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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Upcycling

Where Food Comes From Acquires Upcycled Certification Program From Upcycled Food Association

Third-party verifier of food production practices Where Food Comes From, Inc. (WFCF) announced today it had acquired the Upcycled Certified Program from the Upcycled Food Association.

The Upcycled Food Association launched its certification program in early 2021, becoming, at the time, the first certification program for the nascent upcycled food industry. Since then, 93 companies have obtained Upcycled Certified status for over 480 products, according to the Upcycled Food Association. The group claims it has helped divert an average of 390,000 tons of food waste annually.

WFCF makes sense as a natural home for the Upcycled certification program given the company’s focus on with food industry verification. The company manages verification programs for organic foods, non-GMO foods, and the humane treatment of animals among others. And now with the acquisition of the UPFA’s verification program, they add a fairly fast-growing new category to their stable.

As for the Upcycled Food Association’s future, the non-profit group looks to continue to facilitate the growth of the industry even as it exits the verification business.

“The Upcycled Food Association is looking forward to ongoing collaboration to effectively serve the broader food waste reduction community and to ensuring that upcycled food companies have the resources they need to develop and bring to market new upcycled food products,” wrote the Upcycled Food Association CEO Angie Crone on her Linkedin.

ReGrained Changes Name to Upcycled Foods as It Diversifies Into Non-Grain Upcycled Ingredients

ReGrained is now Upcycled Foods Inc.

The company, which announced the new name as well as a variety of new partners and product announcements at the IFT First trade show taking place this week in Chicago, explained the name change made sense for a startup that had evolved from being a maker of consumer packaged food products utilizing spent brewer’s grain to a platform company that develops upcycled food ingredients for partners and its own group of brands.

Upcycled Foods Inc. “reflects the strategic change we began implementing in 2020, moving from a CPG brand, under the ReGrained name, to a trusted innovation and ingredient platform,” the company wrote in an announcement sent to The Spoon. “We power the food B2B upcycled economy by leading the way for food maker partners with our proven expertise in upcycled product development; deploying cutting-edge technology to create novel ingredient solutions; and building a consumer market for upcycled foods.”

According to the announcement, ReGrained will become a portfolio brand for the company’s grain-based upcycled ingredients. The company also announced two new “ingredient platforms” (aka brands) under which it plans to develop new products: Cacao Fruity Syrup and Coffee Leaf Tea.

Under ReGrained, the company announced a new product development partnership with Irish food and ingredient conglomerate Kerry. The two companies are codeveloping a new upcycled protein crisp product utilizing the ReGrained SuperGrain+ as the foundational ingredient. The new crisp will be designed into food products to add texture and nutrition to products. This partnership is the second of what the company calls ‘value-added’ product collaborations, following a January 2022 partnership with baking ingredients company Puratos.

The company’s new name is not that far removed from the trade association among which it counts itself as a founding member. The company, along with other upcycled startups such as Renewal Mill, launched the Upcycled Foods Association in 2019 to define, create awareness and certify upcycled food products. The association, which launched its certification program for upcycled products one year ago, has already certified 300 products with the UFA-certified logo.

Terra Bio Turns Spent Grain Into Protein Ingredient for Plant-Based Meats

Spent grain, a byproduct of the beer brewing process, often goes to waste (although it’s sometimes fed to livestock). Canadian startup Terra Bio is giving the used grain a second life as a plant-based protein.

Terra Bio has developed a proprietary process called bio-fractionation, which breaks down the grain into component parts while leaving its proteins intact. The company says that the resulting protein—which it calls Protina—has a mild, malty flavor and promising gelation properties.

This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with the Terra Bio team to learn more about its vision for Protina.

Meet Protina

In spent grain, Terra Bio saw an opportunity to create a more sustainable, plant-based protein. Protina requires no direct agricultural inputs as an upcycled ingredient, making it less land- and water-intensive than soy or pea protein.

Terra Bio doesn’t envision Protina as a stand-alone protein. Instead, it sees the ingredient as a textural base alongside other proteins.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect protein,” says company President and Co-Founder Ricardo Martinez, but Protina can add value by complementing other ingredients. “It can be used in combination with other more expensive or premium proteins, so you can reduce costs. And you can increase your product’s performance in terms of amino acids or textures.”

By taking advantage of different proteins’ unique properties, the team says, manufacturers could also simplify their products’ ingredients lists. For instance, Protina’s appealing texture could cut down on the need for additional texturizers.

