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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based meat

Impossible Foods Raises Another $300M, Now Reportedly Worth $2B

Impossible Foods announced today that it has raised another $300 million for its plant-based meat, just over a week after its rival, Beyond Meat went public.

Reuters broke the news, noting that this round brings the total amount Impossible has raised to more than $750 million, though Crunchbase pegs that number at $687.5 million. Whichever is the case, Impossible is reportedly now being valued at $2 billion, while as of this writing, Beyond Meat has a market cap of nearly $4 billion.

Both Impossible and Beyond create plant-based meat that looks, tastes and feels like traditional meat. Impossible’s big fundraise today is another reminder that the plant-based meat sector is, pardon the phrase, sizzling. Restaurants around the U.S. are quickly adding either Beyond or Impossible to reach vegetarian (or flexitarian) audiences. Qdoba, Red Robin, and White Castle all offer Impossible burgers, and Burger King will launch its Impossible Whopper to all of its 7,000-plus locations by the end of this year.

This popularity, however, is putting a strain on Impossible, which is reportedly struggling to keep up with demand. Production was an issue Beyond Meat faced as well before adding a second production facility last year. Presumably, Impossible’s new cash will help it iron out manufacturing wrinkles as it continues to scale.

Impossible will need all the production plant-based muscle it can get as it expands outside of restaurants and into grocery aisles in the second half of this year. Beyond Meat already has a strong foothold at retail and you can imagine the two companies will be ratcheting up marketing and promotion to get consumer attention and dollars.

Today’s funding news also answers another question we’ve been asking here at The Spoon: What does Beyond Meat’s IPO mean for Impossible Foods? Beyond’s initial success as a public company paves the way for an Impossible IPO, but Impossible’s CFO, David Lee told Retuers for its story: “We believe in self-reliance. Being ready to go public is a priority for the company because we need to be operating at the highest level of rigor,” he continued, “but we are not in a rush, nor are we announcing an IPO filing.”

If you want to keep tabs on Impossible and all of the plant-and alternate protein news (trust us, this sector is set to explode this year), then subscribe to our Future Food newsletter!

A Real Whopper! Burger King to Roll Out Impossible Burgers Nationwide

Well, that was quick. Less than a month after testing out the Impossible Whopper in St. Louis, Burger King said today that it will expand the availability of Impossible’s plant-based burger to all of its 7,300 locations by the end of this year.

The BK Lounge becomes the latest in an already impressive list of 5,000 restaurants to go in on Impossible. Other chains using Impossible’s heme-based burger “meat” include Qdoba, Red Robin, and White Castle. For all of these chains, adding a plant-based burger that looks, tastes, feels and even “bleeds” like the real thing opens up new customers bases in the growing market of vegetarians and flexitarians.

For those following the fake meat industry, the Burger King/Impossible announcement comes right before plant-based burger rival, Beyond Meat, is set to go public this week. The two companies have been in a bit of a tit-for-tat news battle throughout this month. While Impossible grabbed headlines for the BK test and now rollout, Del Taco announced it would serve Beyond Meat at all its locations nationwide and Beyond expanded overseas into Belgium and the Netherlands.

Will the BK deal help make Impossible the “king” of plant-based burgers? From the looks of it, we have a Game of Thrones-level battle brewing ahead as the competition between the two fake bleeding burger giants will only intensify over the course of this year. Both companies debuted new burger recipes this year. As noted earlier, Beyond is going public this week, which could raise $184 million for the company to expand its restaurant initiatives more aggressively. But Impossible is also taking the fight to the grocery aisle this year, where Beyond has focused much of its efforts and is well established.

If you’re into Impossible and Beyond burgers, you should definitely subscribe to our new Future Food newsletter, which covers and breaks down all the news in the emerging plant-based food world.

Qdoba Expanding Impossible “Meat” Nationwide

Qdoba announced yesterday that it is broadening its use of Impossible’s plant-based “meat” to all of its locations across the U.S. The Mexican food chain had been running tests of Impossible in Michigan, and is the latest high-profile brand to expand its use of alternative proteins as restaurants revamp their menus to keep up with growing demand for plant-based products.

