Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness sat down with Bloomberg Television to talk about the struggles of plant-based meat, consumer preferences, and a potential IPO.

The plant-based meat category was launched incorrectly, there are too many brands in the space, meat-eaters are key to their success, and someday, an IPO would be nice. These were some of the highlights of a wide-ranging chat between Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness and Bloomberg Television’s Alix Steele and Romaine Bostick.

Over eight minutes, the head of one of the industry’s giants reiterated a lot of things he’s said over the past year, clarified a few others, and revealed a couple more. “We don’t like the sector and the category being where it is, and there’s a lot of reasons why,” he said.

If you read between the lines, you see an executive confident in his company’s position, apprehensive about the wider sector and other brands, and comfortable about not being invited to the Met Gala.

Jokes apart, there are hints that Impossible Foods is using Big Food and Big Meat’s playbook to beat them at their own game and displace those industries. Here’s what McGuinness said over the eight-minute interview, and what it all meant.

“I think it was launched incorrectly from the beginning. It was very climate[-forward], it was very zealot, there was a lot of rhetoric, it was anti-cattle industry. So it got political, it got woke, it got bicoastal, academic, elitist – so that all has to stop.”

McGuinness said something similar in an interview with AgFunderNews last September: “I think the category was not launched in the best possible way. It was launched against the cattle industry. And, you know, no one wants a civil war in America.”

Speaking at the Adweek X conference a few months later, he said: “There was a wokeness to it, there was a bicoastalness to it, there was an academia to it… and there was an elitism to it – and that pissed most of America off.”

Meat industry interest groups and cattle-protecting lawmakers have long been using words like ‘elite’ and ‘woke’ to describe alternative proteins – that rhetoric has become much more noticeable around cultivated meat in the wake of statewide bans in Florida and Alabama, but these phrases have been successful in driving a large portion of consumers away from plant-based analogues.

Particularly, the focus on sustainability hasn’t attracted customers the way meat analogue makers would have hoped, and that has led to a shift in their messaging. In March, Impossible Foods unveiled a major brand refresh that saw it switch from green packaging to red to appeal more to meat-eaters, and put a greater spotlight on flavour descriptors and nutritional points (like saturated fat and sodium content”.

This is because these factors are much more important to consumers. According to a Mintel survey from 2023, the top two attributes discouraging Americans from trying plant-based meat are flavour (48%) and nutrition (35%). A poll of Kroger shoppers found that over half (51%) of people buy plant-based meat because they’re healthier, which is the top motivation for these purchases.

“It’s gotta be delicious… It’s gotta be nutritious… And then you gotta be price-competitive.”

This was perhaps the most succinct explanation of where plant-based meat marketing is headed. As alluded to above, Impossible Foods is already focusing on these factors, as is Beyond Meat. In the UK, too, THIS is doing the same.

“Taste is the #1 reason why consumers will decide to purchase a product again or not,” an Impossible Foods spokesperson told Green Queen in November, after its Beef Lite product received the heart-check certification from the American Heart Association.

But while flavour is key to bringing consumers back and nutrition important to keep them long-term, in the cost-of-living crisis, price is what will decide whether they pick up these products in the first place. “We’re on average about $1-1.50 less than grass-fed, organic, but we are premium to what I would call ‘the well’, you know, the saran-wrap cellophane stuff,” McGuinness told Bloomberg.

He revealed that the company has brought its prices down by 20% in the last year and a half, while conventional meat is up 18-22% because of higher input and labour costs, and the culling of herds due to famine, drought and diseases.

“We’re in 48,000 foodservice locations, so we’re number one in foodservice in plant-based, but there’s 1.4 million, so we have a lot of work to do.”

The statement outlined Impossible Foods’ intention to roll out its products in more foodservice locations – there’s a general consensus that the risk of chefs preparing a bad meal is lower than individuals cooking these products at home for the first time. This makes restaurants a great entry point.

In fact, McGuinness hit back at Bloomberg’s suggestion that plant-based meat isn’t as “prominent” in fast-food chains anymore. “I just had one at the airport the other day, and it was pretty prominent on the menu board,” he said of the Impossible Whopper, which is available at all 5,500 Burger King locations in the US, as part of a collaboration that began five years ago.

That partnership is one of a number of long-term foodservice deals cultivated by Impossible Foods over the years – the company, it must be said, has an outstanding foodservice record. Its eight-year-long link-up with American chef David Chang and his Momofuku restaurant group is just one example – it’s also present in 15,000 Starbucks stores (five years), Disneyland (four years), White Castle (six years) and Bareburger (seven years), among others.

“What keeps me up at night is the opportunity, not the cynicism.”

McGuinness underlined the company’s goals to increase retail distribution – it’s on under 1,000 store shelves (though it recently launched in Whole Foods). “We’re in first gear, it’s nobody’s fault. And we have 15% awareness, 85% of the country hasn’t heard of us… and 6% household penetration – so 94% of America is yet to try an Impossible product.”

He added that the steps the company needs to take to grow aren’t “high math, crazy things”. “You can expand awareness through paid advertising. You can expand household penetration through more distribution. Food companies do this every day.”