To demonstrate the possibilities for Protina, Terra Bio is currently working with microalgae protein startup Smallfood and vegan chef Doug McNish to develop a plant-based fish fillet. The project was selected as one of 28 semifinalists for the XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion competition.

The spent grain supply chain

The team noted another upside of using spent grain: The breweries where the ingredient is generated are often located near food manufacturing plants. By taking advantage of an ingredient that can usually be sourced closeby to production facilities, the Protina manufacturing process can simplify the supply chain.

“That’s especially important as we’re in the middle of this COVID environment where supply chains are highly disrupted,” says CEO and Co-Founder Steve George. The COVID-19 pandemic has put global food supply chains under stress and driven up food prices. “So we said, what if we can shorten the supply chain. This accomplishes that.”

Because the bio-fractionation process can be performed using existing food processing equipment, Terra Bio plans to focus on building partnerships with contract manufacturers rather than constructing new production plants. The team says it sees these partnerships as a way to scale up production and leverage local supply chains while minimizing the environmental footprint of producing Protina.

Protina’s path forward

Terra Bio currently uses barley-rich spent grain mixtures to produce Protina, but the team is working on modifying the bio-fractionation process to accommodate more diverse feedstock. The company has also begun the process of getting food safety approval from Health Canada and the FDA.

As it takes steps to scale up its production process, Terra Bio is also seeking out new partnerships with breweries, food companies, and contract manufacturers. Through those partnerships, the company plans to continue taking on more capacity.

“We expect to be able to make those key partnerships in this coming year, and be able to start having protein and protein-based products out there come 2023,” says Rebecca Bradley, Terra Bio’s Outreach and Marketing Coordinator. “We expect to be able to scale a lot faster because we’re working together.”

Comet Bio Raises $22M Series C for its Upcycled Ingredients

Comet Bio, which manufactures various ingredients through upcycling, announced today that it has completed its Series C with an initial close of $22 million. The round was led by Open Prairie, the Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), BDC Capital, as well as existing investor Sofinnova Partners.

With headquarters in London, Ontario and Schaumberg, Illinois Comet Bio takes agricultural leftovers from farms and upcycles them through a proprietary process to turn them into a number of different ingredient products including a prebiotic dietary fiber called Arrabina, sugar syrup alternatives called Sweeterra, as well as animal and bionutrition industrial products.

Upcycling is a trend we follow closely here at The Spoon, and it’s one that thankfully seems to be catching on with a number of startups. ReGrained upcycles grain from beer brewing into bread and even ice cream. Kern Tec upcycles stone fruit pits into oils and and alternative dairy products. And Rind produces upcycled dried fruit snacks.

In fact, there’s been so much momentum going into upcycled foods that the field now has its own certification label. As my colleague, Mike Wolf wrote recently:

The interest in upcycled food is also a part of a broader interest in companies up and down the food system in tackling the problem of food waste. The pandemic helped accelerate this interest as everyone saw entire crops go to waste, but the reality is rising costs of food products has made reducing food waste not only appealing to sustainability-oriented organizations, but also to the bottom-line focused types in big corporates at CPG, retail and restaurants.

In the press announcement, Comet Bio said it will use the new funds to invest in its product innovation and health claims development.

 

There’s More to Food Waste Innovation Than Tech, According to ReFED’s Dana Gunders

This being The Spoon, a lot of our discussions around food waste concern the innovative technologies that could help us eventually curb the multi-billion-dollar problem and meet national and international targets to halve food waste by 2050. But as we learned today at our Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum, done in partnership with nonprofit ReFED, tech is only one piece of the solution. When it comes to food waste, true innovation is as much about new business models, behaviors, and ways of thinking as it is about advances in, say, machine learning or computer vision.  

Dana Gunders, the Managing Director and a founder of ReFED, kicked off the event by asking two important questions related to food waste: What is innovation, and what is the problem we’re trying to solve with it?

The second question is the easier one to answer, and Gunders called on some well-known stats as a way of explaining how “radically inefficient” our food system actually is:

  • 35 percent of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten
  • $408 billion annually is spent in the U.S. on food that is never eaten
  • More than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure

Food waste also accounts for 4 percent of U.S. GHG emissions (that’s 58 million cars worth’ of greenhouse gases), 14 percent of all freshwater use, 18 percent of all cropland use, and 24 percent of landfill inputs.

