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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based

Waring and Planit Protein Debut Fermentation Appliance for Chefs to Create Plant-Based Proteins

This week at the National Restaurant Show, commercial equipment provider Waring and Planit Protein debuted a new commercial fermentation system to create plant-based proteins in commercial kitchens. The new system, called the Planit POD Fermentation Chamber, uses single-ingredient bases provided by Planit Protein combined with a proprietary starter culture to create eight pounds of customizable protein base in 24 hours.

The origins of the Planit Pod and its development into a kitchen fermentation appliance date back 40 years when an inventor named Gunter Pfaff, along with his partner Joy DuPuis, began making homemade tempeh. Eventually, Pfaff designed an appliance constructed from plywood, which he perfected in 2015. He collaborated with a product development firm, the DuPuis Group, to finalize the U.S. patent. Although Pfaff passed away shortly after perfecting his appliance-powered fermentation process, the DuPuis Group continued to refine and test the appliance until they could ferment a variety of plant-based proteins from bases such as chickpea, lentils, and mushroom protein.

After working on the fermentation process and system, the team formed a separate company in Planit Protein and started to work on building a commercial system in partnership with Waring. Waring’s General Manager Dan DeBari recalled to The Spoon the day he got the call from the company to see if there was any interest in helping to develop the fermentation appliance.

“They had worked with (Pfaff), who had a patent on a small machine that was actually made of plywood, and they came to us and said this is something they knew they couldn’t manufacture themselves. They asked if we were interested. That was on a Wednesday, and I hopped on a plane to California the next day to go meet with them.”

DeBari explained that at the time, the company was looking for new and innovative new types of product concepts that would be differentiated in the marketplace.

“We were looking to sort of get away from the creation of the me-too products and go into some real innovation,” said DeBari.

The system, which will cost around $2 thousand when it ships in Q4 of this year, will give restaurant and food service chefs a turnkey fermentation appliance that enables them to make their own custom-built plant-based proteins in-house, something that, except for the most adventurous of chefs, doesn’t really exist today in the form of commercial kitchen system.

Initially, users of the Planit POD fermentation chamber will have three base options: a roasted chickpea base, hybrid lentils, and a “burger” blend—a proprietary mix of mushroom protein, pea protein, and chickpea. To start the process, chefs prepare the base, such as boiling chickpeas for 45 minutes until soft, adding the starter culture, and then placing them on a sheet that is inserted into the appliance. After 24 hours, they obtain a fermented base ready for making tempeh, koji, or plant-based meat.

I’m pretty intrigued by this system, especially since most chefs’ efforts to do on-premise fermentation usually involve Macgyver’d contraptions that can include fish tanks, water pumps, and humidifiers. As more restaurants look to put plant-based proteins on the menu, this type of system could help create a new appliance category and an associated protein-based supply chain that helps them turnkey the whole process.

And this says nothing of the potential for bringing this type of system into the home, something that Planit Protein already has on its product roadmap. According to Planet Protein, the “Planit Pod Home will be next and ideal for the foodie’s countertop at home.”

Planit POD by Waring Fermentation Chamber Sizzle

GFI: U.S. Plant-Based Meat Sales in Food Service Hit All-Time High in ’22, Retail Sales Remain Flat

According to a new report from the Good Food Institute (GFI) examining plant-based meat sales in the U.S. food service sector, sales of meat derived from plants sold to restaurants and other food service institutions hit $730 million in 2022, up 7.8% and $53 million in total dollars compared to the previous year. GFI also says that total U.S. retail sales for plant-based meat – still the biggest overall category – remained flat at $1.4 billion last year.

The GFI report detailed total U.S. sales of plant-based meat, including food service, retail sales, and e-commerce. According to the report, total plant-based meat sales revenue grew slightly from $2.1 billion in 2021 to $2.2 billion in 2022, amounting to an increase of 2%. However, while total plant-based meat revenue was up year over year, GFI’s report says that total pounds of U.S. plant-based meat sold dipped slightly from 349 million to 336 million in 2022, a dip of 4%.