This is why Impossible Foods’ launched its first-ever campaign last summer, followed by what McGuinness described as “plant-based’s biggest” marketing drive ever earlier this month. Launched at the Met Gala, it will be a three-month campaign across TV, streaming, digital, social media and billboards – and focuses on “solving the meat problem with more meat” (plant-based, that is).

It’s a forward-looking, optimistic statement by the company’s CEO, who looked visibly excited about the new marketing initiative. Whether it will translate into more customers, time will tell.

“We want to encourage meat-eaters to try and eat our food… I’m not interested in stealing share from other plant-based companies.”

This is a familiar but important assertion from McGuinness. “My job is not to steal share from Beyond Meat – then I’ve just moved the deck chairs around, and the category stays at the same size. We have to make the category bigger,” he said at Adweek X in December.

The same week, after announcing the Impossible Hot Dog, the company told Green Queen: “We’re trying to reach meat eaters – not vegans, vegetarians or those already eating sustainable diets. That’s why we focus on making products that appeal to actual meat-eaters. Our goal is not to compete with fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods, but to offer meat-eaters products that are better for them and the planet.”

McGuinness echoed this sentiment in his Bloomberg interview, suggesting that appealing to non-meat-eaters is “not going to move the needle”, whether that’s from a value, revenue or mission perspective. “If you’re trying to have less water, less [deforestation], less GHG, it only works if you’re displacing animals,” he said.

While vegans and vegetarians are obviously important to plant-based meat companies, the real value is bringing over the meat-eaters. “People might be surprised to know that 90% of Impossible consumers also eat meat, and more than one in two who try us for the first time intend to do so again,” Impossible Foods told this publication in March.

McGuinness highlighted the importance of speaking to this target audience “in a respectful, inviting way, not an insulting way, which is what I think was done in the past”. Alienating meat-eaters won’t help – this is precisely why Starbucks’s Impossible Breakfast Sandwich has cheese and eggs, and the Impossible Whopper contains cheese and special sauce. They’re not vegan, but that’s not the target market anyway.

“There are a lot of companies that are making food that’s not great food. There’s 200 plant-based companies in America – probably only need three, or two. So there’s a lot of small companies making not-so-great food and people are having bad first impressions.”

You can look at this two ways. There is definitely a case to be made about oversaturation in the industry – 2023 saw several startups cease operations as they ran out of cash in a highly competitive market. But on the other hand, suggesting a monopoly of two or three companies in the entire category sounds a bit… Big Food?

“Many consumers have unfortunately had a less-than-positive first impression of various plant-based products, and that casts doubt on the rest of the category as a whole,” the company has previously told Green Queen.

McGuinness alluded to this in an interview with Food Dive earlier this month, where he took aim at what he labelled “the biggest ‘all other’ I’ve seen in any category”. “There are 100 of these little micro companies that are throwing out products that are not particularly good,” he said, particularly describing fungi and mycelium startups. “I think there are certain brands and products that are the problem,” he said.

“Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat [are] the only true meat alternatives in the category,” he added. “You’re going to be left with a couple of brands and private labels, and that’s going to be the category.”

We’re already seeing consolidation in the industry, but diversity and consumer choice are vital – that Kroger survey found that the range of options in supermarkets is the second-most influential purchase factor for plant-based meat (with 39% choosing it). Monopolies, meanwhile, are dangerous, especially in the food industry. It’s exactly what the meat giants have been doing for years, with National Beef, JBS, Cargill and Tyson owning a jaw-dropping 85% of the US meat market.

It’s something the documentary Food, Inc. 2 highlighted. “Monopoly power is a threat to our freedom,” the film said in one of its calls to action. Take the case of Abbott Nutrition, which – along with Meat Johnson Nutrition – owns 80% of the baby formula market. When there were safety issues with its products, Abbott recalled its formula and shut its largest plant, sparking an infant formula shortage.

Things are more evenly split in the plant-based sector – according to Bloomberg, Impossible Foods leads the refrigerated space with a 9% market share, but is trumped by Kellogg’s (which owns MorningStar Farms), Beyond Meat and Conagra (the parent company of Gardein) in the freezer aisle, where it commands a 5% share.

“We don’t need to go public in the near future… That said, it would be nice to go public at some point on our terms, to further capitalise and cement the legacy of the company.”

An Impossible Foods IPO has long been rumoured, with speculation rife last month after McGuinness indicated to Reuters that the company is exploring a liquidity event that could result in a sale or a public offering. Green Queen understands that the company isn’t committing to this – it has maintained that it’s the fastest-growing brand in the category.

Any liquidity event, if it were to happen, wouldn’t take place for another two to three years. And at present, expanding distribution and strengthening its portfolio are the business’s key priorities.

“We’re lucky enough to be pretty well-capitalised right now,” McGuinness told Bloomberg. Not needing to go public was a good position to be in, he explained as the IPO markets are not “great right now”. “We’ll go public when we’re prepared and we’re ready. I think things were rushed maybe in the past – we don’t need to rush, luckily.”

The company will hope that this will put IPO rumours to bed for a while, as it ramps up its marketing efforts to meet the meat-eaters where they’re at, shrug off the elitist tag, and keep the price tag wallet-friendly. But would a monopoly make sense?

