Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cheese

Why GFA’s Unceremonious Drop of Climax is a Big Win For the Company & the Plant-Based Cheese Category

For the past week, the alt-protein world has been abuzz about the news that the Good Food Awards had quietly dropped Climax Food from the list of finalists and, according to Climax, snatched the winner’s trophy from them due to a convoluted and confusing set of rationalizations by the organization.

Washington Post broke the story last weekend in an article titled A vegan cheese beat dairy in a big competition. Then the plot curdled (is there a title for best article headlines? If so, WaPo may have just ran away with it).

The article detailed how Climax was listed among the finalists when the GFA announced them in January and how Climax was quietly informed that same month that they had actually won it all. An uproar among industry insiders ensued, fueled by a blog post from well-known cheese industry influencer Janet Fletcher, questioning whether vegan cheese is actually cheese. The post featured quotes from traditional cheesemakers who, unsurprisingly, felt that cheese not made from animal milk should not be included.

“My take is that it’s not really cheese,” said cheesemaker Mateo Kehler of Jasper Farms in the post.

The story took a turn when Climax Foods CEO Oliver Zahn was informed by the WaPo journalist working on the story that Climax had been taken off the list of finalists and, as he would soon learn, had been disqualified from the competition altogether. From there, Climax and GFA provided differing accounts of what happened, with GFA offering up a confused and convoluted explanation that seemed to hinge on the fact that Climax had included Kokum butter in its original entry, an ingredient that they claim is not designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe). Zahn claimed that the entry requirements didn’t specify that ingredients needed to be GRAS-certified, a claim backed up by the Internet archive version of the rules as stated in January.

As WaPo was working on the story, Zahn spoke to a few other journalists (myself included) about the news in anticipation of the WaPo story’s release. When I first talked to Zahn, he was worried about the impact of the news and was frustrated that his team had bought tickets and made hotel reservations in anticipation of receiving an award. However, his biggest frustration was that he felt the award would raise the visibility of his product and be an important milestone for the vegan world.

via GIPHY

Above: The Good Food Awards

As it turns out, the controversy surrounding the GFA awards and the organization’s unceremonious retraction of the winner’s trophy might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to Climax and the plant-based cheese category. That’s because it’s clear that even though Climax didn’t receive the award in the end, the publicity from GFA’s rake-step is better and more far-reaching than if the organization had actually gone through with the right thing.

Sure, Climax winning the award would no doubt have been a nice feather in their cap, but would it have gotten them featured as a bit on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert?

Meanwhile… Amazon Cat Returned | Gull Screeching Champion | Vegan Blue Cheese Beats Dairy

When I caught up with Zahn after the WaPo story had come out and dozens of follow-on stories had appeared about the news, he seemed more at peace. Of course, a jump in sales will probably do for you.

“Sales are good,” Zahn told me.

Stepping back, that a panel of judges saw a plant-based cheese as not only on par but actually better than a product made with dairy is forcing the industry and consumers to have a conversation, one in which I imagine many will side with Climax. Sure, today many in the industry are claiming distinctions without a difference when it comes to the actual final product, saying things like real cheese “has a story” and plant-based cheeses aren’t “agricultural products” (huh?). But in the long run, when consumers happily begin choosing great-tasting vegan cheese, the industry (and the GFA) will have to follow their lead.

You can watch my interview with Oliver below.

Climax's Oliver Zahn Talks About Good Food Awards Controversy

How New Culture and Moolec Science Are Growing Cow-Free Dairy Proteins

Most of today’s vegan cheese startups face the challenge of reproducing cheese using ingredients like plant-based oils and nut milks. That’s no easy feat, as unique dairy proteins are responsible for some of the taste, stretch, and melt properties of cheese.

But alternative cheese may soon be getting a tech upgrade. A handful of startups have developed cow-free processes for replicating those key dairy proteins. Last week, The Spoon got on Zoom with the CEOs of two of those companies—New Culture and Moolec Science—to ask about the state of alternative cheese technology.

New Culture & precision fermentation

When California-based startup New Culture set out to develop a better alternative cheese, the company’s founders surveyed a range of processes that could be used to grow dairy proteins. Company CEO and co-founder Matt Gibson says that precision fermentation stood out because the technology had already been used by the conventional dairy industry at commercial scale.