If you’re curious how total revenue went up while pounds shipped went down, that’s due to price increases for plant-based meat brought on by inflation. According to GFI, wholesale prices for plant-based meat in broadline distribution increased by 4% in 2022 over the previous year, half that of the 8% increase in prices for animal-based meat products. Animal meat product price increases were in line with the estimated increase in food service pricing, which was an estimated 8% in 2022. According to GFI, overall plant-based meat price per pound has decreased by 11% since 2019, which they attribute to increased scale and more favorable sourcing agreements with distributors.

GFI also broke down where plant-based meats were sold in the food service category. According to the report, 39% of alternative meat was sold through quick-service restaurants (i.e. fast food), while full-service restaurants accounted for 19%. Education came in a distant third, accounting for 16% of plant-based meat sales in the food service category for 2022.

You can read the full GFI report here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shiru’s Partnership With Puratos Adds Further Credibility to its Protein Discovery Platform

In the world of food tech, decisions made on viable data are good, and a lot of data is even better. But with Shiru, a functional ingredient discovery company, with a dataset of more than 450 million known proteins, you are in rarified air and a welcome partner to forward-thinking companies.

With that in mind, Shiru has announced a new partnership with Puratos, a Belgium-based company that supplies food ingredients for bakeries. Shiru’s Flourish platform will evaluate naturally occurring proteins that could serve as a next-generation egg replacement.

“At Puratos, we truly believe that collaborations can fuel innovation within the food ecosystem,” stated Paul Baisier, Chief R&D Officer at Puratos. “As a company rooted in biology and science, Shiru is the perfect partner in the Puratos’s journey to finding novel uses for proteins discovered by Shiru’s Flourish platform as functional food ingredients that are sustainable, healthy, and delicious. Together with Shiru, we will be able to accelerate our plant-based product innovation pipeline for the benefit of our customers and consumers.”

Julian Lewis, Shiru’s Vice President of Business Development, told The Spoon why his company is excited about this partnership. “(Puratos) will help us scale up these (egg replacement) proteins using their fermentation facilities to a large kind of food grade sample, where we can then do more extensive food application testing. And through this partnership, we have a clear path to fully scaling these ingredients and bringing them to market.”

At this stage of its life cycle, Alameda, Calif.-based Shiru lives for such a partnership. Its database Flourish Flourish uses AI and machine learning to analyze its database of nearly 450 million proteins found in nature. Each application—for example, a plant-based meat company that wants to add taste to its burgers—identifies ingredients that will solve that specific functional ingredient challenge. This business model, Lewis explains, might expand to his company by commercializing some of its discoveries.

“There’ll be other food categories where we might collaborate, or we might do it ourselves,” Lewis said of opportunities down the road. “We might end up in a hybrid where we’re doing some stuff ourselves and collaborating with experts in other fields just to accelerate its market path.”

Functionality is Shiru’s secret sauce, which is the ability to target a specific property of a particular food product. Lewis explains:

“There are three categories we can play in. There’s replace in which we substitute an ingredient for one that, for example, doesn’t work properly. A second is taste. And what we mean by that is some plant-based foods are not that good, and I have yet to find a vegan cheese that works. Lastly, it is to transform. What new foods could be generated in the future that is not replacing traditional products, which are just new things? And maybe we can do that by discovering new functional protein.”

One of the side benefits of working with a complex database is the ability to help food manufacturers get away from using relatively unhealthy ingredients in some plant-based products that give the impression of being a clean alternative. “We’re aiming to provide a much better toolkit of ingredients to the food developers trying to create plant-based foods,” Lewis said.

Lewis adds that while Shiru is currently generally focused on the plant-based world, there’s no reason it will not be a player as the cultured food business develops. “All food has, I would say, taste and texture challenges, so with cultured meats, some additional ingredients may be required. And we’re already working on the early stage with players in that space as well. Our goal is to create more sustainable food ingredients that are both required and interesting.”

Supergut’s Marc Washington Believes the Way to Better Health Is Through Our Stomachs

The Spoon recently sat down with Supergut CEO Marc Washington to hear about his company’s mission and the inspiration that drives him.

To call Supergut Marc Washington’s passion project is a gross understatement. The former Princeton University football player and Harvard MBA built on his background in the health and fitness industry to create a company whose sole aim is to improve our health through our stomachs. It was more than a noble mission that inspired Washington to start this now two-year-old company; his work is inspired by loss.

