Good Catch Foods, the Pennsylvania-based startup which makes seafood out of plants, closed an $8.7 million Series A funding round yesterday. This ups their Series A from the $5.5 million the company announced in April. The round was led by New Crop Capital with participation from Stray Dog Capital, the PHW Group, Blue Horizon, and others.
Founded in 2016, Good Catch Foods is developing plant-based alternatives to shredded tuna, crab cakes, and fish patties. They’re aiming to bring their fish-free tuna, which comes in three flavors and has roughly half the protein of “real” tuna, to market by 2019.
According to the U.N., around 90% of the world’s stocks are currently fully or overfished — and our demand for fresh seafood continues to grow. Some companies are tackling this by ensuring they only source sustainable fish and shellfish or raising farmed fish with low environmental impact. Despite these efforts, the fact remains that seafood is a finite resource. Which makes the work of companies like Good Catch Foods, who hope to sate our seafood craving using plants, all the more important.
The alterna-seafood market, which is developing more slowly than its meaty counterparts, has recently experienced some serious growth. Wild Type raised $3.5 million a few months ago for their lab-grown salmon, followed a few months later by an identical fundraise from Finless Foods, a startup developing cultured bluefin tuna. And just a few weeks ago, Terramino Foods raised $4.25 million for its “salmon” burger made out of fungi.
Terramino Foods’ “salmon” burger.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first investment in meat alternatives for the PHW Group, which is one of Europe’s largest poultry producers. They recently invested in cultured meat company Mosa Meats, and also partnered with SuperMeat, an Israeli company developing lab-grown chicken.
This is in line with the idea that Tom Mastrobuoni, the CFO of Tyson Ventures, put forth at the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe: for Big Food companies, the smart move is to invest in their own disruptors. Which explains why Tyson Foods, which produces one in five pounds of protein consumed in the U.S., has invested in both plant-based and cultured meat companies. (P.S. If you want to hear more about food tech investment trends, see Tom speak at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle this October.)
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