“It’s a process that has been done time and time again,” says Gibson. Precision fermentation is used today to produce chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme. “And that means that all those risk factors that come with anything that you scale up have really been eliminated. It’s a tried-and-true method of going from a small fermentation shake flask of say 50 milliliters to a large fermentation tank of 200,000 liters.”

In New Culture’s fermentation process, microbes are genetically edited to convert sugar into a dairy protein called casein, which makes up about 80% of the protein content in cow’s milk. To grow the protein at high volumes, the microbes need to be kept at a certain temperature and pH, and fed sugars at a specific rate.

According to Gibson, another advantage of using precision fermentation is that the regulatory process is relatively simple. This is partly because the dairy industry has set a precedent for using precision fermentation, and partly because New Culture is using the process to create an existing protein rather than a new ingredient.

“So there’s no concern from a regulatory point of view about the fact that you’re using genetic engineering,” he says. “You go through the regulatory process to show that the process you’re using—like what you’re feeding your microbe—is safe and stable. So the regulatory process is expected to be very smooth sailing.”

New Culture expects to complete the regulatory approval process next year. The company’s flagship cheese will be mozzarella, which they plan to launch as a branded product in restaurants in late 2022. In particular, Gibson says the team has its eyes on the pizza industry, which is a huge consumer of mozzarella, but has been held back from using alternative cheeses because today’s plant-based options don’t stretch well or tolerate the high temperatures in pizza ovens.

Casein is the foundation for all kinds of cheeses. Someday, the company could add other bacterial cultures and age their casein curd base to create blue cheese, brie, and other varieties. For now, they’re focused on building scale and getting their mozzarella onto menus.

“To quickly transition away from animal-derived cheeses, you need a technology that can scale quickly and get costs down quickly,” says Gibson. “And that’s what precision fermentation ultimately allows you to do.”

Moolec Science & molecular farming

Moolec Science, headquartered in the U.K., is taking a different approach: The company grows animal proteins using molecular farming. Last year, The Spoon reported on Moolec’s success in producing the cheesemaking enzyme chymosin (mentioned above) in plants.

Molecular farming solves the problem of scaling up in a different way from precision fermentation. Through molecular farming, says company CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini, Moolec can take advantage of existing agricultural infrastructure for production purposes. “There’s nothing better than low-tech farming to produce at an enhanced scale and low cost.”

In molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company’s proof-of-concept chymosin is grown in safflower plants; its next products, meat proteins, will be grown in soy and yellow pea plants.

Moolec is a spinoff of Bioceres Crop Solutions, an agtech company. The team at Bioceres spent over a decade building the tech platform that Moolec now uses for molecular farming, says Paladini—“from the laboratories and construction design to the new genes, new seeds, field trials, farming, and harvesting.”

While precision fermentation companies can scale up using models created by the conventional dairy industry, Paladini says that the scale for molecular farming already exists. “There aren’t many precision fermentation tanks out there to produce alternative protein right now, so the industry needs to build new fermenters,” he says. “With molecular farming, we could use the same lands that are currently used to grow animal feed right now. You only need to switch the seeds.”

Bioceres has an existing network of growers in Latin America and the U.S., which is helping Moolec to expand its operations.

The regulatory process for molecular farming is relatively complicated, requiring both USDA and FDA approval (while the precision fermentation process requires only FDA approval). Moolec is currently working its way through the regulatory process.

Moolec’s process involves farming genetically modified crops on a large scale, a controversial practice in some regions. Paladini says that the team plans to take an active and transparent approach when it comes to communicating with the public about GMOs.

“We believe that we need to inform, educate, and promote the benefits of GM techniques, when they’re used for a good reason,” he says. Toward that end, the company is working on building an NGO in collaboration with scientists and industry representatives. The organization, GM4GOOD, will “promote the benefits of using science and GM techniques.”

Moolec is currently working with R&D departments at CPG companies to develop end products using its proteins. The team plans to re-launch its plant-derived chymosin later this year, and to introduce its alternative meat proteins in late 2022 or early 2023.

