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The Spoon Food Tech Weekly: About That Bloomberg Article

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Someday, We’ll Look Back and Laugh

If you’re in the alternative protein industry, you’ve probably seen an article from Bloomberg titled, “Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world’s $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop.”

And if you haven’t read it, you’ve almost certainly read about it. That’s because, over the past week, there’s been no shortage of blog posts, newsletters, Linkedin think pieces, and full-page ads in the New York Times declaring why – depending on where you fall on the matter – Bloomberg had it right or wrong. 

Much of the reaction from those in the alt-protein industry centered on the article’s focus on two companies, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Many argued (rightly) that the plant-based meat industry is much bigger than just these two companies, and any analysis of the space and its prospects that doesn’t include a fuller look of the new products on the horizon (like those based on fungi/mycelium) misses why so many are still so excited about the industry’s prospects. 

But as Rachel Konrad, former head of comms for Impossible Foods, said on this week’s Spoon podcast, the industry “doth protest too much.” 

After all, it’s just one article, right? Why was there so much pushback?

The strong reaction can be partly attributed to Bloomberg’s place in the media ecosystem. Not only is its journalism viewed on par with the Wall Street Journal from a business reporting perspective (though they don’t have as many journalists covering as many beats at the Journal), but unlike the Journal, it’s a weekly news magazine with cover stories. 

I mean, just look at that cover: 

Despite print media’s long and slow death spiral, a story like this still has an outsize impact, especially in publications like Bloomberg. They can become, in a sense, self-fulfilling prophecies.

Don’t believe it? Just ask Juicero’s founders. Those familiar with Juicero’s demise will remember the final nail in the coffin for the connected juicer startup was a Bloomberg piece. Within days after publication, the company and its high-priced juicer became a symbol of Silicon Valley excess and over-engineered solutions. It wasn’t long before the company’s venture backers backed out, and soon after, the company was toast.

But the plant-based meat industry is not Juicero. It’s an industry made up of literally hundreds of companies, backed by billions of dollars of venture funding, and it has achieved some measure of success in that many of these new products have become established on quick service menus and occupy space on grocery store and warehouse store meat aisles. 

I suspect the real reason, though, the article touched a nerve was it pointed out a truth that not enough executives in the plant-based industry and food retail are ready to admit: some of the earliest and loudest voices in the plant-based industry over-promised early on about how quickly consumers would embrace their products. 

Take these quotes from Pat Brown, founder of Impossible, made on stage in 2015 at a TED talk and later in an interview with the New Yorker: 

“I know it sounds insane to replace a deeply entrenched, trillion-dollar-a-year global industry,” he said, “but it has to be done.” Four years later, when the New Yorker profiled Impossible, Pat predicted his company would “take a double-digit portion of the beef market” by 2024 before sending it into a “death spiral.” Next he would target “the pork industry and the chicken industry and say, ‘You’re next!’ and they’ll go bankrupt even faster.”

Ethan Brown has spoken in similar terms about how he felt his company would transform people’s diets around the world. From the Bloomberg piece:

Just like technology had rendered the horse-drawn carriage obsolete, he told the crowd at the New York Times’ climate conference this past fall, so, too, would his system of breaking down plants transform the protein at the center of the plate. “This,” he said, “is something that I feel is inevitable.”

I don’t blame either founder for articulating what they see as the ultimate goal of plant-based meat. Both are visionary founders and are driven to change what they see as a cruel industry that is, according to them, steering the planet toward a calamity caused by the climate impact of industrial agriculture. The goal of the plant-based meat industry – to replace industrially-produced meat from animals with a more sustainable alternative – makes sense and should be the goal.

But the reality is that these visionaries overpromised early market acceptance because, in part, they underestimated how difficult it would be to convince consumers to change their diets. Part of this has to do with the product themselves; neither Beyond nor Impossible are what you could describe as healthy when compared to a pure, simple ingredient plant-based diet. Even more importantly, the products’ taste profiles aren’t nearly close enough to what they are replacing, residing still in what chef Ali Bouzari describes as the ‘Uncanny Valley of Food.’

As a result, the consumer dietary profile that Pat Brown has said many times he most wanted to target – the carnivore – doesn’t believe these products are suitable replacements for something they’ve been eating their whole lives. Arguments about animal welfare don’t resonate with the vast majority of consumers, and the health arguments – which have the potential to resonate with a wide swath of consumers – haven’t convinced the vast majority of people who have been told – rightly or wrongly – that these products are going to be better for them. 

The hard truth is consumers are creatures of habit. They eat what they know, and convincing them to change their behavior is difficult. When consumers do change their diets, it’s often due to exposure to a mix of influencer-fed trends and ideas passed on to them by friends or family. Plant-based meats just haven’t caught on, and in fact, you could point to an opposite trend, where a contingent of consumers argue (again rightly or wrongly) against these foods because they’ve come to believe they are too “processed” and this is somehow unhealthy. 

The purchase price also factors in. While consumers with plant-forward diets may be ok paying a premium for an alternative product that satiates a desire for meat, most consumers are not. They wonder why not just buy the real thing at a lower price? And sure, the price premium for plant-based meat has gotten smaller, but the products are still, on the whole, more expensive than those spit out by the fine-tuned, highly-scaled machinery of industrial animal agriculture. 

