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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Hormel

Better Meat Co. Serves Legal Foie Gras To Hungry Silicon Valley Workers

No trip to Silicon Valley would be complete without a visit to one of the sumptuous dining experiences at companies such as Yahoo, Google, Adobe, and LinkedIn. We’re not talking private dining rooms with white table clothes; employees and guests (especially employees) are treated to five-star dining every day, at no charge. And, if someone is hungry between scheduled meals—no worry; there are more snacks on hand than you would find at your neighborhood grocery store.

Thanks to its relationship with Bon Appétit Management Company, a Palo Alto-based café and catering service, Better Meat Co. is pulling a sleight of hand by offering foie gras to the employees at LinkedIn’s Sunnyvale officer cafeteria. The trick here is that foie gras is illegal in California, so Better Meat substitutes fungi for duck or goose liver. For good measure, Better Meat is showcasing its deli turkey slices, also made from mycelium called Rhiza. Rhiza (the Greek word for root) is a whole food, complete protein that’s allergen-free, neutral in taste, and has the texture of animal meat.

Showcasing is the keyword here. At this point in its lifecycle, Better Meat Co. is more of a supplier than a producer, offering its mycoprotein to partners such as Hormel for inclusion in its existing and new products.  As CEO Paul Shapiro explains, Better Meat Co. is focused on what it does best—“Our real expertise is in the fermentation and creating this extremely meat-like and versatile ingredient,” he told The Spoon, “But every once in a while, we like to showcase what the ingredients can do and the fact that it can make things as diverse as a turkey slice and foie gras really showed that. And so, in California, it’s illegal to sell foie gras, but now there is an option to enjoy that same delectable experience.”

Better Meat Co. walks a tightrope like others in the plant-based protein and cultured meat sector. Once a viable product has been developed, they face the option of taking their creations directly to the market (B2C) or taking the safer B2B route where a company offers its product to food manufacturers for their use in existing or new products. Shapiro, known throughout his industry as a visionary, realizes his company can take both paths to success.

In October 2021, Better Meat Co. and Hormel’s venture division entered an exclusive partnership to bring new mycoprotein and plant-based protein products to the marketplace. “Companies like Hormel have dramatically larger product development teams than we do,” Shapiro said. “Once our ingredients are in the hands of experts at companies like Hormel Foods, we are confident that the next generation of alternative meats will be more convincing and economical than ever.”

Perdue is another partner of Better Meat Co. In June 2019, the Sacramento-based company launched a national partnership with Perdue Farms – a leading chicken producer in the U.S. The company will provide Perdue with plant-based blends mixed with Perdue chicken to create the Chicken Plus product line.

While relationships with Hormel and Perdue make sense in the short run, neither, at his point, shows the breadth of Better Meat’s possibilities. In-house products developed by its food scientists and chefs range from Rhiza-based beef to fish to pork and may lead to the company—at some point—going directly to consumers.  “I think you can expect to see that,” Shapiro said of such future plans. “We want to be able to bring our micro protein to as many people as possible, and we want to make it humane, easy to eat and affordable for everyone.”

According to Crunchbase, Better Meat has raised $9.6 million, the bulk of which came in a July 2020 round of $8.1 million. The new funding is led by Greenlight Capital and Green Circle Foodtech Ventures, and Johnsonville, the maker of Johnsonville Sausages. Another financing round would be expected for Better Meat Co to scale enough to bring its branded crabcakes and deli slices to hungry, healthy consumers.

Fungi-Based SPAM? You Never Know as Hormel Partners With Better Meat Co To Develop Next-Gen Products

Listen, I’m not here to promise anything. I’m also not trying to create some clickbait headline about some new kind of SPAM (ok, maybe a little).

All I’m doing is wondering aloud where a new partnership between Hormel, the maker of the delicious canned meat(ish) product/pop culture mainstay, and Better Meat Co., a supplier of mycoprotein and plant-based protein ingredients, will go. After all, the new partnership’s mission is to co-develop new alt-protein products, so who’s to say a fungi-based SPAM isn’t on the roadmap?