The post Analysing Impossible Foods CEO’s Bloomberg Interview, and What It Implies for Plant-Based Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

As it rolls out its first cultivated meat product following regulatory approval in Singapore, Vow CEO George Peppou speaks to Green Queen about the Forged quail parfait, the need to do things differently, and consumers’ approach to novel food tech.

As the first Australian cultivated meat brand to earn regulatory clearance anywhere in the world, Vow’s momentous achievement has raised plenty of intrigue – and questions.

In case you missed it, the Syndey-based startup is today launching its cultivated Japanese quail in Singapore’s Mandala Club, after the country’s regulator gave it the go-ahead to sell the product. But unlike other rollouts of cultivated meat, where chefs are supplied with the meat itself (which they then incorporate into dishes), Vow is taking a novel approach. What restaurant kitchens get is a parfait containing its cultivated quail.

The product coincides with the unveiling of its premium consumer brand, Forged, and a new metaphorical bird called Quailia, which is supposed to represent an animal that only exists to be eaten, unlike its real-world counterpart. “Quailia is a metaphor for what we are doing: creating new experiences rather than replicating food animals make,” Vow co-founder and CEO George Peppou tells Green Queen.

It all feels a little different with this latest cultivated meat launch – and that’s because it’s meant to be. “We believe in creating entirely new food experiences,” says Peppou. “Quail is a great way to introduce consumers to this. It’s familiar enough to be interesting, but not something eaten regularly enough for consumers to have a strong view of what it is and isn’t.”

What’s in the Forged Parfait?

Peppou reveals that the parfait is the first of several products Vow is launching the Forged brand this year. But why start with this? “Parfait was the most gentle introduction to our deliberately different products,” he notes. “Parfait is similar to a very light pâté. Forged Parfait combines a flavour and texture combination you can’t find anywhere else. The result is a delightful contradiction: rich yet delicate with a unique weightless, melt-in-your-mouth quality.”

Companies like Eat Just, Aleph Farms (both of whom are cleared to sell their products) and Meatable are all using a hybrid approach in their initial products, but Vow’s quail itself comprises 100% quail cells. “We don’t hybridise with any other inputs,” confirms Peppou.

So what goes in the parfait? “Cultured Japanese quail, a bit of garlic, onion, brandy and butter – exactly what you’d find in a pâté, just much lighter and creamier.” The Quailia makes up 60% of the product, which additionally contains butter and port wine that’s clarified with egg whites and milk. Being a meat product grown from real animal cells, this was never going to be vegan, but the company is doubling down on its for-meat-lovers rhetoric.

“We are exclusively focused on making foods for meat-eaters, which is why featuring butter on the ingredient list is not an issue,” says Peppou. “Vegans and vegetarians eating the food we produce doesn’t have an impact.”

This chimes with what the Vow CEO – a meat-eater – told Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras on the Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers in October. “When I think about how can I change the behaviour of people like me, like my family, it’s not going to be by making something which approximates the meat we eat today – that’s a very hard sell for people that already have integrated meat into their diets and have no intention of changing that.”

He added: “We have to make foods that are better than the meat that we can get today: tastier, more nutritious, offering functionality that animals can’t.”

To elevate and showcase the potential of such products, cultivated meat companies rely on world-class chefs to incorporate their innovations into dishes. Vow’s debut will come courtesy of a seven-course omakase menu at Mandala Club’s Japanese restaurant Mori, with a series of exclusive dinners running until the end of the month.

“The product delivered to chefs is a packaged finished parfait,” Peppou says. “The use cases are limited only by the creativity of the chefs, as diners will see at Mandala, and at other venues in the future.” (Vow has a host of other restaurant collaborations lined up for the next two months, but it remains tight-lipped when pressed for further details.)

APAC ‘more open-minded’ to novel foods

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) was the first regulator to approve the sale of cultivated meat, granting that honour to Eat Just back in 2020. Since then, Eat Just and fellow Californian startup Upside Foods have obtained approval in the US, and Aleph Farms in its home country of Israel.

It cements Singapore’s status as a hotbed for food tech and regulatory progress, despite having one of the most stringent processes globally. Dutch cultivated pork producer Meatable and French cell-cultured chicken startup Vital Meat have also filed for clearance in the island nation, with the former expecting to go to market in mid-2024.

“It was a very thorough assessment, which was very important to us so that consumers know our products are safe beyond doubt,” says Peppou. “The team at SFA were rigorous across all parts of the application, paying special attention to media components and ensuring our risk assessment around residues was to the highest standards.”

Europe is still lagging behind when it comes to cultivated meat regulation, given it has the strictest novel foods standards in the world. Up until recently, the UK followed pre-Brexit EU rules too, but now, a shake-up is on the horizon. In the US, while several companies are awaiting FDA and USDA approval, there’s the more immediate issue of dealing with incoming political bans on cultivated meat.

Consumer surveys show mixed results about the acceptance of these proteins. In the US, one poll suggested that 45% are open to trying these foods. This drops to just over a third (34%) in the UK. Another survey shows 47% of Germans and 42% of Austrians are willing to eat them at least once.