Now, the plant-based meat industry finds itself in a tricky spot in 2023. A majority of consumers not only don’t believe these products are any healthier than the real thing but they also aren’t convinced plant-based alternatives taste as good as meat yet. In other words, the average consumer sees plant-based meat – as represented by Beyond and Impossible – as expensive processed food, and no amount of New York Times full-page ads will change that.

But all hope is not lost. The plant-based meat industry is still in the early innings, with much of its promise ahead of it in a pipeline of new products that are either on the market or slated to arrive soon. Tasty meat analogs that use mycelium, jackfruit, or other ingredients are already here, and most consumers have yet to try them. Products using novel ingredients derived using new approaches that use some combination of artificial intelligence, precision fermentation, and genetic engineering are on their way. New formats, like plant-based whole-cut meat and fish, have yet to make their way onto the vast majority of consumer plates. And let’s not forget to mention those products made with real animal cells in the form of cultivated meat, which are now on the fast track toward consumer plates in 2023.

The alternative meat industry has a lot of work ahead of it, but the best way to move forward is to examine its challenges in the cold light of day. That’s what we’re doing now, and we’ll look back at the Bloomberg article in 5 or 10 years and laugh and wonder what we were all worried about. 

How will new tools like ChatGPT impact the world of food? We’ll be discussing just that during the Spoon’s mini-summit on February 15th. The event is free, so register here today before the session fills up. 

Bruce Friedrich, Isha Data, and Mark Post in a panel discussion at Tufts University’s Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day. (Paul Rutherford for Tufts University)

The Cell Ag Infrastructure Buildout

A little over a week ago, the leaders of the nascent cellular agriculture industry got together at Tufts and held a day-long state of the industry conference. The Tufts team did an excellent job getting the right people together, and the sessions spanned several topics that have been top of mind for me, including scaling and funding, two things that are integrally intertwined.

One of the points made during the day was the need for more government funding. Bruce Friedrich of GFI said he’s seeing progress on this front, as we’ve seen governments go from “almost zero to hundreds of millions of dollars” in funding in the span of a few years.

Friedrich pointed to how the government helped get the EV industry off the ground by allocating tens of billions of dollars over the past decade and thinks governments could be convinced to eventually do the same for cellular agriculture. 

So the question becomes what this type of funding would look like and how it would be spent. Are tax breaks for large-scale biomanufacturing similar to what we saw for the chip industry with the CHIPS act the right approch? Or what about direct investment in infrastructure, like we’re seeing with the EV charging network buildout spending allocated from the infrastructure bill? The devil is definitely in the details, but one that is sure is that private capital alone won’t get us there alone. 

Who knows, maybe someday we’ll see a biomanufacturing infrastructure plan akin to the CHIP act. For that to take place, the Biden administration or one that follows will need to be convinced that cellular agriculture is not only a growth industry that will provide millions of new jobs (which I think it could), but it’s also strategically important for the US to become a leader in biomanufacturing, something other countries – China and Singapore to name a couple – already have recognized. 

Food robots are popping up everywhere, from fast food to stadiums to even some homes. So what’s the food robot industry look like in 2023? Join us for the Food Robotics Outlook 2023 on March 1st to find out! 

You can register for this free event here. Better hurry before the tickets are gone!  

Sigh. I Guess The Gas Stove is Now Part of the Culture War

Over the past couple of years, food-related matters have become an ever-bigger part of the political culture wars, and the latest one to enter the fray is gas stoves. The recent fuss resulted from some poorly worded remarks from Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr, who told Bloomberg that “any option” was on the table regarding gas stoves: “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” he said. 

Some on the right, ever eager for a new political cudgel with which to hit the Biden administration over the head, seized on the words. Trumka later clarified his remarks and said no ban was being considered, but by then, it didn’t matter; gas stoves were fodder in a new culture war.

While there is little chance we’ll ever see an outright ban on gas stoves at the federal level, we are already seeing some restrictions being put in place at the state and city level. Berkeley started it all in 2019, followed by San Francisco and LA, and the state of California is looking to ban gas hookups to new builds by 2030. More recently, states like Washington have passed legislation banning gas in commercial buildings set to kick in this year.

Somewhat lost in the frenzied debate is the momentum we’ve seen for induction cooking over the past couple of years. The technology, which a number of chefs have started to see as superior to that of gas, has become more mainstream in the US in the past couple of years, and forecasts have it continuing to outpace the growth of gas or coiled-electric cooktops. 

The biggest hurdle for induction cooking today is price. On average, a new induction stove still costs more than a gas or coiled electric stove and costs even more if a consumer has to swap out their cookware for induction-compatible pots and pans. The good news is many pans sold today come induction compatible, so many consumers may already be equipped to start cooking with induction. 

For now, organizations like the Decarbonization Coalition are busy making the rounds, doing the hard work of trying to convince more of the benefits of electrification. We wish them luck and hope they don’t get caught in the crossfire!

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend and we’ll talk to you next week.

Michael Wolf

P.S. The CES food tech report will be out on Monday. There was so much to cover we wanted to make sure to get all of it!

