Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Tindle

Next Gen Foods Launches TiNDLE Plant-Based Chicken in Amsterdam, Opens Innovation Center in Singapore

Singapore-based startup Next Gen Foods announced last week that its flagship alternative chicken product (named TiNDLE) has touched down in Amsterdam restaurants.

TiNDLE debuted in Singapore in early 2021 before launching in Hong Kong, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, and the UAE. The Amsterdam launch marks the beginning of TiNDLE’s expansion into Europe and beyond: Next Gen plans to introduce the product in Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. next year.

“Amsterdam is a trailblazing city when it comes to food innovation and sustainability on the plate,” company co-founder and CEO Andre Menezes said in a press release emailed to The Spoon. Amsterdam is also a strategic European starting point for Next Gen because the company’s manufacturing operations are located in the Netherlands.

When I met up with Menezes last month to talk about the New York City sneak peek of TiNDLE, he told me that the Next Gen team had been working hand-in-hand with chefs to develop innovative recipes using the product. “Chefs are creative, but they’re also scientists in a way,” Menezes said. Instead of selling TiNDLE to restaurants in a premade shape, he said the team wanted to offer a kind of “Playdoh, or a canvas” that chefs could experiment with.

You can see the results of those partnerships in the range of different dishes that are now on Amsterdam menus—from the buttermilk-fried TiNDLE burger, to the taco with pickled cucumbers, to the roulade with shiitake mushrooms and kimchi. Among the six restaurants now serving TiNDLE are chic brunch spots; a Mexican cocktail bar and eatery; a vegan comfort food cafe; and a self-described chicken rotisserie “guilty pleasure bar.”

And while Next Gen is expanding TiNDLE’s global reach, it’s also investing in research and development for new products. The company announced today that it has partnered with the Food Tech Innovation Centre (FTIC), an accelerator and innovation hub, to establish an R&D facility in Singapore.

“Accelerating the transition to a more sustainable food system will require the ability to not only have commercially scalable products for our consumers, but also be on the cutting edge in terms of food innovation,” Menezes said in a press release shared with The Spoon. “We’re thrilled to be the first tenant and a long-term partner of the Asia Sustainable Foods Platform and A*STAR’s FTIC, where we’ll be able to significantly expand our R&D capabilities to drive new technologies and sustainable solutions.”

Next Gen plans to expand its portfolio of plant-based products at the new R&D center, which is scheduled to open in late 2022. The company plans to accelerate hiring and double its current number of R&D roles. It’ll be interesting to see which alternative protein space the team sets its sights on next: According to the company, it could be an alternative dairy, seafood, or meat product.

TiNDLE Plant-Based Chicken is Coming to the US Soon. But How Does It Taste?

Next Gen Foods of Singapore launched its flagship plant-based chicken product, TiNDLE, just 11 months after its founding in April 2020. Three months later, the company began its international expansion—bringing TiNDLE to over 130 restaurants worldwide, from Hong Kong to the U.A.E.

Now, Next Gen is introducing TiNDLE in the U.S. This week, the company will offer a sneak peek of the product at the Food Network & Cooking Channel New York City Wine & Food Festival. The team is currently working with chefs to bring TiNDLE to restaurant menus next year.

This week, I met up with company co-founder and CEO Andre Menezes at Next Gen’s New York City tasting room to learn more about the anticipated launch—and try TiNDLE myself.

According to Menezes, the Wine & Food Festival sneak peek is part of Next Gen’s international strategy, which hinges on building partnerships with sought-after food names and brands. “We’re working toward launching in food havens around the world,” he said. “We’re targeting the coolest places, the best chefs, the restaurants consumers love to visit.”

I tasted the two dishes featured at the festival: a lotus leaf bao wrap with veggie slaw and a parm slider on a brioche bun. TiNDLE appeared as a breaded patty in both dishes, although there are other ways to cook the product.

Both dishes were flavorful, creative, and fun to eat. The TiNDLE was satisfyingly crunchy, with none of the wet sponginess that I associate with fast food chicken patties. It had a defined, fibrous texture, an appealing bite, and a rich, convincingly chicken-y taste. A more chicken-y taste, I thought, than some actual chicken products. Menezes said that that’s because the company didn’t set out to recreate the taste of a chicken breast; they wanted their products to taste more like a wing or a thigh.


In developing TiNDLE, the team wanted to figure out what people love about chicken and then develop a food ingredient that would maximize those beloved qualities—which turned out to be chicken’s fibrous texture, smell and taste, and versatility.

The fibrous texture is achieved via extrusion. To mimic the flavor of chicken, the team uses a proprietary, sunflower oil-based emulsion called Lipi™. “As an emulsion, it goes within the fibers just like fat does,” said Menezes.

As for versatility, Menezes said the team wanted to create “a product that chefs can really play with, like Playdoh.” Rather than offering preformed products like burgers, they’re working closely with chefs to see what TiNDLE can do.