In India, meanwhile, a 2019 study showed that 56% of citizens are “very or extremely likely” to buy cultivated meat regularly. And recent research polling Singaporean diners who had tried Eat Just’s cultivated chicken found that on a scale of 1 to 5, the acceptance of cultivated meat was high (4.19). In fact, buying and eating these products “significantly boosted” people’s acceptance, with diners expressing a strong willingness to try them again (a score of 4.41/5) and recommending them to loved ones (4.45/5).

“Asia-Pacific, in general, is much more open-minded to novel food from a consumer standpoint,” says Peppou. “At a regulatory level, it’s much less politicised than in the EU and US,” he adds. Vow is currently in the middle of a public consultation process for its application to the bilateral Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, with the next round due to open in the middle of the year. “We are working with several regulators across four continents in different stages of engagement all the way through to filing,” he says. This includes the US too.

Tackling bans and backlash

Lately, there has been increased attention on what is termed ‘food tech neophobia’. “Often, what we’ve got is a phobia of new stuff, a sort of almost a sort of comfort reaction of regard to cling to the old stuff,” environmental journalist George Monbiot said in an interview with Figueiras last year.

This fear has been exacerbated by the attack on cultivated meat in the US. The states of Alabama, Arizona, Wisconsin, Texas, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida have all taken aim at the industry by proposing a series of bans – whether that’s to do with labelling or even production and sale – with the latter on the brink of passing a bill to effectively criminalise cultivated meat.

Meanwhile, a host of negative media coverage – from Bloomberg to the New York Times – hasn’t helped things. “It’s an inevitable backlash by the media to overly optimistic timelines by companies and failed promises, and by farmers to a movement that calls for an end to their livelihoods,” suggests Peppou. “Naturally, farmers are upset by founders and companies that make them out to be a problem to be solved, and politicians are capitalising on that anger, while the companies have failed to convince consumers to replace a tried and tested product with an expensive, lesser replica.”

He adds: “We have been very clear from the beginning: we think sustainable, open-range farming – the kind practised here in Australia – is a critical part of the future of our food systems, and that cultured meat only makes sense as a way to create new, delicious foods, not imitate the food we already know and love. We are proud to create an entirely new category of food designed specifically for meat-eaters to enjoy.”

Peppou disagrees with the notion that novel tech has put many people off. “When Impossible [Foods] launched in Australia, there was zero controversy and now it’s on our shelves.” The Californian plant-based meat giant was something he also mentioned in Green Queen’s podcast last year. He praised Impossible Foods’ marketing and messaging, but said he would do things differently around the consumer angle: “There’s not really any selfish driver to purchase Impossible.”

Expanding on this, he stated: “It’s a direct, drop-in replacement for beef mince. It’s so meaty that it sort of has been seen by meat eaters, and it’s like: ‘What is any individual meathead getting out of incorporating impossible into their diet?'” He continued: “There’s not really anything in it for me to make my lasagna out of Impossible. In fact, there are reasons not to: it’s more expensive and it’s a bit of a hard choice because I have had to make a conscious decision to do something differently than I would otherwise want to.”

Peppou echoes this thinking when asked about the challenges – whether they’re political, optics, financial or production-related – facing cultivated meat in what is going to be a very important year for the industry. “By changing the process of production, rather than the food itself, you are asking consumers to change their behaviour for the benefit of the planet alone. Despite what we’d like to believe, those externalities don’t matter as much as we think to a vast majority of consumers when it comes to purchasing,” he says.

“The only way for us to change our behaviour is to offer new foods that consumers choose selfishly. That’s why Vow is different, because we innovate instead of imitating, and therefore offer something that consumers will selfishly choose, because it is deliberately different.”

The proof, of course, will be in the pudd– sorry, parfait.

The post Vow CEO George Peppou on Cultivated Quail Launch: ‘We Need to Change the Food, Not the Production Process’ appeared first on Green Queen.

Max Elder, co-founder of former plant-based meat company Nowadays and managing director of Food System Innovations, reflects on the journey of his vegan chicken nugget startup, explains why it was forced to cease trading, talks VC funding in food tech, and reveals if he’d do it all over again.

In August, Californian plant-based chicken startup Nowadays announced it was shutting down “due to an inability to raise venture funds in this market”, a year after it successfully closed a $7M seed funding round. The news reflected the growing fundraising pains faced by the plant-based sector – and food tech as a whole.

Elder, the company’s co-founder and CEO, noted at the time that the nuggets were performing well in D2C and retail channels, with many consumers returning to purchase more. But the financials associated with frozen food distribution for a startup of Nowadays’ scale were too steep. “The economics only work if you have the capital to really push a multi-year brand building and marketing strategy and it’s really hard to access capital now,” he was quoted as saying.

A well-respected figure in the alternative protein industry who was frequently featured in legacy media including the New York Times, the Guardian, Forbes and Fast Company, Elder had predicted that in the long term, “the headwinds for conventional proteins will only get stronger”, saying: “I think we just need to batten down the hatches and weather the storm, and sometimes that means some companies can’t survive because there’s limited access to capital.”