New Alt Protein and Bioinnovation Hubs Are Popping Up From NYC to Israel

This week was a big one when it came to incubating the next generation of future food.

Not only did GFI Israel and Technion announce a new Sustainable Protein Research Center (SPRC), but the city of New York also announced it would build a “bioinnovation hub” with $20 million in new funding earmarked from NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

The SPRC, which Technion and GFI Israel claim is the first of its kind in the world, “will coordinate the collaborative activities of dozens of researchers from more than ten different academic departments at the Technion and with additional universities and companies to address the world’s most pressing challenges of sustainability and human health.”

The new facility will have a 5-year budget of $20 million and will facilitate the recruitment of new faculty members in the field and support “the construction of a building for the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center.” The new center will purchase and maintain capital equipment and recruit professional technicians and ” fund collaborative seed research and train graduate students and post-docs in related fields.”

You can read the full story here on The Spoon.

Meati Opens Up ‘Mega Ranch’ Production Facility, Plans to Produce “Tens of Millions of Pounds” of Fungi-Based Meat

Meati Foods, a producer of plant-based whole-food protein made from mycelium, announced the opening of its largest-yet production facility in Thornton, Colorado. The 100 thousand foot facility, dubbed the “Mega Ranch,” is expected to hit a production rate that could produce tens of millions of pounds of the startup’s fungi-derived meat product by late 2023.

The funding for the new facility comes in the form of a $150 million Series C raised last year and a recent $22 million extension round. The company’s total funding to date is more than $250 million.

Meati claims the Mega Ranch will be able to match and even exceed the scale of the United States’ largest individual animal-based ranches. The company says the Ranch is vertically integrated, which means it will allow for the growing, harvesting, processing, and packaging of Meati products under one roof.

Read the full story at The Spoon.

Food Retail

GreenSwapp Wants to Make Figuring Out the Climate Impact of a Bag of Chips as Easy as Snapping a Pic

While the climate impact of our food has finally made the main stage as a topic at the world’s most high-profile summit, the average joe has no idea how good or bad that bag of chips or can of soda is for the environment.

A Dutch startup called GreenSwapp wants to change that by making information about the climate impact of practically any CPG product instantly available to anyone using its technology.

The Amsterdam-based company started as an online grocery app for climate-friendly products, but more recently has focused on building a climate impact data platform for both consumers and companies. To that end, the company debuted a new scanning tool at CES which gives instant scoring (low, medium, or high impact) of practically any packaged food product when the product’s barcode is scanned with a smartphone.

You can read the full story at The Spoon. 

Food Robotics

SJW Robotics Raises $2M as It Eyes Launch of Autonomous Robotic Restaurants This Spring

SJW Robotics, a maker of autonomous robotic restaurants, has raised a $2 million seed funding round, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The Canadian startup’s newest round includes investments from Alley Robotic Ventures and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio.

Company CEO and cofounder Nipun Sharma told The Spoon the new investment would be used to fund the rollout of the company’s robotic kitchen system with partner Compass Canada. The two announced their partnership last summer, with Compass disclosing that they had plans to pilot three RJW robotic restaurant kitchens in select markets. According to Sharma, the first Compass autonomous kitchen pilot will launch at a hospital in the Toronto market under Compass’s Bok Choy brand this spring.

To read the full story, click here!

Here Are Some Alternative Protein & Future Food Innovations Heading to CES 2023

Ever since Impossible stole the show at CES with the debut of the Impossible Burger 2.0 in 2019, a growing number of future food startups head to Vegas each January to try to repeat the feat or, at the very least, build momentum for the coming year.

This year will be no different, and companies making everything from new types of fat to bug protein infrastructure will be on the show floor starting this Thursday.

Below are some of the alternative protein and future food startups on our radar for CES 2023:

Armored Fresh – If you’ve ever wanted to try plant-based cheese, this is your chance. Armored Fresh which launched their plant-based cheeses in the US in October, creates its cheese with almond milk and plant-based lactic acid. The company, which has a number of patents for its process, will be showcasing its cheese starting January 5th at booth 53314.

Koreasoft – If cheese isn’t your thing, how about bugs? Koreasoft showing off its 3rd generation edible insect smart farm machine and system on the bottom floor of the Venetian Expo in Eureka Park in the Korea Pavilion.

SavorEat – Israel-based SavorEat is has built a 3D-printing robot that makes plant-based meat. The company’s focus for now is food service, but they intend to create a home machine in the future. SavorEat will be in the Food Tech Pavilion in the Venetian Expo at Booth #53117.

Kwang Jin Corp – This Korean startup will be showing off its plant-based food product, ‘DNS Da Neung Sik’, which originated from Chungguk jang, a traditional Korean fermented food. DNS’s main ingredient is soybeans and the company says it is a futuristic fermented alternative milk rich in protein and probiotics. You can find DNS Da Neung in the Korea Pavilion in Eureka Park.

Lypid – Lypid makes PhytoFat, a proprietary plant-based fat line that it claims mimics the texture, mouthfeel, transfer of flavor, and cooking behavior of animal fats. The company plans to sell its product to manufacturers to add animal meat-like juiciness and mouthfeel to plant-based meats. The company will in the Taiwan Tech Arena, booth 62500, starting Thursday.