“Her name was Monica,” Washington told The Spoon. “She had an unbelievable personality. You know, she was the party and an amazing mom, I’d say, you know, hilarious, even inappropriately. But she was like the life of the party. And she was my little sister. And the biggest challenge throughout her adult life was health.” As Marc Washington said, battling several chronic conditions, Monica died during childbirth, a tragic event that shook him to the core.

And so, the idea for Supergut (formerly Muniq) was born. And the term “resistant starches” (starches such as green bananas that feed your good gut bacteria by fermenting in your large intestine) became a mantra for Washington. Available through its website, Supergut is a proprietary blend that contains unripened green bananas, resistant potato starch, oat beta-glucan, and soluble vegetable fiber. Currently, it comes in the form of a shake (four flavors), bar, and fiber mix.

How did Monica’s death lead you to start your company?

It lit a fire that just never has never been extinguished. It’s like this didn’t have to happen. There had to have been better ways to get better control of her health, which could have let her down a different pathway. And this kind of built up over time. And there’s a point where if you want to make a difference, it’s like ‘If not you, then who?  If not now, then when?’

Looking at the masses, it’s not as though we’re getting healthier. And despite all the advances in science and technology and food, there’s got to be a better way to move the needle and bend the curve of health outcomes and actually potentially impact public health, and things like that could have changed Monica’s trajectory. And so, yeah, that was my inspiration to throw my hat in the ring, and I started this company a couple of years ago. 

How did you get from the desire to improve our health to an actual product?

I like to describe it as the moments in the Matrix where Neo has decisions to make. I think it was an awakening to see just how pervasive the impact of the gut is on our overall health and that it was actually a pathway to activate this vision that I had. You could reorient your body more healthily, and the gut could be that pathway. So I credit some scientific and medical experts, along with my original investors, for helping me with the approach taken with resistant starch.

How do you use resistant starch to formulate Supergut?

We do have our proprietary blend that is resistant starch and other prebiotic fibers as well as other plants. And a lot of that was based on clinical evidence, like literally looking through close to 200 different studies to show what kind of impact that you can have and what form factors, what dosage levels, what concentration levels, what other things you to combine with it, etc. to get to what we felt like was the most productive.

The first thing was, let’s put it into a shake, which was our first product. We had a prototype within a few months, but it tasted like shit. So, for the next year, modulating the taste work with our suppliers or flavor experts, etc., to get to a shake that would work and that you could enjoy. So we did lots of iterations to get a shake that we’re incredibly proud of and our customers love the taste of. And we now find that in bars and other products.

What was behind the name change from Muniq to Supergut?

Muniq is a combination of Monica and Unique. We looked at many names, but one of the benefits of Supergut is that it just reads as if people get it right away. Since we’ve introduced it, I talk to people like, what do you do? I founded this product that creates nutrition for a super gut. With today’s attention span and the shorter and shorter range, you’ve got like 3 seconds to get across. So (the name) Supergut is helping us open doors and open conversations because it says we are all about gut health.  

Your website proudly states that Supergut is a Black-Owned business? Is there a message there?

My aspiration for what we aspire to do is to impact public health significantly. We want to move the needle; if we do that, we can play an important role in closing health disparities disproportionately affecting black and brown communities. When you look at all the factors that make up our public health crisis, 70% of people are overweight or obese. You know, 50% have some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. 50% some form of cardiovascular health risk. Keep in mind the, African American, Brown, and Latino communities have a 50% higher incidence of almost every single one. This health disparity gap has been something that has led me to create a solution from the very outset. My goal is to help close that gap.

Germany-Based Mushlabs Scores An Infrastructure Partnership with Bitburger Brewery Group

Hamburg-based biotech startup Mushlabs may have created the perfect storm in its approach to creating a clean, nutrient-rich plant-based meat alternative. The company can hit the ground running without worrying about costly infrastructure and potential distribution partners by applying its proven technology and a sound business approach.

Mushlabs has announced a relationship with Bitburger Brewery Group, a large private brewery in Germany. Bitburger will provide capacity and sidestream byproducts from its beer production as raw materials. Mushlabs intends to enhance and use these local byproducts to cultivate edible mushroom mycelium in a precision fermentation process. The mycelium will be used to produce nutrient-rich, minimally processed foods.

“(Bitburger) has a valuable sidestream that would otherwise get burned to produce energy or go to cattle, but is also not necessarily super stable,” Thibault Godard, Chief Science Officer at Mushlabs, told The Spoon in an interview. “So we are offering them a solution to upcycle in a way that is also better for the planet.”

