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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

NUGGS

SIMULATE, Maker of NUGGS Plant-Based Chicken, Raises $50M

SIMULATE, the company behind the NUGGS plant-based chicken brand, announced today that it has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by SEVEN SEVN SIX, with participation from Chris & Crystal Sacca, NOMO Ventures, McCain Foods, Imaginary Ventures and Day One Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding raised by SIMULATE to $61 million.

The company’s first product, NUGGS, is a pea protein-based “chicken” nugget the company launched through mail order two years ago. In March of 2020, SIMULATE launched its nuggets at retail, and in July of last year it introduced its second product, the DOGGS faux hot dogs. SIMULATE has since expanded its lineup with SPICY NUGGS and DISCS (fake chicken patties). According to the press announcement sent to The Spoon, NUGGS are now available at more than 5,000 retail locations. The company will add another 10,000 retail locations by the end of this year.

SIMULATE’s funding comes at a time of growth for the plant-based meat category. According to the Good Food Institute, U.S. sales of plant-based meat increased by more than $430 million from 2019 to 2020, with the market now worth $1.4 billion.

However, it also comes at a time of increased competition, especially in the fake chicken nugget space, and SIMULATE will need its bulked up warchest to compete. The company faces pressure from smaller players such as Nowadays, which just raised $2 million, and Rebellyous, which just expanded its retail presence throughout the Northwest. Then there are the larger players such as Target, which recently launched its own line of plant-based nuggets. Meat giant Tyson has its own line of plant-based nuggets as well.

SIMULATE says it will use the new funding to triple its team, speed up the development of new products, scale up manufacturing, expand its retail presence and expand internationally.

Fake Chicken Co. NUGGS Raises $4.1M, Rebrands as Simulate, Adds DOGGS to its Lineup

NUGGS, the company behind the plant-based chicken nuggets of the same name, announced a bunch of things this morning including: It’s rebranding its parent company name to Simulate, it has raised an addition $4.1 million and it is developing a new spicy version of its NUGGS as well as a line of DOGGS (faux hot dogs).

That’s a lot to parse, so we’ll go through it line by line.

Re-branding from NUGGS to Simulate makes sense, especially since the company is expanding its product line in to non-nugget foods. Having a broader corporate name allows it to venture into more categories without any confusion. Plus, who wants to say they work for a company called NUGGS?

The new funding came from Lerer Hippeau, AgFunder, Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit), Walter Robb (former CEO of Whole Foods), and Jasmine Tookes (a model). This cash expansion brings the total amount of funding raised by NUG–, err, Simulate to $11 million.

Simulate will need the money because the fake chicken nugget space getting crowded. In addition to NUGGS, which made the move into retail this March, rival nuggets maker Rebellyous has also started to sell through grocery stores. Big meat company Tyson launched its line of Raised and Rooted plant-based nuggets in stores last year. And there are the existing stalwarts like Morningstar and Quorn.

Given all that competition, Simulate’s addition of new product lines like DOGGS isn’t that surprising. Besides, sales of plant-based foods have been on the rise over the past two years, so diversifying its product line to nab a bigger piece of that faux meat pie seems like a good idea.

NUGGS Announces Retail Launch of Plant-based Chicken Nuggets

NUGGS, a startup that delivers plant-based chicken nuggets directly to consumers’ doorsteps, announced today via an emailed press release that it will launch in retail this spring.

Founded in 2019, NUGGS makes meatless “chicken” nuggets out of pea protein. The company started delivering the nuggets directly to consumers last July in the U.S. In addition to this D2C model, NUGGS has said it will create new iterations of its product based on consumer feedback (the company claims to be on version 2.0 right now). NUGGS will begin selling the nuggets at 10,000 retailers through CPG distribution agencies Acosta and Green Spoon. Exactly which retailers will carry NUGGS was not disclosed in the emailed release.

Said release came from McCain Foods, the world’s largest manufacturer of frozen potato products, which has also invested $7 million in NUGGS. The affiliation makes sense since NUGGS will debut in the frozen section of the grocery store, where it’ll have some competition from alt-meat stalwarts like Morningstar and Quorn. It’ll also face off against Tyson’s Raised & Rooted line of plant-based nuggets, though those have egg in them so they aren’t technically vegan.

A 10.4 ounce box of plant-based nuggets will retail for $5.99. That’s slighly pricier than a similarly sized offering from Morningstar, but significantly cheaper than Quorn. The NUGGS price tag is also in line with Tyson’s Raised & Rooted nuggets, which cost a whopping $6 for a bag of nine.

Retail has always been in the gameplan for NUGGS, which also expects to branch into foodservice. That’s where the company could actually face more competition: KFC is rapidly expanding its tests of the new-and-improved Beyond Fried Chicken, startup Rebellyous is selling its plant-based nuggets at cafeterias, and just a few months ago Scottish startup Daring Foods inked a deal with Rastelli Foods Group to start selling its meatless chicken pieces to both restaurants and retailers.

When I first wrote about NUGGS last year, I was skeptical that their young team would be able to compete in the white-hot alternative protein space, especially when faced with the challenges of scaling and mounting competition in plant-based chicken. This retail launch will be the first real test to see if I was right.