The announcement centers around the two companies working together to create new products using Rhiza, Better Meat Co’s novel mycoprotein. As described in the release, Rhiza is made via “via a potato-based fermentation pioneered by The Better Meat Co., Rhiza is an all-natural whole food mycoprotein with a remarkable meat-like texture. Boasting more protein than eggs and more iron than beef, Rhiza offers a new generation of sustainable animal-free protein for the burgeoning alternative meat market.”

According to Better Meat Co’s CEO Paul Shapiro, the two companies have an exclusive relationship with gives Hormel early access to Rhiza for product development purposes. The partnership does not, however, give Hormel exclusive distribution rights to Rhiza products.

“Demand for Rhiza right now far outstrips our ability to supply it,” Shapiro told me via email.

Like Unilever, Hormel sees the potential in mycoprotein as an alt-meat platform. After all, fungi are inherently meat-like and pack a powerful protein punch. But perhaps most important if you’re an industrial scale meat company like Hormel, mycoproteins – including Rhiza, reproduce very quickly.

So while I can’t promise a fungi-based SPAM, I not gonna say it won’t happen. After all, we’re talking about a meat product so popular it has a museum and festival. So, with traditional factory farming becoming less sustainable by the day, what better way to ensure the future of SPAM by going full fermented fungi?

Make it happen, Hormel.

Applegate to Launch New Blended Meat and Vegetable Burgers in Retail This Month

Hormel-owned Applegate will begin selling Well Carved, its frozen line of blended meat and vegetable products, in grocery stores this month, according to IngredientsNetwork. Well Carved includes hybrid beef and turkey burgers mixed with beans and vegetables, as well as blended meatballs. The new offerings feature a garden-full of plants lentils, cauliflower, spinach, parsley, and kale.

The Well Carved line was meant to debut at the Natural Products Expo West in March, but like every other event, it was postponed in response to COVID-19. Applegate decided to push the launch back to April and do it with retailers — though it hasn’t yet specified which ones, how many, or in which areas.

Applegate was actually the first Big Meat brand to venture into blended products. It launched The Great Organic Blend Burger, made from a mixture of beef and mushrooms, a year ago. That puts it well ahead of Tyson, which debuted its Raised & Rooted line of blended beef burgers and plant-based chicken nuggets in June. Soon after, chicken giant Perdue also released a line of hybrid chicken nuggets, made with plant-based protein from Better Meat Co.

Pricing may be a hurdle for Applegate. A four-pack of Well Carved burgers goes for $9.99, which is almost twice the price of a four-pack of organic beef burgers at some supermarkets. In fact, it’s almost on par with the price of Beyond Beef burgers. I’m wondering if people looking to cut their meat consumption will actually purchase a blended burger when, for roughly the same cost, they can just buy a delicious plant-based substitute?

Two things could work in Hormel’s favor, though. One, the Well Carved burgers are frozen. And in a time when people are stocking up on frozen food like nobody’s business to avoid grocery runs, that’s a good thing. Well Carved burgers also position themselves as clean label and wholesome — that is, they contain only vegetables and meat. Some critics don’t like that plant-based meat like Beyond and Impossible contains a litany of ingredients and is processed. That could spur flexitarian consumers looking to cut their meat consumption to give Well Carved a try.

It’s a prime time to drop a new alt-meat product in retail. With COVID-19 spurring sharp increases in grocery sales for both meat and plant-based meat, this is a prime time to experiment and see if blended burgers can actually make it in the market.

Hormel Joins the Meatless Meat Movement With New Portfolio of Plant-based Products

Add one more to the list of major CPGs looking to capitalize on the public’s insatiable appetite for plant-based meat. This week, Hormel Foods, who owns brands like Skippy and Applegate, announced the launch of its Happy Little Plants product line. This is Hormel’s first project under what the company’s new plant-based foods division called Cultivated Foods.

The new portfolio’s flagship product is a ground protein offering the Happy Little Plants’ website says you can cook “just like you would with ground beef or ground turkey.” The product contains 20 grams of non-GMO soy protein and is gluten-free.

Right now, Happy Little Plants products are available at select Hy-Vee stores in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconson. Further expansion is in the works, though Hormel didn’t name specific cities or timeframes.