Since then, he has been working as the managing director of US sustainability non-profit Food System Innovations, which supports initiatives that are helping to remove animals from the global food system. We spoke to Elder about Nowadays, why it reached the end of its tether, and what the future of this industry looks like.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Green Queen: Did you see the end coming? What finally made you decide to say that’s it?

Max Elder: Every startup goes through an existential crisis between each round of financing, so all founders see the end frequently. Running a startup is a tricky balancing act of challenges and opportunities, successes and failures, growth and setbacks. There wasn’t one event that ended Nowadays – there were a plethora of factors, many outside of our control, that made it impossible to raise additional capital. We ceased operations when we became insolvent and couldn’t sustain the business any further.

GQ: If you could do it all again, would you?

ME: Absolutely. Founding a mission-driven food company is an extraordinary privilege I don’t take for granted. Building is a formidable challenge and feeding people is insanely rewarding. Most importantly, I’ve never had such a high velocity of learning in my life. I don’t plan on doing it all over again anytime soon.

I currently see a higher impact approach for how I spend my time: I’ve transitioned to work on systems-level change and category-level innovation at a public charity called Food System Innovations, co-founded by David Meyer and Galina Hale. While Nowadays was my shot on goal, I’m most excited these days by redesigning the playing field.

GQ: Do you have any big regrets? What would you do differently?

ME: I honestly don’t have any big regrets. I think there are a few I would do differently next time. The first is being more intentional about the co-founder relationship. That relationship is mission-critical and often ends at some point in a company’s journey, like it did at Nowadays. I also would have shut down Nowadays earlier than I did. It’s an insanely hard choice to make, and it’s hard to find allies in that choice.

Winding down your business is emotionally draining (layoffs, including yourself; liquidation efforts; legal) and can take a long time and cost a lot of money. I now help founders better understand what they need to responsibly wind down their business.

GQ: What are your biggest learnings? And what are you most proud of?

ME: Nowadays accomplished a lot. We built a differentiated brand, patented whole-cut manufacturing processes, launched into retail with Whole Foods Market, secured restaurant partnerships with critically-acclaimed partners, and fed a lot of people. While those are all impressive, I think what I’m most proud of is how I managed the company. Despite some really thorny problems and tough challenges, I always made values-based decisions and communicated honestly.

My biggest learning was that you can feel proud even if you don’t achieve your desired outcome as long as you hold yourself accountable to your own values. Even when I’ve failed, my values have never failed me.

GQ: You were straddling the line of processed plant-based food and ‘clean label’ with a product that had a short ingredient list. We are constantly told that processed products turn people off the plant-based category. Is this what consumers want? What’s your take on all this? Do we need more clean-label products?

ME: Meat is a $1.4T industry globally and a $180B industry in the US. The average American eats 330 lbs of meat (including seafood) annually, and about nine out of 10 Americans eat meat everyday. The market for meat is gigantic.

There are many different consumer segments who have different pain points for different meal occasions across different channels. There is no singular value proposition that consumers want. I believe food products in the US need to taste delicious and be priced competitively. For some consumers during some meal occasions in some channels, cleaner labels matter.

That said, I’m worried about the mis- and disinformation campaigns around ultra-processing and alt-proteins we’re seeing, as I see much of these concerns as industry talking points that eaters use to post-rationalise, more so than real pain points that drive purchase decisions.

GQ: Do you think the vegan nugget market is oversaturated?

ME: Market saturation at a macro level is when the supply of a product becomes higher than its demand. Sometimes this happens because the market has too many competitors offering the same product, or when the product has already reached the entirety of its customer base. While I believe there are many plant-based nugget products competing with each other, I also believe that the product hasn’t reached the entirety of its potential market.

If you think the market for vegan nuggets is only made up of vegan consumers, the vegan nugget market is oversaturated. If you think the market for vegan nuggets is made up of flexitarians, the vegan nugget market is full of blue sky. Chicken nuggets amount to an $8B market in the US; there’s plenty of room for demand capture.

GQ: What advice would you give for existing and new plant-based brands?

ME: I feel like I should be the one taking advice from existing and new plant-based brands! One pivot I made too late at Nowadays that I’d love to see other brands make is a pivot to institutional procurement. Plant-based products offer truly impressive environmental benefits that aren’t accurately priced in the market today.

While the climate crisis hasn’t quite yet become a consumer problem, it’s increasingly becoming an ESG problem. If consumer demand signals are weakening, institutional ESG commitments are getting stronger. The downside is that institutional sales cycles can be long and opaque, distribution hard to secure, and prices relatively low, but the upside is the potential for high, consistent volumes at a better margin than retail.

GQ: There’s a lot of talk about whether VC funding is the right choice for founders/startups. What’s your take? Would you take VC money again?

ME: I think the funding model you pursue needs to depend on the business you want to build. If you want to build for impact on a short-time horizon, you need a higher-risk capital source to support growth. It’s hard to imagine other sources of capital to underwrite innovative startups trying to solve big challenges quicker than venture.

GQ: Can you describe what a day in the life of a plant-based founder was like? Take us through your mental state on the average day.