Nuldam – Nuldam makes a variety of plant-based food, including vegan macarons and vegan aquafaba. They will be in the Food Tech Pavilion at booth #52914.

Nature’s Fynd – Nature’s Fynd makes alternative meat products utilizing a hearty new microbe called Fusarium strain flavolapis, which they discovered in the remnants of acidic volcano springs of Yellowstone National Park. Nature’s Fynd will be sampling their product outside of CES in a food truck.

The Spoon will be covering all the food tech news they find at CES. Check back regularly!

Motif and Impossible Patent Fight Continues as Europe Revokes Key Impossible Patent

Motif Foodworks announced today it has filed four additional challenges to U.S. patents held by Impossible Foods, pointing to a recent preliminary decision by the European Patent Office (EPO) to revoke a key European patent of Impossible’s.

According to Motif, the EPO recently revoked Impossible patent No. 2,943,072 B1 (‘072), which centers around making meat alternatives utilizing heme protein, sugars and sulfur compounds. In its release, Motif said they concurred with the EPO’s conclusion that the innovation claimed by Impossible is “obvious”, since these innovations have been used in the creation of food “for decades”.

“We agree with the European Patent Office’s ruling that Impossible’s patent is obvious and look at it as a win for the industry – and a sign of things to come,” said Michael Leonard, CEO of Motif FoodWorks.

For its part, Impossible has told The Spoon that the decision by the EPO is a temporary one and they are appealing it, and for the time being, the patent remains fully enforceable.

“We’re optimistic that the Boards of Appeal will review and overturn this decision,” said an Impossible spokesperson. 

The patent fight between the two companies started last March when Impossible sued Motif for violating an Impossible patent (No. 10,863,761). Impossible’s lawsuit claimed that Motif has been able to gain an understanding of its process through information in the public domain, which then helped it develop its HEMAMI protein. The lawsuit also calls out Motif and parent company Ginkgo’s claims that its novel protein can essentially replace Impossible’s proprietary heme.

Motif fought back, filing a petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) to invalidate Impossible’s patent at the center of the lawsuit against them. The petition, known in legalese as an “inter partes review” (“IPR”), could allow Motif to ask a panel of judges from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to review the Impossible Foods’ patent for to beef replicas.

Impossible has since added four additional patents related to plant-based meat formulations to its lawsuit and, in light of the EPO decision, Motif is now challenging these patents (US11,224,241, US11,013,250, US10,039,306, and US9,943,096). All four of these patents relate to the creation of flavors and aromas in alt meat that contains heme protein, sugars, and sulfur compounds.

Motif might have an uphill battle on its hands, especially given the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled in October that Motif’s challenge to Impossible’s patent at the center of the original lawsuit is invalid, writing Motif “has not shown a reasonable likelihood that it will prevail in showing that at least one of the challenged claims is unpatentable” and declining to review the case.

“Motif has tried repeatedly to avoid accountability for its theft by attempting to have Impossible’s lawsuit dismissed, delayed, and petitioning for our patent to be reviewed and revoked,” said an Impossible spokesperson. “Both the District Court and the Patent Office have rejected Motif’s requests. The case is proceeding, and Motif can no longer skirt accountability for its theft of our technology. We remain wholly confident in our position and are confident that Motif will be held accountable.”

The battle has serious implications for both companies. Impossible has pointed to its proprietary heme product as the secret to much of its success in achieving a realistic plant-based alternative to animal meat. Meanwhile, Motif hopes to offer its Hemami product to plant-based meat makers to help them create make products that could rival Impossible’s in terms of realistic taste and aroma.

The IP wars for future food are only going to continue heat up as we see increased competition in the market.

Impossible Sausage Link Review: Tasty, But Missing That Familiar Sausage ‘Snap’

Today, Impossible Foods announced the debut of their plant-based sausage links, the sixth retail product from the alt protein pioneer in the last eight months.

The new products come in three different varieties – Spicy, Italian, and Bratwurst – and the company claims they have the same snap and savory flavor as conventional pork sausage.

The Spoon got a hold of some samples in advance of today’s news, so I thought I’d try them out. I was excited because I like sausage, and my favorite Impossible product – by a long shot – is the company’s ground sausage product which came out last year.

I pulled the sausages out of the package, and this is what they looked like:

While the Impossible sausages look link-ish, they also struck me as looking a bit, well, squooshy. And, when I picked them up, they felt soft and didn’t have the same firmness I associate with traditional sausage. This, of course, has a lot to do with the casing (which I’ll talk more about a bit later).

You can see in the video below what an Impossible sausage link looks like grilling up in a pan. The instructions suggested I heat the link up at a medium heat. I put a couple of drops of olive oil in the pan to give it a little more sizzle while cooking.

The Impossible Sausage frying in a pan

After cooking the link for 10 minutes, rotating it every minute or two to give it that nice sausage crispiness, I plated it. It looked pretty close to what a conventional pork sausage link looks like on a plate, with slight exception of the casing, which looked a bit loose at the end of the link.

I cut up the sausage into smaller pieces and gave it a taste. I liked the flavor of the interior sausage and thought it tasted pretty darn close to what a conventional sausage filling tasted like. The mouthfeel was similar and, overall, it definitely didn’t give me uncanny valley “vibes”.

