity in 5 Years

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Over the past year, more and more of those invested in the future of cultivated meat are saying price parity with traditionally farmed meat products is achievable in 5 years.

This includes Jim Mellon, who told me on a recent episode of The Food Tech Show that not only will meat derived using cellular agriculture hit price parity with traditionally produced meat in half a decade, but over time it will be more affordable than plant-based alternatives like the Impossible Burger.

This is a big deal, because while many of the earliest proponents of lab-grown meat may be motivated by environmental, food safety or animal cruelty concerns, the vast majority of consumers are much less idealistic. For most of us, the primary calculus when buying food remains a result of the same three variables: price, taste and convenience.

But can we really get to price parity in half a decade? I mean, it’s one thing to predict low-priced meat from a bioreactor, it’s another to have it widely available at the same price as farm-raised meat anywhere at anytime.

The short answer is yes, if we can build the infrastructure for the production of lab grown meat. This means moving beyond today’s bench top prototypes and pilot production facilities to fully scaled industrialized production facilities worldwide.

What will it take to get there? Experts agree there are a few major challenges to the development and industrialization of cultivated meat, including: Development of cell lines, cost and performance of growth media, bioprocess optimization and better bioreactor design, and production of complex meat cuts.

Cell Line Development

The process of manufacturing cultivated meat begins with acquiring and banking cell lines. According to Clare Trippet, the chief science officer for CPI who spoke at the Agrarian Revolution virtual event last week, finding cells that can be optimized for manufacturing is time and resource intensive, in part because these cells often times need to be adapted for growth in a biomanufacturing environment. The good news is over time many of these cell lines, once identified and developed, can be reproduced indefinitely.

Growth Media

In order to for cell cultures to grow and reproduce, you need to feed them energy and nutrients. In the world of biomanufacturing, the fuel for cell-cultured meat reproduction is known as growth media. One of the biggest challenges in the early stage of cultured meat production is much of the early growth media was fetal bovine serum – or FBS – which is both misaligned with the purpose of cultured meat production and is widely seen as not economically viable.

However, the industry has been working hard to move away from FBS towards more humane and scalable alternatives. Mosa Meat made news last year with an 80x reduction in the cost of its FBS-free growth media, and this week Avant said it’s achieved a 90% cost reduction in the production of its cultured fish maw using non-FBS growth media. Other potential growth media in the future could be based on innovation such as that from Solar Foods, which is creating low-cost protein out of “thin air” using gas fermentation processes.

Biooptimization

The process of taking stem cells from animals and getting them to reproduce at a big enough scale to produce enough for human-level consumption is perhaps the biggest lift of all. According to Trippet, cultivated meat companies need to optimize their processes to produce at high-volume commercial scale production. This means a lengthy, multistage biooptimization process goes from high-throughput screening to identify optimal cell cultures for manufacturing, to lab-scale demonstration, pilot plant production and finally commercial scale production.

Much of this early work – cell line screening and benchscale demonstration and optimization – has already happened at some of the more mature cultured meat startups like BlueNalu, Mosa and Supermeat, and now these companies are moving onto pilot plant buildouts and production. These companies (and those that follow them) will utilize the learnings and processes developed during pilot production and they prepare for the move into commercial scale production.

Bigger and Better Bioreactors

A big part of this move into commercial scale production will be the transition to bigger and better bioreactors. The reality for today’s cultivated meat industry is that the currently available high-scale bioreactors for cellular agriculture were developed to produce high price-per-unit pharmaceuticals. However, since a cellag chicken burger at McDonalds will have a much lower price per unit than a vaccine, there’s a need to create better optimized high-volume bioreactors that can act as meat breweries.

The reason for optimization is pretty straightforward: replicating mammalian cells for food is immensely more difficult than replicating tissue for pharmaceuticals.

From the conclusion of Mark Post’s 2015 research paper at Maastricht University entitled “Alternatives for large-scale production of cultured beef: A review“:

Tissue engineering in large-scale is a difficult task and the scale of cell and tissue culture needed for food applications is orders of magnitude higher than for medical applications. Commercially available systems, microcarrier or cell-aggre- gate based are a good start but need to be optimized for bovine satellite cells, including but not limited to, specialized microcarriers.

Like we saw with the early days of the Internet, making the picks & shovels for the coming gold rush can be lucrative. That could mean riches for new entrants like Cellular Agriculture and for existing players like Thermofisher and Sartorius.

Interestingly, one of the industries that might move into this space is big brewing itself, as hinted at by Zoe Leavitt, an investment principal at ZX Ventures (the investment and innovation arm of brewing giant AB InBev), told The Spoon on last week’s Clubhouse live chat that the big brewing company has been evaluating how it could play in cultivated meat infrastructure.

Production of Complex Cuts

The types of cultivated meat that will likely reach price parity are unstructured meat, in other words products like ground beef. However, meat-eaters will want products like premium cuts of ribeye steak and filets of tuna to go with burgers, which means developing technology for structured cuts of meat.

