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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Funding

Swedish Plant-based Investment Fund Kale United Scores €350K

Plant-based holding company Kale United announced today that its latest funding round, which launched on the crowdfunding site FundedByMe, is fully subscribed and has raised €350,000 ($380,000). The holding group currently has over 100 public and private investors.

Based in Sweden, Kale United has invested in 30 startups making plant-based meat, dairy, and more. Its portfolio currently includes Hooray Foods (meatless bacon), Noquo Foods (vegan cheese), Ocean Hugger Foods (plant-based fish for sushi), and LiveKindly (vegan media platform). According to a press release on their site Kale United’s most successful investment thus far is Astrid Och Aporna, a range of plant-based meat sold in Swedish retailers. The fund will use its fresh capital to expand its portfolio with new early-stage plant-based companies.

$380,000 seems like a pretty modest sum when compared with other plant-based venture firms, like Big Idea Ventures or Agfunder, whose funds are up in the tens of millions. However, it’s intriguing to see that Kale United has turned to a crowdfunding site to raise its sum, meaning that regular folks like you or me could get in on the investment action. Other venture funds require people to be an established investor or pay high entry fees to participate.

This pairs well with the recent trend we’ve been seeing in equity crowdfunding, which is when companies let people buy a stake of the company itself. Kale United isn’t doing exactly the same thing — rather it’s opening its doors to allow people to participate in their fund, which the company will then allocate to startups — but it is democratizing the investment process in a similar way.

It might be an opportune time for people to invest more heavily in animal-free products, despite the circumstances (you know, the global pandemic). Coronavirus is disrupting almost every corner of the food world, but it’s actually spurring sales of plant-based foods, specifically milk and meat. If that trend continues more investment in the space there will be more opportunity for new startups — and for the funds backing them.

Good Food Institute Awards $4M to Scientists Forging the Future of Alt-Meat

The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit trying to promote the evolution of alternative protein, announced today that it had awarded $4 million to 21 research projects to advance the study of plant-based and cultured meat. The money came from GFI’s donor-supported Competitive Research Grant Program, which thus far has donated over $7 million since it was founded last year.

The selected projects hail from nine different countries. Eight are tackling cultured (which GFI called ‘cultivated‘) meat and Here’s a quick list of some of the cool projects the 2020 grantees are leading:

  • Faster, cheaper cultured meat production. Dr. Marianne Ellis of the University of Bath, UK is developing a smaller, more cost-efficient production system for cell-based meat. She hopes that this will make cellular agriculture more accessible, including for those in remote locations and developing countries.
  • Turning waste into plant protein. Dr. Marieke Bruins of Wageningen University in the Netherlands is using plant-based proteins upcycled from agricultural waste streams to make super sustainable meat alternatives.
  • 3D printed cultured meat. Dr. Sara Oliveira of INL in Portugal is working on a bioprinted model for cultured meat design. Called M3atD, the model will help her team explore how 3D printing can help accelerate cell-based meat production.

You can see the full list of grantees from 2020 and 2019 here, if you’re interested. But overall, it seems that the most recent crop of grantees are trying to improve four key areas for plant- and cell-based meat: cost, taste, texture, and scaling. As consumers continue to hunger for plant-based meat, and cell-based meat keeps trekking towards the market, these improvements will be necessary to keep flexitarians satisfied, attract new diners, and reduce the environmental footprint of alt-proteins.

Admittedly, alternative meat is probably not the issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now. But in a time when your newsfeed is full of articles about pandemics, social distancing and scary outlooks, it’s nice to be reminded that positive progress is still going on to help the planet, and help us eat better too.

THIS Raises £4.7M for Plant-based Chicken and Bacon

Even though the news cycle is dominated by coronavirus, the world is still turning — and plant-based meat companies are still getting funding.

In fact, today THIS, a UK startup making alt-meat, raised a £4.7 million ($5.5 million) seed round (h/t Tech.eu). The round was led by Backed with participation from Five Season Ventures, Idinvest Partners, Seedcamp and Manta Ray Ventures. This brings THIS’ (ha) total funding to £5.6 million ($6.6 million).

Founded in 2019, THIS makes alternatives to chicken and bacon — including flavored chicken pieces and nuggets — from a mixture of pea and soy protein. Its products are currently available in 1200 retailers and restaurant chains. As of now, THIS only sells in the U.K.