But where the sausage fell short is, you guessed it, the casing. The casing is what gives a sausage link its famous “snap” when eating, and, truth be told, the Impossible link just doesn’t have it.

Of course, I understand there are tradeoffs, and no doubt it’s really hard to mimic a conventional casing made of (yes, gross) animal intestines. But the reality is Impossible’s isn’t there yet.

Would I try it again? Yes. I think the Impossible sausage links taste good and I would happily replace conventional pork sausage with these in future meals. But, unfortunately, those craving that traditional sausage snap won’t find what they’re looking for with Impossible’s plant-based alternative.

Impossible’s New CEO Will Need to Navigate a Fast-Changing Plant-Based Meat Marketplace

This week Impossible Foods announced that founding CEO Pat Brown is stepping down from his current role and assuming the new role of Chief Visionary Officer. The company’s new CEO will be longtime Chobani exec Peter McGuinness, who recently served as the yogurt pioneer’s president and COO.

Explaining the move in a company blog post, Brown said that as Impossible has grown in size and scale, he’s had less time to devote to strategic initiatives, communicating the company’s mission to the public and policymakers, and guiding R&D for new products. Brown said the demands on the role of CEO at Impossible Foods will only continue to grow, which means now is the time to appoint a proven executive to lead the execution of the company’s day-to-day business.

From the post:

Peter and I will work together to lead Impossible and its long-term strategy, combining our complementary strengths and experience. Peter will be our CEO and a director, and will report to the board. I will continue in my role as Founder and director, and take on the role of Chief Visionary Officer reporting to the board, leading research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and, most importantly, our mission. 

McGuinness comes aboard at a time of uncertainty for the plant-based meat industry. Starting last fall, we began to see signs of a potential slowdown in sales across the segment. This year, companies like Kellogg’s are warning of continued soft sales and predicting a possible shakeout.

It’s important to note that Impossible has signaled their sales are doing fine. They very well could be, but there’s no way to have 100% certainty around the health of Impossible’s income statement since we don’t have any real visibility into the company’s numbers since they are still private. Still, it’s hard to see how Impossible could completely sidestep what seems to be a growing set of concerns for the space.

One potential concern is consumers’ growing questions about the ingredient lists for plant-based meat. With Impossible’s genetically engineered heme and a long list of other ingredients, they are one of the companies whose products might get a hard look from a segment of consumers who are looking for simpler, clean ingredients.

There’s also growing evidence of consumer apathy towards plant-based meat. At this point, most alt-meat curious consumers have tried it out, and some are not coming back for seconds. This might be for various reasons, including they don’t like the taste, the higher price tag or they just prefer animal meat. Whatever the reason, plant-based meat companies need to figure out how to make their products a mainstay on the weekly grocery shopping list.

Finally, while a large pipeline of interesting plant-based (and cell-cultured) meat products is coming to market, there’s been an over-saturation in a few categories like burgers and chicken nuggets. While Impossible is likely a market leader in the burger category and seems to hold a decent shelf share for their nuggets, there’s lots of competition for their flagship products.

All of which brings us back to Pat Brown. By clearing his schedule of running the company day-to-day, Brown can now focus on what he is no doubt good at (and I assume probably prefers) in innovating new products. The company has teased new products ranging from whole cuts to a new milk product, and imagine we might see even more as Brown sets his sights full-time on building out the product roadmap.

And while he’s famously opinionated, Brown is also one of the industry’s best ambassadors. The plant-based meat industry owes him a debt of gratitude for much of the early excitement built around the category, so having him focus on messaging could help both Impossible and the rest of the industry as consumers cast a more discerning eye on plant-based meat.

Impossible has raised a massive amount of money, and its investors have big expectations of seeing a return on their capital through the equity markets. I am pretty sure this is one of the rationales for transitioning to a food industry executive with experience in growing a brand. And so, while McGuinness has his work cut out for him running a company that has exited the honeymoon phase of the market, his job will no doubt be made easier by letting Pat Brown do what he does best.

Impossible Foods Opens a Burger Stand in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

Nowadays, if you want an Impossible Burger, you have your choice of thousands of fast food joints or grocery stores to pick up the plant-based patty.

But last night, the Impossible Burger showed up in a new kind of place: its own.

This week Impossible and Climate Pledge Arena, the world’s first net zero-carbon sports arena, announced that the Impossible patty had been named the venue’s official burger. They also announced Impossible is opening two branded food stands in the home of the NHL’s newest franchise, the Seattle Kraken.

Called Impossible Market, the new plant-based burger stands feature a menu with the Impossible Burger, Impossible chicken nuggets, and other items made with Impossible plant-based beef like chili fries and street tacos.

While the Kraken is the main attraction at Climate Pledge, the newest NHL team did not play last night. Instead, the debut event at the arena and for the Impossible Foods Market was the Foo Fighters concert. Since I was at the show with my wife to do “research,” I figured I’d stop by and check out the Impossible new burger stand.

The Impossible Market is viewable from the concourse.

The Market features a large selection of drinks, packaged food like candy and popcorn, and ready-to-eat warm items.

Food from the kitchen sits under a warmer ready to be picked up and purchased.

You can watch the cook flip Impossible burgers and buns on the grill.