Both New Culture and Moolec can leverage knowledge from previous applications of their technologies, and both companies will face challenges as they build up scale and work toward regulatory approval. And there are questions to ask about both companies’ processes: about the energy intensivity of protein extraction, for instance, and the land use implications of growing animal proteins in plants at scale.

But both companies’ uses of technology to produce native dairy proteins mark big steps forward for alternative cheese. The next wave of cow-free cheeses will likely be more versatile and convincing, and more attractive to restaurants and CPG companies.

Formo Raises $50 Million to Make Animal-Free Cheese With Precision Fermentation

Berlin-based Formo announced today it had raised $50 million in Series A funding. The investment in the maker of animal-free cheese was led by EQT Ventures, with Elevat3 Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.

The company, which started out as Legendairy Foods but rebranded earlier this year, says it will use the new cash to build a pilot plant, fast-track commercial production, and expand its science team.

From the release:

“With the resulting increase in R&D capacity, Formo plans to expand its product portfolio to represent a wide variety of European dairy specialties such as mozzarella and ricotta, with techniques designed in collaboration with artisan cheesemakers.“

Formo uses a precision fermentation process to make animal-free dairy cheese with animal identical proteins. For cheese, this means first encoding DNA into microorganisms to produce casein and whey. From there, they feed the microbes until they produce enough protein, which is then harvested and combined with other ingredients to make cheese.

“Formo domesticates microorganisms instead of cows, using precision fermentation to create nature-identical dairy products. Formo’s cheeses have the same taste, texture, and functional properties as animal-derived cheeses, but come at a substantially lower cost for the environment, human health, and animal welfare. With microorganisms being up to 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into food, Formo can already undercut consumers’ willingness to pay at commercial production scale.“

The company says the $50 million is Europe’s largest series A food tech investment to date. This is true if we’re not counting restaurant tech (and Karma Kitchen’s $317 million series A), but no matter how you slice it, Formo’s latest is impressive and certainly the largest we’ve seen for a precision fermentation startup in Europe.

Imagindairy Using Precision Fermentation to Create Animal-Free Dairy Proteins

Imagindairy, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that re-creates dairy proteins without the cow, publicly announced itself and its technology today.

In a press release emailed to The Spoon, Imagindairy said that its micro-flora, precision fermentation technology re-creates nature-identical, animal-free versions of whey and casein proteins. These proteins can be used to develop analogs of dairy products such as cheese, milk and yogurt. Imagindairy says these analogs will have the same flavor, texture and nutritional value as conventional dairy products, and will also be lactose-free, and won’t carry the environmental and ethical complications around raising dairy livestock.

There is certainly an appetite for animal-free dairy products. Recent data from The Good Food Institute found that U.S. sales of plant-based cheese grew 42 percent over the past year and the category is now worth $270 million. More than 162 million units of plant-based yogurt were sold in 2020, up 20 percent over the last year. Meanwhile, sales of plant-based plant-based ice cream and frozen novelty was also up 20 percent with 88 million units sold in 2020.

Precision fermentation has been called the third pillar of alternative protein, alongside plant-based and cultured meat. Last year, the Good Food Institute reported that there were 44 companies working on fermentation-based alternative proteins, up from 23 in 2018. The best known is Perfect Day here in the U.S., which already has products made with its technology out in the market via the Brave Robot ice cream brand. In Germany, Formo (formerly Legendairy) said it will unveil its first precision fermented cheese this year. And over in the Asia-Pacific region, Change Foods is working on its own brand on animal-free cheese.

In its press announcement, Imagindairy said its technology can be “readily integrated” into existing dairy food production facilities. The company has raised $1.5 million in Seed funding, led by The Kitchen FoodTech hub with participation from the Israeli Innovative Authority, CPT Capital, New Crop Capital, and Entrée Capital.

Podcast: Talking Plant-Based Cheese With Grounded Foods’ Veronica Fil

While the plant-based meat and milk space has seen incredible momentum the last couple of years, cheese has been another story.

It’s not that anyone hasn’t tried. Companies like Treeline have been making vegan cheese for a while, and they’ve certainly found their niche among vegans. Still, for those of us non-vegans who want to try some plant-based alternatives for health or sustainability reasons, there hasn’t really been anything out there that’s really close to the real thing.