Impossible is famous for its heme-based burger patties that “bleed,” though the Qdoba offering will be ground and used in bowls and tacos. Starting April 23, Impossible will be available at Qdoba locations in Brooklyn, Denver and Los Angeles. All of the more than 730 Qdoba’s will have the Impossible option by May 28.

Restaurants are fast becoming hip to consumer desire for plant-based protein. The Qdoba news comes just days after Del Taco announced the addition of Beyond Meat to the menus of its 580 locations across the country. Earlier this month, Burger King announced a pilot program with Impossible in Missouri. Impossible “meat” can also be found at White Castles and Red Robins, while Beyond Meat is at Carl’s Jr. and the Canadian A&W chain.

But restaurants are just one front in the battle between the alterna-meat biggies. Impossible also said it is going into grocery stores this year, where Beyond Meat already enjoys a sizeable foothold.

All of this positioning at various retail outlets comes as Beyond Meat prepares its IPO. Should that public debut go well, it will have enough money to scale up and expand further into restaurants and deeper into grocery stores. A good IPO for Beyond will also help pave the way for Impossible, which has raised $387.5 million, to go public as well.

Even with all this activity, there’s plenty of, err, meat on the restaurant bones left. Expect more news like Qdoba’s (and Del Taco, and Burger King…) to continue apace throughout the coming months.

Will the Government Shutdown Spur Sales of Plant-Based Burgers?

If you are one of those who think that the government is too big or there is too much regulation, a quick perusal of the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service press releases from 2018 shows just how much work they do to keep what you eat safe — and also that a lot of meat was recalled last year.

But now food inspectors from the USDA (which is responsible for inspections of meat, poultry and eggs) and the FDA are working without pay. First, let’s appreciate that fact since most of us in the private sector probably would not do the same. And even though the Secretary of the USDA took to Twitter to reassure people:

the fact of the matter is that not paying your employees for an indeterminate amount of time probably won’t yield better performance.

This sounds mercenary, but the government shutdown and the news that food inspectors might be disgruntled (rightfully!) couldn’t have come at a better time for plant-based burger companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

There are actually a number of factors converging at once that could make this a banner year for alterna-meat companies. First, sales of plant-based meats were already on an upswing: dollar sales of plant-based meat grew 23 percent from August 2017 to August 2018. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that plant-based burgers taste better than ever, and are actually a decent substitute when it comes to the texture and feel of eating a burger. Our own Mike Wolf said he would give up meat burgers for the new Impossible burger, and all of us here at The Spoon can’t wait to try the new Beyond Meat Burger 2.0.

Despite all these advancements, 2018 was projected to be a record year for meat consumption in the U.S. But 2018 was also a year for numerous meat recalls, capping it all off with a raw beef recall that included twelve million pounds in December. Did that steady stream of recalls ultimately have an impact on what people purchased? Or are people just used to it now?

To be fair, one of the bigger recalls last year was for romaine lettuce, so it’s not like being plant-based is a magic wand that protects your product from foodborne illnesses.

While USDA food inspectors not getting paid probably isn’t top of mind for most people when they get groceries, every little bit of bad news contributes to an increasingly negative narrative about traditional beef. It’s bad for the environment, ethically complicated, gets recalled regularly, and now the people charged with keeping it safe aren’t getting paid.

I’m not cheering on a government shutdown (quite the opposite), but if it lasts and food safety issues stay in the headlines, it could be a boon for sales of plant-based alternatives. This potential boon would come at a time when Impossible is making the move to sell their burgers at retail and when Beyond Meat is preparing to go public. A successful IPO for Beyond will give them the money to expand their operations and pave the way for Impossible to IPO as well, which would fuel its own expansion.

We hope the shutdown ends soon and everyone can get paid, but until then we’ll be watching to see if it impacts the food choices people make.

Video: Plant-Based, Cellular, and Sustainable — What is the Future of Meat?

Cell-based meat (also known as “clean” and “lab-grown” meat) is set to hit the market by the end of 2018, even though the FDA and USDA are still figuring out how to regulate it. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are seeing unprecedented levels of consumer interest and investment, even from Big Meat companies.