Citing data from Project Drawdown, Gunders pointed out that reducing food waste ranked first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change — ahead of plant-based diets, utility-scale solar, wind turbines, and other well-known contenders.

New innovations will help us reach those targets and cut down overall food waste, but as we learned at today’s event, “innovation” means different things to different stakeholders when it comes to food waste. “People talk about food waste as if it were one problem. It’s not,” Gunders said at the event. “This is a complex set of inefficiencies and we need a whole suite of solutions to address that.” Gunders is, of course, referring to the wide variety of ways in which food is wasted along the supply chain. Post-harvest food loss looks different from food thrown out at the grocery store. Both of those in turn look different than food that we dump down our kitchen drains. In all of these scenarios, food waste looks different, so it follows that the solutions will vary greatly based on which part of the supply chain they are aimed at.

Tech is one obvious tool when it comes to innovation, and at this point, companies are working with everything from machine learning and image recognition to hyperspectral imaging and sensors to fight food waste. These and other technologies can track waste, help retailers forecast more precisely, and even tell us which pieces of fruit will ripen soonest in any given crop. 

But, as mentioned above, technology is only one piece of innovation. Equally important are new processes and business models as well as what Gunders calls “cultural evolution.”

New business models around food waste have been emerging steadily over the last few years, many of them around grocery and/or restaurant services selling surplus food. This is a model popularized by the likes of Imperfect Foods, Too Good to Go, Flashfood, and many others. Upcycled products are another example, as is offering financial incentives to managers, as Sodexo is doing. 

Cultural evolution, meanwhile, refers to what Gunders called “innovation on a much simpler level.” It’s smaller actions that work together to make the public more aware of food waste and encourage changes in behavior. Signage in dining halls about food waste or allowing customers to taste a product before they buy it are two examples.

In the wake a of the pandemic, a new administration, and an increased sense of urgency around climate change and food equity, the culture in the U.S. right now is open to change. As Gunders pointed out, now is the time for businesses with food waste solutions to consider where they fit into these changes and how they might test their customers accordingly.

Sophie’s Bionutrients Debuts New Burger Made from Microalgae

Singapore-based food ingredient company Sophie’s Bionutrients announced today the debut of its new plant-based burger patties made from microalgae.

For its base ingredient, Sophie’s Bionutrients uses uses various strains of microalgae (including chlorella, which is already in health supplements) that the Singapore Food Agency and European Food Safety Authority have already identified as being safe for consumption.

Sophie’s Bionutrients scales up the protein source from a single-cell microalgae into a plant-based flour. To make a meat like patty, that flour is extruded into textured crumbles that are then shaped into patties. The patties are then seasoned with 10 different spices.

According to the press announcement, each patty weighs roughly 60 grams and has 25 grams of protein, comprising all nine essential amino acids including histidine and leucine. Sophie’s Bionutrients also says its algae-based patty has two times more protein than beef or most commercially available fish.

The ethical and environmental impact issues of traditional animal meat production have helped drive sales of plant-based alternatives up in recent years. Additionally, feeding the nine billion people who will eventually live on this planet will require new methods of protein production, including the use of plant-based alternatives.

In addition to producing protein in a smaller footprint compared with animal protein, Sophie’s Bionutrients also helps reduce food waste. The company re-uses items like spent grains from breweries and okara from tofu makers and molasses from sugar refineries in its algae production process.

We’re seeing algae pop up as an ingredient in more food items. In Israel, Algalafel uses algae to add protein to falafel, and Yemoja developed a “fastrack photobioreactor” to produce algae-based ingredients for food. And here in the U.S. Back of the Yards Algae Sciences has developed an algae-based spray that gives plant-based burgers a more meaty taste.

Right now Sophie’s Bionutrients says each production batch can make between 20 – 100 patties within a week. That’s not a lot, but the product is just being unveiled today. Given investor interest in the alternative protein space, it’s not hard to imagine the company attracting funds to help it scale (assuming the algae burger tastes good). In addition to burgers, Sophie’s Bionutrients also has its version of crab cakes and protein crackers in the product pipeline.

Imperfect Foods Will Be a Net-Zero Carbon Company by 2030

Online grocer Imperfect Foods announced today its pledge to become a net-zero carbon operation by 2030. Via a press release sent to The Spoon, the company claims this timeline is 10 years ahead of most major retailers and 20 years ahead of the Paris Agreement Deadline.

