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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The Week in Food Tech Funding: Double (Alt) Cheese Funding & Big Money for Misfits

Fall is upon us in the Pacific Northwest, and alongside autumn colors and windy weather is lots and lots of food tech venture capital. This week’s funding news includes not one but two alt-mozzarella startups, a monster round for ugly produce online retailer Misfits Market, and three pieces of food robot funding news.

On to it:

Plant-Based Food

Sophie’s Kitchen – $5.6 Million: Sophie’s Kitchen has raised $5.6 million to fund the growth of its plant-based seafood lineup of products. The company, founded in 2010, offers a line of alt-seafood products, including crab cakes, shrimp, salmon, and tuna. Billy Goat Brands led the round, a Canadian venture fund focused on sustainability. Sophie’s Kitchen products can currently be found at Walmart, Sprouts, and Wegmans. The funding continues the momentum for the plant-based seafood category, which saw $116 million in funding in the first half of 2021 (compared to $26 million for the whole of 2020).

Growthwell – $22 Million: Singapore-based plant-based seafood and chicken maker Growthwell has raised a $22 million Series A led by Creadev. The company, which raised $8 million last year, “owns a portfolio of alternative protein companies aimed at Southeast Asian consumers, including OKK (plant-based meat), Su Xian Zi (vegan mutton), and gomama (ready to eat dishes made from plants).” They also sell a chickpea protein powder called ChickP for use in meat and dairy alternatives.

NUMU Food Group: Plant-based cheese startup NUMU has raised early in September. The amount of the funding was undisclosed. The company makes plant-based mozzarella from potato starch, soybeans, and coconut oil. Started a former DJ named Gunars Elmuts, NUMU sells its cheese to food service providers in shreds and blocks.

Precision Fermentation

Formo – $50 Million: Berlin-based Formo announced 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. Formo uses a precision fermentation process to make animal-free dairy cheese with animal identical proteins. The company plans to use the funding to “With the resulting increase in R&D capacity, Formo intends 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.“

Food Robots

Pudu Robotics – $78 Million: China-based Pudu Robotics announced this week it had raised a $78 million C2 found of financing, matching the same dollar amount for its May C1 funding round. In total, the company has raised $156 million in Series C financing. The company makes a few different types of bots, including a front-of-house bot called the Bellabot, a cleaning bot, and two models of delivery bots.

Keenon Robotics – $200 Million: Another China-based robotics startup Keenon Robotics has raised an impressive round with its $200 million Series D. Its round was led by Softbank. Like Pudu Robotics, Keenon also makes food delivery and front-of-house food service bots and robots for hospitals.

Daxbot – $211 Thousand Crowdfunding: This week, Daxbot, a maker of sidewalk food delivery robots, launched its equity crowdfunding raise. Like many food robot startups, Daxbot is using StartEngine for its raise, and the company has already (as of this writing) raised $211 thousand from 136 investors. Today the company’s robots are being used for food delivery in Philomath, Oregon.

Online Grocery

Misfits Market – $225M Series C-1: Online grocer Misfits Market announced it had raised almost a quarter billion in new funding via a Series C-1 round. It’s a quick turnaround for more capital for the sustainability-focused online grocer that works with farmers and food producers to save ugly produce and food that otherwise would go into the compost bin; the company raised a $200 million Series C in April. Misfits Market joins fellow ugly food retailer Imperfect Foods as one of the companies that have tapped investor interest in the food waste space.

Smart Vending

Foodles – €31 million: Smart corporate food vending/catering startup Foodles has raised a €31 million Series B round from InfraVia Growth and Bpifrance via its Large Venture fund, and follow on rounds from existing investors, Creadev, DN Capital, and Adelie. The French company offers connected fridges, which it calls canteens that it supplies with food. According to the company, each fridge can provide food to up to 59 employees. The company hopes to disrupt a European contract catering market worth 240 billion euros.

Food Supply Chain Software

Grubmarket – $120 Million: Grubmarket, a provider of software and services to enable food producers, has raised a $120 million Series E round. The company’s software enables food producers and distributors to manage inventory, pricing, customer relations, and other company-related operations. The company’s announced hinted in the announcement that they will likely expand from just software into robotics in the future: “GrubMarket will likely also start to explore connected hardware to help those customers, too: robotics for picking and moving items” related to those activities managed by its supply chain oriented software.

Restaurant Tech

SpotOn – $300 Million: Payments software startup SpotOn announced this week it has raised a $300 million Series E to help finance the acquisition of Appetize, a mobile and digital payments startup focused on sports and entertainment venues, amusement parks, and zoos. Mega-VC Andreessen Horowitz led the deal (as they did SpotOn’s last round). A16z’s eagerness to inject more capital into SpotOn probably has a lot to do with the company’s tripling of revenue over the past 18 months. SpotOn, which has traditionally focused on SMBs (the segment of the restaurant space that has been the most aggressive in modernizing its tech stack during the pandemic), will now be able to sell into the enterprise market with the newly acquired Appetize.

