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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based

Impossible, Brave Robot, Magic Spoon. Are We Near a Tipping Point for New Foods?

To borrow from Phil Collins, there is definitely something in the air when it comes to the food in our kitchens. While I don’t think we are fully there yet, it feels like we are the cusp of major changes to what we eat at home.

I got to thinking about this last week when I noticed my day started eating a bowl of Magic Spoon‘s “healthy” sugary cereal and ended with a few bites of Brave Robot’s non-animal flora-based ice cream.

Neither of these products existed little more than a year ago. Both sell direct to consumer. And both are new formulations of old standbys angling to replace existing products we currently stock in our cupboards.

Oh, and both are delicious.

They are also expensive. It’s $40 for four boxes of Magic Spoon and $58 for four pints of Brave Robot. That’s WAY too expensive to be mainstream right now. So even though my kitchen carries these items, I recognize that I am a very off to the side as an edge case.

It would be cliché to say that we’re in the first inning of this food tech game and that prices will come down as those companies scale up. Of course they will. The point of this post is that we aren’t in first inning any more.

In addition to new cereals and ice cream, my freezer is full of Impossible and Beyond plant-based meat, I drink oatmilk, I enjoy JUST egg products, I’ve become addicted to Pig Out plant-based pork rinds, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day Loca will sell its plant-based cheese online.

All of these products feel mature. They aren’t almost there, they’re here, and they have arrived at just the right time and they are at scale. Sales of plant-based foods were already growing before the pandemic, which added some rocket fuel to the mix. And now, these new foods don’t have to rely on traditional retail infrastructure to reach consumers. Brands can market on social media and sell directly through their own websites. Like Magic Spoon and Brave Robot, Impossible has its own sales channel, as does Pig Out and Beyond will soon be following suit.

This is good because consumers are getting used to buying their food online. The pandemic pushed people into record amounts of grocery e-commerce. And now that we’ve been doing it for months and formed new habits, the idea of buying food — especially non-produce items — online is almost second nature.

There is still a ways to go, I’d call this the end of the first quarter, and dominance perpetuates itself, so existing big CPG players will remain big (think: Oreos and Doritos and such). But looking at where we are now, the next generation of food products becoming our new normal is no longer against all odds (the superior Phil Collins song).

Check Out This Insanely Detailed Market Map of the Alt-Dairy Landscape

Sometimes a picture tells a thousand words.

And in the latest alt-dairy landscape map from NewProtein.org, there’s a whole industry wrapped up in one highly detailed image.

NewProtein.org, which is run by Olivia Fox Cabane, has been creating these market maps for a few years, and just like those of our friend Brita Rosenheim (see Brita’s food tech market map from last year), they are amazingly detailed and help you to get an idea of the scope of this fast-growing industry.

One good way to see just how fast the category is expanding is to compare this version (1.6) to the previous one published just a couple months ago (1.5). Since that last edition Fox Cabane’s team has added algae, amaranth, barley, chickpea, microflora and pumpkin to name a few to alt-milks. Also, the oat milk category has exploded from around 40 to over 50 milks alone!

And it’s not just milk. The map details cheeses by type — wheels, blocks and wedges, sliced, shredded & grated and spreads — and breaks down down alt-butters, creamers, yogurts and frozen desserts.

One concern I had early in the pandemic was what its potential impact could be on alternative, plant-based food; the continued investment in the category has laid any potential concerns to rest. Yesterday morning we heard of another investment in cauliflower cheese startup Grounded Foods and today Oatly announced a monster $200 million round. This type of investment has been repeated over and over in the past few months and, as this up to date market map shows, the space continues to grow at an astounding pace.

You can see the full map in detail by clicking here. And make sure to check out NewProtein.org for this map and others.

SavorEat Plans to Build an Appliance For The Home That Prints & Cooks Meat

“That’s our goal,” said Vizman when I caught up with her via a zoom call. “Where we can also have, next to a microwave, we can have machines that you know can create variety of products.”

But to get there, first her company is working on building a product that can print and cook food instantly for a large quick service food chains, starting with one of the biggest in Israel, BBB (Burgus Burger Bar).