Imperfect began as a service that rescued surplus fruits and veggies from supermarkets to sell at discounted prices to customers. A few successful fundraises later, the company is a full-fledged online grocer selling not just rescued produce but also meat, dairy, and pantry staples from other environmentally conscious companies.

To track its carbon footprint, Imperfect has partnered with Watershed, a software platform that measures a business’s carbon footprint across every touchpoint of its supply chain. Speaking in today’s press release, Imperfect said that through Watershed’s platform, the company can see which parts of its supply chain are emitting greenhouse gases and redesign operations based on that information.

Imperfect laid out a few steps for going net-zero carbon. It plans to have its first “zero-waste-to-landfill” facility operational by 2022, and a total of six such facilities operational by 2025. All six fulfillment centers will run off renewable power by 2026, and the company’s vehicle fleet will be electric by 2027. Finally, improving regional sourcing by 15 percent is a near-term goal, slated for 2022.

Imperfect’s announcement today is the latest in a string of recent stories about food companies’ various sustainability efforts, from Just Salad’s zero waste delivery aspirations to Burger King’s reusable cup program. Sweetgreen a chain that has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2027, is also using Watershed to track its carbon footprint.

There are also a few grocery-specific developments around sustainability of late. Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste program addresses many sustainability issues, and Aldi says it will shift to sustainable packaging by 2025. Walmart, meanwhile, has a goal of reaching zero emissions by 2040.

For its part, Imperfect’s goal is to go beyond just sustainable food sourcing and “ensure [that] each internal process ladders up to an operationally net-zero carbon business model.”

 

Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation Is Taking Applications for Its Innovation Accelerator

Startups, take note. The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation (aka, the “Foundation”) is now taking applications for the second cohort of its Innovation Fund. The program, done in partnership with Village Capital, looks for companies developing new technologies, processes, and other solutions that combat food waste.

The Foundation says this could include rescuing and upcycling “imperfect” food. “Upcycled food is the next frontier in recovering and repurposing food that may otherwise go to landfills,” the Foundation said in a statement this week. In this context, upcycling could mean either using discarded food to create new foods (e.g., upcycled cookies), ingredients, or even meal kits. The program also lumps food rescue — selling surplus food to consumers — as part of the upcycling process, too.

Both areas are becoming more popular in the U.S., with companies like Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Renewal Mill, and Goodfish leading the way. Imperfect was actually a part of the first cohort for the Innovation Fund, along with Food Forest, mobius, Replate, and others. About 400 startups applied for the first cohort, so we can expect as many if not more vying for a spot in this next installment of the program.

The six-month-long Kroger program includes one week of virtual programming followed by monthly cohort sessions. The entire program runs from late May through November 2021.

A total of 10 startups will be selected from the applicant pool. Selected companies each receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, with the chance for an additional $100,000 grant based on “achievement of identified program milestones.” Virtual workshops that cover investment readiness and technical skill development, and also provides networking opportunities with mentors and potential investors.

Two startups of the chosen 10 will be picked at the end of six months to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.

Applications are open until April 1, 2021.

Just Salad’s Reusable Bowls Are Going Off-Premises, Too

New York-based restaurant chain Just Salad plans to pilot its popular reusable bowl program for digital orders in the near future. The announcement comes as part of the fast-casual chain’s annual sustainability report, which was just released, and tracks company progress on making its business more eco-friendly.

If you’ve ever set foot inside a Just Salad, you’ll know the company’s line of colorful bowls made from heavy plastic resin that can be washed and reused on a regular basis. Just Salad started its reusable bowl program back in 2006 with the aim to cut down on single-use packaging for to-go orders. Customers could purchase a reusable bowl (mine cost $1 when I bought it in 2012), take it home, wash it, and bring it back for a refill each time they bought a meal from the restaurant.

In its most recent sustainability report, Just Salad said that sales of its reusable bowls grew more than 100 percent year-over-year in 2019 — then were abruptly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In New York City and elsewhere, reusable containers were banned from restaurants in an effort to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. Simultaneously, homebound customers switched to digital ordering and delivery formats, neither of which lend themselves to reusable packaging.

Now, in 2021, Just Salad said it plans to expand its reusable bowl program to serve off-premises channels like delivery. Under the new phase of the program, customers can order digitally for delivery and pickup. Food arrives in a Just Salad reusable bowl, which can be returned to any Just Salad location for cleaning and sanitizing afterwards. The phase is currently in beta and only available at one location, at the chain’s 3rd Avenue spot in Manhattan.