ME: I think the founder role is overly romanticised. There are a lot of fun parts of the job, but a lot of the role is administrative work and constant problem-solving and making sure things get done. My days typically rotated through a cycle of strategy, fundraising, and capacity-building. I would build a strategic vision supported by core enabling milestones we planned to achieve; sell part of the company to secure the capital required to execute on that vision; and then build capacity to hit those milestones.

Throughout those cycles, my mental states fluctuated highly based on the frequency and scale of opportunities versus the frequency and scale of challenges. Some days, my mental state was calm, confident and proud. Other days, I’d be insanely stressed and not my best self. I’m so impressed with and inspired by people who build.

GQ: Do you still believe in the category? What needs to change?

ME: The more time I spend in the food and climate worlds, the more deeply I believe in alternative proteins. The problem of industrialised animal farming is only getting worse, and the alternatives are only getting better. I see truly mind-blowing innovation at a pretty fast pace for the food industry addressing an incredibly complex problem. Farmed animals are all complex living beings, so replicating their bodies with plants is a formidable task.

The industry is nascent. I see some opportunities to accelerate the protein transition across both supply and demand. On the supply side, I’m excited by the impact of choice architecture and default shifts at institutions. I’m inspired by market shaping efforts to accelerate alt-protein value chains and the potential of offtakes and advance market commitments. I’m also seeing some big improvements in taste and texture, which I hope continues, and I’m increasingly growing bullish on blended/hybrid meats (new category-level nomenclature to come).

On the demand side, I’m eager to see more category-level demand campaigns (they need funding!) and efforts to combat mis- and dis-information campaigns. Price, taste and nutrition are all necessary but not sufficient for plant-based products to break into the mainstream; we also need to understand and engage the social, cultural and political elephants in the room. All that said, I believe the alternative protein category is not a question of if, but when.

The post Q&A with Max Elder: ‘Alt-Protein Needs to Engage the Cultural & Political Elephants’ appeared first on Green Queen.

Matthew Glover, co-founder of the Vegan Food Group, speaks to Green Queen about the decision behind acquiring its portfolio companies, the ambition to become a “vegan Unilever”, the challenging period for the sector, and the need for a plant-based checkoff programme.

“I know… it’s a bit of an ambiguous title,” admits Matthew Glover, chief mission officer of the Vegan Food Group (VFG), the new company that evolved from plant-based chicken startup VFC Foods.

Glover co-founded VFC with Adam Lyons in 2020, replete with wacky marketing, undercover chicken farm investigations, and – if sales are a barometer – a finger-lickin’ good product. The brand grew exponentially last year, with sales value up by nearly 200%, but things turned in a different direction halfway through.

Fellow plant-based meat maker Meatless Farm was on the brink of collapse – and VFC swooped in to purchase its UK operations and revive its market presence. Months later, it acquired pie company Clive’s Purely Plants. And in January came the grand reveal. VFC was now VFG, a holding company that has rapidly become a leader in the vegan sector. Just yesterday, VFG announced the acquisition of 35-year-old German tofu manufacturer Tofutown, an indicator of its wider European ambitions.

“I’d like to say this was always the masterplan,” Glover tells me. “But the reality is that circumstances came into play. VFC was making good progress, but like many startups, the progress wasn’t as fast as we’d hoped or expected.” The competition was fierce, the demand was levelling off, and the team sensed that businesses in this space would need to be proactive if they were to survive.

“When we heard that Meatless Farm might be going out of business, we saw synergies with what we were doing, and felt the brand was too good to fail,” he recalls. The rescue of Meatless Farm is when the idea of VFG began to take shape. When the rebrand materialised last month, Glover stepped into the more active role of chief mission officer.

“When Adam and I set up VFC, my motivation was removing animals from the supply chain, and Adam wanted the world to taste better. We were both very focused on the ethical imperative,” he says, explaining his new position. “The way I see it is: I’m here to keep the original values of the business front of mind as we grow and bring on more brands.”

Why the Vegan Food Group acquired the brands in its portfolio

So VFG made its first two acquisitions before officially being formed, and now is a company that houses four businesses with over 80 SKUs in more than 21,000 distribution points across the UK and the EU. Reflecting on the Meatless Farm deal, Glover says VFC was an admirer of the brand and product range: “There’d been so much invested over the years in marketing and product development that it seemed such a shame for the movement to lose such a big name.”

He credits the progress made by the team, led by founder Morten Toft Bech (who exited the company after the sale), in terms of listings in major retailers and foodservice. Crucially, consumers liked the products. Moreover, the product range of chilled beef and pork analogues was complementary to VFC’s frozen vegan chicken. “By not cannibalising our VFC range we knew we could make our proposition stronger,” says Glover.

Meatless Farm was also local to VFC, with both businesses hailing from Yorkshire, and the latter’s head of innovation previously worked at the former. “When the business instructed an administrator, we decided to take a look. The staff had all been laid off, and we knew that customers were being let down as the company had run out of cash,” notes Glover.

“We knew it was going to be a huge challenge to get the supply chain back up and running, but suppliers and customers were generally very receptive in those early days and we gradually managed to get things moving again,” he adds. Meatless Farm returned to UK retail in September, three months after the takeover. “I had little involvement in the rebuild, and the VFC team led by [CEO] Dave Sparrow put in all the hard work.”