Until now. Grounded Foods new line up of plant-based cheese, which will start shipping early in 2021, tastes just like the real thing. I had a chance to try some of their early prototypes in February and was blown away. It had the taste, mouth feel and true cheese funkiness that you expect from the real thing.

In short, if what I tried early last year is anything close to the final product, Grounded Foods might do for cheese what Impossible Foods did for beef.

In this episode, I talk with Grounded Foods CEO and cofounder Veronica Fil. who shares the story of how she came up with the idea for a plant-based cheese that appealed to non-vegans. She also shares how she convinced her co-founder and husband, who was running one of the top restaurants in Australia, that making cheese – not running a restaurant – was the big idea they should pursue.

If you haven’t heard Veronica Fil and Grounded Foods’ story, you’ll definitely want to give it a listen. Just click play below, download direct to your device, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

No Whey! A Rundown of Alternative Cheese Startups

With summertime here, vegans across the country will be grilling up sizzling Beyond and Impossible burgers . While the burgers themselves may be delicious, there is still a deficit when it comes to non animal-based cheese they want to melt on there.

But the days of lackluster vegan cheese will soon be a thing of the past, as there are a number of startups working on non-dairy cheese — and raising millions to do so. Here’s a list of companies rising up to the cheese challenge:

  • Heartbest is a Mexican startup that recently raised $2 million for its plant-based cheese that uses ingredients like amaranth, quinoa and peas.
  • GOOD PLANeT Foods makes plant-based cheese from coconut oil, potato starch and natural flavorings and is widely available at retail locations like Walmart, Costco and Whole Foods . The company raised $12 million last month to expand production.
  • Grounded Foods uses cauliflower to create cheeses like camembert guyere and roquefort, and is part of the Big Ideas Ventures alternative protein accelerator.
  • Noquo Foods has ditched traditional plant-based ingredients for its product and instead relies on a “stable matrix” of legumes to better replicate cheese. The company raised $3.6 million at the beginning of this year.
  • Legendairy Foods ferments microbes in a process similar to creating insulin and has already created prototypes for mozzarella and ricotta. The German company raised $4.7 million in funding last year.
  • New Culture is also creating mozzarella cheese in the lab, using “recombinant protein technology” that also uses genetically modified microbes to make milk protein. It raised $3.5 million last year.
  • Perfect Day uses fermentation of microbes to recreate cream cheese and feta in the lab and has raised $201 million in funding so far.

Though most of these startups won’t save vegan bbqs this summer, saying (non-animal) cheese, please, is something they’ll definitely be able to do in the not too distant future.

Cauliflower Camembert? Grounded Foods’ New Plant-based Cheese is Surprisingly Delicious

When I was doing Vegan January (also known as Veganuary) this year, there was only one thing I missed: cheese. While there are relatively good substitutes available for ice cream, butter, milk, yogurt, and even eggs, cheese was the one thing that I just could not find an animal-free replacement for that didn’t taste bland, rubbery, or worse.

So when I went into the Big Idea Ventures (BIV) office in New York City this week to taste a new plant-based cheese from startup Grounded Foods, part of BIV’s latest alternative protein accelerator program, I came in with a healthy amount of skepticism. Especially since I knew that the main ingredient in many of the cheeses was one of the unsexier vegetables on the planet: cauliflower.

Grounded Foods’ vegan “Camembert.” [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

But before we get to the taste test, here’s a bit of background. Founded in Australia in July of 2019, Grounded Foods grew out of co-founder Shaun Quade’s efforts to develop a plant-based Roquefort (blue cheese) for a new high-end restaurant concept. As he and his co-founder (and wife) Veronica Fil started looking for funding for the restaurant, they realized that people were actually interested in investing in the Roquefort itself. “They just wanted to give money for the plant-based cheese!” Fil said.

Since then the company has participated in the Mars Seeds of Change accelerator, for which they earned $40,000, and just relocated to New York a few months ago to join the latest Big Idea Ventures cohort. As part of the alt-protein accelerator they receive $250,000 in funding. Next up Fil and Quade plan to move to the West Coast, where they believe there is the largest audience for high-caliber faux cheese. Fil and Quade hope that their products will attract not only vegans but flexitarians who either have dairy sensitivities or are looking for healthier ways to get their “cheese” fix.

