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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based cheese

Noquo Foods Rebrands as Stockeld Dreamery, Readies Launch of Its Plant-Based Cheese

Noquo Foods has rebranded itself as Stockeld Dreamery the company announced today, as it prepares to launch its plant-based cheese product in a little over a month from now.

The Stockholm, Sweden-based startup’s first product will be a feta-like cheese made from fermented pea protein and fava beans. Stockeld Dreamery cofounder and CEO, Sorosh Takavoli, told me by phone last week that his company’s vegan cheese will have a similar nutritional profile to traditional feta in terms of protein and fat, and won’t have any carbs.

Stockeld’s product is beyond the prototype phase and doing a factory launch. Initially, the production run will be limited and sold to foodservice companies and restaurants in Stockholm.

Stockeld raised a $3.6 million seed round a little more than a year ago, and as it re-brands and launches, the company plans to expand its operations as well. Takavoli said they plan to grow the headcount from six to roughly 20 over the next 18 months, and relocate to bigger facilities.

Sales of plant-based cheese lag behind other plant-based categories like milk. But creating a good plant-based cheese to replace traditional dairy cheese is a tricker proposition. In addition to flavor, non-dairy cheese needs to melt properly and have the right texture and mouthfeel. But there are actually a number of startups working to overcome these obstacles. Grounded Foods is using cauliflower to make camembert, guyere and roquefort. GOOD PLANeT makes mozzerella from cocount and potato. And Climax Foods is using data an AI to create new types of plant-based cheese.

While we won’t see plant-based cheese go mainstream this year, both Stockeld Dreamery and Grounded Foods have their cheeses coming to market, so we will definitely get a taste of what is to come.

Loca Food Makes Vegan Queso Cheese from Potatoes

With approximately 65 percent of the global population estimated to be lactose intolerant, it makes sense that the plant-based cheese market is expected to be valued at $4.42 billion by 2027. Plant-based cheeses are commonly made from ingredients like cashews, almonds, coconut, and soy, and a not-so-common ingredient showing up in alternative cheese is potatoes.

Loca Food, based in the Bay Area, is one company that uses potatoes to recreate a plant-based version of classic queso cheese sauce. The company piloted its plant-based queso in several test market outlets in 2019, including Oracle Stadium in San Francisco, the University of San Francisco, and the NVIDIA Corporate campus to name a few. Loca had plans to launch in restaurants, retailers, and ballparks in 2020, but these plans were brought to a halt when the pandemic began.

Cheese was the hardest food to give up when Loca Founder Lauren Joyner started following a plant-based diet, so she wanted to recreate an alternative queso dip that reminded her of her childhood.

“If you’ve been to the South, then you know that cheese dip is central to every gathering,” Joyner told me by phone this week, “It’s always been this food that has brought people together and represented community, fun, and positivity.”

The main ingredients in Loca’s shelf-stable queso are potatoes, carrots, and sunflower oil; all of which are non-GMO. Nutritional yeast provides both a cheesy flavor and several B vitamins. The queso sauce comes in two flavors, Mild and Spicy, and the kick comes from whole, fresh jalapenos that are blended into the sauce.

The unassuming potato might seem like an unlikely ingredient to be found in a plant-based cheese alternative. However, the starchiness of potatoes provides the thickness of traditional queso, and its neutral flavor allows for the desired cheesy flavor to shine through.

Loca’s queso is also an option for those who suffer from common food allergies as it is soy, dairy, nut, and gluten-free. A few other companies make allergy-friendly alternative cheeses from unique ingredients, including Grounded Foods (cauliflower), Noquo (legumes), Legendairy Foods (microbes), and Perfect Day (microbes).

Loca isn’t the only company using potatoes in its plant-based cheese. GOOD PLANeT makes mozzarella cheese shreds and slices from coconut oil and potato starch, and HeartBest uses potato and tapioca starch for its alternative shredded cheese and cream products.

Loca Food has so far raised an undisclosed seed round of funding led by Siddhi Capital and participation from Clear Current Capital, Rose Culinary, and several angel investors. Loca’s products are currently only available on the company’s website, and a two 12 oz jar package costs $25, while a four jar package costs $45. The company’s products will soon be available through Good Eggs (San Francisco) and Pop-Up Grocer (Chicago).

Podcast: Talking Plant-Based Cheese With Grounded Foods’ Veronica Fil

While the plant-based meat and milk space has seen incredible momentum the last couple of years, cheese has been another story.

