Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Israel

Dispatches From the Israel Food Tech Ecosystem

When I first attended the Greencircle NY-Israel food tech conference in New York City last year, I never imagined that I would be living in Israel just a year later, exploring the food tech ecosystem for myself. I relocated to Tel Aviv in mid-January for an exchange program and have since been discovering the richness of Israel’s culture, language, cities, people, and places. While the high-tech innovation was a significant draw, my primary goal was to immerse myself in the culture and history of Israel as a whole. In the short time I’ve been here, I learned that the country’s foundation lies in its entrepreneurial mindset.

As I met more local Israelis, I was struck by the sheer number of people working in the high-tech industry. It makes sense considering Israel’s startup history dates back to the country’s founding. As a young nation facing existential threats, Israel’s defense system has always had to adapt to new scenarios, avoiding heavy reliance on conventional methods. There is a strong culture of questioning everything, evident in both political protests and companies that foster a climate of critical thinking. This environment encourages innovation not only for entrepreneurs but also for intrapreneurs, who develop new ideas and frameworks within existing organizations.

Food tech and ag tech are thriving industries in Israel, driven by the nation’s limited natural resources, water shortages, and a broader global climate crisis. According to the Good Food Institute Israel, alternative protein startups in the country raised $454 million in 2022, making up 30% of climate tech investments. Moreover, Israel ranked second globally, only behind the US, in alternative protein investments. The Israel Innovation Authority, an independent publicly-funded agency, is a significant driver of the country’s food tech advancements, offering a variety of practical tools and funding platforms to meet the needs of local and international innovation ecosystems.

Leading universities such as Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Technion University in Haifa, and Tel Aviv University also contribute to food tech innovation through academic research. However, beyond government funding and academic research, I am particularly interested in the intangible aspects of Israel’s culture that foster a high concentration of founders and an environment conducive to risk-taking. 

Roee Nir, the co-founder of Forsea, a cultivated fish company making an eel product, told me what sets Israeli founders apart is, “We are Israelis, and we are very communicative within ourselves. We like to meet, we like to share ideas, and we love that this is a very central industry that is erupting from Israel.”

Similarly, Anat Natan, the co-founder of Anina Culinary Art, credits the Israeli mindset of daring, inventive, and non-traditional thinking.  When asked where this mindset comes from, she told me “If you look back, the Jewish needed to survive. Even though we’re very advanced as a country in a lot of aspects, we’re a startup nation. We’re only 75 years old. We’re still establishing (ourselves), and when you’re building something, you have to do more than when you maintain something. We’re still in the building phase of the Israeli country.” 

In this series, I will continue to explore that startup mindset and developments in Israel’s food tech industry through interviews with founders and investors. I will delve into how startups are established, the groundbreaking innovations taking place, and the implications for Israel’s agricultural sector, environment, economy, and even its conflict with Palestine, because no analysis of food technology in Israel would be incomplete without considering the complex political environment. The food chain is an intricate web that intersects all aspects of society, which is especially true in a region as diverse and multifaceted as the Middle East.

Stay tuned for my first interview tomorrow!

Joy Chen is a contributor at the Spoon and has been writing about robotics and alternative proteins for the past year and a half. Although originally from the United States, she is currently studying at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Israel’s Tastewise Turns Diverse Data into Real-Time Insights Using AI

Those who rely on data to make an important business decision know the adage, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Data is plentiful for those in the food world, but it is a challenge to select the correct data, understand what the information means, and how it relates to your specific situation.

Enter Tastewise, an Israeli market intelligence platform that harvests a vast—and we mean vast–array of structured and unstructured data and turns it into meaningful insights. Working with Nestle, Mars, PepsiCo, and others, Tastewise recently upped its game by adding AI capability using ChatGPT to its functionality.

In a recent interview with The Spoon, Alon Chen, Tastewise Co-Founder, and CEO explained the company’s origins. After working for Google, Chen ran into Eyal Gaon, who became co-founder and CTO. The two men discussed the gap between bringing new products to market and eventual success.

“We found very early on that 90% of innovation–tens of thousands of new products that come out to the market every single year– fail, right? CPG companies and others win up; they innovate a lot less and focus on acquisitions because they can’t keep up. We took a deeper look at this and said, why is that? “

The answer became evident to the two men. Companies, especially in the food area, focused on retail data, which becomes stale quicker than a week-old banana. “Retail data is not good for the food industry because if something is successful and you see that on sales data, you are already 18 months too late,” commented Chen.