The pair plan to launch their cheese through high-end restaurants later this year in order to establish the Grounded Foods brand before branching into direct-to-consumer sales and, eventually, retail. Ambitious plans to be sure, but Quade revealed that they’re prepared to scale; in fact, they’ve already secured a location on which to build their first large scale manufacturing facility on the West Coast. They’ve also filed a patent for their fermentation protocol, which Fil told me is the secret sauce that makes their cheese so “addictive” and full of umami (savory) flavor.

Pricing isn’t set in stone, but Fil told me that they expect to be cost-competitive with other cheese alternatives right out of the gate. Since their product is made using relatively inexpensive ingredients and low-tech processes, she claims it’s not expensive to produce. Grounded Foods is also cutting cost by using “ugly” cauliflower — vegetables that are aesthetically unfit to sell to grocers — to make their cheese.

Australian feta made from hemp seed. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Now for the moment of truth: how did the Grounded Foods cheese taste? I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of offerings were a home run, successfully imitating the things I love most about cheese: the umami flavor, silky texture, and creaminess. The camembert (cauliflower + hemp) was a standout; it actually emulated the funky “stinkiness” that you taste with aged French cheese. The gruyere (oats + cauliflower) was slightly less similar to its namesake, though it had a sharpness that would take well to being melted over pasta or tucked in a sandwich. The Australian feta, which was marinated in olive oil and herbs, was pleasantly smooth and fatty, and the scallion cream cheese would honestly have fooled me in a taste test. It was that good.

The only miss for me was the “cheese” sauce, which is meant to replace Velveeta. While tasty it tasted distinctly vegetal and reminded me more of a butternut squash sauce than the beloved neon-orange cheese sauce.

The offerings I sampled were only the tip of the faux cheese iceberg. Quade is already developing other vegan cheeses to add to the Grounded Foods portfolio, including a mozzarella and blue cheese. “We have not fully explored the potential of vegetables,” Quade told me. There’s also another product line in the mix meant specifically to appeal to Gen Z diners.

Gruyere made from hemp seeds. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Besides being quite tasty, Grounded Foods’ biggest advantage is its ingredient list. Most plant-based cheeses are made of nuts, soy, or coconut oil. The first two eliminate consumers who have certain food allergies, and the oil-based cheeses don’t have much nutritional content to speak of. Instead they’re made just of cauliflower, hemp, and oat, transformed through Quade’s proprietary fermentation process (which he, unsurprisingly, was hesitant to reveal too many details about).

While Grounded Foods is trying to crack the animal-free cheese code with plants, other companies are using a decidedly more high-tech approach. Perfect Day and New Culture have developed a method to ferment dairy proteins using genetically engineered microbes; in essence creating milk without the cow (which can then be turned into cheese). However, there’s no word on exactly when these offerings will go to market — or how costly they’ll be when they get there. Next-gen dairy startups like Eclipse Foods and Noquo Foods are also using plans to develop better-tasting cheese alternatives, but neither has announced a concrete timeline to enter the market.

Grounded Foods has been moving incredibly quickly considering it’s just over 6 months old. However, it’s still a young startup with only two full-time employees (Fil and Quade), neither of whom have experience scaling an alternative business. We’ll have to see if they can establish all the tricky parts of running a food manufacturing business, like establishing a supply chain, branding, and finding effective restaurant and retail partners.

However, with demand for plant-based cheese on the rise, there’s a lot of space for a market disrupter who will make vegan cheese that’s actually worth eating. And as far as taste goes, Grounded Foods takes the cake — er, camembert.

Noquo Foods Raises $3.6M to Make Plant-based Cheese That Actually Tastes Good

Today Stockholm, Sweden-based Noquo Foods announced it had raised a €3.25 million ($3.6 million USD) seed round. Investors included VC firms Astanor Ventures, Northzone, Inventure, Purple Orange Ventures, and Creandum. Henry Soesanto, CEO of mushroom-based vegan food line Quorn, and a handful of angel investors also participated.

