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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Report: Nestlé Is Getting Into Cultivated Meat Through Deal With Israel’s Future Meat

CPG giant Nestlé intends to enter the cultured meat market via a partnership with Israel-based alt-protein company Future Meat, according to a report from Bloomberg. 

Unnamed sources familiar with the matter said Nestlé is working on various products that mix its own plant-based proteins with cultivated meat from Future Meat. 

More granular details on the deal, such as specific products are not available at this time. Future Meat recently opened what it says is the world’s first production facility for cultured meat. The plant, located in Future Meat’s hometown of Rehovot, Israel, can produce 500 kilograms of cultured meat per day, or the equivalent to about 5,000 hamburgers, according to the company. The new facility is currently processing cultured chicken, pork, and lamb. Beef production is also in the works.

Future Meat’s end products will be a combination of cultivated and plant-based protein, which is exactly what Nestlé is aiming for in its deal with the company. Future Meat told the Spoon recently that its products are currently 45 to 75 percent cultured meat, with an edible scaffold made of plant protein.

Earlier this year, Future Meat told The Spoon it has been able to decrease the cost of cultured meat production by 1,000x over the last three years. At last check, the company had brought the cost of its cultured chicken breast down to $7.50 USD per quarter-pound serving. It followed that up with news that the production price could drop to $2 within the next 12 to 18 months.

Actual product launches for both Future Meat and Nestlé are contingent on the companies getting regulatory approvals. Currently, Future Meat is working to get regulatory approval here in the U.S., with the goal of selling its products in foodservice venues next year. A partnership with a major CPG like Nestlé may boost the company’s ambitions in this area.

Nestlé Acquired Freshly

Nestlé announced last Friday that it had acquired prepared meal delivery service Freshly. According to the press announcement, “the deal values Freshly at USD 950 million, with potential earnouts up to USD 550 million contingent to the successful growth of the business.” The deal was signed and closed on October 30th.

Freshly, which provides prepared meals that consumers just need re-heat at home, has raised a total of $107 million in funding. In August of last year, the company was producing 600,000 meals a week. By April of 2020, that number had grown to nearly 1 million meals per week and a Freshly rep told us last week that by August the company was delivering “well over one million” meals each week.

The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, has played a hand in Freshly’s growth, as the pandemic has forced the closure of dine-in options at restaurants and forced more people to eat at home. When we checked in with Freshly in April, the company said that it had basically doubled the number of people over the age of 60 ordering meals, and that the average order size had jumped 20 percent.

Given how the pandemic continues to rage across the U.S. and Europe, people will most likely continue to eat in as much, if not more, considering that the cold winter months are almost upon us and dining outside is not really an option in a lot of places.

In 2017, Nestlé had purchased a 16 percent stake in Freshly. With the outright purchase of Freshly, Nestlé said that it will be able to combine its understanding of what people eat at home and deep research and development with Freshly’s consumer analytics platform and distribution network.

Nestlé’s purchase of Freshly also comes during a bit of a renaissance in direct-to-consumer sales. Brands big and small, among them Pepsico, Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and many others, are selling direct to consumers online in addition to traditional retail outlets. Freshly gives Nestlé another such D2C route to sell its brands.

Changes are already afoot at Freshly. In a corporate blog post about the acquisition, Freshly CEO, Michael Wystrach, said that thanks to Nestlé, the company already has plans to increase its menu variety by tripling the number of weekly meals.

Nestlé Launches Plant-based Tuna Alternative

Nestlé announced this week its newest product release: a plant-based tuna called Vuna, which is the company’s first seafood alternative product. Vuna will first be available in Switzerland.

Nestlé’s fish-free tuna contains six plant-based ingredients, with pea protein being the key component. Although Nestlé did not disclose the rest of the ingredients, they did say the tuna product is high in protein and contains essential amino acids. The Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland has spent the past nine months developing the product, which will be released under the Swiss brand Garden Gourmet.

Nestlé is among the largest food manufacturers in the world and is growing its plant-based portfolio. Two of its brands, Garden Gourment and Sweet Earth, offer plant-based meat alternatives like chicken nuggets, sausages, and burger patties. Nestlé also launched its Incredible burger last year, though it changed the name of the product to Sensational Burger after Impossible pressed a trademark infringement case.

With a growing population correlating to a growing demand for seafood, plant-based alternatives offers a solution to feeding a protein hungry planet. The seafood industry is currently worth $15 billion, and given the microplastics found in fish and overfishing threatening traditional fish, the plant-based seafood industry certainly has the opportunity to expand.

