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FoodTech Weekly #43 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
April 02, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #43
Hi there,
Oh, they say people come
Say people go
This particular diamond was extra special
These words from Coldplay's Everglow somehow carry extra meaning right now, as I'm transitioning out of a consultancy role I've held with The Rockefeller Foundation Food Initiative for the past almost 4 years. And for me, RF has been a very special diamond.
RF is a legendary organization with a unique legacy, track record, reputation, and impact, especially so in food and agriculture. I've had the privilege of traveling the globe (at least before COVID) to meet with world-class entrepreneurs, academics, grantees, and activists, all trying to improve the food system. And I've been so grateful for the opportunity to work with the members of the RF Food Team; they're caring, hard-working, mission-driven, inspiring, and smart. The chance to play a small role in shaping RF's work in the food space has been a dream -- I've truly considered myself the luckiest guy in the world. A huge thank you to Roy, Sara, Devon, Noah, John, Mehrdad, Betty, Kagwiria, Chianda, Cate, Peiman, Onesmus, Kimberly, Cheryl, and Sarah. I will miss you.
I'll continue to work in various ways to advance a more nourishing, sustainable, and equitable food system. More on my next role soon.
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Was pleasantly surprised to see a shoutout for FoodTech Weekly in Niko McCarty's Cell Crunch, one of my favorite newsletters. If you're into biotech and synbio (for food and non-food), Cell Crunch is worth subscribing to!
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Had a chance to try the plant-based filet mignon from startup Juicy Marblesthis week, and I couldn't have been more excited (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to Juicy Marbles. Also, check out their website copy, which is hilarious). Visually the Juicy Marbles filet mignon really resembles meat, both before and after cooking. The taste is pretty pleasant (similar to many alternative meat products containing soy protein and wheat protein). The steak has good texture/chewiness, the fiber chunks tear away softly like real meat, and yeah -- it's very juicy. Juicy Marbles, which just graduated from Y Combinator, is currently closing a funding round. Trying their filet mignon for the first time felt very special, sort of when I had the Impossible Burger, pre-launch, about 5 years ago. There's a feeling that this might be big.
Juicy Marbles
Onwards!
Highlights
Conversations: Daniel Oddhammar (Generation Waste) and Christian Pettersson (Meal Makers)
Noteworthy: Beeless honey-startup MeliBio bags $850K in pre-seed; Oatly announces new production facilities in the U.S. and Singapore; In Ovo secured millions in funding for tech that eliminates chick culling; Foodsmart nabs $25M Series C for its personalized food-as-medicine service; vertical farming company AeroFarms IPOs through SPAC in $1.2B deal
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: First direct-consumption gene-edited tomato launched in Japan; how cooking videos can land you in jail; volcano volleyball; bartending a toddler. And more.
Conversations
Chatted with Daniel Oddhammar, CEO and Founder of Generation Waste, a startup based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Daniel's background is as a chef. When he was 25, he opened his first own restaurant ('I was young and naive'), and realized that a good part of the profit ended up in the trash as food waste. Over time, he felt that the amount of food waste just escalated, and that kitchen staff lost respect for the food ingredients. In 2017, Daniel created a spreadsheet and pitched some Gothenburg restaurants, showing them how much money they lost through food waste. In 2018, Generation Waste launched for real. Today, the startup offers a simple but efficient app and solution (different from those of other food waste fighting companies such as Winnow). The solution enables kitchens to understand where the waste occurs (e.g. in preparation, buffets, guest plates, etc) so that interventions can be deployed to reduce the amount of food waste. Generation Waste today has many food service actors as clients -- hotels, restaurants, and municipalities, but also e.g. theme parks, that pay to access the solution. Daniel is looking for tech developers to join the team, as well as collaboration partners (ideally large wholesalers). He's also planning to raise $300k-$500k to invest in tech development and expand the sales team. To get him touch, ping Daniel on LinkedIn or send him an email.
Left: 'If you throw away too much of the carrot, you're literally wasting money'. Right: Daniel Oddhammar, Generation Waste
Spoke with Christian Pettersson, CEO and Co-Founder of Meal Makers. Christian's background is in the food space, as a chef and eventually a key account manager for one of the large FMCG companies in Sweden. Working in food, he always felt too much food was going to waste due to short export dates, poor sales forecasts, etc. 'The whole setup between producers, wholesalers and retailers is archaic and inefficient in some ways.' Christian was frustrated that no-one tried to solve the problem - so he decided to do it himself. Meal Makers was born -- is a hybrid between a marketplace and a wholesaler, it reduces food waste by offering great bulk options to schools, restaurants, and other large-scale kitchens. If a food manufacturer has a pallet of meatballs [note to self: A pallet of meatballs sounds very Swedish], it can upload it via the Meal Makers dashboard, and then schools and restaurants will see the pallet of meatballs and can purchase it. And it seems to be working -- in 2020 Meal Makers e.g. expanded sales to schools by 130%. To get in touch with Christian, you can reach him via email.