“We are about to start this testing it in their facility within a year, while we believe that we will be commercialize it in a larger scale two years from closing the financial round that we are now running.”

That financial round Vizman is looking to close is a $3.5 million seed round led by a company called Next Food, an Israel based food tech investment fund. Next Food led SavorEat’s pre-seed round of $1.75 million.

3D printed meat has gained momentum over the past couple years, especially, it seems, in Israel. SavorEat joins two other venture funded Israel based 3D meat printing startups in Redefine Meat (formerly Jet Eat) and Meatech, a company which prints cultured meat cells into steak.

Two things set SavorEat’s technology apart from those and other 3D meat printing startups. The first is the company’s binder, which is a proprietary plant-based cellulose. The cellulose is combined with other ingredients such as plant-based fats and protein to make the final product.

“We’re using the cellulose to bind a variety of fats and proteins and other tastes and flavors and combine a very stable emulsion,” said Vizman.

The other big differentiator for SavorEat’s technology is that it prints and cooks simultaneously, which allows the company’s printers to make a fully cooked piece of 3D printed meat like you might see produced by a futuristic appliance like that in the TV show Upload.

The food comes out “ready to be eaten,” said Vizman. “We’re printing one layer, then we cook one layer, print one layer, cook one layer. So at the end, you get something that’s ready to be consumed.”

This print and cook technology, according to Vizman, will give the cook a high degree of precision of over the final print.

“The nice thing about that is that you can also control the way you cook it. You can decide whether you want it medium, you want in rare, well done. How you want to cook it in the you want to grill it from the inside and rare from the outside.”

The company’s technology was invented by Oded Shoseyov, a serial inventor and entrepreneur who spends much of his time spinning out new ideas from his research lab at Hebrew University. Shoseyov is SavorEat’s chief science officer. Shoseyov and Vizman are joined by other executives from companies like Stratasys (3D printing) and IFF/Frutarom (flavors).

The full interview with Vizman, where we go in depth on the company and its technology, can be read below if you are a Spoon Plus subscriber. Find more information here about subscribing to Spoon Plus. 

Plant-Based Sushi Startup Ocean Hugger Foods Falls Victim to COVID-19, Ceases Operations

COVID-19 has claimed another food-related business, this time plant-based seafood startup Ocean Hugger Foods.

The company, which had raised $500,000 in late 2019, had been gaining traction through much of 2019 for vegan sushi products as it reeled in wins at select Whole Foods and quick service restaurants such as Ahipoki.

But once COVID-19 hit, the bulk of the company’s customers closed down for months and, as a result, Ocean Hugger couldn’t survive.

The company disclosed the news via an open letter on its website. From the letter:

Due to the COVID-19 health crisis our world is facing, and the fact that our company sells exclusively to foodservice customers (such as university and corporate cafeterias, and restaurants) who are suffering greatly during this time, it is with tremendous sadness that we must report that Ocean Hugger Foods must cease operations.

The company had launched its second product at last year’s National Restaurant Show, a vegan eel sushi (unami). The product followed its original ahimi (the company’s plant-based “tuna” sushi).

While some food companies that rely heavily on food service were able to sustain themselves through ramped up restaurant delivery or by pivoting to direct to consumer channels, Ocean Hugger didn’t benefit much from either of these alternative models. Sushi is the type of food most prefer to eat fresh and in-venue, and it certainly isn’t the type of product that could be delivered direct to consumer through order-by-mail.

While Ocean Hugger wasn’t the only company with plant-based sushi alternatives, they were maybe the most well known and seemed to be on a good trajectory before COVID-19.

With restaurants in the US and other markets slowly reopening, hopefully other startups who have been struggling like Ocean Hugger can start to sell their products again. However, with some markets starting to see an increasing number of COVID cases as people start heading to restaurants, chances are we’ll probably see some future COVID-related casualties.

Motif Foodworks Wants To Make Better Fat For Your Plant-Based Burger

While many people think fat is bad, it’s actually a critically important part of what makes many foods taste good.

That’s especially true when it comes to meat. The juiciness and wonderful mouthfeel you experience when you bite into a steak or burger is basically fat doing its job.

Makers of plant-based meat usually rely on coconut oil or cocoa butter to replicate fat and it does an ok job, but plant-based fat has a long way to go to become more animal-like in how it tastes and cooks.