Overall, plant-based seafood alternative companies have raised $35 million in investments as of June 2020. Plant-based seafood currently only accounts for 1 percent of total plant-based meat sales, and sales of plant-based foods are quickly outpacing the sales growth of animal-based foods. There is certainly room and opportunity for more alternative seafood products and companies in the plant-based space.

Nestlé’s Vuna joins other companies like Good Catch and Sophie’s Kitchen which also offer plant-based fish. Other large CPGs also see the potential in plant-based seafood. General Mills, for example, is an investor in Good Catch.

For now, Nestlé’s tuna alternative product is currently only available in the Switzerland, though the company has with future plans to roll out in other markets. The tuna will come refrigerated in a glass jar and be available in select retail locations.

Court Rules That Nestlé’s ‘Incredible’ Burger Name Infringes on Impossible

A European court ruled that Néstle must change the name of its Incredible burger because it infringes on Impossible’s trademarks, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

For now, the ruling only applies to European countries. Swiss CPG giant Néstle will change the name of its patty to Sensational Burger, which unfortunately doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily but also won’t potentially confuse customers — something the court cited in its ruling. 

According to the WSJ, Impossible claimed Nestlé was “trying to impede” its entry into the European market by using a similar name for its product.

A spokesperson for Néstle said that they believe “anyone should be able to use descriptive terms such as ‘incredible’ to explain the qualities of a product.” The company is planning to appeal the decision.

Néstle launched its Incredible meatless patty last year under its Garden Gourmet brand. The burger is made of soy and wheat protein and meat to compete with the new wave of plant-based meat companies, namely Beyond and Impossible. As of right now, Nestlé’s patty sells in 15 European countries as well as Australia, and in 2019 also landed in McDonald’s stores in Israel.

Impossible doesn’t actually sell its products in Europe yet. It filed with the EU in 2019 for regulatory approval. A spokesperson for the company last year told The Spoon that Impossible plans to “sell plant-based meat in every single region of the world.” That said, one of the hangups with Impossible getting its products in Europe is the company’s use of soy hemoglobin in its products, which is the molecule that gives the patties their “bleeding” flavor and appearance. As Catherine Lamb noted last year:

While technically heme isn’t genetically modified — it’s the output of genetically modified yeast — it could still throw up some red flags for the European Food Safety Authority.

Plant-based meat’s other major player, Beyond Meat, announced a new manufacturing facility in The Netherlands last year, and more recently said it would increase availability and speed for getting its products around Europe and the Middle East.

All of which is to say, the fight over Nestlés naming underscores how competitive the plant-based meat market has gotten recently. Even if Nestlé successfully appeals the court’s decision, the company has its work cut out in terms of carving out a dominant spot in the European alt-protein market.

 

Food Tech News: Nestlé Opens Plant-based Meat Factory in China, Home Chef Data Breach

It’s certainly an odd Memorial Day weekend, what with most of us unable to travel or gather on beaches or rooftops or invite our friends over to grill. But hopefully it’s a relaxing one for you, nonetheless.

Did you know that a proven way to make any holiday weekend better is to kick it off with some food tech news? This edition has stories on Home Chef’s data breach, Nestlé’s first plant-based meat factory in China, and some new celebrity investors for vegan tuna company Good Catch. Enjoy!

Home Chef confirms data breach
Meal delivery service Home Chef confirmed this week that it had indeed suffered a data breach (h/t Techcrunch). The company stated that the names, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses of some of its customers were hacked, along with the last four digits of their credit cards. Not all of its users were affected. The stolen information was published online, along with other hacked data from 10 other companies.

Photo: Nestlé

Nestlé to open plant-based meat factory in China
CPG giant Nestlé announced plans this week to build a new plant-based meat manufacturing site in Tianjin, roughly 72 miles outside of Beijing (h/t Fortune). This will be Nestlé’s first production facility for plant-based products in Asia. The company noted that the food sector has undergone a “quiet revolution” over the past few years, as consumers turn to more environmentally friendly foods — like plant-based meat.

Photo: Good Catch Foods

Plant-based seafood company reveals celebrity investors
Gathered Foods, the company behind plant-based seafood company Good Catch, announced a new group of celebrity investors this week. The list includes big names like Woody Harrelson, Paris Hilton and Lance Bass. Good Catch’s vegan tuna is available at 4,500 retailers in the US and UK, and the company plans to expand to more international locations in 2020. The celebrity investment news comes four months after Good Catch announced a $36.8 million Series B financing round with investors including General Mills.