Photo: THIS’ plant-based bacon

As I’ve written before, chicken is primed to be the next big alt-meat. Startups like NUGGS, Rebellyous, and Daring are all making chicken nuggets and pieces meant to be an easy 1-1 replacement for chicken meat. Larger companies — like Beyond Meat — are also diversifying into chicken. Even Big Meat is getting in on the alt-chicken space. With its new funding, THIS is smart to try and amp up and get more brand recognition and shelf space before it becomes as crowded as plant-based burger space.

The space that has even more potential, I think, is bacon. Very few companies are making plant-based bacon right now, and the ones that I’ve tasted on grocery shelves are generally overly salty and have the texture of cardboard. There’s a vacuum, just waiting for someone like THIS to fill it (before Impossible Foods beats them to it and launches its own product).

THIS will use its new funding to boost manufacturing capacity and establish an internal R&D center. Hopefully that means we’ll be seeing some more plant-based bacon on our grocery shelves in the near future.



Basil Street Raises $10 Million for its Pizza Vending Machines

Basil Street announced today that it has raised a $10 million round of funding that will help the company begin a multi-city pilot of its pizza vending machines starting this April.

Basil Street’s machines are roughly 20 square feet in size and hold up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. The machine serves cheese and pepperoni pies as well as a rotating “Pizza of the month,” each costing between $6.95 and $11.95. Pizzas are made fresh, flash frozen for storage in the machine, and reheated using a patent-pending, non-microwave speed oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is targeting high-volume, high-traffic areas such as airports, military bases, hospitals, college campuses or even inside existing locations like supermarkets.

And also like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is part of a wave of high-tech, haute cuisine automated food kiosks coming to market. Other players — Yo-Kai Express with its hot ramen, Chowbotics with its fresh salads, and Bake Xpress with its pastries (and pizza!) — are all vying to revolutionize what a vending machine is capable of.

But for Basil Street, selling pizza is just part of the equation and really just the start for the company. As we wrote last year, all the machines are IoT-enabled, so the company will have a ton of data to work with:

The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but [Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin] Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

But first, Basil Street has to get its machines up and going, which it will do with this cash infusion (the company had previously raised $3.5 million in family and friends funding). Basil Street will be targeting Texas, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Southern California for its first roll-outs.

BlueNalu Nets $20M Series A to Accelerate Development of Cell-based Seafood

BlueNalu, the startup focused on creating seafood directly from fish cells, today announced that it had closed a $20 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Stray Dog Capital, CPT Capital, Clear Current Capital, and New Crop Capital. Combined with previous funding raised in 2018, this Series A brings BlueNalu’s war chest up to $24.5 million.

Based in San Diego, BlueNalu was founded two years ago to create a platform to grow a wide variety of seafood — fish, crustaceans, and more — from cell samples in large bioreactors. Since then, the company has been quite busy. Bluenalu hosted a culinary demo of its cell-based yellowtail back in December. A month later, they partnered with Nutreco, one of the world’s largest fish feed companies, to accelerate the scaling of its cultured seafood in order to bring it to market more quickly.

When is that exactly? The company has stated that they hope to start selling their cultured seafood products (maybe starting with yellowtail?) in two to three years. In five years they hope to break ground on their first large-scale production facility. That’s part of what they’ll use their new funding for, according to a press release emailed to The Spoon. BlueNalu will also channel its fresh funds into expanding its team and accelerating its product’s path to market.

With its significant Series A complete, BlueNalu is in an advantageous spot to become a leader in cell-based seafood production. Compared to its competitors, like Wild Type, Finless Foods, and Avant Meats, BlueNalu is working across multiple fronts — legislation, R&D, and supply chain — at a very quick pace. BlueNalu has also unveiled plans to build a 150,000 square foot facility which could produce 18 million pounds of their cell-based seafood per year. If that comes to fruition, it’ll be hard to compete with.

Then again, cellular aquaculture isn’t a zero-sum game. Cultured seafood (or meat, for that matter) isn’t even to market yet, so there are plenty of opportunities for multiple companies to debut their own cell-based fish, shrimp, and more. Plus many startups are focusing on a particular species, so there’s space for everyone to stake their claim.

