Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

silicon valley

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.

We Tried The Impossible Burger, And It Was…

On a rainy day in Seattle, Mike Wolf and I set off on a mission. We were going to sample the much-hyped Impossible burger. As a vegetarian who hasn’t tried a beef burger in 4 years or so, I was pretty psyched to sink my teeth into one of these look-alikes. But would it be everything I dreamed of?


Look at all of that excitement!

First off, a little background about Impossible Foods: the Silicon Valley-based millennial darling trying to make meat alternatives that are as good as the real thing. Their plant-based burgers are sweeping the country by storm, garnering a mega Instagram following and pretty favorable reviews. While the patties were originally available at only a few trendy restaurants, they’re now on menus in a lot of major cities.

Impossible patties contain wheat protein, coconut oil, potato protein and their ace in the hole: heme. An iron-containing compound found in blood, heme is what gives red meat that rich, umami taste. Impossible Foods’ scientists have found a way to extract heme from plants, which they hope will give their burgers a magic meatiness missing in so many veggie burgers.

Unlike plant-based burger competitor Beyond Meat, which is sold in grocery stores across the country and online, Impossible burgers are only available in restaurants. They premiered on the menu at celebrity chef’s restaurant Momofuku Nishi in 2016 and have since expanded to restaurants around the country. This business model might change, though, as their website hinted that they do have retail plans in the pipeline.

An Impossible burger, ready to go on the flat top.

So did it live up to expectations? Mostly. The Impossible burger is definitely good: it’s savory, has a good texture, and even has that umami flavor that comes from red meat. I suppose that’s thanks to the heme, which is also what makes the Impossible burger “bleed” when cooked rare.


Don’t worry, we washed our hands first.

Sadly, ours was very well-done, so we couldn’t test the bleed. But that’s alright. The burger was still juicy, despite a seared, caramelized exterior. I was surprised by how much it reminded me of burgers of yore, and I even tasted a distinct animal-like funkiness (thanks, heme!). It wasn’t quite as chubby and rosy-tinted as the photos on their website, but it still beat my expectations. I didn’t even add ketchup, and I always add ketchup.

I also appreciated how fatty it was, chiefly thanks to coconut oil. Impossible isn’t trying to make a health-food burger—just one that tastes as good as meat. In fact, their patty has comparable levels of protein, iron and fat to an 80/20 beef burger, though it doesn’t contain cholesterol. This makes sense if they’re targeting a wide, flexitarian audience, instead of a health-conscious vegan one.

Of course, there’s the possibility that my perspective was skewed since I haven’t had beef in a few years. So Mike Wolf took a bite of each to compare and contrast.


The true taste test. 

We got cheese on our burgers and, according to Mike, there wasn’t a huge difference between the two patties. In fact, if you topped your burger with bold flavors like blue cheese, special sauce, and pickles, you might not even notice that you weren’t chomping into a quarter pound of cow flesh.

The Impossible burger also had a delicious taste of self-righteousness. We all know that meat isn’t exactly great for the environment and that we should probably be reducing our beef consumption. Impossible’s website claims that by replacing one meat burger with one of their wheat protein-based patties, you’ll spare 75 square feet of land for wildlife, save water equivalent to a 10-minute shower, and spare 18 driving-miles worth of greenhouse gases.

Now for the downsides: Most notably, the Impossible burger is expensive. It cost an extra $4 to replace a beef patty with an Impossible one, at least at the restaurant we went to. That put the beef burger at $5.99 plus tax, and the Impossible burger at $9.99. Customize it with cheese and a topping or two, and things start to add up. It’s not a huge difference, but if they’re aiming to nab flexitarians price could be a big deciding factor.

In the end, I really enjoyed my Impossible burger experience. In fact, if someone suggests a burger night, I would go out of my way to find a spot that serves their patties (they have a map for that). Now if they could get started on making plant-based pulled pork, it would be much appreciated.