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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based cheese

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.