Which led to a two-part solution—the underpinnings of the Tastewise platform. Step one is harvesting data from myriad sources ranging from restaurant menus to recipe sites on the Web. The trick of turning raw information into actionable insights is to take structured (quantitative) and unstructured (qualitative) data and offer users easy-to-understand answers. For example, Tastewise can tell a CPG customer what customers are enjoying the latest food fad. The details of those results can go deep into the location and demographics of those trends and the foodies behind them.

“We call it the fast-moving consumer data,” Chen observed. “Fast moving consumer data, which is a whole new category that we think that is evolving today and is now being integrated into the different workflows and the tasks nig companies have in place. Tastewise is a layer of data that brings consumer preferences and needs into the food brand and the food manufacturing life cycle.”

Taking its SaaS data platform to a new level, Tastewise has added AI functionality to its product line. Called TasteGPT, users can ask such questions as:

  • What product ideas are the best fit for my Gen Z consumers?
  • What concepts should I invest my R&D budget in?
  • Where should I launch my new beverage product first?
  • Where is my competition under-represented, and what can I do about it?
  • What should the focus of my next marketing campaign be?

“AI influences how consumers choose what to eat and drink in countless ways. Consumers are also more informed than ever, and they expect us to meet their needs accurately, specifically, and on-demand,” Chen said at the March launch of the new AI capability. “TasteGPT can now help companies get closer to their consumers by capturing the pulse of culinary, nutritional, and dietary needs, and to stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.”

“Artificial intelligence is the only way to mitigate a lack of credible data by enabling organizations to make sense of vast amounts of data,” said Gaon. “With relevant AI tools, data turns into meaningful insights that drive better decision-making and innovation in real-time.”

Israel’s Wasteless Uses A.I. As A Solution for Food Waste

The aptly named Wasteless is a triple threat as it offers a solution that simultaneously benefits retailers, consumers, and the environment. The Israeli company provides an AI-driven solution to cut down on food waste in retail by allowing supermarkets to give consumers dynamic pricing based on the freshness of a given product.

Wasteless has reached a milestone in announcing a partnership with Hoogvliet, a leading European supermarket chain with over 70 stores across The Netherlands. Using Wasteless’ dynamic pricing technology, the retailer will reduce food waste by optimizing costly price markdowns. This partnership forms part of a wider store rollout to stop throwing viable perishable goods into the dumpster, increasing margins while benefiting shoppers and the planet.

“The E.U.’s supermarkets alone are responsible for nearly 7% of all food waste, leading to more than 15 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” Oded Omer, Co-Founder, and CEO of Wasteless, said in a company press release. “By the time this waste occurs, all the energy and resources have already gone into the food. It’s the costliest waste we’re creating – indeed, it costs each store up to 4% of its revenues. In addition, Wasteless will help customers make smarter grocery decisions. Our solution also helps retail managers by optimizing inventory control systems. Joining forces with leading innovative retailers like Hoogvliet means we’re another step closer to saving the environment and achieving our goal of reducing food waste in retail by 80% while increasing retailers’ profits. This is a concrete step toward the Food Waste Pledge we signed at the COP27 Climate Conference and other signatories, including the World Wildlife Fund.”

Speaking to the origins of the company, Omer told The Spoon, “I stood in the supermarket, and I said to myself, well, it doesn’t make sense that I’m going to pay the same price for Chobani for that expires in two days and six days,” he recalled. “So, I started to contact some the academic professors and so on, and to understand the perspective of revenue management.”

That revelation in 2016 led to Wasteless, a machine-learning system embedded in a retailer’s data center. It can be applied using electronic shelf markers (which are more common in the E.U. than in the U.S.) or stickers applied to anything from meat and poultry to apples and salad greens. The pricing scheme is done in small increments using sell-by and consumer shopping data. Wasteless’ pricing can also be applied using a consumer-facing application.

To date, Wasteless is backed by $9.75M in funding, led by Slingshot Ventures (N.L.), Zora Ventures (U.S.), SOSV (U.S.) IT-Farm (Japan), Food Angels (Germany), strategic industry-related investors, and Israel Innovation Authority grants.

In 2021, Wasteless announced a collaboration with NX-Food, a German food tech hub, to bring its pricing systems into stores from METRO, one of the world’s leading wholesale specialists. Omer summed up the win-win bottom line for implementing dynamic pricing. “It’s a huge win for us as we grow and show the world what our technology is capable of. Most importantly, this is a huge win for the environment. There’s a lot of talk about sustainability in business, but it only really works if it’s also profitable.”