Food Tech News: Nestlé Expands Coffee Blockchain, Uber Expands Eats for Business

How are you all doing out there? I’m starting to get into a bit of a weekend routine: walk, bake bread (then Instagram it, of course), read, sleep. And read food tech news, of course. This week we’ve got stories on Nestlé’s new blockchain application, Chilean plant-based food startup NotCo’s layoffs, and Uber’s plans to expand Eats for Business globally. Enjoy!

Nestlé brings blockchain to its Zoégas coffee brand
Food giant Nestlé announced this week that it’s partnering with The Rainforest Alliance to expand its IBM Food Trust blockchain technology to its Zoégas coffee brand (thanks for the tip, FoodDive). With blockchain, consumers will be able to scan a QR code on their bag of coffee to trace its journey and see which country it came from. They’ll also be able to access information about the farmers, general time of harvest, and when the beans were roasted at  Zoégas’s factory in Sweden. 

Photo: Eats for Business

Uber for Business to expand Eats to 20+ countries
Uber for Business, a platform which targets corporations, announced this week that it will expand its food delivery component, Eats for Business, to more than 20 countries this year (h/t Techcrunch). First up: Brazil, Canada, France and the U.K., which all launched last week. Uber started Business for Uber in 2014 to help companies better facilitate rides for their employees and clients, and in 2018 added a corporate version of its Uber Eats food delivery app. Uber Eats reportedly decided on this expansion since more employees are working from home in the wake of COVID-19 and don’t have access to catered office foods.

Photo: NotCo

Chilean plant-based food startup NotCo shutters production plant
NotCo, a Chilean startup making plant-based foods like mayonnaise, milk, and ice cream, has announced it will close its NotMayo production plant in Santiago, Chile. According to Contxto, over half of the startup’s staff has been laid off. But the company isn’t shutting down altogether — production of its vegan NotMayo product will be passed onto an unnamed third party.

Food Tech News: Nestlé’s Plant-based Partnerships and a Kroger Podcast

Happy winter weekend, all. Hopefully wherever you are has some fresh Snow, clear skies, or a fire in the fireplace. One thing it definitely has: some food tech news.

In this week’s roundup we have stories on Nestlé’s new plant-based partnerships, a fresh podcast from Kroger, and a personalized nutrition report. Enjoy!

Nestlé partners with Canadian plant-based ingredient makers
It looks like Nestlé has taken another step into the alternative protein space. This week the New York Times reported that the Swiss CPG company has teamed up with two Canadian plant-based ingredient manufacturers: Burcon and Merit Functional Foods. The deal will give Nestlé new resources to expand and improve its alternative protein products, such as the soy- and wheat-based Incredible burgers which are currently available in Europe.

Kroger unveils new podcast “Noshtalgia“
For those who love their podcasts with a side of groceries, there’s a new option to add to the listening queue. Kroger has launched a podcast called Noshtalgia which features stories of people sharing their food memories (h/t GroceryDive). Hosted by cookbook author and TV personality Danielle Kartes, the podcast is intended as a medium for people to share their favorite family recipes — and, ya know, promote a place to buy the ingredients for said recipes (cough, Kroger, cough). The first episode, “Poppy’s Waldorf Salad,” is already live wherever you get your podcasts.

Report indicates huge potential for personalized nutrition
This week USB released a report stating that personalized nutrition could generate annual revenues of $64 billion by 2040 (via CNBC). The report calls out big-name companies, like Uber and Amazon, who should be investing more in the space.

There’s a ton of buzz around this topic, which is why we’re organizing a food personalization summit in NYC next month! Called Customize, the event will feature speakers in CPG, grocery, restaurants, and more talking about how they’re harnessing personalization to create the future of food. If you’d like to join use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tickets!

Nestlé Launches Awesome Burger at Ruby Tuesday, Announces New Plant-based Sausage

Nestlé has seriously beefed up its plant-based meat initiatives this week. Today Sweet Earth Foods, which is owned by the Swiss CPG company, announced that it would begin selling its plant-based Awesome burger at Ruby Tuesday’s. The Awesome burger launched in U.S. retail this October, but the Ruby Tuesday’s deal marks its first time sold in a national restaurant chain.

The pea protein burger will be available for $5 at all Ruby Tuesday’s locations for tomorrow only. After that diners can substitute an Awesome patty on any burger on the menu for $10.99 (which I’m assuming includes all the toppings). Sweet Earth’s burger will be available through mid-March, after which it has the “potential” for it to become a permanent item.

