Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Asia

Future Food: Pigging Out on Omnipork in Hong Kong

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

I just got home from a stopover in Hong Kong after the whirlwind of SKS Japan, and boy it was anything but boring.

In between sampling bubble waffles and copious amounts of dim sum, I got to meet with David Yeung, founder of the Green Monday enterprise. Green Monday is an umbrella organization which includes a non-profit educating consumers on the benefits of meat alternatives, a vegan grocery and wholesale operation, a venture arm, and a branded plant-based pork product called Omnipork.

Yeah. David Yeung is busy.

During my visit I also got to put Omnipork to a taste test. I sampled it tucked in a fried gyoza, crumbled on top of a bowl of ramen, and stuffed inside sweet puff pastry dim sum.

Overall, I thought Omnipork worked pretty well as a pork substitute. It doesn’t have the same unctuous fattiness of actual pork, at least partially because it’s lower in saturated fat, but it’s still tasty and the texture hits close to the mark.

Omnipork is essentially flavorless — which is both a good and bad thing. Yeung told me this was very intentional; he wanted to make a product that was endlessly versatile so it could be incorporated into a wide variety of Asian dishes. However, it can also make for a pretty bland bite if not properly seasoned or combined with tasty sauces.

The versatility bit is key. Yeung’s overarching goal is to make a comprehensive platform to cut down on Asia’s consumption of animal products, starting with the continent’s most popular meat: pork. Yeung said that Asian consumers might have a burger every month or so, but they incorporate ground pork into multiple meals daily. He figured that if he wanted to create a plant-based protein that could have a shot at taking a bite out of growing meat consumption in Asia, he had to make a product specifically tailored for that audience.

Crazily enough, he’s the first to do so. When people think about the new wave of fake meat products, their thoughts automatically turn to Silicon Valley. While there’s certainly plenty of innovation there, Asia is actually the area that seems in most need of tasty, cheap plant-based protein: meat consumption there is projected to rise by 78 percent by 2050, and recent outbreaks have made meat prices skyrocket and also triggered consumer demand for a safer alternative.

I left Hong Kong feeling both inspired by Yeung’s progress and daunted by how far he has to go. If he wants to take a bite out of Asian pork consumption, he’ll need to get Omnipork on a lot more plates. Making it into tasty gyozas is certainly a good start.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat skips Japan

Like any alternative-protein nerd, I kept my eyes peeled during my time in Tokyo to see if I came across any plant-based meat, eggs, etc.

No dice. And now it seems that at least one major alt-protein player won’t be entering the Japanese market at all, at least for a while. Last week Reuters reported that Beyond Meat had dropped plans to start selling in Japan, instead opting to double down on the U.S. market.

This is a change in tune from Beyond CEO’s Ethan Brown statement during the company’s first earnings call a few months ago. Then, he outlined Beyond’s aggressive expansion plan, naming Asia as one of the key areas of focus.

That being said, it makes sense why Beyond has to hit the pause button on outward growth and turned their attention back stateside. The company has announced multiple fast-food partnerships over the past few weeks alone, including large rollouts with Dunkin’ and Subway. A product shortage would be very, very bad right now, as Beyond competes with Impossible Foods in a race to snag the most fast-food partners and steels itself for Impossible to enter retail later this year.

No wonder Beyond has turned its attention back to the U.S.

Photo: Aramark.

Cafeteria special: Meatless meat

As I mentioned above, alternative meat companies have been grabbing headlines lately by partnering with large fast-food chains like Burger King, Subway and Dunkin’. But recently, two new alt-meat partnerships have flown relatively under the media radar — and they shouldn’t.

Last week food service management company Sodexo announced it would launch a new product line featuring the Impossible burger at 1,500 locations in the U.S. A few days later, news broke that food and facilities management giant Aramark would begin using Beyond Meat products to build out its plant-based meat portfolio.

Partnerships like these may not get as much press as fast-food launches, but teaming up with major food and facilities management companies is an important strategic move for companies like Impossible and Beyond.

Most obviously, it’s an opportunity for plant-based meat companies to massively expand their footprint and get their products on even more plates, selling to a captive audience at sports venues, concert halls, and cafeteria. Since both providers also serve a lot of university cafeterias, also a way for them to train younger generations of consumers to expect alternative proteins wherever they dine.

Beyond and Impossible may be just starting to ramp up foodservice expansion, but they’re not the first to do so. Plant-based chicken nugget company Rebellyous has been targeting large clients like cafeterias from the start (they just got into the Microsoft canteen).

If meat alternatives want to give real meat a serious run for its money, they’ll need to capture audience not just in restaurants and grocery stores, but also during their office lunch or ball game dinner. These partnerships are a great start.

