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I really did not want to write about alternate proteins in this newsletter this week.
Really.
We have a whole other weekly newsletter called Future Food devoted to topic (you should totally subscribe!) and I didn’t want to step on its toes. But there has been so much alt-protein news already this week, that it’s impossible avoid.
See what I did there? Because, you know, Impossible Foods raised $300 million yesterday in a whopper of a funding round, which coincidentally, will go in part towards making Impossible Whoppers for Burger King (and hopefully help the company keep up with demand). This brings the total amount raised by Impossible to $687.5 million and values the plant-based burger company at $2 billion.
Impossible’s raise, of course, follows the recent successful IPO of Beyond Meat, which, two weeks after the fact continues to perform well. FWIW, as of this writing, Beyond’s stock price is almost double that of former Silicon Valley darling, Uber.
But it’s not just plant-based beef making headlines. Aleph Farms, which makes lab-grown steaks raised $12 million from investors including Cargill, which is the country’s third-largest meat producer. This is the second cultured meat investment for Cargill, which has also put money into Memphis Meats, and appears to be disrupting itself, rather than letting some upstart startup do it.
Photo: Oatly.
You’d be forgiven if you needed a little latte pick-me-up to keep up with all the alt-protein news happening recently. And may we suggest a splash of Oatly in that latte? Catherine Lamb spoke with Oatly co-founder, Bjorn Oste, to get the story of how this oat-based milk in conquering coffee shops across the U.S..
Or perhaps you’ll be ditching coffee altogether. No, for real, stop laughing. During his recent whirlwind trip through Europe, Mike Wolf came across the cacao-based espresso made by Chokkino. Packed with all its superfood-y goodness, Mike wondered if Chokkino could one day make your preferred morning beverage.
My morning is just getting started, and there’s still plenty of news to cover! Thanks for reading, and be sure to sign up for our Future Food newsletter.
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