Warm dishes like the chicken nuggets and street tacos sit next to the grill, ready to be picked up by customers.

The prep and cleaning stations

The menu with sports venue pricing: $15 for an Impossible Burger, $16 for the cheeseburger. The prices reminded me of the early days of Impossible Burger when you had to pay $15 or more for the plant-based burger.

The Impossible Marketplace is just one-feature of the new net-zero venue. Throughout the arena you could see an emphasis on creating a more climate-friendly place to watch live entertainment.

And in case you were wondering, it was a pretty good concert.

While Impossible has been showing up at ball parks for some time, this week’s opening of the Impossible Marketplace marks the first time Impossible has its own restaurant in a sports venue. I have to wonder if it’s the first of many.

Rise of the Plant-Based QSR

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Those of us of a certain age will remember a time when eating “vegan” at a QSR meant the Wendy’s salad bar. 

Fast forward to 2021, and advances in both food technology and the restaurant biz have made the concept of eating vegan (which we now call “plant based”) much more palatable to the mainstream. The names “Beyond” and “Impossible” are on most major QSR’s menus today. Eat Just’s plant-based egg products are in a growing number of fast-food breakfast items. And recently, two more announcements from major QSRs dropped that indicate we’re at fast approaching a major turning point for menus in the QSR realm.

On its most recent earnings call, Starbucks said it had turned one of its Seattle, Washington locations into a test area for a “100% plant-based food menu.” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson suggested that this test site is in response to what he sees as “the most dominant shift in consumer behavior,” which is the move to plant-based foods. The shift, said Johnson, is evident in both food and beverages. 

The move to offer plant-based meals to customers isn’t entirely new for Starbucks. The chain debuted Beyond Meat products in China last year and carries Impossible sausage sandwiches at its stores in the U.S. It also offers a number of plant-based milk alternatives. 

But this new test store in Seattle is the first time the chain has gone full-tilt on a plant-based menus. All food items on the Starbucks menu will be vegan, with animal-based proteins being replaced by plant-based counterparts. 

Also recently, McDonald’s announced it’s finally testing its McPlant burger, a vegan offering the mega-QSR developed with Beyond Meat. While this is less of a monumental change than overhauling an entire menu, McDonald’s has up to now has made few moves when it comes to introducing plant-based foods to its menus. (A brief trial in Canada is the exception.) Though this McPlant pilot is pretty limited right now — Denmark and two cities in Sweden — it is also likely also in response to a growing consumer demand for plant-based proteins.

All that said, demand shows up differently in different parts of the world. Sweden and Seattle are obvious choices to test plant-based wares, given the demographics that reside in those areas. In the U.S., at least, seven in 10 people classify themselves as “meat eaters,” according to recent data, and there are undoubtedly parts of the country where a plant-based Starbucks would fail harder than the Wendy’s salad bar expansion did in the ‘90s. 

For now, that is. As more tests like that of Starbucks are conducted, and major chains like McDonald’s introduce more plant-based items, the concept of a full-vegan fast-food meal will grow less foreign to more customers. I doubt it’s long before we see plant-based QSR locations popping up in certain markets like, NYC, San Francisco, and even newly popular cities like Austin and Denver. How the plant-based QSR fares in these markets will tell us a lot about when it will head to other parts of the country.

The Restaurant Robots Are Coming

Of course we’ll know we’ve really hit a turning point when vegan Starbucks locations start delivering our plant-based breakfast sandwiches via robot.

I just made that up, but as The Spoon’s Editor in Chief Chris Albrecht points out in his new Spoon Plus report, we will soon see these delivery bots rolling about our sidewalks, college campuses, and city streets.

Chris’ report breaks down the different companies currently leading the space, including Starship, Kiwi, Nuro, and Refraction, and where these players’ opportunities lie in making robot delivery more common for the average consumer.

In the restaurant realm, there are a few advantages to robot delivery. It’s first and foremost a more contactless delivery method, which is an obvious plus at a time when COVID-19 vaccines aren’t widespread. Robots can also work continuously without the need for a break and could potentially be cheaper for restaurants. The flip, of course, is that widespread robot deployments would take jobs away, a point that cannot be ignored in any discussion about restaurant robots.

Chris delves into all of this and much more in his report, which you can access by becoming a Spoon Plus member. Spoon Plus members get access to all of our market reports, maps and deep dives that give you an advanced understanding of where the food tech industry is headed. Get the goods right here.

Restaurant Tech From Around The Web

Luckin Coffee, one of China’s largest coffee chains and Starbucks’ main competitor in that market, is filing for bankruptcy. The company is still dealing with the fallout from a fraud scandal from 2020. Luckin said that stores would remain open for business.

The California Supreme Court has declined to hear a lawsuit filed this week seeking to overturn Proposition 22, the controversial ballot measure that passed in November and exempts companies like DoorDash and Uber from classifying workers as employees. the Court suggested plaintiffs refile the case in a lower court. 

If it feels a little off to you that third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats are spending millions on themed Super Bowl ads (Cookie Monster and Wayne’s World, respectively) while restaurants and restaurant workers continue to struggle, check this quick read from the folks at Eater Chicago. In the words of Eater writer Ashok Selvam, “can you imagine Wayne and Garth using a third-party service to order from Stan Mikita’s Donuts? Game off.”