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.

Food Tech News: Consumer Acceptance Study on Precision Fermentation Dairy, Seaweed Cattle Feed, and Airdropped Beer

Welcome to the weekly Food Tech News round-up, where we gather recent stories you might have missed. This week a few pieces caught our eye, including a recently published consumer acceptance study on precision fermentation, a new facility for seaweed-based cattle feed, a university in Singapore offering an alternative protein course, and Busch Light dropping beer from a helicopter.

Consumer acceptance study on precision-fermentation-derived dairy products

Formo (formally LegenDairy), a Berlin-based alternative dairy start-up, announced this week that it co-published what it is calling the first-ever consumer acceptance study on precision fermentation-derived dairy products. The study was published in the peer-review journal “Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.” A little over 5,000 people from the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, Germany, and India were surveyed on their attitudes towards animal-free dairy products, specifically cheese, that are molecularly identical to real dairy. The study found that strong enthusiasm from all five countries, with 71 percent of the participants saying they were willing to buy animal-free dairy cheeses and 79 percent willing to try these alternative cheese products.

Photo by Celia Sun on Unsplash

A new $90 million facility for methane-reducing seaweed cattle feed

Pirie Meats and CH4 Global are partnering to build a $90 million dollar facility in Southern Australia at the end of this year to produce cattle feed made from seaweed. Cattle are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and their feed might be to blame for this. Research by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) found that by feeding cattle a mixture of regular cattle feed and a red seaweed called Asparagopsis, greenhouse gas emissions from cattle could be reduced by 90 percent. CH4 Global will initially supply Pirie Meats with enough red seaweed to feed up to 10,000 head of cattle.

Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash

A university in Singapore will now offer a course on alternative protein

Singapore has recently been gaining recognition as a hub for alternative protein, with it being the first country to offer regulatory approval of the sale of cultured meat and major players in the space opening up new facilities in this Asian city-state. Nanyang Technological University (based in Singapore) will be offering a new course that explores alternative proteins. The course, the first of its kind throughout Asia, will be available starting this upcoming school year for undergraduate students. Called “Future Foods – Introduction to Advanced Meat Alternatives,” the course was developed in partnership with the Good Food Institute and will be coordinated by Professor William Chen. Science and engineering students in their third or fourth year have access to the course that will touch on the three pillars of alternative protein: plant-based, cultured, and fermentation.

Airdropped apple-flavored beer

Busch Light is bringing back its apple-flavored beer, the Busch Light Apple, for the summer season. To celebrate the relaunch, the first batch of the flavored beer will be delivered to fans via helicopter. A small number of fans will be able to receive the airdrop at select locations in the Northwest and Midwest. To enter the free beer giveaway, fans must comment on Busch’s social media posts with the hashtags #BuschLightAppleDrop and #Sweepstakes before June 30th. Those who do not receive Busch Light Apple from the sky can buy the beer for a limited time from select retailers throughout the country.

LegenDairy Rebrands to Formo, Announces Plans to Bring Products to Market

LegenDairy, a precision fermentation alterative dairy company, announced today that it has rebranded to the name Formo, and that it will focus on consumer-facing products with plans to unveil its first products later this year.

To create its animal-free milk proteins, Formo uses microorganisms instead of cows. These undisclosed microorganisms are first encoded with the DNA sequences of milk proteins. A fermenter is then used to grow the cells, which are harvested when enough protein has been raised. From this point, the cultivated milk protein can be used to make cheese.

Plant-based ingredients, like different fats and carbohydrates, are added to the milk proteins to create the base of cheese products. Like traditional cheese, the product is heated until it turns into curd. After this step, a wide spectrum of cheese products can be created from this base and packaged as fresh or ripened to create a stronger flavor.

Formo shared that it is first focusing on specialty European cheeses, like ricotta and a few ripened/aged kinds of cheese. The company will launch its products where customers are most excited about it (based on its upcoming consumer acceptance study) and where it can get regulatory approval.

In addition to Formo, a few other companies use precision fermentation to create alternative dairy and cheese products. Perfect Day applies its precision fermentation process through its spinoff brand, Brave Robot, to create an animal-free ice cream that is molecularly identical to real dairy. Change Foods uses precision fermentation to develop its cheddar and mozzerella, and plans on launching its product on the market in 2023.

Formo is currently expanding its team of scientists and executives in preparation for its initial product presentation in Europe this year, and market launch in 2023. Prior to the launch, the company will host a tasting this summer for its alternative cheese products with Ricky Saward, the first plant-based Michelin star chef.