Noquo Foods was founded one year ago by Anja Leissner and Sorosh Tavakoli. The company has a singular goal: make vegan cheese that actually tastes good.

As it turns out, that is surprisingly complicated. (If you don’t believe me, go and taste some of the plant-based cheeses currently on the market — there’s a lot of room for improvement). During a phone call yesterday Tavakoli told me that current vegan cheese offers are usually made from coconut oil and plant starch, or else nuts. Both fall short when it comes to emulating cheese, and nuts have the added burden of being expensive. Animal-free cheese made from fermentation — like that from Perfect Day, Legendairy and New Culture — is certainly promising, but it may be a while before it’s widely available (or cost competitive).

Instead of coconut or cashews, Noquo Foods is making their cheese out of legumes that are formed into what Tavakoli calls a “stable matrix.” This, he claims, will allow their cheese to slice, melt, and taste like the real thing, and also have more protein than some other vegan options.

Nuquo Foods’ cheesy prototypes [Photo: Nuquo Foods]

The key word in that sentence is will. Despite their notable fundraise, Noquo Foods actually doesn’t have a product to market yet. They’ve developed a few prototypes — including one for a feta-like cheese — but haven’t even done a significant public taste test. Tavakoli is aware that they have a ways to go, and told me that the company will funnel most of its new capital into R&D. “We haven’t totally cracked it yet,” he added. At least at first, they’re focusing specifically on cheddar-like cheese meant for melting and slicing. He hopes to bring a product to market by the end of the year.

Initially Noquo Foods will sell its plant-based cheese to foodservice providers in Sweden in a similar model to Impossible Foods or Oatly. Down the road Tavakoli said they would create their own branded product line for retail.

Having $3.6 million in their pocket is certainly helpful, but Noquo Foods still has an uphill battle ahead of them. The company is quite small; Tavakoli and his cofounder just hired their first two employees — food scientists — in November. There’s also the fact that making cheese from plants is hard. If companies with even larger warchests and teams of R&D scientists are struggling to make vegan cheese that tastes like the real thing, I’m guessing Noquo Foods will also face plenty of hurdles.

There might not be many tasty vegan cheeses available right now, but consumers are hungry for them. A study by the Good Food Institute showed that sales of plant-based cheese grew by almost 70 percent from 2017 to 2019.

Looking at Noquo Foods’ seed round, I’d say that investors are pretty hungry for the next generation of vegan cheese, too.

Lab-Made Cheese Maker Legendairy Raises $4.7 Million

Legendairy Foods, which ferments microorganisms into cheeses with the same process used for making insulin, has raised $4.7 million from a group of investors that include German drugs and tech company Merck KGaA (not to be confused with the American drug company, Merck) and UK-based investment company Agronomics.

The Berlin-based startup told Bloomberg it has already created prototypes of mozzarella and ricotta. The company’s process involves mixing microorganisms and sugar, fermenting them into milk protein and creating dairy products such as cheese. It also plans to integrate plant-based ingredients into its products.

“The food industry has crossed an inflection point — for the first time in human history, we are capable of producing real dairy products without the need of breeding and raising animals,” Raffael Wohlgensinger, co-founder and CEO of Legendairy, said in an investor release. He added that the company will “fully leverage our core technology and bring our delicious, animal-free cheese to market in the coming years.”

Legendairy, which says it is Europe’s first cellular agriculture company developing lab-grown dairy products, joins a growing group of startups dedicated to removing animals from the process of creating milk. Perfect Day, which this month raised $140 million in Series C funding, creates dairy products with genetically engineered microbes and plans to sell its products to foodmakers. Another company that creates dairy from genetically engineered microbes is New Culture, which closed a $3.5 million seed round. It plans to sell its cheeses into high-end restaurants. Meanwhile, TurtleTree Labs is creating milk in a whole different way: actually growing mammary gland cells in a lab to produce milk.

It’s clear that in the coming years, there will be plenty of options besides nut- and soy-based milk and cheeses for those who forgo animal-derived dairy products.

New Culture is Developing Creamy Mozzarella Cheese Without the Cow

If you’re seeking out plant-based dairy, odds are you’ll be able to track down pretty tasty vegan versions of yogurt, milk, butter, and ice cream. But the Holy Grail of dairy alternatives, which at least this writer thinks has yet to be cracked, is vegan cheese.