A rep from BlueNalu told The Spoon that they think this is “the largest A round to be secured in the cell-based food industry.” (Memphis Meats secured a hefty $161 million last month, but that was a Series B.) Twenty mill is nothing to sniff at, but it’s a metaphorical drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of funding that BlueNalu will need to make their goal — scalable, sustainable, affordable cultured seafood — a reality.

Aquaculture Accelerator Hatch Raises $8.4M, Recruits Fourth Cohort

Hatch, a Norway-based accelerator program focused on aquaculture startups, announced yesterday that it had raised $8.4 million to recruit a fourth cohort and further invest in its existing portfolio (via The Fish Site). Thus far the fund has raised over $10 million in external investment thus far. It currently operates in Hawaii, Bergen (Norway), and Singapore.

Founded in 2018, Hatch launched its first three-month accelerator program, which included eight aquaculture startups, in the spring of 2018. As my colleague Jenn Marston wrote at the time:

Each team will get $30,600 (USD) in addition to mentoring, development help, office space, and the chance to make new connections in the aquaculture industry. For those companies that have “high potential,” an additional loan will be available once they complete the program.

Since then the numbers have gone up. Per the Hatch website, each startup in the accelerator program will receive a total of $130,000 ($75,000 in cash, $55,000 in kind). They’ll also receive a year of free office space, mentorship, and product development connections.

Hatch is looking for startups that are reinventing and streamlining any part of the aquaculture field, from seafood nutrition to population management to new species development. Past participants in Hatch’s program range from Algaebra, an automated shrimp hatchery, to Gaskiya, which tests tilapia for the streptococcus virus. They’ve even invested in Finless Foods, the startup growing bluefin tuna from fish cells in bioreactors.

Overfishing is a pressing problem, depleting oceans of seafood and disrupting the delicate balance of the ecosystem. Aquaculture is certainly one alternative, but it carries its own burdens: water pollution, and overuse of pesticides, to name a few. As our population — and hunger for seafood — increases, we’ll need to get more creative to make seafood cultivation more sustainable.

A growing number of startups are getting creative with ways to solve this disconnect. Aquabyte uses machine learning to monitor in-ocean fisheries, Ynsect is developing insect farms to use for fish feed, and companies like Timberfish and BluePlanet are reinventing seafood farms altogether. There’s also a handful of companies developing cell-based seafood, which could dramatically reduce our reliance on ocean fishing and aquaculture altogether.

With seafood consumption set to increase, Hatch’s fresh funds could be chum in the water for innovative aquaculture startups.

Applications for Hatch’s newest cohort open today. If you’ve got a startup that is out to change the way we cultivate seafood, you can apply here.

Alpha Foods Raises $28M to Expand Frozen Plant-based Meats

Today Alpha Foods, a company making meatless proteins and frozen plant-based heat-and-eat meals, announced that it has raised $28 million. The funding round was led by VC fund AccelFoods with support from Alpha Foods’ existing partners New Crop Capital, Green Monday, and Blue Horizon.

As of today Alpha Foods has raised a total of $41 million. The company will channel its new funding into marketing, new hires, and product R&D.

Founded in 2015, Alpha Foods sells a range of plant-based food options, from frozen premade meals like burritos and pot pies to standalone meat alternatives like ground “beef” and fried “chicken” patties. They currently offer 27 SKUs, which range in price from $3 to $6 and are sold in 8,000 retailers nationally.

Though their first products were frozen plant-based grab-and-go meals, Alpha Foods is currently pivoting to focus more heavily on what Cole Orobetz, Co-Founder and President of Alpha Foods, calls “center of the plate” proteins. When I spoke to him over the phone last week he said that the brand would emphasize their frozen meat alternative line going forward.

These standalone proteins are sold chiefly through retail but made their foodservice debut last year. Orobetz told me that foodservice would actually be more of a focus for the company in 2020, specifically around sales of their plant-based meats. “We definitely see an opportunity in fast food,” he said. Orobetz also mentioned fast-casual chains and foodservice operations like cafeterias as potential partners.

Last March after Alpha Foods had raised $7 million, I wrote:

… what sets Alpha Foods apart is the convenience factor. They make complete, ready-to-eat meals, most of which — like handheld pot pies or vegan burritos — are meant to be eaten on the go. No extra preparation or ingredients needed.