Israel’s Brevel and Vgarden Team Up to Add Taste to the Alt.Cheese Market

Vegans would agree that cheese is one of the more difficult foods to put aside when entering the plant-based world. A decade ago, vegan cheese options were lacking, and even though the choices have skyrocketed, finding a smoked gouda cheddar. Mozzarella, or provolone’s taste closely approximates its dairy counterpart, has been challenging. Yes, some smaller artisan brands do a respectable job, but finding a creamy, melty vegan cheese that nails taste and texture is a tall order.

Israel-based Brevel is teaming up with plant-based food manufacturer Vgarden to tackle the cheese challenge head-on. In a press release ballyhooing the new partnership, the companies believe the combination of Brevel’s algae-based microprotein and Vgarden’s production exercise will yield a top-notch product.

In an interview with The Spoon, Eyal  Adut, Chief of Marketing and Business Development at Vgarden, and Yonatan Golan, Co-founder and CEO at Brevel, discussed how the two companies would change the face of non-dairy cheese.

What protein is Vgarden using now, and how will Brevel’s algae-based alternative change the product?

Adut: Currently, Vgarden’s meat and fish alternatives contain high levels of pea or wheat protein. The challenge with these widely used plant-based proteins is in mild-tasting products such as cheese when a certain aftertaste is notable in these products when using those proteins. This fact, combined with Vgarden’s cheeses being allergens free (our products do not contain nuts, oats, soy, etc..), creates the situation that most of our plant-based cheeses are high in calcium, fiber and other nutrients yet contain no protein.   We   have   successfully developed cheddar and parmesan cheese with 10% pea protein, which was possible due to the relatively strong flavor of these cheeses

Vgarden intends that all of our cheeses will contain plant-based proteins, and that is why Brevel’s protein,  being taste and color neutral,   can provide us with the required solution for mild-tasting cheeses.

Golan: In terms of functionality – Brevel tries to be as inert as possible – increasing the protein of Vgarden’s cheeses without changing taste, color, or texture. Brevel has been described as a “ghost protein” – it increases protein content without noticing it is there

Will Brevel’s product be used for more than cheese, given Vgarden’s product line?

Adut: Vgarden is constantly researching novel ingredients and will continue to use other plant-based proteins for its meat and fish alternatives, as these serve different purposes, such as texture. The main challenges for novel ingredients in the plant-based industry remain taste, cost, and scale. As more consumers demand solutions for highly nutritious products, we are working with the industry to scale up novel ingredients. Vgarden’s goal is to provide healthy plant-based foods at price parity with the   animal-based   alternative, and   that   is   what   will   drive gardens ingredients choices in the future

Any chance of moving into the B2C space?

Adut: Vgarden has been active in the Israeli B2C space for nearly a decade under the Mahu Mashu™   brand, and its products are being sold in most retail stores in Australia under other brands (powered by Vgarden). Vgarden recently announced its joint venture with Cale  &   Daughters and established garden Australia, which will manufacture locally-made products for retail and food service in Australia. We are aiming to occupy any white spaces in the worldwide market with the right partners on board

What specific cheeses will Vgarden make? More of its hard cheeses and soft cheeses?   Are there certain cheeses better suited for Brevel’s protein?

Adut: That is something Vgarden is exploring and researching. The Brevel protein shows promising qualities, and we hope to incorporate it in all of our cheeses. Vgarden has developed prototypes of mozzarella and cheddar with previous versions of Brevel’s protein, which taste groups received very well.

How will you enter the U.S. market? Any chance for direct-to-consumer?

Adut: Vgarden recently announced it had formed a presence in the U.S.; Vgarden carried out thorough research of the plant-based market in the U.S. and developed its penetration strategy.   Vgarden is   currently under negotiations with some of the leading sales and distribution companies in the U.S. food sector to be able to provide for any future and current demand for Vgarden’s plant-based offerings

Israel’s Profuse Technology Raises $2.5M for Technology That Lowers Cost of Cultured Meat

As the world awaits the arrival of cultured meat, manufacturers and their suppliers strategize to cope with the realities of this potentially mammoth market. Infrastructure and product scaling for growth remain a challenge from the supply side. Still, concerns over the pricing of lab-grown meat, poultry, and seafood might be the most significant roadblock to consumer acceptance.

Israeli-based Profuse Technology believes it has a solution to bring manufacturing costs down to a point where a pound of cultured beef could achieve price parity with meat from a live animal. A step forward, the company has announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed funding round (and a total of $3.75m since its establishment). The round is led by New York-based investment firm Green Circle and existing shareholders – OurCrowd, Tnuva, and Tempo. Other new investors include Siddhi Capital, a leader in investments in cultivated meat, and Kayma, the investment arm of De-Levie, a meat industry specialist.

