Flavor and fragrance company Givaudan just announced a new partnership with The Kitchen, an Israeli food tech incubator.
Founded by the Strauss Group, the largest food & bev manufacturer in Israel, The Kitchen is a hub for emerging startups (many from Israel) looking to reinvent different parts of the food system. The program’s 12 current participants from cell-based meat company Aleph Farms to personalized recipe service MyFavorEats to food safety detector Inspecto.
According to an Givaudan announcement, The Kitchen’s partnership with Switzerland-based Givaudan will enable the latter to “expand its innovation ecosystem further by connecting with Israel-based food entrepreneurs who are contributing to the creation of healthier and sustainable products and solutions.” As details in the announcement were pretty scant, we’re still waiting to find out exactly what that means. We’ve reached out to Givaudan and will update this post if we hear back.
But it’s not too difficult to guess what the flavor and fragrance company will be getting out of the partnership: a direct line into the cutting-edge Israeli food tech ecosystem and a source for potential new company acquisitions. Working with an incubator like The Kitchen is also a great way for Givaudan to refresh their brand image as a company that’s hip with what’s new and not stuck in the past.
In fact, Givaudan has been slowly amassing partnerships with food tech innovation hubs around the world. In addition to The Kitchen, the company also works with Bits x Bites in China and EIT Food in Europe. Last December, Givaudan teamed up with Danone, Mars, and Ingredion to launch MISTA, a platform to help businesses solve problems in the food system, in San Francisco. And earlier this month, the company co-founded the Future Food Initiative, a joint venture with Swiss universities, Nestlé and food production company Bühler to encourage nutrition research in its native Switzerland.
Lately we’ve seen quite a few Big Food companies partnering with/creating their own accelerators to tap into emerging food trends. It seems like Givaudan is really taking the whole invest-in-innovation thing to heart — and I’m betting the company has more incubator partnerships in the pipeline.
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