Motif Foodworks, the food ingredient building-block spinout of Ginkgo Bioworks, wants to change that. The company just announced a new partnership with the University of Guelph where they will work over the next 12 months to find and develop ways to make plant-based fats more like the real stuff.

Their work will include making plant-based fat act more like animal fat so it solidifies at room temperature and recreates more realistic”marbling” in plant-based meat products. The company will also work on ways to make plant-based cheese more “meltable and elastic.”

Under the terms of the partnership, Motif has exclusive options to license or acquire any of the novel technologies developed during the 12 month period.

While partnerships like this usually fly under the radar, we’re still early in the game when it comes to plant-based meat, and the type of research Motif and the University of Guelph will be doing is critical to close the gap. Beyond, Impossible, and other plant-based household names have done a good job so far in making tasty replications of our favorite animal-based products, but the reality is we’re still firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley of fake meat where the end result is still at least 10 percent off from the real thing. That turns off many of those who would otherwise be converts to plant-based meat.

Hopefully this deal will help us close the gap and make the fake stuff tastier and more meat-like.

GOOD PLANeT raises $12M for Meltable Plant-based Cheese Made from Coconut

GOOD PLANeT Foods, a company that makes plant-based cheese, announced yesterday that it had raised a $12 million Series A round. The funding was led by Cleveland Avenue with participation by GreatPoint Ventures, Tasseo Consumer, Stray Dog Capital and Lever VC. This is the company’s total funding announced to date.

Based in Seattle, GOOD PLANeT makes vegan cheese — from shredded mozzarella to sliced cheddar — that doesn’t contain any soy, nuts, or GMOs. Instead, it’s made from coconut oil and potato starch plus natural flavorings.

Since it’s coconut oil-based the cheese will melt, which not all vegan cheeses, especially those made from nuts, can do. However, that also means that it’s high in saturated fat: a one-ounce serving of GOOD PLANeT’s shredded mozzarella contains 5.6 grams of saturated fat, or 28 percent of your daily recommended value.

GOOD PLANeT’s cheese is sold at major retailers like Walmart, Costco, and Whole Foods nationwide. With its new funding, GOOD PLANeT will expand production and reach.

We haven’t tasted GOOD PLANeT’s cheese ourselves, so I can’t pass judgment on how close it comes to the real thing. However, I’ve tried other coconut oil-based cheese before and find that it falls short, both on texture and flavor.

Cheese is one of the trickier products to successfully make vegan and tasty. Several startups out there, like Noquo Foods and Grounded Foods, are experimenting with new ingredients and formulations to make a better cheese alternative. On the more high-tech side, New Culture, Legendairy, and Perfect Day are using microbes to recreate actual dairy proteins to make cheese without the animal. However, none of these options are to market yet.

GOOD PLANeT’s funding does illustrate the continued interest in animal alternatives, even during COVID-19. Since the start of the pandemic we’ve seen meat alternative companies attract significant amounts of investment as consumers flock to plant-based foods in the grocery store. Now it seems that dairy alternatives are also getting in on the action.

If The End of Meat is Here, What’s Next?

The New York Times ran an Opinion piece this morning entitled ‘The End of Meat is Here” that soon had that phrase trending on Twitter. The piece was written by Jonathan Safran Foer, novelist and author of the book Eating Animals.

The full article is definitely worth a read, but here, I’ll just summarize Safran Foer’s key points:

  • Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming.
  • We don’t need animal protein to survive and thrive.
  • Family farms will not suffer if factory farming goes away.

He also dives into why COVID-19, in particular, is shedding light on the problems that come with industrial meat farming. He points to the high amounts of infection within meat slaughterhouses, and how farmers are forced to euthanize animals as said slaughterhouses close. For these reasons, Safran Foer states, the sun might finally be setting on meat.

“Our hand has been reaching for the doorknob for the last few years. Covid-19 has kicked open the door,” he writes. “At the very least it has forced us to look.”

If the time of meat is ending, what’s next?