Impossible Is Prototyping a Plant-Based Milk Product

At a press conference today, Impossible Foods revealed a prototype for a plant-based milk alternative as part of its ambitious plans to eliminate animal protein from the food supply chain. The product will be called Impossible Milk and will look and function just like cow’s milk. 

To illustrate the differences, Impossible showed its prototype off alongside other alternative milks at the press conference, even mixing it with a cup of coffee to demonstrate how it does not curdle as other plant-based milks do.

Though the milk won’t be available to customers at any point in the near future, It is part of Impossible’s plan to diversify its products to include a range of plant-based alternative proteins. The company is also working on alternatives to chicken and steak, and CEO Pat Brown told MIT Technology Review that Impossible is on a mission to “completely replace the world’s most destructive technology by far, which is the use of animals, by 2035.”

“We will succeed or fail based on whether we build a complete technology platform that creates all the foods we get today from animals,” he added.

To help realize that lofty goal, Impossible also said at the press conference that it intends to double the size of its R&D team over the next year and launched the “Impossible Investigator” project to entice scientists to join the team.

Today’s news follows Impossible’s just-announced expansion onto retail store shelves in Hong Kong and Singapore. And overall, 2020 has been a busy year for the company. It raised another $200 million in August, expanded distribution of its products to Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and other food retailers, and launched a direct-to-consumer e-commerce store. 

The company’s ambitions to branch out from faux beef into dairy, fish, poultry, and other areas of alt protein comes as the entire sector is seeing enormous growth and investment. Impossible’s chief rival Beyond hasn’t exactly rested on its laurels this year, either, having also expanded its product line, launched its own D2C store, and launched products at retail stores in China.

One area we won’t see Impossible branch into, at least for now: cell-based meat. Pat Brown didn’t waffle about at SKS last week when he said the idea of commercially produced meat from a lab was never going to happen. Of course, the company could always change its stance. For now, though, expect Impossible ton continue its focus on plant-based proteins for the foreseeable future.

Good Food Institute: Plant-Based Food Consumers Spend 61% More in Food Retail

We’ve known for a while now that the current spikes and surges in demand for plant-based protein are in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our food system. Now there are some new numbers that back those claims up and give insights into just how big plant-based products have gotten in the food retail sector, thanks to the Good Food Institute (GFI). 

GFI’s new report, “Plant-Based Strategies for Retail: An overview of leading plant-based assortment, merchandising, and marketing tactics at top U.S. retailers,” lays out some of the growth statistics of the plant-based meat sector, and examines the forces driving such a rapid adoption in the retail space. 

For context, the report notes that U.S. retail sales of plant-based food were worth $5 billion in 2019. While we don’t yet have the full sales numbers for 2020, GFI notes in its report that “plant-based sales are growing 14 times faster than total food sales” and that consumers who buy plant-based food products tend to spend more: 61 percent of plant-based food shoppers are considered “valuable,” and spend 61 percent more than the average shopper. 

All of those numbers are pre-pandemic, which means this time next year, figures will likely be even higher. It’s an understatement to say the pandemic has had a major impact on plant-based meats. According to GFI’s report, nearly one quarter of consumers surveyed report eating more plant-based meals because of COVID-19, with Millennials and Gen Z being the largest age group in this percentage. Both groups (41 percent for Gen Z and 37 percent for Millennials) reported they “will be less likely to buy [traditional] meat” because of COVID-19 fears, compared to 25 percent for all age groups. The report cites health concerns (physical and mental), an intent to buy more health-related items, and general fears around the spread of COVID-19 as plausible reasons for this uptick.

Meat alternatives, in particular, saw positive increases. GFI’s report outlines some figures from some of the major plant-based meat companies: 

  • Beyond’s retail sales increased 194.4 percent over the second quarter of 2020; the company currently has products in roughly 25,000 retail stores across the U.S.
  • Impossible saw a 500 percent increase in grocery stores selling the Impossible Burger during the pandemic months, and the company’s products are available in 9,200 stores nationwide.
  • Morning Star farms saw a 66 percent increase in March sales.
  • Gardein sales increased by 65 percent from March 13 to April 19, 2020.
  • Tofurky sales increased 40 percent from February through April of 2020. 

It’s likely the plant-based foods sector would have seen these high numbers even without the pandemic — only over a much longer timeframe. For example, Impossible would probably have reached that 500 percent increase in grocery retailers eventually, but it likely would not have happened in a matter of a few short months had there been no pandemic.

Exactly how long it would have taken sans pandemic we’ll never know, but regardless, sales of plant-based foods aren’t going to subside once COVID-19 does. As GFI’s report notes, this demand for plant-based foods “is a consumer shift, not a fad.”

That in turn means we’ll see more food retailers (and restaurants) selling these products, more alt-protein companies setting up direct-to-consumer e-commerce stores like those of Beyond and Impossible, more food tech accelerators dedicated to alt-protein, and, of course, far more investment in the coming months.

Chile’s NotCo Raises $85M to Bring Its Plant-based Proteins to the U.S.