The acquisition of Clive’s Purely Plants was a different state of affairs, however, given that it wasn’t in a distressed situation. Glover’s investment firm Veg Capital had bought 90% of the business in 2021, with Clive’s managing director Esther Pearson staying on at the helm. “She’d helped steer the company from a local supplier of organic pies in health food stores, to gaining national listings with Waitrose and Ocado, whilst moving to a larger manufacturing site in Dartmouth, Devon,” says Glover.

“As Veg Capital is also the major investor in VFG, we began to see how having Clive’s as part of the group would make sense for both parties. VFG would have direct access to manufacturing, and a veg-led brand as part of the portfolio, whilst Clive’s would have access to the support of the wider VFG team and resources, and benefit from the additional sales and marketing,” he explains.

“The integration is still ongoing, but the signs are good that Clive’s will play a leading role as part of VFG’s future development.” (Pearson remains a shareholder in Clive’s.)

The cross-Europe move for Tofutown

In the works for a while, the Tofutown takeover was a major move, giving VFC access to its two manufacturing sites sprawling a combined 55,000 sq m, and a gateway into further European expansion. “There’s a number of reasons why we saw Tofutown as an attractive addition to the Vegan Food Group,” says Glover. “The fact that Germany is the biggest market for plant-based food in Europe was top of the list, providing so many opportunities to expand.”

He adds: “The business also has an existing senior management team in place with an enthusiasm to grow and learn as part of a wider group structure. We’re very excited about how we can merge the start-up culture of VFC and Meatless Farm, with the established nature of a food company where manufacturing and delivering high-quality food is second nature.”

While VFG is unable to disclose the acquisition sums, Glover did highlight the value of employees of the acquired brands. “It is indeed our priority to retain the workforce whenever possible. We believe that the success of our acquisitions is significantly enhanced by the contributions of these individuals, and we are keen on integrating them into our team, fostering a culture of growth, innovation, and mutual respect,” he states.

With a diverse portfolio of brands, could we see a blend of the different offerings in new product launches? “We’ll be looking at a variety of ways to enhance the brands, and co-branding opportunities could be a possibility. We’re particularly excited about expanding the Meatless Farm and VFC brands into Germany, and then using our base there to expand into other EU countries,” confirms Glover. (Tofutown products will soon be available in the UK as part of the deal too.)

“As Tofutown is known for natural, organic, clean-label product ranges, then we’ll be looking at ways to leverage this expertise and create new SKUs, which could be private label, branded as VFC, Meatless Farm, Clive’s, or we may even bring new brands to market,” he adds. “The beauty of having significant manufacturing capacity and expertise is we can listen to our customers and create the products that consumers are buying.”

Turning VFG into ‘a vegan Unilever’

VFG made a significant statement upon launch, setting its sights on becoming “a vegan Unilever”. “Our strategy is to establish VFG as a leader within the plant-based food sector, where customers, suppliers and industry leaders look to us for what’s coming next,” explains Glover.

“We’ll be offering a much wider range of options to customers, so they don’t need to deal with so many smaller suppliers,” he says. “Operationally, there are efficiencies and better buying power we can leverage, whilst providing our teams with a more diversified portfolio of brands to manage. There’s likely to be flexibility with some brands managed in-house (like VFC and Meatless Farm), with other brands being stand-alone subsidiaries.”

VFG aims to become profitable this year, with a goal of collecting €100M in revenue. Unilever, meanwhile, turned over nearly €60B last year, with its nutrition and ice cream divisions alone bringing in €21M. Becoming a vegan Unilever is a lofty ambition – does Glover fear it could almost become an albatross?

“Only if we fail, but we’ve no intention of failing,” he says. “We believe we have a very good strategy and a team that can develop our model into a large plant-based CPG company. We’ve got strong financial backing from mission-aligned investors who are keen to support us on this journey. The early signs are good, but I’ll reflect on your question in a couple of years and let you know!”

When laying out this goal initially, Glover had said: “Imagine a ‘vegan Unilever’, but with the majority of future profits being donated to effective animal charities and diet change initiatives – that’s what we’re creating at the Vegan Food Group.” This is where his role as chief mission officer comes in. “As we grow the team both organically and through M&A, we’re bringing on staff who don’t necessarily have the activism background or know about all the impacts of animal agriculture. I see my role as making sure we don’t lose sight of why we’re doing this as a company,” he explains.

VFG is majority-owned by Veg Capital, which is committed to donating 100% of its profits from its stake to effective animal charities. “We see our work as a virtuous circle, working on both the supply and demand side of the equation,” notes Glover.

“We expect to be profitable in 2024 if all goes to plan, with consistent profits feeding through over the coming years. As the group will be focused on fast-track growth (either organically or through acquisition), then we’ll likely be reinvesting profits back into the organisation for the next few years,” he adds. “The most likely time that we’ll be able to fulfil our charitable ambition is after an exit event, but there’s a lot of work to do before we get there.”

Glover will additionally assume the role of group chair at VFG, which will see him support Sparrow and the leadership team to navigate the M&A opportunities and advise on the organic growth of its existing brands.