That’s where foodtech will come in. Here’s what I envision the End of Meat could look like, based on recent shifts we’ve seen during COVID-19:

Mostly plant-based

If traditional factory-farmed meat goes away, plant-based meat certainly seems like the most viable replacement. Consumers are already familiar with it, from industry veterans like Tofurky to disruptors like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. It’s so ubiquitous that you can even get an Impossible Whopper at a Burger King drive-thru.

In fact, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of meat alternatives have skyrocketed. In response that growing demand — and the fact that its restaurant partners are struggling — Impossible Foods has rapidly increased its retail footprint. Big Food companies like Cargill are also entering the space with their own plant-based plays. And smaller startups, like Rebellyous and Plantible, are taking new funding to accelerate their commercialization timelines.

Right now companies are developing technologies to make realistic plant-based versions of everything from steak to raw tuna. Are they perfect? Not yet. But with more investment, within the next decade or so consumers could theoretically buy any and every type of meat — just made from plants. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more consumers turn towards meat alternatives, the better they will be.

Finally time for blended meat?

Blended meat, which is made from a combination of animal meat and plant-based protein, could be a stop-gap on the transition away from factory-farmed meat. Consumers who aren’t ready to switch over to a diet of Impossible burgers and Rebellyous nuggets could wean off meat with blended beef burgers and chicken nuggets.

Right now there aren’t a ton of companies offering blended meat products. However, two of the biggest meat producers in the world — Tyson and Perdue — launched lines of hybrid products over the past few months. If the pandemic continues to throw a wrench into meat production, it would make sense for more leading meat companies to develop blended products to both stretch their own meat supply and lower their costs.

Photo: Raised & Rooted blended burgers from Tyson Foods

Futuristic protein sources

Not all meat alternatives will rely on plants as their protein source. Companies like Motif Foodworks are using fermentation of microbes to create bespoke proteins — and other elements — to more accurately mimic meat. Some companies, like Air Protein and Solar Foods, are even using carbon dioxide to create protein.

As the popularity of meat alternatives grows, producers will likely explore new inputs beyond just pea and soy protein. Fermentation could be a key to unlocking more evolved, more affordable alt-meat.

Coming soon: cell-based meat

We’ll know that the End of Meat is truly here when cell-based meat comes to market. Or at least when it becomes semi-affordable and accessible.

After all, if consumers can buy a steak that tastes like a cow, cooks like a cow, and is made of cow cells, will they really care if it came from a cow or from a lab? There is certainly some consumer resistance to the idea of cultured meat. But as COVID-19 sheds light on some of the less savory aspects of meat production — especially in slaughterhouses — I’m guessing that eating meat grown in sterile lab conditions could seem a lot more appealing.

Regulatory issues are the biggest hurdle for cultured meat right now. We’re at least a year from cell-based meat hitting the market, and likely a decade away from it reaching price parity with real meat. But if COVID-19 continues to cause meat prices to spike then cultured meat could actually reach price parity sooner than expected.

Photo: Impossible Foods

So what’s next?

Safran Foer’s piece argues why it’s time for the End of Meat. But how exactly will it come about? That’s a lot more complex.

Meat won’t disappear all at once with a fiery bang. Instead, we’ll likely see a gradual transition from traditional meat to meat alternatives, including plant-based and blended meat. That’s actually good news for the disruptors making alternative protein. Plant-based and cell-based meat will have to increase production astronomically to fulfill consumer demand for protein left behind by industrial meat. And once cultured meat comes into its own, the need for factory farmed meat will be all but gone.

That will be when the End of Meat can indeed transition into the Dawn of Meat Alternatives.

The Plant-based Meat Innovators and Startups Database (Spoon Plus)

But what about the constant stream of innovators bringing their products to market? Companies big and small from around the world are launching plant-based meat products of their own, trying to carve out a piece of the lucrative pie before the market becomes too saturated.

The offerings go far beyond burgers — companies are also creating plant-based seafood and developing next-generation protein ingredients to power these new meat alternatives.

To give you a clearer picture of the playing field, we’ve created a database naming the companies making plant-based meat, fish, and protein ingredients across the globe.

This sortable database includes the following fields: Company Name, Protein Category, Website, Year Founded, Region, City/State or City/Country, Company Summary, Location of Product Availability, Total Funding.