Godard boils the complex process down to a simple example: “I like the example of coffee. For instance, coffee has 80 to 90% of waste from the crop to the cup. And this is also something where you have valuable nutrients there that you can recycle and produce food. So we are basically taking the leftovers and injecting them into the food system.”

The approach—that is, using mycelium, which has a property that acts as a natural decomposing agent in precision fermentation to create a healthy plant-based protein is what Mushlabs called fulfilling the goal of a “circular economy.”

“In natural ecosystems, fungi recycle nutrients through a specific fermentation process that digests their surrounding biomass,” the company explained in a blog post. “At Mushlabs, we harness this process to produce food from agro- and food industries’ side streams (i.e., spent coffee grounds, fruit peels, and sugarcane bagasse). This is a unique form of food production with many potential applications for the circular economy, yielding tasty meat-alternative products.”

And then there’s the smart business angle. While other companies in similar adjacencies struggle to raise large sums of capital to scale out their facilities with large fermentation tanks, Mushlabs’ partnership with Bitburger will accelerate its growth. Using often underutilized brewing tanks, Mushlabs avoids the cost of new infrastructure. CEO and founder Mazen Rizk acknowledges collocating with Bitburger gives his company a giant boost.

“And not only saving the cost, but it’s also saving the time. Because if we now decide we want to build the facility, I think ordering steel would take you probably a year and a half because there are delays in even ordering steel. Then building a facility is very costly and takes time,” Rizk says.

“When you’re talking about food products. It would be best if you did it in the most economically viable way possible so we can find a sidestream that the mushroom can grow on,” Rizk says. “So part of it is understanding what kind of product you can do, what kind of taste, what kind of nutrition they provide. The other side is understanding which one is economically feasible. How can you produce it at a high yield and low cost to ensure that you have a food product that can go into the market at a price that people can afford?”

In June, the company also boasts a huge financial acknowledgment from the EU’s prestigious EIC Accelerator Program. More than 1,000 startups and small businesses from Europe applied to receive a share of €382 million in total capital. Seventh-four companies each will get funding of up to 17.5 million Euros, with Mushlabs receiving an eight-digit figure. Through the EIC Accelerator program, the EU aims to support technology startups that address societal challenges and drive breakthrough European innovations.

Atomo Raises $40 Million To Scale Its Beanless, Upcycled Coffee

Today Seattle-based Atomo announced it had raised $40 million in Series A funding to scale production of its beanless coffee, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon.

When the company’s founders made the rounds in 2019, they pitched Atomo as the first ‘molecular’ coffee company. They had just emerged from the company’s chief scientist’s garage with a prototype of a ready-to-drink coffee made from upcycled ingredients, and eventually launched a Kickstarter with plans to make a ground coffee substitute that, when brewed, tasted and caffeinated like coffee.

The company eventually shifted its focus to developing pre-brewed products and started shipping small batches of its canned cold brew made from upcycled date seeds as well as grapes, chicory, and caffeine from tea. According to the company, they are still working on developing grounds product to allow customers to brew their own beanless coffee at home.

With today’s news, the company’s messaging is firmly centered around making “beanless” coffee crafted from upcycled ingredients. The shift away from ‘molecular’ as the primary consumer-facing descriptor makes sense given how consumers want cleaner ingredient lists, and terms like ‘beanless’ and ‘upcycled’ are less intimidating than more science-forward words like ‘molecular’ or ‘synthetic’ (which can connote non-natural ingredients).

No matter the messaging, the company’s focus has always been to create a coffee alternative that tasted like coffee but is made from more sustainable (and less challenged) plant-based ingredients. With Series A funding from S2G Ventures, AgFunder, and Horizons Ventures, the company has the resources to scale its manufacturing, invest in R&D and officially launch its consumer cold brew product.

Has The Era of Private Label Plant-Based Meat Arrived? Motif Thinks So With Launch of New Line

Last year, the execs at Motif Foodworks figured they’d make some finished products to showcase the company’s next-gen plant-based ingredients in alt-beef, chicken, or pork.

The tests went so well that the company, which normally focuses on making plant-based meat building blocks for other manufacturers, has decided to launch its own line of finished-format private label products targeted at the foodservice and food retail markets.