Back then, I thought that Alpha Foods could stand out from its better-funded companies — like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat — by emphasizing its grab-and-go factor. However, it looks like the company is now pivoting away from that model to get more into the cutthroat world of base plant-based meats ingredients, which means it’s going to have even more competition to deal with.

That said, Alpha Foods makes an array of products that bigger companies like Impossible and Beyond don’t — specifically plant-based chicken nuggets and patties. Given the number of QSR’s jumping on the alternative meat bandwagon, Alpha Foods still has a chance to establish a foodservice market for its products. And an additional $28 million in funding could help give them the extra muscle they need to carve out its place in the game.

Kaigo Raises $3M for Personalized Food as Medicine Delivery Service

This week KAIGO, a personalized meal delivery service, announced it had raised $3 million in seed funding (hat/tip FoodBusinessNews). Micromanagement Ventures and Mike Lee, the founder of MyFitnessPal, both participated.

Founded in 2014, KAIGO delivers personalized, health-optimized meals from local restaurants directly to individuals. First users complete a short online assessment to indicate their health priorities (better sleep, more energy during the day, weight loss, etc). A KAIGO medical partner calls you within 24 hours to get more insight into your goals and help the company construct a personalized health plan, which they form with a partner dietician. The company also works with over 1,000 medical providers to check out your medical records, to see your bloodwork and medical history (I’m assuming with your permission first).

After KAIGO draws up your nutrition plan they work with local chefs and restaurant partners to have them cook up meals for you, which are then delivered to your door (by KAIGO or by the restaurant, it isn’t clear). You also get periodic check-ins by the KAIGO team to make sure that your goals are being met.

So far, KAIGO only operates in New York and San Francisco. They’ll use their seed funding to expand into new cities, including Washington, DC and Los Angeles.

Honestly, this sounds like a very expensive — and inefficient — process. There’s a lot of hands-on work and the bit about working with local restaurants to cook and delivery the food has got to be costly. It’s especially hard to justify since there are plenty of other services out there offering personalized meal plans and recipes (Nutrient, Suggestic) or personalized prepared food/meal kit delivery (Daily Harvest, Snap Kitchen, Innit). You can also (duh) just cut out the middleman and order food from restaurants directly.

Then again, KAIGO could be a boutique offering. It certainly has boutique pricing: the service comes with a one-time $299 fee to cover personal assessments, plus a monthly fee of $249 to have the meals planned, prepared, and delivered. Plus the costs of the meals themselves. In short, it’s not for those on a budget.

The startup is also targeting individuals struggling with chronic illnesses, who might be willing to pay more to try something new if other specialized diets haven’t given them relief in the past.

Skepticism aside, KAIGO is certainly tapping into two bigs trends we’ve been seeing a lot of at The Spoon: personalization and food-as-medicine. Those are both topics we’ll be exploring in depth at Customize, our food personalization summit in New York on February 27th! Use code SPOON15 to snag 15% off tickets.

Yofix Raises $2.5M to Reinvent Plant-based Yogurt

Israeli startup Yofix Probiotics announced today that it had closed a $2.5 million Series A with participation from investors Müller Ventures, the French Bel Group, and U.S.-based LionTree Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $4.5 million.

Founded in 2014, Yofix makes a range of plant-based yogurts made with natural ingredients such as oats, lentils, and sesame. It differentiates itself from other vegan yogurts by prioritizing clean label ingredient lists (many plant-based options contain chemical stabilizers for thickness), skipping soy and fermenting its product to give the same probiotic makeup of regular dairy yogurt. Yofix launched its first product — plant-based yogurt — in 2019 under the Only brand.

With its new funding, Yofix will focus on global expansion and R&D for new soy-free plant-based dairy products, including cheese and frozen desserts. Previously, the company was the first participant in the Israeli foodtech incubator The Kitchen Hub. The company also snagged a €100,000 (~$110,000) grant from the PepsiCo 2018 Nutrition Greenhouse program.

I haven’t had the chance to taste Yofix’s yogurt yet, so I don’t know how it stacks up against its other plant-based competitors. And boy does it have a lot of those. There’s Lavva, whose pili nut-based ‘gurt I tried and really liked. Other startup like Ripple, Kite Hill and Coconut Collaborative also have plant-based yogurt offerings, as do Big Dairy corporations like Chobani, Yoplait and others.