Image: Christian Pettersson (left) and Meal Makers logo (right)
Noteworthy
California startup MeliBio, which produces real honey without bees, has raised a $850,000 pre-seed round. Funders include e.g. Big Idea Ventures, Joyance, Sustainable Food Ventures, Capital V, and members of the GlassWall Syndicate. I interviewed Darko Mandich, CEO and Co-Founder of MeliBio, for FoodTech Weekly back in October 2020.
In mid-2022, a new $45M facility which will produce Oatly will open in New Jersey. Oatly also recently announced the construction of a new U.K. facility which will produce at least 300M liters of Oatly per year -- and the company has announced a new $30M production facility in Singapore. Oatly is preparing a 2021 IPO which rumors to value the company at $10B.
Dutch startup In Ovo has raised 'several million Euros'. The company has discovered a biomarker for gender, that can be used to determine the sex of egg embryos long before they hatch. This, in turn, can help reduce the need for culling of billions of male chicks every year. In Ovo says that thanks to its technology, 150,000 chicks have already been hatched without a single chick needing to be culled.
Foodsmart, a personalized food-as-medicine telenutrition service based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has closed a $25M Series C round, bringing its total funding to $76M. The company connects dietitians with its 1M+ members, and offers personalized meal plans via subscriptions as well as a marketplace to order food online. In addition, Foodsmart offers 'Foodscripts', clinically validated diets to help users combat high BMI, high blood pressure, hyperglycemia and other NCD's through better nutriton.
AeroFarms, one of the best-funded vertical farming startups in the world, is going public via a so called SPAC, in a deal valuing the company at $1.2B. A SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) is a company with no commercial operations, that is formed to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. The IPO (the first ever for a vertical farming startup) will provide AeroFarms with $357M in fresh funding, and help it with market distribution and penetration. AeroFarms grows leafy greens in indoor vertical farming facilities, and claims to achieve up to 390x greater productivity per square foot compared to conventional outdoor field farming, while using 95% less water and no pesticides.
Aerofarms
Swedish food brand Dafgårds has announced a SEK 300M (appr. $34.3M) investment, for a new 4,000 sq. m (40,000 sq. ft.) facility opening in 2022, which will produce a large number of plant-based meats, such as sausages, salami, ground beef, chicken, and bratwursts. More here (in Swedish).
British plant-based chicken brand VFC has announced a $3.4M Seed round, and aims for sales of $68.6M by 2025.
Augmenta of France has raised $8M in Series A. The company retrofits tractors with smart tech, such as field analytics, that
Agrivoltaics is the combination of solar farming and agriculture. It holds the promise of increased energy production, increased agricultural yield, and reduced land and water use. More in this article from the Counter.
Confused by terms like CRISPR-Cas9, aeroponics, mycelium, or entomophagy? FoodHack has written a helpful guide on 40+ frequently used FoodTech terms.
How much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food? Great write-up in Our World in Data.
Image: Our World In Data
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Max Bade is looking to bring on a Venture Partner for k16 Ventures in Berlin... Swedish vertical farming startup Urban Oasis is hiring a Marketing Communications Manager... Big Idea Ventures is recruiting a Communications Director.
How will future human colonies on other planets grow food? Nate Crosser has written a really good piece on space food.
The Yield Lab's Global Aquaculture Challenge is open for applications until April 11. The Big Idea Ventures accelerator is open for applications for cohort #4 (in New York, Singapore, and Paris). And the Food Systems Game Changers Labs is open for submissions.
Work with world-class mentors to help cut through distractions and focus on what's important to build a massively scalable company. The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a mentorship program for massively scalable, science- and tech-driven startups. Their sweet spot is working with founders at the pre-seed/seed stage and helping them to set smart milestones over a 9-month period. CDL has curated a group of successful entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists/technologists who provide guidance to the founders as they build their businesses. The next annual cohort of CDL runs from September 2021 to June 2022. Applications open soon (sign up here to be notified). CDL's Climate stream is for founders developing high impact and scalable solutions to help preserve and protect our planet. For more information on the program, please get in touch with Sarah via email.
Image: Creative Destruction Lab
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
Sanatech Seed in Japan has launched the first direct consumption genome-edited tomato (edited using CRISPR-Cas9). The tomato, a Sicilian Rogue, contains high levels of GABA, an amino acid believed to aid relaxation and help lower blood pressure.
Speaking about Sicilian Rogues, an Italian mafia fugitive has been caught in the Dominican Republic, after having uploaded cooking videos on YouTube (but forgetting to cover his distinctive tattoos).
IKEA Canada has released ScrapsBook, a new cookbook with ideas on turning food waste into meals.
This guy can dance. Must-watch (25 seconds).
Icelandic people playing volleyball. By an erupti volcano (13 seconds).
This video of Sany Bacsi bartending his toddler son Sasha is just wholesome.
Image: YouTube
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Everglow by Coldplay. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.