According to the announcement, the company will use the funds to collaborate with cultivated meat producers, obtain FDA regulatory approval, and expand the research and development team and its laboratories. The funds will also position the company to source significant capital raising at the end of the second quarter of 2023 to commercialize its customer collaborations.

Profuse’s solution is based on what it calls “a cocktail” that is added during the period when a harvested animal stem cell begins its proliferation process. As founder and CTO Dr. Tamar Eigler-Hirsh told The Spoon: “You would start with a biopsy, and it could be directly from the muscle tissue or an embryonic stem cell harvested from an animal. The cultivated meat companies would take these cells, bank the most successful ones, and optimize them. They would grow them in bioreactors and expand and expand and proliferate these cells until they have hundreds of millions of cells per milliliter. And then, at some point, they have to differentiate the cells to become muscle tissue or muscle fibers. This is where our media supplement comes in.”

“What we’ve basically found a way was to target this natural biological mechanism of regeneration by understanding the biological pathway that that that’s responsible for that,” Dr. Eigler-Hirsh continues. “There’s one protocol to make muscle, and everybody follows it, and it’s very inefficient. Right now, we’re hearing numbers being reported about between 10% to 30% efficiency in converting stem cells into muscle. And using our technology, we can bump that number up from 30% well to over 90% efficiency in conversion of stem cell to muscle.”

Greater efficiency yields more muscle which in turn leads to cultured meat. The math is simple: a more significant and efficient supply can bring down manufacturing costs, which can be passed on to the consumer.

Profuse founder and CEO Guy Nevo Michrowski goes into further detail on the issue of price parity. . First, you won’t need as many cells to start with because your efficiency of using the cells will be 95%. So instead of going for 30 days, you’re going for only 25 days. And most important, the most expensive days are being saved. So, in the last ten days, where over 85% to 90% of the median cost is consumed, those days are cut by half because you don’t need as many cells. And then also, the differentiation and fusion maturation phase of creating them is now reduced to two days instead of ten. Your overall process is only 27 days versus 40 days, which means your factory can produce 33% more yearly.”

Using technology developed at the Weitzman Institute, the company started in 2021. In 2022 it began collaborating with cultivated meat companies and others who potentially would be our distribution partners. Michrowski said that Profuse is working with the major players in the cultured meat and poultry space” And I would say that of the ten leading companies worldwide, we are working with the vast majority together “to demonstrate and quantify the effects of our cocktail on their specific production environment. We operate with different customers to demonstrate our value in different viable development environments and methods.”

Israeli Startup Mermade Gets Seed Funding for Its Lab-Grown Scallops

Mermade is more than just another food tech startup with a laboratory-oriented process to manufacture an alternative protein. The Jerusalem-based company’s method of using algae to create scallops has set it apart and attracted significant early-stage investment.

The company has announced an oversubscribed $3.3M seed round as it showcases a circular cellular agriculture technology for producing cultivated scallops. In doing so, Mermade attacks two problems at once: bringing sustainable, good-tasting scallops to the public at a below current market price. Most cultured meat companies struggle with the economics of meeting or beating the cost of beef, chicken, or conventional seafood.

In an interview with The Spoon, company Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Einhorn explained the differences in his company’s business and technology approach. “We thought is why not pick some meat product that eliminates as much as possible of that food engineering challenge and just focus on those huge biological challenges,” Einhorn said. “Scallops, they have a fairly similar size, and each unit is a fairly similar size and shape. And texture taste is the same all throughout the cuts. Those are huge unfair advantages compared to our direct competition– other startups trying to replicate the more complex meat products.”

Mermade says it is the first company in the world to produce scallops using cellular agriculture. The company intends to develop a product and reach laboratory-scale production by 2023, reaching consumers and restaurants after that. Mermade will use the funds to employ more stem cell and algae researchers, accelerating the company towards this goal. The scallop is the first product the company will develop out of a diverse seafood portfolio that will gradually arrive on the market.

The use of algae to recycle the cells’ growth substrate is a clear distinction for Mermade. This cellular interpretation of traditional aquaponics was termed by the company Cytoponics, and the company has filed several patent applications related to this circular production method.

Related to the cost issue, Einhorn states, “It’s a big market segment and one that it has a very high price point, which is important because the main challenge right now is driving costs down. We’re trying to integrate all parts of our design into this prototype to bring cost even close to market parity.”

“In the next few years, consumers worldwide will be able to buy cultivated scallops (Coquilles Saint Jacques) made by Mermade in a supermarket or restaurant, at an affordable price and with the same quality and taste as the original food. Using Cytoponics as our production platform, we could also produce a variety of other cultivated seafood products such as calamari, shrimp, crab meat, and more.”