You can apply filters to search the database by keyword and also sort by category such as region, protein type and more.

The Plant-based Meat Innovators and Startups Database is available to Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

JUST Partners with Michael Foods to Grow Foodservice Sales of Plant-based Egg

JUST announced today that it is is expanding the sales footprint of its vegan egg substitute by teaming up with Michael Foods. Michael Foods is a subsidiary of CPG giant Post Holdings and one of the largest processors of value-added eggs in the world.

With the new partnership, Michael Foods will be the sole manufacturer, supplier and distributor of JUST Egg to its existing foodservice and B2B customers — those who already buy Michael Foods’ egg brands, such as Abbotsford Farms and Papetti’s. It will begin to roll out JUST Egg starting this fall in select locations.

Made from mung beans, JUST Egg currently comes in two iterations: a liquid for scrambles, and a pre-cooked folded egg patty. Both are meant to cook up just like a chicken egg and contain comparable protein, with no cholesterol.

According to FoodDive, roughly 90 percent of JUST Egg’s sales in the U.S. come from grocery stores. The Michael Foods partnership will allow JUST to massively expand the foodservice footprint of its plant-based eggs in the U.S. In addition to restaurants, Michael Foods also caters to large venues like cafeterias, hospitals and stadiums.

Photo: JUST Egg

It’s an… interesting time for JUST to juice up its foodservice business, to say the least. Most crowded venues — like concert halls and stadiums — are shut down for the forseeable future and restaurants are operating at reduced capacity, if they’re open at all.

The point of the Michael Foods news is that JUST is putting fuel in its engine to expand rapidly across multiple channels — and geographic regions. Last year the company acquired a factory in Minnesota to increase production. In March they announced a group of new global manufacturing and distributions partners, from South Korea to Colombia. And just last week, the company announced that it was working with Emsland Group, a German leader in plant-based protein ingredients, to help them scale in Europe.

By partnering with Michael Foods, JUST is clearly thinking (far) ahead to pave the way for more sales when major venues and foodservice establishments open again. Some states are slowly opening up restaurants, but large-scale reopenings, especially for big venues like stadiums, seems far on the horizon.

We’ll have to wait and see if JUST’s partnership with Michael Foods pays off post-pandemic.

Rebellyous Launches Plant-based Chicken Nuggets in Seattle Grocers

Rebellyous Foods, the Seattle-based plant-based meat startup, announced today that it would begin selling its meatless chicken nuggets at Seattle retailers next week.

Since it was founded in 2017, Rebellyous has been selling its plant-based chicken wholesale to spots like corporate cafeterias, universities, and hospitals in the Pacific Northwest and Bay Area. Obviously, most of those were crowded gathering spaces, but are now shut down or severely limited due to social distancing and shelter-in-place orders.

As a result, Rebellyous has pivoted to move into CPG. Last month, as Rebellyous announced its $6 million Series A funding round, the company’s CEO Christie Lagally told me that they were accelerating their retail launch in response to COVID-19.

Next week, Rebellyous nuggets will make their retail debut in the freezer section at Leschi Market and Vegan Haven in Seattle. The nuggets will be sold in one-pound packs with 30 nuggets each and cost $5.99. The package includes instructions to bake, pan fry, or deep fry (it warns you not to microwave them).

Up next, the company will expand to other West Coast retailers and launch new products. Lagally told me last year that they have a plant-based chicken patty in the works. At the same time, Rebellyous is still working towards its overall goal; to improve plant-based meat manufacturing technology to make alternative protein more scalable and affordable.

If you’re in the Seattle area and try out Rebellyous’ nuggets for yourself, drop us a line and let us know what you think!

Impossible Foods Accelerates Retail Rollout with Kroger, Now in 2,700 Grocery Stores

Impossible Foods is massively expanding its retail footprint. Starting today, the plant-based burgers will be available at an additional 1,700 Kroger stores and banners. According to a live press release from the company, this puts Impossible at more than 2,700 retailers total nationwide.

Impossible’s plant-based beef will be sold in 12-ounce packages and priced between $8.99 and $9.99. It can be found in the frozen, fresh, or plant-based sections of Kroger stores. The Impossible beef will also be available on Kroger.com.