New Culture, a New Zealand-based company that recently relocated to Silicon Valley, is trying to make an animal-free cheese that tastes just as good as the real thing. Only instead of turning to plants, they’re using biotechnology to reverse engineer cheese’s main ingredient: milk.

According to New Culture’s founder Matt Gibson, there’s a good reason that we haven’t yet been able to make dairy-free cheese that would fool anyone: the cheesemaking process super complicated.

Broadly speaking, milk is made up of water, fats, sugars (lactose) and proteins (casein + whey). When acid is introduced to the milk the proteins coagulate and bond to make water-resistant micelles, which are basically curds. Smoosh those curds together and you’ve got the makings of cheese.

But without casein, it’s really, really hard to make a cheese that tastes, cuts, and melts like the real deal. “Proteins are what we love about dairy cheese,” Gibson explained me over Skype.

As of now, there aren’t any plant-based options that can mimic casein well enough to fool anyone. So New Culture’s team decided to make it themselves using something called “recombinant protein technology.” The company uses genetically modified microbes — like yeast — and “trains” them to produce certain proteins, like casein. The team then adds water, plant-based fat, sugar, and minerals to the casein, which creates something that acts and tastes a lot like milk. “From there, it’s a pretty standard cheese-making process,” said Gibson.

First up, New Culture will be tackling mozzarella, which Gibson called “the gold standard of cheese.” I’m partial to a sharp cheddar myself, but this makes sense from a proof of concept perspective. Mozzarella doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor to hide behind, so it’s a good blank canvas to prove just how good New Culture’s technology is. Gibson’s goal is to make a product that’s good enough to stand on its own on a cheese plate, not just as a melted pizza topping.

New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella.

The company has got a ways to go before they’ll get there. As of now, they haven’t even made cheese from their own proteins yet. While they’re making milk through the aforementioned recombinant protein technology, they haven’t made enough proteins to do their own mozzarella R&D. So for now, New Culture is also purchasing pre-made casein micelles to supplement their development efforts.

The six-month-old startup is currently in science accelerator program IndieBio. Gibson told me they hope to have a cheese sample made with their own proteins ready for Demo Day on June 25.

New Culture isn’t the first company to use this type of technology to make cow-free dairy. Most notable is Perfect Day, a Berkeley-based startup that is also creating milk proteins in a lab by creating casein and whey with genetically modified microbes.

But where Perfect Day is targeting a B2B market, selling their “dairy” to big CPG companies, Gibson said that New Culture will have more of an Impossible Foods model. He plans to debut their cheese in a San Francisco high-end restaurant to validate the product before expanding into more mid-range food spots and maybe even retail. Gibson wouldn’t commit to an exact timeline, but said they plan to do their first taste test “at least 18 months from now.”

The thing is, Perfect Day — which has been around 5 years longer than New Culture — initially also had a B2C go-to-market strategy. However, in 2017 they pivoted to a B2B model so they could focus their efforts on R&D and also scale more quickly. They’re currently partnering with ADM to debut a whey protein powder, so that strategy seems to be paying off.

I wouldn’t be surprised if New Culture makes a similar pivot down the line. For a company that hasn’t even successfully developed a product, it’s pretty ambitious to say that they’ll have their own branded line of cheese in a restaurant in a year and a half. It’s also just a huge lift to simultaneously develop a product, create a brand strategy, and forge restaurant and retail partnership.

Sure, cheese is more expensive than milk or yogurt and they’ll be debuting at a fancy restaurant, so their price point doesn’t have to be super low. But eventually it will have to be, especially if they want to capture the attention of flexitarians.

New Culture is also working with a pretty lean team and comparatively little funding: as of now it’s just Gibson and two other founders. The company received $250k from IndieBio as part of the accelerator and has already raised an undisclosed amount of funding from “an international VC firm” over the past few months.