The company was founded in July 2021 by Daniel Einhorn (CEO), Dr. Rotem Kadir (CTO), and Dr. Tomer Halevy (COO). Investors in the seed round include the investment platform OurCrowd, Israel’s most active venture firm; Fall Line, an American VC fund specializing in AgTech; and prominent Dutch investor Sake Bosch.

Alternative seafood—both plant-based and cell-cultured—is a hot area. As The Spoon reported in April, Good Food Institue’s report, which looks at the entire alternative seafood category across plant-based, cell-cultured, and fermentation-based products, said 2021 investment brought the total invested in the category to $313 million from 2013 through 2021. Cultivated seafood startups commanded two-thirds of all investment in alt-seafood last year at $115 million, compared with $58 million invested in plant-based seafood startups and $2 million in fermentation-based seafood.

Among the companies active in this space are Wildtype, UPSIDE Foods, Gathered Foods, and Finless Foods. With all the activity in this forward-looking space, the United States—in the form of the USDA and FDA—has yet to give the green light for sales of these lab-grown alternative proteins. Only Singapore, Qatar, and to some degree, The Netherlands have given their stamp of approval.

Some Cities Are Pushing Back on Sidewalk Robots. Here Are Some Possible Ideas For Peaceful Coexistence

While sidewalk delivery robots promise to help reduce carbon emissions and car traffic on cluttered city streets, not everyone is excited about them, including one city traffic administrator in the Yaffa municipality of Tel Aviv.

According to an article published this week in the English-language edition of Israel newspaper Haaretz, Ofir Cohen, the director of transportation, traffic and parking for Yaffa, sent a letter in early July to Israel’s Transportation Ministry to convey his belief that sidewalk robots from Russian tech company Yandex were a nuisance to pedestrians.

From the letter:

“One of the ways we give priority to pedestrians is by limiting bicycle traffic on sidewalks,” Cohen wrote. “It’s understood that the robots, which are about 80 centimeters [31 inches] wide, could be a potential real nuisance for pedestrians on the sidewalks although we have also been impressed by the [robots’] smart-navigation capabilities.”

And then, on Sunday, less than a month after Cohen sent his letter, the municipality notified the Transportation Ministry it was terminating Yandex’s pilot program.

Cohen said he believed the robots should be removed from sidewalks because they made them a much less useable public resource. He also expressed concern about the impact of robot traffic on low-mobility pedestrians as well as the elderly and children.

פלישת הרובוטים לישראל החלה: לראשונה ברחובות תל אביב, רובוט משלוחים אוטונומי. ככה זה פועל.

These are essentially the same reasons that the city council of Toronto decided to issue a ban on the use of sidewalk robots late last year. The city’s accessibility advisory committee proposed the ban, expressing concern that the robots would be hazardous to those with low mobility and impaired vision, as well as elderly people and children.

“Sidewalks are an important publicly-funded public resource, created for pedestrians to safely use,” David Lepofsky, the chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, wrote in a letter to the Council. “Their safe use should not be undermined for such things as private companies’ delivery robots.”

My guess is these rulings – which followed San Francisco’s ban on sidewalk robots in 2018 – will become more and more common as sidewalk robots go from trials to wider deployments. Because of this, it’s probably worth exploring ways to accommodate the increased use of robotic delivery vehicles and pedestrians.

One idea is simply to set limits on fleet size and traffic. In cities with lighter pedestrian traffic, having limits to ensure the sidewalks don’t become overburdened with robots makes sense.

Another is to continue to push for guidelines and safety measures for robot fleets on pedestrian walkways. Guidelines put into place during the Toronto trial included a 6 MPH speed limit, mandatory insurance for robot companies, audible signals, reflectors with lights, brakes, and a requirement that robots yield to pedestrians. I can these being expanded further and putting the legal and financial burden on robotic delivery companies to ensure pedestrians are not obstructed in any way.

Finally, I can also imagine cities exploring robot travel lanes, similar to what you might see for bikes on streets and on the sidewalks themselves. And who knows, beyond that, we might even see some of them consider sending the robots underground into tubes.

What do you think? Are there other ways you can envision pedestrians coexisting with sidewalk delivery bots? Drop us a line and let us know or let us know in the comments.

SuperMeat Believes An Open Source Approach to Cultivated Meat Will Benefit All

Lab-grown or cultured meat is a sexy topic that fulfills the dream of healthy eating while saving the planet’s precious resources. Most of the headlines focus on the companies in the four corners of the world waiting for regulators to wave the checkered flag. The more interesting story—at least for those who enjoy looking under the hood—is in the processes, supply chain, and partnerships vital to this promising industry.