Motif announced this news today as part of a release that led with the news of Robert Downey Jr’s Foodprint Coalition investing in Motif Foodworks. In fact, the launch of the new line was almost a footnote in a press release with the headline “Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition Ventures Joins Motif FoodWorks in its Effort to Reimagine Plant-Based Foods.”

Sure, it’s exciting to announce a celebrity investor, but the truth is you can’t walk on a red carpet nowadays without turning around and knocking over an alt-protein investing movie star. So the private label launch is the more interesting news of the two and, I’m guessing, more impactful long-term for Motif’s business.

From a business perspective, it’s a smart move to chase a market that accounts for 17% of meat in North America and almost half of all meat sold in Europe. While the private label has only been a small part of plant-based market thus far, some like Trader Joe’s and Walmart have already launched some lines of their own branded alt-meat products, and I’m sure the trend will only continue to grow in the coming years.

And that’s just food retail. The private label opportunity is probably even more significant in foodservice, where the allure of having a branded plant-based burger is probably declining for restaurants. The company is betting on its HEMAMI (Motif’s umami flavor technology) and APPETEX (its texture/mouthful tech) as differentiators in a crowded plant-based food market. I think they’re right since the reality is these types of tech-forward advances are beyond the scope of typical suppliers of meat for food retailers and restaurants.

I also think a healthy private label business is good for the broader plant-based meat industry, which still needs to work on bringing the price differential down between traditional meat and plant-based products. And with the food industry’s continuing battle with inflation turning consumers to store branded products, it seems like it might be time for the era of private-label meat to begin.

OneRare and Honeybee Burger Partner to Bring Plant-Based Food to the Metaverse

OneRare, the first dedicated food metaverse platform just announced a collaboration with LA-based Honeybee Burger to make plant-based food “more desirable, accessible and available everywhere.”

The vegan burger, founded by former Wall Street execs, is considered a mini-chain in Southern California but has grown in popularity alongside the plant-based movement and is planning to open locations in NYC and Chicago. Honeybee plans to leverage OneRare to enter the metaverse and create a virtual location accessible to anyone around the world.

It’s a good move and one that smaller restaurant groups should watch carefully; as giants like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Chipotle unveil their proprietary “metaverse” environments that will act like virtual storefronts and communities (Wendyverse, anyone?), taking advantage of already established platforms like OneRare will be important to compete in the fast-casual dining space in the future.

Adam Weiss, CEO of Honeybee commented, “we like to think of Honeybee as an innovator, redefining the potential of vegan food in order to increase the appeal of plant-based dining globally. On the food side, that means bringing new and exciting plant-based products to our customers, including things like Nowadays chick’n nuggets…and also Akua kelp patties, which we were the first QSR to serve. This innovation extends to our business and marketing, where we were one of the first to use Regulation CF to raise funds, and now we want to be one of the first to market in the metaverse.”

For now, Honeybee will use the OneRare “foodverse” to promote plant-based food and sustainable dining and feature an NFT menu created by the vegan chain. OneRare has been busy since raising its first funding round in November 2021, announcing dozens of partnerships with food and restaurant brands along with partnerships with NFT and cryptocurrency platforms.

Mikuna Foods Hopes Its New Funding Will Take Its Superfood Chocho To New Heights

If there’s a category of superfoods that has the potential to surpass super, Mikuna’s line of chocho protein products aspires to claim that title. The competition is intense, but the uses for a clean, gluten-free, low-glycemic, multipurpose powder-like food go well beyond juices and smoothies.

“Chocho is the future of plant-based proteins, and as we look ahead to the brand’s product and innovation pipeline, Mikuna is poised to lead the plant-based industry back to its clean, whole food roots,” company CEO Tara Kriese said in a company statement.

 Chocho is a lupin that, once milled, becomes a protein-rich powder. It is indigenous to South America in the Andes Region, particularly in Ecuador and Peru (where it is known as Tarwi). Mikuna’s founder, Ricky Echanique, is a fifth-generation farmer from Ecuador who suffered from digestive issues. He found the answer in his backyard, discovering that this plant provided solutions to his ailments. After discovering the power of this superfood, it became Echanique’s mission to bring chocho to the world.