Watch as our panel from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, featuring Tom Mastrobuoni of Tyson Ventures, Christie Lagally of Seattle Food Tech, and Thomas Bowman of JUST, Inc., explores the challenges and opportunities of the future of meat: plant-based, cell-based, and otherwise.

Plant-Based, Cellular & Sustainable: Exploring The Future of Meat

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Clean Meat Is Out — Cell-Based Meat is In

One of the biggest news stories from last week’s Good Food Conference (GFC) happened after all the speakers had left the stage. Over email, Brian Spears, the CEO and co-founder of cellular agriculture company New Age Meats, told me that:

1-2 reps of all the existing “clean meat” companies, except for just a few, met on Friday after the Good Food Conference. We decided that, for the purposes of working with traditional meat companies and US regulators, we are abandoning the term clean meat in favor of cell-based meat. We also decided to form an industry trade association.

Now, this is not the first time that clean meat (also known as in-vitro, lab-grown, and cultured meat) has rebranded. But unlike previous name switches, which were mostly working to quiet public fears and make meat grown in a lab environment sound palatable, this new term is targeting traditional meat companies and U.S. regulators.

In recent months, the question of what to call cultured meat has stirred up some serious controversy with both parties. A coalition of big meat production groups penned a letter to President Trump, asking for equal regulation for cell-based and traditional meat. A few months ago the FDA had a public meeting to open dialogue about regulation, terminology, and safety of cultured meat technology, and most recently a Missouri law went into effect which only allows food “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry” to be called “meat.”

By rebranding as “cell-based meat,” these companies are hoping to walk a fine line that will appease both consumers and the governing bodies who will eventually regulate food produced through cellular agriculture. “Cell-based meat” is certainly more revealing than “clean meat,” which, while it sounds nice, doesn’t exactly reveal why it’s clean.

That term is also pretty passive aggressive towards traditional meat companies. “Clean” implies that the alternative — that is, meat from slaughtered animals — is dirty. And if you compare the pristine lab environment in which cultured meat is made to a slaughterhouse, it certainly is cleaner. But that terminology is already ruffling lots of feathers in Big Meat, who are responding by writing letters and pushing laws to block “clean meat” from calling itself meat at all.

Honestly, I’m torn on whether the name change is a good idea — or even necessary. If cultured meat is as safe as its producers say (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be), it will eventually get regulatory approval and make its way to market — no matter what it’s called. To me, the bigger issue around naming is consumer acceptance. My guess is that people would gravitate to something called “clean” meat more readily than the comparatively clinical “cell-based” meat. But all that will lie with the marketing team, and right now most cultured meat companies are made up chiefly of scientists.

During the GFC, I was also struck by a point made by Barb Stuckey, President and Chief Innovation Officer at Mattson. She said: “I don’t know if what we call clean meat matters as much as what these companies do with their marketing. My family doesn’t think of Impossible burgers as “veggie burgers,” they’re just Impossible Burgers.” Maybe terminology won’t matter at all, and instead of asking for a “clean” or “cell-based” burger in 10 years, people will request a “Memphis” or a “Mosa.”

Though the number of cell-based meat companies is growing, there are still relatively few — only 27, was the number given at the GFC. A group that small can be agile, as long as they’re all on the same page. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see another rebrand, either for regulatory or consumer acceptance purposes, over the next few years.

If you’re curious about how plant- and cell-based meat will disrupt the consumer meal journey, join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th for our Future of Meat panel featuring innovators from Seattle Food Tech, JUST, and more. Get your tickets before they sell out!

Better Meat Co. Says to Make Meat Better, Just Add Plants

Picture a corporate cafeteria. One day, the food director decides to add a vegan sausage option to the menu, just to see how it’ll sell. What percentage of people do you think would opt for the vegan sausages over pork?

That’s the question that Better Meat Co.’s co-founder and COO Joanna Bromley asked onstage at the Good Food Conference yesterday as she pitched her company before an audience of the future meat-curious. According to her research, a safe bet is that five percent of people would go for vegan sausages. Maybe ten.