To understand the drill-down of what it takes to go from harvesting animal cells to creating consumer-facing products, it’s valuable to speak with visionaries such as Ido Savir, CEO of Israel’s SuperMeat. In addition to his knowledge of cultivated meat, Savir’s background in IT provides him with a panoramic view of the infrastructure needed to build a successful B2B company.

While it might not qualify as an awe-inspiring announcement, SuperMeat recently received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to establish an open-source high-throughput screening system for optimizing cultivated meat feed ingredients. As an analogy, think of it as a system that ensures cows or chickens receive only the best quality feed to produce larger quantities of high-grade meat or chicken. But there is a significant difference.

Savir explains that animals are inefficient producers of their products. “It’s just done more efficiently (in cultivated meat),” the SuperMeat CEO told The Spoon in a recent interview. “In traditional meat production, 70% to 80% of the cost comes from the feed, and animals are just not very efficient conversion machines.” To put it into perspective, the cost of animal component-free (ACF) feed can make or break those vying to play in this space.

Rather than compete with consumer-facing brands such as Future Meat, Eat Just, and Mosa Meat (to name a few), SuperMeat is taking a B2B approach. Working with established meat and poultry providers to build production facilities where companies with existing supply chains can quickly enter the future of the alt-meat market. SuperMeat has announced deals with Germany’s PHW Group and Migros in Switzerland. The Israeli firm is in discussion with potential U.S. partners to reach the stateside market by the end of 2023.

The decision to build a platform for cultivated meat rather than build its own consumer brand directly results from Savir’s tech background, and it is also why the new feed screening system is in the open-source approach. “From my background, and I really believe in open source, and I really believe in sort of a platform approach that can help bring not just one company but the industry forward,” Savir stated.

Also, speaking to his tech background, it’s clear Savir has learned the relationship between capital expenditures and profit. It’s not about cost; it’s about having the right model.

“The way I look at this, and it doesn’t matter how much the infrastructure costs,” he said. “What matters is how efficient and the return you can get from that money. Right. And if you can get that return in a reasonable time, it makes sense, no matter what the cost is. We have our cost of goods models that demonstrate that that makes sense.”

A trip to SuperMeat’s facility in Israel will yield more than a view of lab equipment and many steel fermentation tanks. The facility includes a small restaurant-like space called “The Chicken,” where potential business partners, consumers, and others can taste the lab-grown animal protein. Savir says it’s more than just a pretty place to show off.

“We’re trying to do things a bit differently,” Savir said. “We thought it was important for us and our potential clients, which are food companies, to have that full transparency and traceability.”

See video of the makeshift eatery below:

World's First Cultivated Meat Blind Tasting Full Reel

Israel’s Remilk Heads to Denmark With Plans for Precision Fermented Milk Production Facility

The challenge for companies focused on developing fermented alternatives to milk-based products that come from cows is to replicate the scale of a dairy farm. A large farm can have up to 15,000 cows, while a small farm will have between 1,000 and 5,000 animals. Cows are milked two to three times per day, with each producing between six and seven gallons daily.

Do the math, and you understand the enormous task facing this new breed of innovators in the alt. dairy space. Among companies in this space, the race is on to build out giant fermentation facilities to meet the potential demand. Remilk, a Tel Aviv-based firm using yeast-based precision fermentation to create a non-animal milk product, announced it would go big in tackling future production needs by securing 750,000 square feet at Kalundborg Denmark’s Symbiosis Project. The company says construction will begin by the end of 2022.

“Remilk has already started high-volume production in several locations around the world. The Danish facility will be our first fully owned facility, and production at this facility, the largest of its kind in the world, will begin as soon as the build-out is complete,” Remilk CEO Aviv Wolff told The Spoon. “Remilk is committed to reinventing the dairy industry in a kind, sustainable way. Eliminating the need for animals is the only way to supply our world’s growing demand without destroying the process.”

While Wolff didn’t provide specifics, he said that Remilk is working with leading consumer brands to craft recipes made with Remilk and believes the end products resulting from those collaborations will be available to consumers soon.

Wolff points to Remilk’s ability to create sustainable animal-free products that do not compromise on taste. Rather than compare his company’s efforts to competitors such as betterland farms, Wolff thinks his competition is milk and milk products that have been around for more than 10,000 years.