The Ruby Tuesday’s partnership will certainly expand the Awesome Burger’s footprint, but it has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to competitors Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, both of whom have already established extensive fast-food partnerships. Maybe set your sights on McDonald’s, Sweet Earth?

Photo: Sweet Earth Foods burger/Ruby Tuesday

While its plant-based burger is making its U.S. national restaurant debut, Nestlé is also cooking up a brand new alt-meat product. Over the next few months the CPG giant will launch plant-based sausages in Europe and the U.S.

In Europe the soy-based Incredible Sausage will join the Incredible portfolio of meat alternatives by Nestlé-owned company Garden Gourmet. The Incredible burger is already sold across Europe, including as a vegan option at McDonald’s in Germany and Israel. The Incredible Sausage will hit retailers in 11 European markets, including Switzerland and Germany, this March.

In the U.S., Sweet Earth Sausage, part of the Sweet Earth brand, will be available in retailers this April. Soon after a foodservice version will roll out. Sweet Earth will follow that with a line of plant-based deli meats, which the company states will be sold at retail deli counters.

Judging by the photo (see above), Nestlé’s new plant-based sausages look an awful lot like the meatless brats from Beyond Meat. Like Beyond Meat, the Sweet Earth sausages are also made with pea protein and they both resemble uncooked sausage (though Sweet Earth’s seem to have vegetables incorporated into the links themselves). These qualities will distinguish them in the grocery aisle from sausages by Tofurky and Lightlife, both of which are pre-cooked and made with soy and wheat protein.

Details on pricing and availability for the Sweet Earth and Incredible sausages are still a mystery. We’ve reached out to Nestlé and will update the post when we hear back.

Blue Bottle Coffee Plans to Make Its U.S. Stores Zero Waste in 2020

“We are proud to announce an experiment that may not work, that may cost us money, and that may make your life a little more complicated.”

So wrote Blue Bottle Coffee CEO Bryan Meehan late last week in a blog post introducing his company’s latest initiative: to turn Blue Bottle’s U.S. locations into zero-waste cafes by the end of 2020.

In the blog post, published at the tail end of last week, Meehan wrote that each Blue Bottle store goes through about 15,000 disposable cups per month in the U.S., which adds up to roughly 12 million cups per year. While the company did switch from bioplastic cups and straws to paper versions back in 2015, Meehan says the move is “still not enough.” 

From Meehan’s blog post:

“By the end of 2020, all of our US cafes will be zero waste, which according to Zero Waste International Alliance, means at least 90 percent of our waste is diverted from landfill. To help us go even further, we will test our first zero-single-use-cup program in the San Francisco Bay Area.“

Blue Bottle will pilot this initiative by providing reusable cups users can get with “a modest deposit” and then return to the cafe for cleaning. Customers can also bring in their own reusable cups. Meanwhile, stores will sell whole bean coffee in bulk (meaning customers would bring their own containers) rather than single-use bags, and grab-and-go items will be packaged in reusable containers. 

The move is in keeping with the sustainability goals of Nestlé, who owns a 68 percent stake in Blue Bottle. The Swiss company recently pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025 and make its packaging reusable and recyclable by the same time. 

But as Meehan’s post points out, recycling is far from effective when it comes to combatting the single-use plastic problem. Currently, less than 10 percent of all plastic sold in the U.S. actually gets recycled. Instead, millions of tons wind up in landfills and the ocean. That phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” dates back to the 1970s, but it’s only recently that the first two words have seen a resurgence. By resurgence I mean they are actually getting mentioned once in a while when it comes to sustainability discussions. Getting consumers to use fewer single-use plastics for their day-to-day items — not just recycle them after the fact — could (theoretically) help shift some behaviors around what, when, and how we consume things.

Or it could just piss everyone off and send them running to Starbucks. There’s no guarantee customers be willing to pay that “modest deposit” in order to drink Blue Bottle’s coffee, or that ditching all single-use containers for food and beverages is economically feasible over the long term.

For his part, Meehan is aware of how tall an order Blue Bottle’s zero-waste initiative actually is:

“A commitment to reuse will wreak havoc on every aspect of our pilot cafe’s operations. We expect to lose some business. We might fail. We know some of our guests won’t like it—and we’re prepared for that. But the time has come to step up and do difficult things.”