Better Meat Co. hopes to increase the number of people eating plants over meat — knowingly or unknowingly — by creating a plant-based protein that can be blended seamlessly into processed meats. Their wheat protein product can replace 30% of the meat in processed foods, such as sausages and dumplings, creating an end result that’s healthier and more sustainable — but tastes indistinguishable from the real thing. “The idea is that you can’t see or taste the difference,” Bromley told me in an interview.

Founded in early 2018, the Sacramento-based startup’s first product is specifically suited to blend with pork, but Bromley said that they’re currently working to develop blending agents for other meats, too.

Others are also pushing the blended burger agenda by adding mushrooms into their ground chuck. Sonic recently launched a blended burger which contains 25% mushrooms, playing up the health and taste angle. High-end chefs like Richard Blais (see him at the Smart Kitchen Summit this October!) have also jumped on the plant-blended burger bandwagon. And the James Beard Foundation recently launched the Blended Burger Project, challenging top chefs to create burgers partially made with mushrooms. According to Bromley, however, the problem is twofold: mushrooms cost more than meat and don’t contain the same amount of protein.

Better Meat Co.’s plant-based alternative, on the other hand, costs roughly the same as meat and has a comparable level of protein, making it a more feasible option for industrial meat processors. With the recent boom of plant-based and clean meat companies, you might wonder why we need to bother with blended meat at all. For one thing: scale. Plant-based meat companies are having difficulty meeting growing demand for their products, and even when you can track them down they can be prohibitively expensive. Clean meat isn’t commercially available yet, and it’ll be a while before it’s cost-competitive with the traditional stuff.

“By all means, clean meat and plant-based meat will continue to evolve over the years to come,” Bromley explained. “But for now, we have blending.”

And we do need something now if we want to cut down on the shockingly high environmental footprint of meat production. Americans are projected to eat more meat in 2018 than ever before, despite a growing demand for plant-based proteins. Blended meat can draft off of both of these trends.

Better Meat Co.’s overall strategy is refreshingly realistic. Besides the current constraints around clean and plant-based meats, there will always be carnivores who think that a meal without meat is no meal at all. For those who don’t want to opt for the vegan sausage, for whatever the reason, blended meat offers a nice — and affordable — compromise. “It’s a bridge between where we are now and where we’ll be ultimately,” said Bromley. “It’s a continuum.”

As of now, Better Meat Co. has raised over $800,000. They’re currently in pre-sales and are planning to launch with several meat processing partners over the next month.

Food Tech News Roundup: Google Groceries, Icelandic Drones, and More “Bleeding” Vegan Burgers

What a week! We just wrapped up our first ever Smart Kitchen Europe event in Dublin. It was a whirlwind few days jam-packed with content and networking as foodtech innovators from across the continent got together to forge the future of food tech. If you’re curious, get to know the winner of our SKS Europe startup showcase, and read up on some smart ktichen news that dropped on the show floor. And of course, if you want to connect with many of the innovators from SKS Europe as well as a whole bunch more in person, make sure you’re at our flagship event in Seattle come October.

But enough about us — here’s a list of the some of the food tech news stories that snagged our interest this week. Perfect for reading over a second cup of coffee while fighting jet lag.

Photo: Naturl’i Foods.

Sainsbury’s to add plant-based “bleeding” burger to meat section
British retail giant Sainsbury’s announced this week that it will debut a “bleeding” plant-based burger in June 27th in 400 locations. In the spirit of the Impossible Burger or Moving Mountains, the patty is meant to look, smell, cook, and taste like a beef burger in an attempt to woo flexitarians who are trying to reduce their meat consumption but don’t want to compromise on flavor. The plant-based burger, made by Danish brand Naturli’ Foods, will be sold alongside its beef counterparts in the meat section. This announcement comes not long after Tesco, another large U.K.-based grocery chain, released the news that it would carry Beyond Burgers in their shops beginning in July of this year.

 

Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg

Iceland amps up drone deliveries in Reykjavik
Aha, Iceland’s largest online marketplace, is slated to expand the number of drones it flies through Reykjavik over the next two years. That’s right, expand — this would be in addition to the limited drone trial they launched last year with Israeli company Flytrex last year.