 Kriese, a former SVP for plant-based meat company Impossible Foods, brings her market knowledge and personal passion to the company. In an interview with The Spoon, the CEO spoke about her daughter, whose multiple life-threatening childhood allergies took her to the plant-based, clean food world long before it was fashionable.

 After being introduced to Echanique in 2020 and learning of Mikuna and chocho, Kriese knew she was on to something big. “I couldn’t believe that no one was using this amazing crop,” she said. And it’s no one-trick pony, something borne out by the company’s relationship with Erewhon, which features the protein in juices that it features in its in-house Tonic Bar and in juices it sells in the store.

 The well-known Los Angeles-area gourmet supermarket’s use of chocho is part of Mikuna’s current multipronged strategy, which will evolve with its new investment dollars. The company sells its original or pure product along with vanilla and cacao varieties direct to consumers via its website. They also are available at Amazon and in retailers and foodservice locations across Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and California.

Mikuna’s seed round investors include Olympians and World Champion athletes like Leticia Bufoni, professional skateboarder and six-time X Games gold medalist, professional surfer, and three-time world champion Mick Fanning; and professional snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Sage Kotsenburg.

“I’ve always wanted a protein powder that’s clean, and Mikuna is as clean as it gets with just one simple ingredient, chocho,” says Professional Surfer Mick Fanning. “With Mikuna, I’m investing in both the future of nutrition and our planet, and to join such an impressive community of individuals to support Mikuna’s growth was a natural fit for me.”

Backed by more than hype, Kriese senses that, like her, when consumers learn of the power and versatility of this Andrean superfood, they will have a “chocho moment” just as she did.

Beyond Meat Expands Its Chicken Tenders Footprint to Get a Leg Up

California-based Beyond Meat continues its drive to satisfy plant-based consumers by expanding the presence of its chicken tenders in high-profile retailers. Beginning April 12, Beyond will add Albertsons, CVS, Sprouts, and Whole Foods Market stores nationwide to its roster. Krogers and its brands (Fry’s, Food 4 Less, QFC, Ralph’s) will add the product throughout April. Beyond’s September 2021 announcement of the new product revealed an initial slate of retail partners led by Walmart.

The plant-based chicken market is highly competitive, given the riches at stake. SPINS, a data technology company, reported that the plant-based chicken market grew from $230.7 million in May 2020 to $271.8 million one year later. Others in this crowded space include Singapore’s TiNDL; Impossible Foods; Rebellyous Foods; Nowadays; Gardein; among others.

Beyond the supermarket shelf, food service in fast-food joints and restaurants has become a crucial channel to market for plant-based chicken. Beyond Meat’s poultry is in regional players such as Flyrite, Next Level Clucker; Plow Burger; Panda Express; and KFC (fried chicken). Globally, Beyond Meat products, including the Beyond Burger, Beyond Beef, and Beyond Sausage, are available at approximately 130,000 retail and foodservice outlets in more than 90 countries.

“Building on the positive momentum of our recent chicken launches, we’re excited to significantly expand the availability of our Beyond Chicken Tenders by showing up in more places for our consumers – from their favorite supermarket or drugstore to large warehouse clubs – making delicious, nutritious and sustainable plant-based meat more accessible than ever before,” said Deanna Jurgens, Chief Growth Officer, Beyond Meat in a company release.

Beyond Meat’s chicken nuggets are made primarily from faba (fava) beans with breading comprised of wheat and rice flour. They also contain pea protein, wheat gluten, spices, oil, and a mix of natural flavors. They are soy-free (although the label says they may contain soy from shared manufacturing facilities).

The plant-based chicken market has the potential to be a giant, ticking time bomb. While all matters of faux poultry hit grocery store shelves and eateries, not far off in the distance are a host of cultured products that will rival—and possibly outperform—their plant-based predecessors (provided the newer alternatives can scale). With governmental approval possible by the end of the year, companies such as Eat Just’s GOOD Meats division will be able to sell their cultivated chicken products in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company received approval from Singapore to sell its new product in Singapore, one of two countries where cultured or lab-grown meat is legal. The Netherlands recently allowed samples of this futuristic form of meat to be distributed.

As far as Beyond’s entry into the lab-grown or cultivated meat and poultry market, the company says its current commitment is to plant-based food. “We remain focused on our mission to create products that address the four growing global issues of climate change, human health, the constraint on natural resources, and animal welfare,” a company spokesperson told The Spoon. “We are incredibly proud of our approach to building meat from plants as an accessible and delicious way for consumers to make a positive impact on these areas.”