One of the key technologies that will deliver structured cuts of meat is scaffolding. Scaffolding is that part of cultivated meat that allows the cells to adhere to and grow. Companies have been working to develop edible and biodegradable scaffolding technologies, including Matrix Meat which has created an edible scaffolding technology that they say will allow for a several millimeter thick cut of structured meat to grow.

Another key technology for structured meat production is 3D printing, which some companies like Aleph Farms has developed bioprinting technology to enable them to make complex cuts like ribeye. Other cultivated meat producers like BlueNalu are utilizing processing technologies like layering that have been optimized in the high-volume food production world.

Conclusion

These are no doubt exciting times for cultivated meat. Hundreds of millions of dollars of capital are pouring into the market, and the Good Food Institute has identified over 55 startups working in this space in Q1 2020 and some estimates have that at over 80 as of Q1 this year. Additionally, innovation visionaries like Bill Gates talk about converting nation states to cell-ag-based meat production in the future.

And while there is no doubt other hurdles outside of the technology and industrial optimization such as incumbent opposition and government regulations and policy frameworks that need to be considered, if progress continues on the pace we’ve seen over the past decade, I think a cultured meat value meal at my local fast food joint is not out of reach in few short years.

Plant-Based Food Producer NotCo Granted U.S. Patent for Its AI Technology

Chile-based alt protein company NotCo announced today it has been granted a U.S. patent for its artificial intelligence (AI) tech. 

NotCo, sometimes referred to as the Impossible or Beyond of Latin America, first launched its plant-based milk alternative, NotMilk, in the U.S. at the end of 2020. The company said it will soon open an office in NYC, and already has offices in San Francisco. The company also has U.S.-based retail deals with Sprouts, Wegmans, and online grocer Imperfect Foods.

The company makes a plant-based milk from pea protein. In Latin America, it also sells a plant-based mayo, a burger-like item, and ice cream in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.

The company’s AI platform, named Giuseppe, sifts through huge datasets (for example, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Library), to find ingredient and processing combinations that would best mimic the elements (flavor, texture, etc.) of real meat or dairy in plant-based analogues. The idea, of course, is to find the types of combinations that can create a product that completely mimics traditional meat and dairy — a feat few if any plant-based protein-makers have yet to achieve.

From the patent:

A formula generator learns from open source and proprietary databases of ingredients and recipes. The formula generator is trained using features of the ingredients and using recipes. Given a target food item, the formula generator determines a formula that matches the given target food item and a score for the formula. The formula generator may generate numerous formulas that match the given target food item and may select an optimal formula from the generated formulas based on score.

NotCo said in today’s press release that the AI platform also looks for “unexpected plant combinations” that could also achieve the desired taste and texture of the real thing. 

NotCo is not alone in this AI-based approach to plant-based proteins. Climax is another notable company in this space, and is currently crunching data sets to find the most appropriate ingredient combinations for plant-based cheese. In the wider food industry, Spoonshot uses AI to identify novel flavor combinations, and Brightseed leverages the tech to uncover phytonutrients in plants.

The company has raised a total of $120 million so far from a pool of investors that includes Jeff Bezos, Kaszek Ventures, and Maya Capital. It is also expanding to further international locations, including Colombia, Mexico, and Canada.

Swiss Startup Planted Raises $18M for Plant-Based Meat Alternatives

Switzerland-based alt-protein startup Planted has raised $18 million in Series A funding, according to TechCrunch. The round was co-led by Vorwerk Ventures and Blue Horizon Ventures, with participation from soccer player Yann Sommer as well as previous investors.

Zurich-based Planted makes meat alternatives from pea protein and other plant-based ingredients, such as sunflower and oats. Currently, the company’s lineup includes chicken, kebab, and pulled-pork products. A steak analog is also on the way. 

The company sells to around 3,000 food retail locations across Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, in addition to having a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site for those markets. Additionally, Planted has numerous restaurant and foodservice partnerships.

Part of the company’s new funding will be used to expand into other markets. Planted told TC that said expansion will first be into neighboring countries before moving further into Europe and then overseas. At this time, the company hasn’t named any specific countries.

Worldwide, the plant-based protein segment is expected to reach $85 billion by 2030. While Europe doesn’t yet get the same attention the U.S. or Asia do, its market for plant-based meat is growing rapidly and expected to reach €7.5 billion (~$8.9 billion USD) in the next five years. The number of startups in the space is growing, too, and now includes The Meatless Farm Company, THIS, and Vivera, among many others. International giant Beyond Meat also has a sizable presence in that region, recently boosted even more by a partnership with QSR giant McDonald’s.

Planted said today that in addition to expansion, its new funding will also be used to further build out the company’s tech stack and increase the manufacturing capacity of its products to half a ton per hour. 

Peet’s, Eat Just, and Beyond Meat Debut a Fully Plant-Based Breakfast Sandwich

Peet’s Coffee, Beyond Meat, and Eat Just have joined forces to launch a fully plant-based breakfast offering dubbed the Everything Plant-Based Sandwich. The item is available as part of Peet’s Spring 2021 menu.