According to the BBC, the drones could be used to speedily shuttle everything from pizzas to organs destined for transplant — as long as they’re below the maximum weight of 3kg (6lb, 9oz). Their results will no doubt be critical for companies like UberEats, who are also piloting drone delivery programs.

Photo: Clearly Kombucha.

Molson Coors acquires California-based Kombucha brand
Kombucha, a non-alcoholic fermented tea beverage with purported gut health benefits, is not for everyone. But it appears that it’s certainly for Molson Coors, who recently acquired California-based brand Clearly Kombucha. The kombucha brand was founded in 2010 and will become part of Molson Coors’ craft and specialty import division, Tenth and Blake.

According to Grand View Research, the global kombucha market is expected to reach $4.46 billion by 2024. Lately, Molson Coors has been investing in non-alcoholic beverages; last year they purchased a minority stake in Bhakti, a Colorado-based chai tea company.

Photo: MiAlgae

Scottish agtech company raises £500k
MiAlgae, a Scottish company that turns algae into nutrient-dense animal and fish feed, raised £500k ($665k) from backers including Equity Gap, SIB and Edinburgh University’s Old College, reported the U.K. Business Angels Association. The algae is grown using co-products from the Scottish whiskey distillation process (yum), and is high in omega-3 and other nutrients. As it’s made from a byproduct, the feed also has a low environmental footprint, which is critical as our global demand for, and production of, meat and fish continues to grow.

 

Photo: ndb_photo via Flickr.

Google to sell groceries through Home and Assistant platforms in France
Earlier this week Google announced a joint venture with French grocery chain Carrefour. According to Bloomberg, the retailer said that this partnership marks the first time in France that fresh food will be marketed through Google’s platforms. French shoppers will be able to buy grocery products through Google Home and Google Assistant by 2019. This comes a little more than a month after Google unveiled Duplex, which allows Google Assistant to have surprisingly realistic phone conversations to do things like make restaurant reservations. We’ll see if this move can make Google Home/Assistant a competitor with Amazon’s Alexa, who already partnered with U.K. retailers for voice-controlled grocery shopping.

U.K. Finally Gets a Beef-Like Vegan Burger

Picture a juicy seared burger, mac and cheese, short rib, and smoky barbecue sauce, sandwiched on a soft bun. But it’s all vegan. Dubbed the “Vegan Mac Daddy,” it’s the plant-based meat behemoth that restaurant Dirty Bones will premiere at its London and Oxford locations this June.

The base of this head-turner is the vegan B12 Burger by Moving Mountains. It’s made from coconut oil, wheat, soy, potatoes, mushrooms and beet juice, which makes the patty appear to “bleed” when you cut into it. According to Moving Mountains Founder Simeon Van der Molen, their product is “the UK’s first ever raw bleeding plant-based meat burger.”

The patty has 20 grams of protein, no cholesterol, and low saturated fat, but is on-par with beef in terms of protein. As its name suggests, the B12 burger is also fortified with B12, a vitamin that can be hard to get in a meat-free diet.

Moving Mountains launched their burger at vegetarian London chain Mildred’s earlier this year, but when they premier at Dirty Bones this June it will be the first time their patty will grace the menu of a restaurant that also serves meat dishes. The Vegan Mac Daddy will be £12 ($16), which is just £1 more expensive than its meaty alter-ego.

While I certainly wouldn’t mind taking a taste of this burger (and maybe I will when I head to the U.K. after Smart Kitchen Summit Europe!), the most interesting part about the B12 Burger isn’t the burger itself, but how long it took to get here. And by here, I mean the U.K.

After all, we in the U.S. have two options for plant-based burgers meant to mimic the look and feel of beef: Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Moving Mountains’ burger is the first attempt in the U.K. to make a plant-based product that’s marketed not just at vegetarians, but also at meat-eaters and flexitarians.

The recent arrivalof a meaty vegan burger is pretty surprising considering London was named the most vegetarian-friendly city by PETA and has over 3.5 million vegans. A recent study from Kantar Worldpanel showed that 29% of evening meals in the U.K. don’t contain any meat.

While I lived there I came to expect a vegetarian option — in fact, a good vegetarian option — at every burger joint and cafe, no matter how meat-focused. Which is not always the case in the U.S.