This news comes just a few weeks after Impossible began selling its plant-based beef in 777 supermarkets in the Albertson’s portfolio in California, Indiana, Illinois and Nevada. That expansion put its retail footprint at roughly 1,000 grocery stores nationwide. Now, with the new Kroger news, Impossible has more than doubled that number.

Restaurant dining room shutdowns have been devastating for Impossible’s thousands of foodservice partners. Some restaurants are selling uncooked 5-pound bricks of Impossible Foods’ beef directly to customers to supplement their revenues, though it’s not clear if they’ll continue to do that as Impossible amps up its retail footprint.

Since their foodservice sales are no doubt taking a hit right now, it’s no surprise that Impossible is making a hard pivot to focus on retail. In fact, a press release emailed to The Spoon notes that the company plans to expand its retail presence “more than 50-fold” in 2020.

Coronavirus actually offers a prime opportunity for the company to roll out in grocery stores. As COVID-19 disrupts meat manufacturing and shortages loom, plant-based meat is experiencing a bit of a boom — making it a smart time for Impossible to accelerate its retail rollout.

Impossible has been adamant that, unlike traditional meat producers, the coronavirus will not affect their supply chain. In fact, the company announced a $500 million Series F round back in March at least partially intended to help them weather the volatility of the coronavirus pandemic. With its hefty warchest and robut retail presence, it seems like Impossible will come out of the coronavirus pandemic stronger than when it went in.

Novameat Develops 3D-printed Pork Alternative to Feed Plant-based Meat Demand

Spanish startup Novameat announced today that it had developed a realistic plant-based pork product with the same texture as real meat. And it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc across all sectors of the food supply chain, but the hardest hit area might be the meat industry. Employee infections are forcing processing plants to shut down, which is spurring meat shortages. At the same time, some consumers are worried about the link between eating animals and infectious diseases.

But all these misfortunes for the meat industry mean that the plant-based meat industry could be at the cusp of its heydey. That’s especially true for pork. The pork industry was already struggling with the outbreak of African Swine Fever, which decimated the pig population in China. Now major manufacturing plants, from Tyson to Hormel, are facing a new enemy with COVID-19.

Novameat, which uses 3D printing technology to create realistic meat alternatives, sees this as an opportunity. That’s why they recently developed a plant-based pork prototype. The meatless pork is made with pea and rice protein isolates, olive oil, seaweed extract and beet juice and produced with Novameat’s signature micro-extrusion technology to mimic the texture of meat.

So far, Novameat has chiefly been focusing on developing 3D printed steaks, though it has yet to bring any of its products to market. The startup raised an undisclosed amount of funding last year and has plans to sell its plant-based meat to restaurants as well as to license out its printing technology to bigger companies.

Novameat’s 3D printed meatless pork prototype

In an email, Novameat CEO Giuseppe Scionti told me that they decided to create this pork prototype “in a moment of the need for flexibility and adaptability in the proteins market, and seen the global disruption in pork meat supply.”

But the new product isn’t just motivated by the coronavirus pandemic. Scionti also noted that Novameat is trying to demonstrate that their tech is versatile enough to create a wide range of plant-based meat and seafood products.

Scionti told me that, despite the pandemic, they’re still sticking with their original timeline to sell 3D printed plant-based steak to a few restaurants in Europe by the end of 2020. That might be ambitious depending on when restaurants reopen, and what they look like when they do. I’m not sure if high-tech vegan steaks (or pork) fit into that new normal, with restaurants operating at reduced capacity and slimmed-down staff numbers.

However, Novameat’s other sales channel could actually be nudged forward by COVID-19. The company plans to license out its 3D printing technology to plant-based meat manufacturers. Scionti told me in January that would be over the next two to three years, but considering how alternative protein companies gaining investment left and right, and Big Meat companies like Cargill are investing more and more in plant-based, I could see that timeline getting moved up.

One selling point for 3D printed meat in particular is that its production is largely automated. In fact, Scionti noted that they developed the pork alternative entirely while working from home. In a time social distancing orders are keeping many from their R&D labs, 3D printing doesn’t have to slow down. That could make it printed meat alternatives a more appealing option in the post-coronavirus world.