Like most big CPGs bringing plant-based meat alternatives to market right now, Hormel is emphasizing the meat-like qualities of its meatless product. In a bid to appeal to more flexitarians — those wanting to curb meat consumption without going full vegan or vegetarian — food companies are currently creating alternatives to meat that cook, look, taste, and feel like the real thing. In other words, they’re trying to live up to the industry standard set by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

Hormel is one of a growing list of CPGs launching such products. Tyson announced its Raised & Rooted brand of plant-based meat alternatives this past June. Nestle is selling meatless meat patties to QSR chains in Europe and Israel. And just yesterday, Kelloggs-owned MorningStar Farms announced its own new line of more meat-like, plant-based products called Incogmeato.

These companies have long histories in the food industry, but as The Spoon’s Catherine Lamb pointed out when reporting on the MorningStar news, that could be more hindrance than help. As evidenced by events like Beyond selling out of its meatless chicken wings in less than five hours, consumers are flocking to trendy upstart brands in the alt-meat space who can tout health and environmental benefits and don’t have a history of selling SPAM in grocery store aisles. Like Kellogg, Tyson, and others, Hormel is one more company that will have to find a way to leap the divide between its legacy products and consumer demand for new and different ways to do meatless meat.

This Avocado Pop-Up Event Is More Proof Food Companies Need Instagram Strategies

If you’re like me, interacting with a bus full of avocados sounds like the perfect way to spend an afternoon. And if you happen to be on the West Coast this summer, you’ll get that opportunity.

Wholly Guacamole, maker of all-natural avocado-based dips and spreads, will take its products on the road this summer for the Guaclandia Tour 2018, which offers an “Instagram-able Avocado Experience” (via Food and Wine).

Guaclandia will travel to select U.S. cities handing out unlimited free samples of Wholly Guacamole products and providing endless photo-ops for fans. According to a release, features to interact with will include a chair shaped like an avocado pit, a retro claw machine full of tote bags, pins, and pool floats, and an avocado-inspired wall for snapping selfies. There’s also a swimming pool, a jumbo ball pit, and “tips on ‘keepin’ it real,” which presumably has to do with food.

Ten years ago, the concept might have seemed ridiculous to many, but in 2018, a traveling avocado circus that encourages people to snap and post pictures actually amounts to a clever branding scheme for a food company. As I wrote last year, Instagram is already an influential platform when it comes to small(ish) businesses gaining visibility and spreading awareness of a particular food culture. And avocados are definitely a food culture at this point, for better and for worse. And as Catherine Lamb recently said, these “delicious, weird, and informative food-focused Instagrams” keep us inspired.

Plus, Guaclandia is hardly the first time a food company’s taken its show on the road. The Museum of Ice Cream launched in 2016 in NYC. Still going strong, it features things like an inflatable pool filled with sprinkles, hula-hooping, and the Limbo. The photos I’ve seen also trigger my taste buds for ice cream and pastel colors. You can catch it right now in San Francisco.

Frozen food maker Birdseye got in the game even earlier, in 2014, when it opened a temporary London restaurant featuring a pay-by-picture concept. In other words, diners settled their bill by snapping a picture of their meal and posting it with the hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations. They even had a professional food photographer at the event, to offer tips and tutorials on how to take the best Instagram photos.

Even restaurants are getting onboard. Recently London-based Jones and Sons teamed up with Knorr, whose software suggests recipes to indecisive eaters. This past April, the two unveiled “Eat Your Feed,” a pop-up that let attendees connect their Instagrams to Knorr’s software, which would then scan the feeds and create a menu based off the photos.

These pop-ups have met with varying success rates. The Museum of Ice Cream, for example, really is as fun as it sounds. And while I wasn’t there for the Birdseye event, frozen vegetables seems a way less appealing sell, even when dinner comes at the mere cost of a picture. Wholly Guacamole has an advantage in that its pushing a product that’s both a bonafide trend and, in this company’s case, a fairly healthy product focused on another current food movement: real ingredients.

So if that plus a mobile Instagram party sounds like a win, check the dates to see where you can keep it real this summer.