Photo: Integriculture

Protein ’round the web

  • An Australian startup is growing kangaroo meat in a lab (via the Wall Street Journal). They currently estimate it would cost about $600 Australian dollars (~$400 USD) to produce one kilogram.
  • Edible insect company Chapul is no longer making protein bars. Instead, they’ll focus on growing bugs to use as fish and poultry feed (h/t Foodnavigator).
  • At SKS Japan we spoke with Integriculture’s founder about his plan to sell cell-based foie gras in restaurants by 2021.

That’s it from me this week. I’m off to grab another coffee to keep my jet lag at bay.

Eat well,
Catherine

Shiok Meats Raises $4.6M for Cell-Based Shrimp

Shiok Meats isn’t so shrimpy anymore. The Singapore-based cultured meat startup, which has been using cellular aquaculture to grow crustaceans in a lab, just completed a $4.6 million seed round (h/t Forbes).

The round sports a pretty impressive list of investors, including the CEO of Monde Nissan (owner of popular plant-based meat product Quorn). Big Idea Ventures, a new venture fund focused on meat alternatives with backing from Tyson, also participated.

This news comes just a few weeks after the startup held the first public taste-test of its shrimp. The cell-based crustaceans were tucked into dumplings and served at The Disruption in Food and Sustainability Summit (DFSS) on March 29th.

For such a young company, Shiok Meats has been quickly gaining traction and notoriety. According to its CEO and co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Shiok Meats is the first cell-based meat company based in Asia. It was also the first cultured meat startup accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator.

When we first wrote about Shiok Meats back in January, we were optimistic that their choice of location — that is, Asia — would serve them well. Not only is there far smaller competition than in, say, Silicon Valley, but Asia also has a huge appetite for alternative protein, as well as the regulatory flexibility to bring new edible technologies, like cell-based meat, to market before the U.S. does.

Clearly, investors see the opportunity as well. Forbes reports that Shiok will use its new funding for R&D and to grow its bioengineering team. Next, the company will focus on scaling so that they can have a product to market in two to three years.

Cultured Meat Will Likely Debut in Asia, Not Silicon Valley. Here’s Why.

It’s no longer a question of whether or not we can make meat without the animal. We can, and there are taste tests to prove we can do so and still make it taste and feel like the real thing. What is still up in the air is what this new product will be called, when exactly you’ll be able to buy it, and where it will be available.

The “where” is getting clearer: Asia. JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year. The exact country was not specified.

This news surprised me. The majority of startups developing cell-based meat are in Silicon Valley, Europe, or Israel, so I naturally assumed cultured meat would launch in one of those spots.

But when I sat down to think about it, there are actually quite a few good reasons why Asia is the ideal launch grounds for this new food.

New startups

Asia is an up-and-coming hotspot for cellular agriculture, the technology behind cultured meat. These past few months alone we’ve seen a flurry of new cell-based activity in the geographic area:

  • Shiok Meats, a startup based in Singapore, is developing cultured crustaceans, like shrimp and crab. Co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram told us last year that the company is planning a taste test of its cultured shrimp later this month in Singapore and will roll out its products in Southeast Asia in a few years. The startup also just became the first cell-based meat company to be accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator.
  • In Hong Kong, Avant Meats is in the early stages of developing a cultured-fish product. In an interview with the Good Food Institute (GFI), Avant Meats founder Carrie Chan said their product will be “tailored for the preference and consumption behavior of consumers in China and Asia,” and will likely launch there.
  • Japanese biohacking hobbyist club Shojinmeat is enabling anyone to grow their own meat by open-sourcing cellular agriculture technology. It also has a spinoff startup, Integriculture.
  • A few weeks ago, the GFI announced they would partner with the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) to set up a research center for cellular agriculture in Mumbai. They plan to set up a lab in the city by 2020 and construct a larger facility the following year.

This recent uptick in cellular agriculture activity in Asia isn’t out of the blue. In fact, there are a couple of reasons why Asia is a more fertile launching ground for cell-based meat than, say, the U.S.

Regulations

Before cultured meat can get to our plates, we need to figure out how to regulate it. In fact, regulatory clearance — the official stamp that cell-based meat is safe to eat — is probably the biggest hurdle to getting clean meat to market.

In the U.S., we have a path in place — mostly. The USDA and FDA decided last year to jointly regulate cell-based meat. However, the two organizations left a lot of things open-ended — including the question of labeling. Until labeling is sorted out, cultured meat won’t be approved by the FDA and can’t be legally sold in the U.S.

Of course, cell-based meat will have to pass muster by regulators in Asia as well before it can be sold. But in a phone interview, Shiok Meats’ Sriram told me that “Asia seems to be pushing the regulators within to come up with a framework sooner than the West.”

In particular, Hong Kong seems a likely spot for the launch of cultured meat. “Hong Kong is … a free market where many industries are not heavily regulated, including food,” Elaine Siu, GFI’s Managing Director of Asia-Pacific, told me in an interview. While the regulatory landscapes of the E.U. and China are extremely stringent, Hong Kong is comparatively more flexible — at least for the moment.

The Impossible Burger.