Regardless of whether they end up changing go-to-market strategies, New Culture is still getting into the dairy alternative space at a good time. Consumer demand for plant-based dairy is on the rise: according to Research and Markets, the global dairy alternative market is projected to reach $26 billion by 2023. And while Perfect Day may have a head start, there’s plenty of space for two (or more) players in the alt-dairy space. Especially if it means better tasting dairy-free cheese.

Food Tech News: Morningstar Goes Vegan, Smart Cheesemaker Fromaggio Launches Kickstarter

This week’s food tech news roundup starts out with a tale of two cheeses. On one hand, we have Morningstar, which has pledged to make all their products vegan over the next two years (cheese and all). On the other, we have Fromaggio, a smart cheesemaking device which just launched on Kickstarter, and which will allow you to make cheese from scratch in your own kitchen.

Kind of makes you hungry, right? Well go make a grilled cheese sandwich (vegan or not) and settle in to read our latest missive from the world of food tech news. In addition to all the cheese, this week we’ve got stories on canned tuna blockchain and a new tool that’ll tell you what wine to pair with your recipes. Enjoy!

Photo: Morningstar Farms.

Morningstar Farms to go 100% vegan by 2021
This week Morningstar Farms, which is owned by Kellogg, pledged to make its product line completely vegan by 2021. The company already sells plant-based products — from veggie breakfast sausage to burger patties — but will stop using eggs and dairy. Morningstar Farms is also debuting a vegan “Cheezeburger” at Expo West this week, which is their vegan Meat Lovers patty topped with dairy-free “cheddar.” This shift is a strategic move on Morningstar’s part to hone in on blossoming demand for plant-based products, especially protein.

Photo: Fromaggio Kickstarter.

Smart cheesemaking device Fromaggio launches on Kickstarter
For those who aren’t avoiding dairy, you might consider backing Fromaggio, a smart countertop cheesemaker that launched on Kickstarter this week. We’ve been fans of Fromaggio since we got to sample its tasty products at our Food Tech Live event at CES this past January. Cheese-lovers can snag a Fromaggio for $299 (the $249 level has already sold out), with estimated delivery in March 2020 (though we all know the struggle of crowdfunded hardware). The Fromaggio will retail for $579.

 

Photo by Thomas Martinsen on Unsplash

Allrecipes has a new tool that will recommend wine pairings
This Tuesday Meredith, owner of recipe recommendation site Allrecipes, unveiled a new tool that will recommend wine pairings to go with certain recipes in their database (h/t Digiday). Wine recommendations will be shoppable in U.S. states where it’s legal. The tool is part of Meredith’s partnership with Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, a vintner in Washington State (where Allrecipes is based), and will initially have 17 Ste. Michelle wines available.

Photo: Bumblebee.

Bumble Bee Foods and Carrefour use blockchain to track tuna and milk
It was quite the week for food companies to experiment with blockchain — though I suppose with buzz around the new technology, it’s always quite the week. Bumble Bee Foods announced that it has been piloting a program which uses blockchain to trace its yellowfin tuna from the time it’s caught until when it arrives on store shelves (h/t Fortune).

Over in Europe, Carrefour stated that it will soon begin rolling out a new product, Carrefour Quality Line (CQL) milk, which uses blockchain to provide increased traceability. Consumers can scan a QR code on CQL milk and get information about where the cows were milked, and when it arrived on retail shelves.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech to clue us in on any food tech news!

Meet Fromaggio, a Countertop Cheese-Making Robot

For most of us, making cheese at home seems almost laughably unattainable, something for the Martha Stewart’s of the world, not the average (or even above average) home cook. A simple ricotta, maybe, but a blue cheese or a cheddar? No way.

A new device claims it can make even the most hapless cook into a cheesemaker. Fromaggio, which debuted at CES 2019, is a smart countertop appliance that takes the guesswork out of making any kind of cheese. Just add the right type of milk (sheep, cow, or goat), pop in a pod of cultures, and press a button. In 48 hours or less you’ll have a round of cheese. (Admittedly, for hard cheeses like cheddar you still have to age it.)

We caught up with Fromaggio founder Dr. Glen Feder on the floor of our Food Tech Live event to get a hands-on look at the machine that will make everyone (yes, even you) a cheesemaker. And to eat our weight in cheese samples, of course.

The Spoon looks at Fromaggio, a smart home cheese maker