Nestlé is Launching Stouffer’s and Digiorno Products made with Awesome Plant-Based Beef Grounds

Today Nestlé announced it would launch two new products featuring its Sweet Earth Awesome Grounds plant-based beef. The Digiorno Rising Crust Meatless Supreme and Stouffer’s Meatless Lasagna come from two brands in Nestlé’s portfolio.

Sweet Earth was acquired by Nestlé in 2017. The company’s plant-based Awesome Burger and Awesome Grounds, both made with pea protein, launched in U.S. supermarkets this October. Now it seems Nestlé is experimenting with where else it can put Awesome to work.

Honestly, I’m surprised this sort of vertical integration hasn’t happened earlier with alternative protein. It’s a win-win for Nestlé. The Swiss CPG giant can leverage the popularity of its frozen products to give its newer plant-based meat brand a wider audience. In turn, it can use its new meat-free products to tap into the flexitarian market and attract new vegetarian consumers.

Considering how crowded retail shelves are becoming with plant-based burgers — with startups, grocery stores, and major corporations all launching their own alt-meat products — Nestlé is smart to cross-pollinate to try and give the Sweet Earth brand a leg up.

I wouldn’t be surprised if other Big Food brands follow suit. For example, Kellogg’s could put its Morningstar Incogmeato ground “meat” in a new line of breakfast sandwiches. Similarly, Unilever could add plant-based offerings from the Vegetarian Butcher, which the corporation bought last year, into any number of its food brands.

Both the frozen pizza and lasagna will be available on Amazon Fresh in Spring 2020. If that seems too long to wait to get your mitts on some meatless microwaveable lasagna, you can visit TryItMeatless.com tomorrow (Dec. 5) and enter to win a chance to try them before they hit the market.

Nestlé’s Sweet Earth Foods to Launch Plant-Based Awesome Burger in US this October

Today Sweet Earth Foods, a U.S.-based vegetarian brand owned by Nestlé, announced it would begin selling its plant-based Awesome burgers and ground meat in retail on October 1.

The burgers will launch at a variety of retailers across the country, including Safeway, Fred Meyer, and more. I connected over the phone with Brian and Kelly Swette, the co-founders of Sweet Earth Foods, who told me that pricing will vary at each location but would be competitive with other plant-based burgers in retail: likely around $5.99 for two quarter pounders.

Nestlé launched its cook-from-raw vegan Incredible burger in Europe this April. Unlike the Incredible burger, which is soy-based, the Awesome burger is made from yellow pea protein. According the Swettes, relying on yellow pea protein gives their burger a higher nutrient density than most of their competitors: 26 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber per 4-ounce burger patty, to be exact. They may win the title of the most protein per plant-based burger, but the margin is slim. For context, Lightlife and Beyond’s quarter-pound burgers both have 20 grams of protein.

Photo: Hardy Wilson

The Swettes told me they also have foodservice partners in the works, though they wouldn’t disclose who. Could it be that the Awesome Burger is headed to McDonald’s? After all, Nestlé’s Incredible burger is already on McDonald’s menus in Germany and Israel.

True, Micky D’s has been pretty vocal that it’s not ready to embrace faux meat on its menus yet, at least in the U.S. But if the Incredible Burger proves to be driving significant sales for McDonalds’ overseas, they could change their mind in the U.S. And since their competitors, such as Burger King and Carl’s Jr., and are already embracing Impossible and Beyond, respectively, the Awesome burger could be a logical choice — provided it actually tastes good.

The cook-from-fresh plant-based burger category is becoming more and more crowded by the day, as everyone from startups to grocery brands to Big Food debut their own take on a meatless burger. Within the past month alone, Impossible Foods, Kroger, and Hormel have all made an entrance into the refrigerated grocery aisle. But the Swette’s aren’t sweating it (sorry). “We think it’s an incredibly positive thing that the plant-based burger space is so dynamic,” Kelly Swette told me.

The Swettes believe that they can differentiate themselves from the competition because of the beefy taste and nutritional density of their burger. But I think the bigger advantage is their parent company, Nestlé. After all, being owned by one of the largest CPG companies in the world has its perks. Sweet Earth is able to take advantage of Nestlé’s massive R&D and manufacturing resources to bring their product to market quickly and on a large scale. They’ll also presumably be able to get into more grocery shelves by taking advantage of Nestlé’s preexisting retail partners. “It’s true — Nestlé will help give us an edge,” Brian Swette told me.

We’ll have to see if that edge is enough to help Sweet Earth edge out the other plant-based meat competition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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