Consumer Interest

A 2018 study from Kadence International showed that 66 percent of Americans would try clean meat, as would 75 percent of people in Belgium and the Netherlands.

There’s less data out there on Asian consumers’ openness towards cultured meat. However, one study by Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems cites higher levels of consumer acceptance in China and India than the U.S. — almost two-thirds of Chinese people were very or extremely likely to purchase cultured meat. Indeed, Sriram seems confident that there’s more demand for clean meat in Asia than in the U.S. “People in Asia are super interested and intrigued by the concept of clean meat,” she told me.

She referenced the recent launch of the Impossible burger in Singapore as a use-case for the demand for meat alternatives. “1000’s of people queued up for a taste of it!” she wrote to me over email, referencing the “bleeding” vegan burger. Plant-based meat is less controversial than cell-based meat, sure. But the success of Impossible in Singapore backs up a report from Allied Market Research which cites Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing market for meat alternatives.

GFI’s Siu also noted that, at least in Hong Kong, people are “comfort[able] with trying new products” and have a wide-ranging and diverse palate. That, plus the relatively high spending power of Hong Kong inhabitants, could make its population the perfect test ground for cell-based meat.

Investment Interest


In order to continue developing better iterations of cell-based meat — better texture, cheaper production methods, etc. — researchers need some serious capital.

So far a wide variety of investors have gotten involved in the space, from celebrities like Bill Gates and Richard Branson to major meat companies like Tyson and PHW Group (one of Europe’s largest poultry producers).

In certain Asian countries, the government is eager to get involved. The Singaporean government has “publicly announced its interest and investment into the cell-based agriculture space,” according to Siu. She told me that Japan has also expressed interest. Having government support could not only be a financial boon, but could also help cellular agriculture companies expedite the tricky regulatory process for cultured meat.

One thing might make investment tricky though, at least in China. In 2017 the country signed a $300 million agreement with Israel promising that the country would import cell-based meat from Israel companies SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future. That could hinder China’s ability to invest in/import clean meat from nearby Asian countries, though it wouldn’t necessarily quench Chinese investors’ thirst for meat alternatives. 

JUST’s cell-based chicken nuggets.

Manufacturing Capabilities

One of the obvious advantages of producing clean meat in Asia is its wealth of manufacturing resources. They have the necessary production infrastructure in place to scale clean meat, making it affordable and more widely accessible faster. According to Deloitte, five Asia-Pacific nations are expected to be in the top 10 global manufacturers by 2020.

This might not be relevant to producers in the immediate future. For now, cultured meat production is happening on a relatively small scale, usually in research labs. But as cellular agriculture technology improves and demand increases, as I assume it will, manufacturing for cell-based meat will scale up quickly. At that time, Asia’s wealth of production facilities — and manufacturing prowess — will become a huge help.

—

Despite the recent uptick in cellular agriculture activity in Asia, as of now there are many more cell-based meat startups in the U.S. and Europe. “But if we are looking into a few years from now, then the answer may be different,” Siu predicted.

That’s not to say that there won’t be any cellular agriculture developments in the U.S. or Europe. There will be. But if JUST indeed launches its first clean chicken nugget in Asia, I believe that that’s where we’ll see some of the more exciting cultured meat innovations over the next few years. Critically, it’s also where we’ll get the first data points about consumer reactions to cultured meat.

All this to say that when it comes to the future of cellular agriculture, I’d spend less time watching what’s happening in Silicon Valley, and more time watching Hong Kong.

TripAdvisor Bolsters Foray into Food with Additional Eatigo Investment

Eatigo, a Thailand-based startup that helps restaurants stay busy during off-peak hours, announced today that it has raised an undisclosed “pre-Series C” round of funding from existing investor TripAdvisor. Tech in Asia reports that this new cash brings the total amount of funding raised by Eatigo to more than $25 million.

According to the Eatigo’s Crunchbase profile, the company “connects empty tables with empty stomachs using time-based discounts.” Eatigo helps restaurants optimize their resources by offering deals for off-peak hours, similar to what Gebni does here in the U.S.. Eatigo operates in six countries across Southeast Asia including India, Malaysia and the Philippines.

With this investment, TripAdvisor continues to expand its interest in food, and illustrates that it wants in on your eating action — no matter where you chow down when traveling. As noted, this is the second time it has invested in Eatigo, which looks to help get people into restaurants. But TripAdvisor also wants to facilitate bringing food to you.

Just last month TripAdvisor entered into a partnership with Delivery.com, which allows people in the TripAdvisor app to order food for delivery from 12,000-plus restaurants. This agreement with delivery.com added another arrow to TripAdvisor’s delivery quiver, which includes partnerships with Grubhub and Deliveroo.

For its part, Eatigo says the new money will be used to expand into new markets, though Asia will remain a key focus for the company. Additionally, TripAdvisor’s reservation portal, The Fork, will help Eatigo with its expansion plans.