The ingredients in Moving Mountains’ plant-based burger.

Perhaps it’s because of these omnipresent veg options (often built around halloumi, the most delicious substance on the planet Earth) that the U.K. has been slow to hop on the meat-like vegan burger train. Though the B12 Burger’s positive reception at Mildred’s shows that there’s certainly a market for it, though it’s still so new that it’s mostly a novelty.

Part of this delay is just timing. Founder Simeon Van Der Molen told the Spoon that the idea for Moving Mountains formed in 2016, after he “recognized a restriction on the impact we can have on the environment and animal agriculture,” and then decided to create an “innovative plant-based food product that could affect positive change for public health and the planet by reducing animal meat consumption.”

After he had the idea, it took Van Der Molen and his team two years in a lab working with a team of scientists, chefs and farmers to nail the formula — they went through 100 recipes before they settled on a final one. They wanted to get a burger that, in Van Der Molen’s words, “replicates animal meat in every way, from the sizzle and texture to the taste.”

It seems like Moving Mountains may have hit the market just in time. Beyond Meat announced that it was planning to start selling their burgers in the U.K. by the end of 2018. In fact, the Guardian reported that Beyond Meat was rumored to have a deal with British supermarket Tesco to bring their burgers across the pond by July of this year.

As of now Moving Mountains is only available at a handful of restaurants in London and Brighton. If Beyond Meat does indeed make it to the U.K., we’ll see if there’s enough room for two meat-like meatless burgers in the ever-growing British flexitarian market.

Highlights From our Future of Meat Food Tech Meetup

Last night we hosted our second food tech meetup. Folks passionate about the future of meat mingled over some excellent grub from lunch subscription service MealPal. One lucky attendee even won a Joule from our sponsor, ChefSteps!

Panelists Isaac Emery (Good Food Institute), Christie Lagally (Seattle Food Tech), and Ethan Lowry (Crowd Cow) had a really thought-provoking discussion about our relationship with meat, why industrial farming is so unsustainable, and the alternatives we can turn towards. If you missed it, here are a few topics and points that stood out to us.

P.S. Our next meetup is on June 27th and will focus on food waste solutions — mark your calendars and register to get your free tickets!

Meat labeling is frustrating.

“I hate labeling,” said Lowry. Factory-farmed meat companies can use clever labeling loopholes to make their products seem more ethical or high-quality. For example, beef can be called “grass-fed” even if it’s just fed pellets of grass in a small pen, and U.S. meat doesn’t have to disclose where it was farmed on the package. Which can be frustrating when companies like Crowd Cow try to show that their beef is truly grass-fed and local.

Of course, we also had to touch on the issue of labeling with regards to lab-grown meat. This topic has been popping up in the news as of late; from provisions in the proposed farm bill to Missouri’s declaration of what is and isn’t meat. People (and Big Beef) are wondering: will clean meat actually be considered meat?

We didn’t solve that problem in our 40-minute panel, sadly. But the panelists did agree that labeling really needed to be more accurate and transparent — for meat and meat alternatives.

Education is critical — sometimes. 

People don’t always know very much about the meat they eat. In fact, they often don’t want to. “Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made — literally,” said Emery. Which is why education is such an important part of his, and Good Food Institute’s, mission. In order to promote meat alternatives, Emery and GFI work not only to inform consumers about the negative environmental effects of animal agriculture but also about new options, such as lab-grown meat.

Education is key to Crowd Cow as well. By giving their customers information about the farm where the meat was raised, they set themselves apart from the veiled sourcing of industrial meat — and justify their higher prices.

Interestingly, education — at least on the part of the consumer — is not all that important to Lagally’s mission at Seattle Food Tech. She’s marketing her plant-based chicken nuggets to institutions, such as schools and hospitals, as a healthy, easy-to-prepare option that costs the same as the meat alternative. So when kids go through the lunch line and get her plant-based nuggets instead of ones made of chicken, the point isn’t that they necessarily care that they’re eating something vegan. In fact, the point is that they don’t care — all they’ll notice is that it tastes good.

 

So, what’s the future of meat?

