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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

edible packaging

Big Idea Ventures’ GFRP Fund Acquires Edible Packaging Startup DisSolves

Today, Generation Food Rural Partners I, LP (GFRP), a member fund that is part of the food tech investor Big Idea Ventures (BIV) family, has announced its acquisition of DisSolves, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based maker of biodegradable and edible packaging solutions.

With this deal, GFRP gets a patented technology that utilizes GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) biodegradable and edible components to create films and packaging materials. That technology is what’s behind Dissolves’ first product, a polysaccharide-based film that can be used to package up individual servings of powders, baby formula, and instant coffee, which can then be dropped into liquids (like water, milk, or coffee) where it will dissolve and not alter the taste.

“Our partnership with GFRP will accelerate our efforts, allowing us to implement pilot programs with leading food producers and move towards scaled manufacturing of all-natural dissolvable food packaging,” said DisSolves founder Jared Raszewski. You can see Raszewski explain how the product works in the video below.

DisSolves Duquesne New Venture Challenge - Round 2

If a fund acquiring a startup to commercialize and scale sounds a little different than the typical way a venture deal works, you’re right. However, according to BIV Chief Investment Officer Tom Mastrobuoni, GFRP was created to build companies from scratch and commercialize them. The only difference with DisSolves, said Mastrobuoni, is that they didn’t need to start from zero, validate the technology, or find a founder. DisSolves provided all that off the shelf.

The typical BIV model “is we are starting a company from the ground up,” said Mastrobuoni. “The Investment Committee usually approves the first million dollars to be deployed into that company, and that’s done because we’re bringing on a new CEO, we’re doing techno-economic analysis of IP. We want to make sure what we’re actually building is what we thought we were going to be building during the IC (investment committee) process.”

Mastrobuoni says from there, the GFRP IC has a second phase where it will approve a $3-$5 million capital investment that enables it to take that initial company and product foundation and get it from sort of prototype to minimally marketable products, all the while utilizing shared resources across the BIV family such as fractional CFOs and manufacturing expertise. Since DisSolves already accomplished what is usually done with the first round of capital, GFRP and DisSolves will be able to move right away to this second phase of capital deployment to enable commercialization scale-up.

DisSolves appealed to GFRP and BIV because the fund saw an opportunity within a growing space of more sustainable packaging where there haven’t been any established winners, particularly in the single-serve segment. Mastrobuoni says that as bigger food brands begin to realize the difficulty of reaching their corporate sustainability pledges over the next 5 to 10 years, they’ll begin to embrace technologies like those from DisSolves, which can solve a lot of the single-use serving packaging that ends up in the waste stream.

“A lot of these corporates have made 30 by 30, 25 by 25 promises,” said Mastrobuoni. “And it’s going to be interesting when those years hit to see how many of them have actually hit those numbers, not by buying carbon offsets but actually achieving reductions in their footprint.”

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Mastrobuoni’s guidance suggests the company was probably valued at around $1 million or so. Raszewski will continue with the company as Founder & Chief Product Officer, and GFRP will install Scott Bolin, the founding CEO of another BIV portfolio company in Terrasafe (which also makes sustainable packaging), as president of DisSolves. Bolin will also continue in his role with Terrasafe.

Sip & Snack? Meet The Edible Coffee Cup

While most of us experience a pang of guilt when consuming water from a plastic bottle, we don’t feel nearly as bad about drinking a cup of joe out of a paper cup. After all, they’re compostable, right?

Not so fast. A significant portion of paper coffee cups have a plastic lining that prevents them from being compostable. Additionally, the production process of these cups generates a considerable amount of CO2 emissions due to the loss of carbon-capturing trees and the energy consumption required for manufacturing and distribution.

But what if we could munch on our cup instead of discarding it in the compost bin after enjoying our morning brew?

That’s the vision of a Bulgarian startup called Cupffee, which creates an edible coffee cup that users can snack on once they’ve finished their drink. The cup, made from edible vegan components such as oat bran, wheat flour, and water, resembles a coffee cup-shaped ice cream cone that can withstand temperatures up to 85 degrees Celsius (185 Fahrenheit) and remains crisp for up to 40 minutes after being filled. Available in two sizes, 110 and 220 ml, the cup also features a relatively low-calorie content (56 or 105 kcal).