Just Salad told Nation’s Restaurant News this week that without any extra marketing done, roughly 30 percent of customers have already used the program since it launched earlier this year. 

The expanded reusable program is one item on a growing list of initiatives Just Salad has around sustainability — an area the company was championing long before the pandemic. Another notable item this week’s report mentions is Zero Waste delivery pilot. In partnership with NYC-based company DeliverZero, the Just Salad location in Park Slope, Brooklyn offers delivery items in reusable containers. Customers have six weeks to return the containers to either a delivery person or at a Just Salad location. Multiple other NYC restaurants work with DeliverZero, many of them local businesses. 

Hopefully that number grows, and quickly. If delivery and off-premises restaurant formats aren’t going away, nor is the mounting packaging waste problem, not if we don’t do anything to stop it. Restaurants account for 78 percent of all disposable packaging, much of it plastic. And plastic production has increased 200-fold since 1950, growing at a rate of 4 percent per year since 2000, with most plastic winding up in the landfill or ocean. Needless to say, our appetites for off-premises aren’t helping this problem.

In response, circular-economy-style delivery is slowly but surely making its way into the restaurant industry. Reusables are by no means the norm yet. However, major chains like Burger King and McDonald’s have various tests underway, which is encouraging for the industry as a whole.

Just Salad, meanwhile, has a number of other sustainability initiatives on the table, including its meal kit program aimed at combating both packaging food waste and a partnership with food “rescue” company Too Good to Go.

Goodfish Raises $4M for Upcycled Salmon Snacks

Goodfish, a company that upcycles salmon skin by turning it into snack foods, announced today it has closed a $4 million Series A investment round. The round was led by AF Ventures and Siddhi Capital. In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it will use the new funds to “support the surging demand for its products, deepen R&D capability and accelerate product innovation.”

Goodfish was started by the founders of beverage company Harmless Harvest, and products became available for online purchase this year. The snacks resemble crunchy chips in texture and are made from the reclaimed skins of Wild Alaskan Sockeye that would normally go to waste. The idea is to create a chip-like snack with far more health benefits (clean protein and marine collagen among them) and far fewer calories. The skins are sourced from well-regulated fisheries in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Cofounder Justin Guilbert, said in today’s press release that Goodfish’s online-only distribution strategy “paid off well above expectations” and led to an earlier fundraised than expected. Hence the close of the Series A round today. 

Given that folks have been snacking their way through this pandemic, it’s no surprise companies offering healthier alternatives are getting noticed (and receiving funding). Others include Renewal Mill, which uses upcycled okara flour to make cookies, plant-based pork rind-maker Pig Out, and jerky made from jackfruit by a company called Jack and Tom.

Goodfish did not say whether it plans to eventually expand to brick-and-mortar stores for distribution. For now, products are available via the company’s own direct-to-consumer website. 

NapiFeryn’s Technology Upcycles Post-Processed Rapeseed Into Usable Protein Powder

Rapeseed, also known as canola, is one of the largest sources of vegetable oil in the world.

The seeds are pressed to get the oil, which becomes the final consumer product. Let behind is a byproduct referred to as rapeseed “cake”, chunky greenish clumps that are sometimes used in animal feed.

Beyond that, however, rapeseed cake has had little functional use as a human food product, but thanks to technology by Polish startup NapiFeryn, rapeseed processors can now upcycle the leftover rapeseed cake into a human-consumable protein powder.

The process developed by NapiFeryn to convert the leftover cake into a usable protein involves several steps and is currently in the scale up phase. Once converted into human-consumable protein powder, the neutral flavor and odor profile of rapeseed protein powder means it can be used in a variety of foods types such as bread, protein bars or as a meat or egg substitute.

This move to create higher-value outputs from agricultural byproducts is just another example of the momentum around upcycling. The market, which now has its own industry association and is sized at $47 billion, has startups creating products from inputs ranging from from cacao pulp to spent beer grains.

And now, thanks to NapiFeryn, rapeseed cake.

You can learn more about NapiFeryn’s technology via the nifty 360 degree video produced by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)’s food innovation initiative (EIT Food) for its Food Unfolded digital content platform.

Rapeseed Cake | How to bake this sustainable protein? (360 Video)