“To a large extent, we benchmark ourselves against traditional dairy proteins because that’s what we are looking to replace,” Wolff said. “Remilk can seamlessly replace cow-milk-based ingredients in consumer products because Remilk has the same characteristics, nutrition, and flavor profile with the advantage of being non-animal, thus free of lactose, cholesterol, hormone, and antibiotic residues.”

Remilk is far from alone in the world of precision-fermented dairy. Others include Real Deal Milk, Change Foods, Imagindairy (also in Israel), Formo, and betterland foods. A list of plant-based milk startups would be run several pages.

Israel’s Vanilla Vida Wants to Expand and Improve the World’s Favorite Flavor

Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that vanilla is the world’s most popular flavor? In addition, how about the idea that 95% of all vanilla sold is synthetic, generally made from an oil or lab-developed chemical compound. Sounds like a supply and demand issue for a real deal vanilla pod.

Vanilla Vida has done its homework and sees an opportunity to tickle the universal taste buds by using technology and data to produce large quantities of top-quality vanilla anywhere in the world. Madagascar and Indonesia are the top crop producers but face issues with uncertain weather, quality control issues, and a long drying process. With proof of concept completed, Vanilla Vida CEO Oren Zilberman is ready to expand beyond Israel and launch climate-controlled farms worldwide.

Zilberman’s experience as a VC is instrumental in the success of his new company. “When you are building a startup, you are always looking about what is the chance it can do a major impact and some change in the world and at the same time, have a really good business,” the company’s CEO said in a recent interview with The Spoon. He also explained that his experience led him not to want to develop something new or go into an unproven segment. By expanding the opportunity for a wildly popular product, such as vanilla, Vanilla Vida can hit the ground running instead of requiring a great deal of marketing to drive customer awareness.

Vanilla Vida’s approach uses technology in the form of climate-controlled growing centers along with data, including image processing, to ensure disease detection, quality control, and plant behavior pattern identification. Zilberman claims that Vanilla Vida’s technology can yield up to three times the volume of existing methods. Going beyond the farming aspect, the company’s IP allows it to alter the metabolism of vanilla beans in ways that increase and even enhance the end product’s flavor.

Founded in 2020, Vanilla Vida recently raised $11.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ordway Selections, a Swiss investment firm, and money manager for a number of private families. Other investors in the round include PeakBridge, a seed fund specializing in FoodTech, Kibbutz Maagan Michael, and Strauss, which has now made its second investment in the company.

“We are a vertically integrated company,” Zilberman said. Vanilla Vida’s strategy is to create joint ventures with farmers around the globe (although currently solely based in Israel) to place these climate-controlled centers close to flavor houses and food manufacturers.

Zilberman is quick to point out that the global need for vanilla is not a zero-sum game. If 94% of the worldwide supply is synthetic, by entering the market, Vanilla Vida will not endanger the business of existing vanilla producers in countries like Madagascar.

 “We are not here to take an existing piece of the cake from countries such as Madagascar and take food out of their mouths,” Zilberman says. “We are expanding the market for everybody, and we want to help the world use fewer synthetic products and more natural.

Zilberman says that the company is now focused on scaling its business with its proof of concept completed. Initially, that scale will be in Israel, but Europe, the U.S., and other regions are all part of the plan after that. That plan includes expanding the uses for top-of-the-line vanilla, such as creating a floral variety that could be used in the cosmetic industry and a flavoring to mask the taste of children’s medicine.

“There’s no real crop in the world like vanilla in the world in both the challenge and opportunity,” Zilberman adds. “It’s an industry with zero innovation, which is unusual when the product has the world’s most popular taste and smell.”

Europe? The U.S.? Israel? Which Country Might Be Next to Approve Cultured Meat

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

Ever since Eat Just nabbed the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in Singapore (and followed that milestone up by actually selling it), myself and many others have wondered which market will be next. 

The question was asked again this week when an article from Food Navigator zeroed in on Europe, noting, “Europeans want to know when it will be their turn: when will cultivated meat be served on EU plates?” It seems the most probable answer is three to five years. 

With Singapore already selling cultured meat at restaurants, five years seems a long time. But David Brandes, the Managing Director for Belgium-based company Piece of Meat, noted to Food Navigator that “bureaucracy and political interest” hold back the regulatory process, and that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s risk assessment process alone takes nine months.

Still, the European Commission has a clearly defined process for bringing cultured meat to market that is known as the Novel Food authorization, which makes it a logical market to try and bring a product into. For example, Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands, has said it is focusing on Singapore and Europe for its first launches, specifically citing Europe’s Novel Food authorizations as a reason. Europe is also home to many other cultured meat companies, including Blue Biosciences, Mirai, and CellulaREvolution.