The idea behind the Cupffee edible coffee cup comes from Miroslav Zapryanov, company founder and CEO at Cupffee. As a student, Zapryanov began considering the environmental ramifications of plastic waste and disposable coffee cups and spent years developing the recipe in his own kitchen. Today, with a specialized machine and production process in place, this idea has materialized into a company capable of producing up to 2.5 million cups per day. The cups are manufactured in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

The company has collaborated with coffee brands like Lavazza, which has resulted with the introduction of the Cupffee in 18 countries. The company has been served at Wimbledon and has been used by Etihad Airways from Abu Dhabi to Brisbane on Earth Day. This traction has led to the company’s initial external investment of EUR 500,000 in a pre-seed funding round from Eleven Ventures, and a EUR 1.3M grant from the European Innovation Council.

Cupffee joins other startups like Good-Edi (edible cups) and IncEDIBLE Eats (edible cutlery/straws) that believe the way to more sustainable single-use consumption is through, well, consumption. I like the idea but have to wonder how many folks are willing to eat a coffee or ice cream-soaked cup or spoon every time they get a beverage or ice cream. I also question whether coffee drinkers want to be on the clock, making sure they drink or dispose of the drink within 40 minutes or so before the cup becomes soggy.

Another challenge is cost. According to the Cupffee website, a cup costs between 45 cents and 62 cents per cup when purchased in packs of 200, which compares to about 18 cents for a paper cup. At a price of 2-3 times a typical cup, margin-constrained food service purveyors might be deterred from using these products.

But who knows? In the long run, more customers will avoid single-use containers altogether by bringing their own cups. But not everyone carries a cup at all times, so those who occasionally forget their travel mugs might be ok with buying a cup of joe poured into their mid-morning snack.

You can watch how Cupffee makes their edible coffee cups in the video below:

LOOK HOW IT'S MADE CUPFFEE 👀

We Use 50 Billion Water Bottles Per Year. Here’s An Edible Container That Can Stop The Insanity

It’s hard to deny that the food industry is experiencing lots of disruption from startups around the globe who are trying to solve the market’s tough problems. Things like delivery, supply chain, sustainability, waste and sourcing are all on the minds of startups like Skipping Rocks Lab. The particular problem they’re trying to tackle? The proliferation of plastic bottles and the waste they generate.

Skipping Rocks Lab isn’t just minimizing plastic production or coming up with new ways to recycle water bottles – they’ve created a product that basically redefines the way water can be delivered and consumed. Meet Ooho, the water “bottle” that delivers single serve gulps of water and can actually be eaten.

Ooho Short Web from Skipping Rocks Lab on Vimeo

The Ooho balls look like a cross between a gross Jello-based dessert and one of those plastic stress balls you can squeeze to get out frustration. But the balls are in fact edible – made by dipping frozen balls of ice into an algae concoction – and biodegradable, meaning they won’t sit in the ocean somewhere for eternity but rather disintegrate after about 4-6 weeks. Given that 50 billion plastic bottles are used by humans every year (EVERY. YEAR.), it stands to reason that this type of innovation would attract lots of interest.

And so far, it’s working. Skipping Rocks has successfully funded their first campaign on CrowdCube and the videos of people popping spherical water into their mouths have gone viral. The company is mainly serving Ooho at events and festivals – and you can see why. They are small and are perfect for quick hydration where storage isn’t a factor. The product is great for things like marathons and sporting events as well.

But Skipping Rocks vision is to become THE go-to seaweed-based packaging company in the world; they clearly have plans to move beyond water and adapt this packaging to all types of beverages that might be served in plastic. How they move the concept from small balls of water to actual practical implementation remains to be seen. For one, people generally like to consume more than one sip of a beverage in any given setting, and the packaging as it stands cannot be resealed. Once you’ve bitten into it, you’ve committed to consuming whatever is inside in one shot.

The other issue is distribution – the idea that they could be sold widely to consumers in stores means the balls themselves will likely need some type of packaging around them. The membranes are edible and therefore can’t just be left to sit out in the open on shelves. The retail model definitely leaves some questions around sustainability and the impact of the product as a whole.

But for now, it will be interesting to see how the startup uses the investment money and what types of unique implementations they come up with next. And of course, we’ll keep our eyes out for any Ooho balls in the wild – and be sure to document the experience.