Lowry summed it up best when he said that the future of meat would be “complex.” If we learned anything at this meetup, it’s that there are a myriad of new ways to create and purchase meat (and meat alternatives), all of which are relatively new. (And, in the case of lab-grown meat, yet to be on the market.)

So as unsatisfying an answer as it is, the truth is that we don’t know what the future of meat will look like. But what we do know is that there will be a lot more options than there are now: more (and better, and cheaper) plant-based meat products, higher-quality meat with transparent supply chains, and, hopefully, clean meat as well.

    That’s a pretty rosy view of the future. But if we can make these alternatives convenient, affordable, and good-tasting, people will hopefully turn towards them and the amount of factory farmed meat will fall. “If we build it, they will come,” concluded Lagally. And that’s exactly what they’re working to do.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the meetup! See you on June 27th. 

Tyson Leads $2.2 Million Investment for Israeli Startup Future Meat

Tyson just announced a new name on the list of alterna-meat manufacturers it backs: Future Meat.

Tyson co-led the Israeli based startup’s $2.2 million seed round, in which the Neto Group, S2G Ventures, BitsXBites, and Agrinnovation also participated.

Future Meat manufactures animal fat and muscle cells for meat without ever having to actually raise and slaughter animals, and without genetic modification. Right now, this is a fairly expensive process: current production costs are $10,000 per kilogram, according to the company’s Chief Scientist, Yaakov Nahmias.”We redesigned the manufacturing process until we brought it down to $800 per kilogram today, with a clear roadmap to $5-10 per kg by 2020,” he said in a press release. 

If Future Meat can make that cost efficiency a reality, it could very well be an enormous advantage for the company in terms of how it stacks up to competitors. And as one expert noted earlier this year, price and taste are two crucial factors for any company looking to make an impact in alterna meats.

The company is also looking to get away from using fetal bovine serum, which is widely known as the key to lab-grown meat right now. No doubt some of the new funds—which Future Meat says are for engineering activities and biological research—will go into developing an alternative element. Future Meat is currently looking for engineers, chefs, and scientists.

The company is one of a growing number of startups and initiatives making alternative forms of meat a reality. Memphis Meats, another Tyson investment, also makes lab-grown meat and raised an undisclosed sum at the beginning of 2018. And last summer, JUST (formerly Hampton Creek), said it would bring lab-grown meat to market by the end of this year. There’s also Integriculture, who not only makes clean meat but is also trying to develop “agricultural-scale cell culture” for uses beyond food.

Meanwhile, it seems there’s a “clean meat revolution” happening in Israel. The country is home to not just Future meat, but also SuperMeat, who recently raised $3 million Meanwhile, Soglowek, a big-time meat producer in Israel, just announced its plans to donate 20 percent of profits to SuperMeat, in addition to launching its own plant-based meat label.

None of this is very coincidental, since Israel is both a leader in tissue engineering and home to the largest number of vegans per capita in the world. And with companies like Tyson and Soglowek backing both lab-grown and plant-based meat concepts, it’s looking like the future of meat is less of an either-or scenario and more about finding the most sustainable, cost-effective, and tasty alternative.

 

 

Come Explore The Future of Meat at our May Food Tech Meetup

It’s time for the next event in our monthly food tech meetup series! We’ll be exploring a subject that’s been making a lot of headlines recently: the future of meat. Join us on Thursday, May 24th at Galvanize Seattle for drinks, snacks, and some rousing discussion. (Bonus: it’s free to attend, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps!)

The Future of Meat

We’re at a crossroads: meat consumption is on the rise, but demand for meat alternatives has never been higher. And technology is changing the way we create, market, and eat animal products. From plant-based chicken nuggets to lab-grown burgers to transparent distribution channels for high-quality steak and pork, our panelists will discuss how technology is disrupting the meat industry — and what they think meat will look like in 5, 10, and 50 year’s time.

The panel will include:

–Christie Lagally, Seattle Food Tech

–Dr. Isaac Emery, the Good Food Institute

–Ethan Lowry, Crowd Cow

-Catherine Lamb, The Spoon

There will be drinks and snacks, so come hungry and ready to meet the Seattle food tech community — and bring a few business cards while you’re at it. Register here to reserve your spot!