NotCo, a Chilean food tech company known for its alternative protein products, announced today it has closed an $85 million Series C round. The round was led by Future Positive, L Catterton Partners, and General Catalyst. Existing investors include Kaszek Ventures, The Craftory, Bezos Expedition, Endeavor Catalyst, Indie Bio, Humbolt Capital and Maya Capital.

The new funds come as NotCo plans to scale its operations and expand internationally, starting with a move into the U.S. The company said in today’s press release that it is evaluating both retail and restaurant partnerships in the States.

Rather than focus on a single food category, NotCo is developing meat, dairy, and egg alternatives at the same time. The company currently has its NotMilk, NotBurger, NotIceCream, and NotMay in stores around Chile, Brazil, Argentina. It also has deals with Burger King and Papa John’s in Chile. 

To make its plant-based protein products, NotCo uses artificial intelligence to match animal proteins with their ideal plant replacement, pulling from a library of thousands of plant profiles the company has stored up. The idea is to make combinations of plants that will most closely mimc not just the taste of meat or dairy but also the texture, smell, and mouthfeel, among other factors.

This approach has made NotCo one of the biggest players in plant-based protein in Latin America. However, an expansion to the U.S. means NotCo will have to compete with some serious competition in an already crowded alternative protein space that includes some of the industry’s biggest names: Beyond and Impossible in the plant-based meat sector, Eat JUST for eggs, and Perfect Day for dairy. 

International expansion, whether to the U.S. or from it, is a major development in the alternative protein space of late. Beyond, Impossible, and Eat JUST have all announced plans to move into other markets, including Canada and China. Those expansions make sense, given the amount of cash flowing into the sector. The entire alternative protein category has seen an enormous amount of investment in 2020: over $1.1 billion so far, with more than $907 million of that going to plant-based protein.

For its own expansion, NotCo co-founders, Matias Muchnick (CEO) and Karim Pichara (CTO), will be based in the U.S. The company said in a recent interview that it wants to be a $300 million company by 2024, with 70 percent of that business in the U.S.

Noops Closes $2M Pre-Seed Round, Launches Oatmilk Pudding in U.S.

Noops, a new company that makes plant-based pudding snacks from oat milk, today announced its U.S. launch online and in some retail locations. The company also announced it has closed a $2 million pre-seed round led by 25madison, with participation from Unovis/New Crop Capital and Siddhi Capital. 

Noops said in today’s press release it will use the funds to further develop its product, expand into more retail and foodservice outlets, and expand marketing efforts.

On its website, Noops lists oat milk, date paste, and sunflower seed protein as the main ingredients of its pudding snacks. All ingredients are organic, and the puddings contain zero added sugars. Noops says each serving contains five to seven grams of protein, five to seven grams of fiber, and half the carbs find in regular pudding snacks at the grocery store. 

Starting today, the snacks are available to pre-order online, and the company will launch at certain retailers (specifics weren’t named) and via Instacart later this month. Right now, the products are only available in the U.S.

Like many products derived from plants and alternative ingredients, Noops’ snacks ring up high in terms of price point right now. An eight-pack of 135g cups costs$39, while a 24-pack costs $84. That’s considerably higher than, say, a three-pack of 115g Swiss Miss puddings that will run you about $3.50 bones. It’s less astronomical, though, than something like Magic Spoon’s $40 for a four-pack of 7-oz. alt-sugar cereal.

On the whole, demand for plant-based products products continues to rise. And Noops is wise to sell its wares directly to consumers via its website. Since the pandemic hit, many companies have taken this route to reach customers who prefer e-commerce to mingling with strangers at the grocery store. Noops joins the likes of Impossible, Planterra, Beyond, and other plant-based brands in offering or planning to offer their products via e-commerce shops.

Impossible Goes the Meal Kit Route With Home Chef Partnership

Meal kit company Home Chef announced today it is partnering with Impossible Foods to offer the latter’s plant-based burgers in its kits. This is the first time Impossible has shown up in the meal kit realm, and it comes at a point when consumer demand for plant-based meat is rapidly growing.

Home Chef will offer multiple recipes that give customers the option to swap out regular ol’ protein for Impossible’s burger, which will come as a 12-oz, package of ground meat for use in a range of recipes that would ordinarily call for beef.

The addition of Impossible to the Home Chef roster is part of the meal kit company’s new “Customize It” feature, which lets users adjust their weekly order to fit their needs, whether that’s extra protein, more veggies, or additional servings. Think Chipotle for meal kits. It’s also the latest way in which the Kroger-owned meal kit company is trying to diversify its offerings to meet different consumers’ lifestyles.

Meal kits are just the latest expansion for Impossible, which up until recently had only been available in restaurants. The company launched its direct-to-consumer online store in June. Those in the lower 48 states can buy bulk orders of Impossible products through it.

But while Impossible may be ahead of its rival Beyond in terms of D2C (Beyond has announced but not yet launched its own e-commerce site), it lags behind in meal kits. Beyond has been available in Blue Apron and HelloFresh kits for some time.

Since the start of the pandemic, Impossible has grown its grocery store footprint by more than 30x and its products are now in about 5,000 grocery stores. Meal kits are another road into consumers’ homes, an important destination seeing as how a lot more people are staying home these days. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the long-struggling meal kit market is actually making something of a comeback.