One of the items on Next Gen’s tasting room menu, a miso ramen dish, incorporates TiNDLE in noodle form: instead of chicken and noodles, an actual (plant-based) chicken noodle. Menezes mentioned a chef who rolled the product out like dough and cut it into flower shapes, and another who put it on top of a sushi roll, then cooked it with a torch.

Menezes said that the company has developed the technology to manufacture whole cuts as well as nuggets and tenders, and that one day, they’ll explore those options. But first, they’re working on growing their brand worldwide through restaurant partnerships.

“We believed that if we really wanted to drive food system change, we needed to be global from day one,” he said. At the outset, the team wanted to address both current meat consumption in the U.S. and Europe, and fast-growing consumption in Asia.

Next Gen focuses on controlling product development, branding, and operations internally. The company builds local teams as it expands, and partners with external contract manufacturers and distributors. Production is currently based in the Netherlands, but Menezes said the team is interested in partnering with U.S. manufacturers, and potentially using the U.S. as an export platform for Canada and Mexico.

The company will use its $30 million extended seed investment to build global operations and supply chains this year. In 2022, they plan to launch at restaurants in the U.S. and Europe. After that, they may eye other plant-based spaces, like dairy and seafood.

How will Next Gen compete in the diversifying alternative protein industry? According to Menezes, Next Gen is all about expanding the plant-based category, and the team doesn’t see other companies as rivals. “Our competition isn’t other startups,” he said. “Our competition is birds.”

Next Gen Foods Raises $20M, Will Bring its Plant-Based Chicken in the U.S.

Next Gen Foods, which makes a plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE, announced yesterday that it has raised a $20 million extension of its seed round. This extension includes new investors such as Global Fund GGV Capital, Bits x Bites, Yeo Hiap Seng, as well as existing investors Temasek and K3 Ventures. This latest round follows Next Gen’s $10 million raise in March of this year and brings the company’s total amount of funding to $30 million.

Singapore-based Next Gen Foods first launched its TiNDLE brand through restaurants in the spring of this year. TiNDLE is made from soy protein, wheat gluten, wheat starch, and sunflower and coconut oils, and contains 17 grams of protein per serving. The company says TiNDLE is now sold in more than 70 restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau.

With its new money, Next Gen says it will expand into the U.S. market and hire more than 50 employees that will primarily be based in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, Next Gen will continue its expansion across the APAC and Middle East, and establish a research and development center in Singapore.

Next Gen Foods is entering the U.S. market at a time when there are more plant-based chicken options than ever. Other startups making forays into the plant-based chicken space include SIMULATE, Rebellyous, Daring, and Nowadays. Not to mention Beyond Meat, the publicly traded plant-based giant, which just launched its own plant-based chicken tenders for restaurants this week.

That so many companies are vying to create a plant-based chicken alternative isn’t surprising given that chicken is the most consumed meat in the U.S., Next Gen’s product could help it stand out in that competitive field however, because its chicken isn’t a nugget or a tender. It’s more of a meat analog that the company says can be prepared using a number of different techniques (grilling, frying, etc.) across a range of cuisines.

Singapore’s Next Gen Raises $10M Seed Round for Plant-Based Chicken

Next Gen, a Singapore-headquartered food tech company, announced today it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The round was led by Temasek, K3 Ventures, the New Ventures arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and NX Food. Funding follows an earlier $2 million investment from Next Gen’s founder, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The company will use the funds to launch Next Gen’s plant-based products brand, TiNDLE, to consumers in Singapore in March 2021. To start, the product line, which will debut with a chicken item, will be available in select restaurants. Other Asian cities will follow. Funding will also go towards further research and development around future plant-based products. 

TiNDLE chicken is made with soy protein, wheat gluten, wheat starch, as well as sunflower and coconut oils. On its website, the company says each each serving contains 17 grams of protein. The first application of the product will be TiNDLE Thy, a plant-based take on chicken thighs the company says can be used in a variety of dishes and cuisine types.

The forthcoming launch is arriving at a time when global demand for alternative protein is higher than it’s ever been before. The plant-based protein segment is expected to reach $85 billion by 2030, according to UBS. Asia is an important market in this growth, and one that is catching up to growth in the U.S. Demand in Asia for plant-based products is expected to jump to over 200 percent within the next five years.  

There is also a growing number of companies bringing products to market in the APAC region now. Some of those companies, like Green Monday in Hong Kong and HERO in China, as well as U.S.-based brands that have recently moved in, notably Impossible and Eat Just. Also, Beyond Meat is building two production facilities in Asia, both in China.

For its part, Next Gen is now looking towards a Series A funding round as well as diversifying its product portfolio and expanding into Europe and the U.S. The company said today it is already “laying the groundwork” for the latter.