In short, it’s a crowded shelf for plant-based yogurt, and many of them are also clean label and soy-free, so that particular pitch doesn’t exactly distinguish Yofix from the pack.

What will? Taste. There may be lots of options out there but, judging from my tests and internet reactions, a lot of products fall short of the mark when it comes to taste. The plant-based yogurt market is growing by 40 percent year over year (according to the Good Food Institute), which means there’s plenty of room for high-quality options out there. With some fresh funding in its piggy bank, we’ll see if Yofix can rise to the be the (plant-based) cream of the crop.

Egyptian Food Delivery Startup elmenus Raises $8M to Battle Uber Eats

Egypt-based online food ordering platform elmenus announced today it has raised an $8 million Series B round (via wamda). The round was led by UAE-based VC fund Global Ventures and Egyptian fund Algebra Ventures, with participation from angel investors.

The startup raised a $1.5 million Series A from Algebra Ventures in 2017, as well as undisclosed pre-Series B investment mid-2019 from Julian Dames, the VP of DeliveryHero.

Founded in 2011, elmenus‘ online ordering platform lets users browse from local restaurants for delivery or just to discover where to dine out. The startup also states on its website that it provides personalized food recommendations, but how exactly it does that is unclear. I poked around their platform for a bit and it looked pretty similar to other food delivery sites I’ve used — listing restaurant options based on location with dish photos and diner reviews.

Even if it doesn’t have a unique personalization aspect, elmenus still stands out in the world of food delivery simply because of its location. Egypt actually hosts quite a few delivery players, including international giants like Uber Eats, Glovo and Delivery Hero-owned Otlob. Elemenus is one of the few companies that started locally and focuses exclusively on the Egyptian market (for now).

So far the startup operates exclusively in Egypt and has its own delivery fleet. According to wamda, elmenus will use its new funds to scale across the country.

Eight million dollars ain’t nothing, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what its competitors are working with. Glovo alone raised $167 million last year. Even in an area with so much untapped market potential (only 4 percent of Egyptians order to-go food online), it might be hard for elemenus to survive.

That is, unless it can find a way to stand out. Beefing up its personalization offering could be one way to do so. If elmenus is smart, that’s how it’ll use that fresh $8 million.

If you’re curious about how personalization is changing the meal journey, from food delivery to grocery shopping, you need to be at Customize this month in NYC! Use code SPOON15 for 15% off your ticket.

Cooks Venture Raises $4M to Expand Regenerative Agriculture Initiative

Cooks Venture, a startup focusing on sustainable agriculture and food supply, today announced a $4 million capital raise led by Golden West Food Group. The startup also hired Ankur Agrawal, former VP of Finance for SeatGeek, as its new CFO.

This news comes just three months after Cooks Venture raised a $12 million senior secured financing round. That brings the startup’s total funding to $16 million.

Cooks Venture, which was founded by former Blue Apron founder Matthew Wadiak, has one goal: to promote regenerative agriculture. For those who don’t know, regenerative ag is holistic farming practices that promote healthy soil, low carbon footprints and sustainable animal husbandry. It also skips artificial inputs like fertilizer and pesticide, instead trying to create a self-sustaining loop: the crops feed the animals, the animals create fertilizer, and the fertilizer grows the crops. Etcetera.

So far, Cooks Venture has been moving quickly. The startup began earning buzz in 2019 and has already established an 800-acre farm, hatchery and breeding facility in Arkansas, as well as two processing facilities in Oklahoma.

Its first product is heirloom chickens, which sell from between $15 to $20 a pop (not absurd compared with other organic pasture-raised birds). Cooks Ventures’ “Pioneer” breed of chicken, which is meant to have more flavor than an average supermarket bird, is available online and through FreshDirect. The startup will use its new fundings to expand distribution to more wholesale and retailer partners.

Chickens are just Phase One for Cooks Venture. When I spoke with Wadiak last year he told me that they’ll expand to sell cattle, pigs and vegetables, all of which were cultivated on the same plot of land.