The product launch makes for one of the first breakfast offerings on a QSR menu to be made entirely of plant-based foods. Up to now, meat, cheese, and egg analogues have been been paired with their  traditional counterparts for these meals. See examples like Impossible’s sausage sandwich at BK and Starbucks or Beyond’s sausage breakfast sandwich at Dunkin’.

This new breakfast sandwich iteration is, by comparison, fully vegan. The sandwich includes a Beyond Sausage patty, a folded egg from Eat Just, and a plant-based cheddar cheese on an everything bagel. According to the press release, the item contains 21 grams of protein.

The product is good news for the vegan crowd or those wanting to replace more of their traditional meat diet with plant-based options. More importantly, it’s another shift in the larger movement towards the plant-based QSR.

Consumer demand for plant-based meat alternatives is only going to get bigger. Restaurants have been incorporating plant-based meat analogues into their products for the last couple years. Now, we appear to be at a point where it’s no longer enough to have one element of a food item plant-based; the whole thing needs to be vegan. Starbucks, for example, hinted at this sort of future with its recent test of a fully plant-based breakfast sandwich with Impossible meat, a JUST egg, and a plant-based cheese from an unnamed manufacturer. Starbucks is also testing a fully plant-based menu at a location in Seattle.

And it’s not only coffeeshops getting onboard. In China, fast-food chain Discos outright replaced their traditional eggs with plant-based counterparts from Eat Just. Meanwhile, last week, Beyond announced deals with both McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell). which will majorly boost plant-based meat’s visibility in QSRs.

Peet’s may be headed in that direction. The company also announced some new beverages made with oat milk to go along with the vegan breakfast sandwich. It seems like only a matter of time before it and other quick-serve coffees chains roll out full menus for plant-based wares.

For now, the Everything Plant-Based Sandwich is available nationwide at Peet’s locations.

Ocean Hugger Will Re-enter the Plant-Based Seafood Space Via a Partnership With Nove Foods

Plant-based seafood maker Ocean Hugger is relaunching via a partnership with Thailand-based Nove Foods, according to a statement on the Ocean Hugger website.

The venture comes after after the pandemic forced Ocean Hugger, which previously sold products primarily to foodservice businesses, to cease operations.

Part of Ocean Hugger’s plight in 2020 was the fact that the company’s plant-based tuna and eel products were primarily used for sushi. But in the U.S., most consumers get sushi either at restaurants or at prepared foods counters. The pandemic devastated both those avenues, leaving Ocean Hugger with little choice but to close up shop for a while. 

However, the company came back in September 2020 with an announcement that it planned to re-enter the plant-based protein market, though no further details were given at the time.

Now, the plan is to launch “an expanded portfolio” of plant-based seafood products via a joint venture with Nove Foods, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of sustainable food manufacturer NRF. New York-based Ocean Hugger’s mission to produce a more ethical, environmentally friendly seafood is in line with NRF’s overall business, which has extended in recent years to include plant-based foods and functional foods.

The plant-based seafood market is still fairly wide open in terms of opportunity for companies. While New Wave Foods makes a plant-based shrimp analog and Good Catch has a “tuna” product on the market, there are not yet plant-based seafood companies that have the status that, say, Beyond or Impossible do with with beef analogs.

Ocean Hugger’s re-entry into the market gives the company another shot at becoming such a company. The company plans to release its expanded portfolio into retail and foodservice businesses later in 2021. Whether that will be in the U.S., Asia, or Europe is still to be determined. 

Singapore’s Next Gen Raises $10M Seed Round for Plant-Based Chicken

Next Gen, a Singapore-headquartered food tech company, announced today it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The round was led by Temasek, K3 Ventures, the New Ventures arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and NX Food. Funding follows an earlier $2 million investment from Next Gen’s founder, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The company will use the funds to launch Next Gen’s plant-based products brand, TiNDLE, to consumers in Singapore in March 2021. To start, the product line, which will debut with a chicken item, will be available in select restaurants. Other Asian cities will follow. Funding will also go towards further research and development around future plant-based products. 

TiNDLE chicken is made with soy protein, wheat gluten, wheat starch, as well as sunflower and coconut oils. On its website, the company says each each serving contains 17 grams of protein. The first application of the product will be TiNDLE Thy, a plant-based take on chicken thighs the company says can be used in a variety of dishes and cuisine types.

The forthcoming launch is arriving at a time when global demand for alternative protein is higher than it’s ever been before. The plant-based protein segment is expected to reach $85 billion by 2030, according to UBS. Asia is an important market in this growth, and one that is catching up to growth in the U.S. Demand in Asia for plant-based products is expected to jump to over 200 percent within the next five years.  

There is also a growing number of companies bringing products to market in the APAC region now. Some of those companies, like Green Monday in Hong Kong and HERO in China, as well as U.S.-based brands that have recently moved in, notably Impossible and Eat Just. Also, Beyond Meat is building two production facilities in Asia, both in China.

For its part, Next Gen is now looking towards a Series A funding round as well as diversifying its product portfolio and expanding into Europe and the U.S. The company said today it is already “laying the groundwork” for the latter.