What The Heck is Causing The Plant-Based Meat Slowdown?

No two ways about it: Plant-based meat has hit a sales slump.

According to recent data from market watcher SPINS, sales in the overall plant-based meat market dropped 1.8% year over year for the four-week period ending October 3rd. This follows an even bigger drop in the category earlier in 2021 starting around April, when the plant-based category dropped over 15% year over year.

The drop in overall plant-based meat sales jibes with what some industry bellwethers are seeing. According to Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, his plant-based meat sales dropped in every channel the company sells into in the third quarter of this year. McCain was perplexed as to the reason and said the company is reevaluating their “investment thesis”.

Maple Leaf wasn’t the only one. Beyond, where company CEO Ethan Brown came out and said the plant-based meat company had seen its sales drop 13.9% year over year and forecast a potentially bumpy road ahead.

So what’s going on here? Fast-growing nascent markets are supposed to go up, not down and down some more.

While there’s no way to know for certain without more data. it’s worth taking a stab at potential causes for the drop in plant-based meat. Here are a few ideas:

Consumers Satiated Their First-Taste Curiosity.

Let’s face it, most of us were curious to sink our teeth into our first Impossible or Beyond burger to see what all the fuss about. Yet, a year or two later, that early curiosity has been satiated, and only some of us are regular plant-based meat-eaters.

Which brings us to…

Not Enough Consumers Have Switched to Plant-Based

While many of us have tried our first plant-based meat, most of us aren’t buying it on a regular basis. According to a recent survey by the Food Information Council, two-thirds of Americans surveyed have tried plant-based meat over the past year, while only 40% of Americans are eating plant-based meat with any regularity. Of those that consume plant-based meat on a regular basis, only about half eat it once a week or so.

Meat Industry Counter-Messaging May Be Working.

I recently suggested that Beyond’s troubles might be a sign that the animal-based meat industry’s negative counter-messaging might be taking hold, and this latest news could be an additional confirmation of that.

While it may be true that while products like Beyond and Impossible are plant-based, the reality is they are also highly processed food with pretty science-forward ingredients. This reliance on a future-forward ingredient list provides an opening for criticism from the legacy meat business, which uses negative messaging to suggest their animal products are the natural and healthier alternative compared to the high-tech competitors.

Looking at survey data, the incumbents are smart to beat this drum as there are concerns among consumers about what is in these new alternatives. According to a recent study by Menu Matters of 1,025 US households, about half (47.9%) of consumers suggest they want more information about plant-based meat before trying them, and 43.1% want complete transparency of ingredients before they try them.

At this point, it’s hard to tell how much of the concerns about plant-based meat’s ingredient list is driven by top-down talking points or if the message-crafters of the legacy meat business are only echoing what they hear among the meat-eating hoi polloi. It could be a little of both, but no matter where it’s coming from, the plant-based meat industry is seeing the rise of a more skeptical consumer.

Less of Us Ate at Home In The Second Half of 2021

As many Americans got their vaccinations in the first half of this year and governments lifted rules against convening indoors in the spring and summer, people started to eat out more. Early data suggests many people eat most of their plant-based alternatives at home, meaning that more meal occasions outside the house could translate to less plant-based meat consumed overall.

Some Are Down, While Others May Be Up

Last week, Impossible raised a $500 million round while claiming “record growth.” While the release itself focused more on expanding Impossible into new markets, if Impossible’s growth also came on the top line, it would provide a counter-narrative to what we have heard from Beyond, Maple Foods, and SPINS.

As I wrote in early November, the reality is unlike animal-based meat, plant-based meat is not a commoditized product category where one can be easily interchanged with another. Instead, plant-based meat products are more akin to something like cola, where some may prefer Coke while others prefer Pepsi.

In other words, some companies may be seeing sales growth, while others are seeing market share decline.

At this point, we don’t have enough data to say with certainty which factor or factors are contributing to the plant-based meat slump. What we do know is some companies are beginning to at least reevaluate their original assumptions about the market. I have to wonder if this reevaluation of the plant-based market might result, at least in the near term, a slow down seemingly unrelenting flow of venture investment into this category.