Regenerative agriculture certainly sounds appealing — who doesn’t want to eat food that tastes better and is healthier for the planet? — but it can often be prohibitively pricey (just think of the expensive offerings at your local farmers market). Cooks Venture is trying to break that stereotype and make sustainable products that are actually affordable.

That’s a lofty goal, especially since startup isn’t leveraging agricultural technologies like automation to cut costs. In fact, it’s taking an opposite tack, relying on low-tech traditional solutions to create a viable alternative to environmentally-unfriendly industrial farming.

In short, Cooks Venture is a young David standing up to the Goliath of factory farming — but at least it’s a David with $4 million fresh dollars.

Future Food: Cultured Meat is Gaining Major $$$, and Should We Give Up on Insects?

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Memphis Meats, the Berkeley-based cellular agriculture company that famously grew the world’s first cell-based meatball in 2016, announced this week that it had raised an eye-popping $160 million dollar Series B round. That’s more than had been raised by the entire cellular agriculture and aquaculture space up to now. It also brings Memphis Meats’ total funding to over $180 million.

In some ways, this massive infusion of cash makes sense. Over the past few years cell-based meat and seafood has gone from futuristic vision to actually feasible reality. Cultured meat and seafood companies have demonstrated their potential though recent culinary demos and a spate of partnerships with large ingredient companies. Some have even released plans for giant production facilities that can churn out millions of pounds of cell-based meat per year.

But the key word here is plans. It’s notable that a company which has yet to bring a product to market — and could potentially never do so affordably or on a large scale — has raised such an eye-popping amount of cash. Even though it’s been given a vote of confidence by big-name investors like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Tyson Foods.

We’re living in a time when investors are throwing cash at any startup that claims to be “disruptive,” with decidedly mixed results. Interestingly, Softbank, which recently went through its WeWork ordeal, led the Series B funding round for Memphis Meats. So is cell-based meat at risk of the same boom-and-bust cycle we’ve seen with other high-tech startups?

Memphis Meats’ cultured meatball

Frustratingly, without a product to market, it’s too early to say. I, however, am optimistic about the future of cultured meat and seafood. Studies indicate that one-third of U.S. consumers are open to trying cultured meat. That’s nowhere near the viral popularity of plant-based protein, but as cell-based meat becomes more commonplace — and proves that the product can be as tasty as the real thing — those numbers could rise.

One safe bet is that we can prepare to see a lot more funding funneling into cell-based meat and seafood. Now the pressure is on for those companies to put it to good use by actually getting a tasty product to market.

Should we stop bugging people to eat bugs?
Cultured meat may still be years away from our plate, but insects are ready to hop right on as our new source of alternative protein.

The question is, Will we (meaning Western consumers) ever get over our aversion to bugs and embrace the idea of eating them? The Spoon’s Head Editor Chris Albrecht pointed out a tweet from Mike Bird of the Wall Street Journal that basically said we should give up on insects. People just flat-out don’t want to eat them. I kinda agree.

https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1220360879021015041?s=20

I’ve bought cricket chips and tried roasted grasshopper occasionally in the past, but am I ready to make bugs an everyday dietary staple? No way.

I feel pretty guilty about that. We’ve all heard the preaching about how eating bugs is good for the environment, a healthy choice, and can be downright tasty. They’re available everywhere from high-class restaurants to protein bars. They’re even sold at baseball stadiums, for goodness’ sake!

But no matter how much we know we should learn to love insects, I’m skeptical it will ever happen. At least as long as we can see the insects that we’re eating. Maybe the solution is to double down on insect-infused spices and protein powder, which lets you forget you’re eating things with wings and antennae.

Or maybe, like Bird points out, it’s just time to give up. Let’s leave the bugs outside and focus on making protein from plants and animal cells, instead.

Photo: JUST’s new plant-based omelet

Protein Around the Web

  • TurtleTree Labs, a Sinagpore-based company growing lactating mammary gland cells in a lab (which produce milk!), secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding.
  • Sweet Earth Foods (owned by Nestlé) will begin selling its plant-based meats at so-called ‘Vegetarian Butcher’ deli counters at select supermarkets (h/t VegNews).
  • JUST is releasing a pre-made frozen vegan omelet made from mung beans, which will be sold in grocery stores and foodservice.

Eat well,
Catherine