It’s not that anyone hasn’t tried. Companies like Treeline have been making vegan cheese for a while, and they’ve certainly found their niche among vegans. Still, for those of us non-vegans who want to try some plant-based alternatives for health or sustainability reasons, there hasn’t really been anything out there that’s really close to the real thing.

Until now. Grounded Foods new line up of plant-based cheese, which will start shipping early in 2021, tastes just like the real thing. I had a chance to try some of their early prototypes in February and was blown away. It had the taste, mouth feel and true cheese funkiness that you expect from the real thing.

In short, if what I tried early last year is anything close to the final product, Grounded Foods might do for cheese what Impossible Foods did for beef.

In this episode, I talk with Grounded Foods CEO and cofounder Veronica Fil. who shares the story of how she came up with the idea for a plant-based cheese that appealed to non-vegans. She also shares how she convinced her co-founder and husband, who was running one of the top restaurants in Australia, that making cheese – not running a restaurant – was the big idea they should pursue.

If you haven’t heard Veronica Fil and Grounded Foods’ story, you’ll definitely want to give it a listen. Just click play below, download direct to your device, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Grounded Foods Raises $1.74M for its Plant-Based Cheese

Grounded Foods, which makes plant-based versions of different cheeses, announced today that it has raised a $1.74 million seed round of funding (hat tip to vegconomist). Stray Dog Capital led the round, with participation from participation from Rocana Ventures, Veg Invest Trust and the GlassWall Syndicate.

Grounded Foods, which is part of the Big Idea Ventures accelerator, uses a proprietary fermentation process to transform its primary ingredient cauliflower (with some help from other ingredients like hemp and oats) into versions of camembert, grueyere and feta. We tried it earlier this year and found it to be a pretty tasty facsimile of the “real” thing.

And there are very real dollars in recreating “real” cheese. The U.S. cheese market is projected to hit $45.5 billion by 2027. And according to The Good Food Institute, sales of plant-based cheese grew more than 50 percent between 2017 – 2019 to reach nearly $190 million.

But getting a plant-based version of dairy-based cheese isn’t that easy. There are a number of factors that must be overcome including flavor, texture, and meltability.

That’s why there are actually a number of companies working on plant-based cheese right now. Heartbest uses quinoa, araminth and peas and is already sold in markets. GOOD PLANeT Foods uses coconut oil and potato starch and is also widely available at retail. Noquo Foods works with a “stable matrix” of legumes. Legendairy Foods and New Culture are both trying to recreate cheese through microbes in various lab techniques.

As Grounded Foods and all of these other companies perfect their technology and improve their products, it’s easy to see how that number will continue to grow into the future.

No Whey! A Rundown of Alternative Cheese Startups

With summertime here, vegans across the country will be grilling up sizzling Beyond and Impossible burgers . While the burgers themselves may be delicious, there is still a deficit when it comes to non animal-based cheese they want to melt on there.

But the days of lackluster vegan cheese will soon be a thing of the past, as there are a number of startups working on non-dairy cheese — and raising millions to do so. Here’s a list of companies rising up to the cheese challenge:

  • Heartbest is a Mexican startup that recently raised $2 million for its plant-based cheese that uses ingredients like amaranth, quinoa and peas.
  • GOOD PLANeT Foods makes plant-based cheese from coconut oil, potato starch and natural flavorings and is widely available at retail locations like Walmart, Costco and Whole Foods . The company raised $12 million last month to expand production.
  • Grounded Foods uses cauliflower to create cheeses like camembert guyere and roquefort, and is part of the Big Ideas Ventures alternative protein accelerator.
  • Noquo Foods has ditched traditional plant-based ingredients for its product and instead relies on a “stable matrix” of legumes to better replicate cheese. The company raised $3.6 million at the beginning of this year.
  • Legendairy Foods ferments microbes in a process similar to creating insulin and has already created prototypes for mozzarella and ricotta. The German company raised $4.7 million in funding last year.
  • New Culture is also creating mozzarella cheese in the lab, using “recombinant protein technology” that also uses genetically modified microbes to make milk protein. It raised $3.5 million last year.
  • Perfect Day uses fermentation of microbes to recreate cream cheese and feta in the lab and has raised $201 million in funding so far.

Though most of these startups won’t save vegan bbqs this summer, saying (non-animal) cheese, please, is something they’ll definitely be able to do in the not too distant future.