On the other hand, many have their sights set on the U.S. as the next destination for the sale of cultured meat. In 2019, the FDA and the USDA issued a formal agreement to jointly oversee regulation of cultured meat using existing frameworks. (The framework does not apply to cultured seafood, which is regulated exclusively by the FDA.)

U.S.-based companies are still leading the cultured meat industry, too, and have attracted huge amounts of investment in the recent past, including Memphis Meats’ $161 million round in 2020, BlueNalu’s $60 million fundraise, and, of course, Eat Just’s recent $200 million fundraise. The latter — still the only cultured meat company in the world cleared to sell a product — hasn’t explicitly said it will next launch commercially in the U.S. In a recent conversation, Eat Just founder and CEO Josh Tetrick only hinted, saying “I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll see clearance sometime in the next two years. I hope it’s this year — we’re going to be ready if it is. But it’s hard to tell.”

Additionally, California-based BlueNalu has said its products will launch in the second half of 2021, though it hasn’t yet said where. And an organization known as the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, which includes Memphis Meats, New Age Meats, Eat Just, and others, is dedicated to advancing the reach of cultured meat in the U.S.

Let’s also keep one eye on Israel. While its a smaller market than the U.S. or Europe, the country is like Singapore in that its government is very keen on advancing cultured meat. That includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, who in December of last year became the first head of state to taste cultured meat. He noted at the time that Israel will “become a powerhouse for alternative meat and alternative protein.”

Israel is also home to the world’s first restaurant dedicated to cultured meat, SuperMeat’s The Chicken. No products are sold their. Rather, consumers apply to gain entry then give detailed feedback in exchange for tasting the company’s cultured meat product. (Spoiler alert: it’s chicken.) 

There are also a growing number of companies coming from Israel, including Aleph Farms, Future Meat, and MeaTech 3D, which already publicly trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. 

Worth noting is that MeaTech 3D has also filed to go public in the U.S., which may suggest where its sights are set in terms of initial commercialization. Future Meat, too, has also said it plans to launch in the U.S. by 2022 via restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales. So while Israel may not necessarily be host the world’s second commercial sale of cultured meat, it may well provide the companies doing so elsewhere. Say, in the U.S.

Other Headlines

Tyson’s Raised & Rooted Expands into Plant-Based Burgers, Brats and Italian Sausage. Tyson Foods’ plant-based protein brand, announced today that it is expanding its lineup with three new offerings: burgers, Bratwurst and Italian sausages. 

Sweden: Stockeld Dreamery Launching First Plant-Based Cheese This Week. Plant-based cheese startup Stockeld Dreamerly, will launch its first product, Stockeld Chunk, at select stores in Stockholm, Sweden on May 6. 

OmniFoods Plans to Launch Its Plant-Based OmniPork Products in the U.S. This Year. OmniPork, the plant-based meat line from Green Monday subsidiary OmniFoods, will launch in the U.S. later this year.

Dragontail Systems and Pizza Hut Deploy Pizza Delivery Drones in Israel

Restaurant tech company Dragontail Systems announced today that it has joined up with Pizza Hut for pizza delivery by drone in Israel.

To make this type of airborne delivery happen, Dragontail is integrating drones into its Algo Dispatching System, which uses AI to manage food preparation and delivery workflow. The delivery drones won’t be dropping pizzas off at people’s front doors, however. Rather, they will fly pizzas to remote designated landing zones where delivery drivers will pick them up for last mile of the delivery.

This remote drop-off hub approach is gaining traction with delivery companies around the world. IFood is using this model in Brazil, and here in the U.S., Uber is taking this approach with its drone delivery program.

There are actually good reasons to use this multi-step approach when delivering by drone. First, it simplifies the regulatory issues around flying commercial delivery drones because it reduces the number of flight paths that need to be created and cleared with appropriate government entities. Second, even if there is a last mile that needs to be driven, a drone still zooms overhead bypassing a lot of ground traffic on its way to customers for a speedy delivery. Finally, a remote hubg can keep delivery drivers closer to the delivery neighborhoods, rather than having them go back and forth to a restaurant.

Regardless of approach, the drone food delivery space is heating up. Walmart is using Flytrex for a groceries-by-drone delivery pilot in North Carolina. Rouses Market is testing deliveries in Alabama. In Ireland, Manna is making deliveries in around Dublin. And Google’s Wing has been making drone deliveries in Australia.

Drone delivery could become a much more viable option for restaurants and other food retailers here in the U.S., as the Federal Aviation Administration released its final safety and nighttime flying rules for commercial drone operators at the end of last year.