A vegan checkoff programme to support plant-based meat

Alternative protein as a whole suffered from dwindling sales and waning consumer interest globally last year. In the UK, meat-free products were among the worst-performing grocery categories last year, with sales declining by £38.4m, and volumes down by 4.2%.

“We can’t hide away from the fact that plant-based meat categories have been in decline over the past year, or two,” says Glover, before pointing out that the British downturn isn’t as severe as it has been in the US. “There’s a multitude of factors at play, including the cost-of-living crisis, meat industry misinformation campaigns successfully turning consumers away, as well as products not meeting expectations. Retailers reducing shelf space hasn’t helped.”

There has been a disconnect with consumers too, many of whom perceive plant-based meat to be unhealthy because they’re ultra-processed foods (UPFs), despite experts suggesting that not all UPFs – which are a mark of processing, not nutrition – are bad for you. “The meat industry has been adept at sowing seeds of doubt about the processed nature of meat alternatives and the healthfulness of plant-based diets, contributing to consumer scepticism,” says Glover. And government support for these systems doesn’t help.

In the US and the UK, meat and dairy industries collect government-backed funds from livestock producers to help fund promotional campaigns that encourage the consumption of these foods. These schemes, called levies in the UK and checkoff programmes in the US, enable the animal agriculture industry to “develop large multi-million-pound category campaigns” transmitted nationwide. With plant-based companies facing tough times, promoting the category to the public “with all its benefits is one way to get businesses moving again”.

In line with that notion, Glover is working with Indy Kaur, founder of vegan consultancy firm Plant Futures, on the plant-based industry’s own checkoff programme. “We are looking to level up with this, consolidate funding and create a campaign which can fairly compete and give consumers a reason to choose to eat plants and not animals,” he outlines.

The project will take “best practices from the meat and dairy industry”. Glover – who is also the co-founder of Veganuary – cites the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s anti-Veganuary drive last month, as well as the US Milk Processor Education Program’s ultra-successful Got Milk? campaign as “proven models driving demand” for meat and dairy. “We’ll be doing the same, with plants,” he says.

For the majority of its funding, the vegan checkoff project aims to raise at least £3M from donors and investors, which would be supplemented with businesses’ marketing spend, though Glover acknowledges that these budgets are tight. “We are starting with a UK pilot, a test-and-learn methodology and potentially starting in the north where we know meat consumption is disproportionally higher than the south. Backed with a fast follow, [we’ll go] nationwide around Q3 with US rollout soon after,” he says.

“We’re going big because we have to. We’re aiming for all plant-based protein businesses in the UK and US to sign up, whether they can financially contribute or not. We are speaking to a lot of businesses and expect to have spoken to most in the plant-based protein space by the end of Q1/start of Q2,” adds Glover.

He notes that this will also help “take the burden off the shoulders of young businesses who need support” in the current climate. “There’s no holding Indy back, and she’s working with the smartest minds and a global network of advisors – it’s impressive,” he says. “We all know the future market potential for plant-based remains huge and this checkoff is designed to unlock this. We’re in it together, and that’s exactly how we are designing [the] checkoff from day one.”

Giving consumers what they want

Going back to VFG, which has teased more acquisitions in the near future, I ask Glover about the profile of the businesses it wants to take over. “There’s no target number of brands to acquire. Instead, we’ll look at every opportunity on merit and decide whether the brand or manufacturing site adds value, whilst not cannibalising our current range,” he explains. “We’ll focus primarily on frozen and chilled meal occasions where we already have expertise and relationships with buyers and suppliers.

“Ideally, we’re looking at companies which are already established, have gained decent distribution and have a run rate in excess of €3M,” he says, adding: “And the products have got to be good.”

That last point is crucial. A 1,000-person survey last year found that 66% of Brits are unhappy with the taste of plant-based meat, and 62% find them too expensive. For 51%, taste and texture are the main reasons for reducing their alt-meat consumption, but on the flip side, 39% are eating these products because of their flavour and texture. Attitudes around health were also mixed.

Does Glover know what people really want? “Oh gosh, I wish I had the definitive answer, as it’d make it far easier to scale VFG if we knew exactly how to appeal to the broadest range of consumers,” he responds. “Unfortunately, we’re navigating a nuanced interplay of factors.

“Taste and texture often stand at the forefront; people choose plant-based options that don’t compromise on the sensory experience traditionally associated with animal products. However, achieving this without the additional price tag remains a challenge for the sector,” he explains. This is significant, as the price gap will always deter the budget-conscious.

“Health considerations are also a driving force, with many turning to vegan options for a diet seen as cleaner and more beneficial. But there’s been a meat industry-sponsored backlash in the media, which has discouraged some consumers,” he says, referring to the aforementioned misinformation campaigns.

“Beyond these immediate concerns, broader issues play into consumer decisions. Environmental sustainability and ethical considerations are increasingly influencing purchasing behaviours,” suggests Glover. “Convenience, too, cannot be overlooked, with the demand for easy, quick-preparation vegan options rising.”

Additionally, there are some cultural and informational challenges as well. Over half of Brits want more information about plant-based meat, with occasional and former frequent eaters most likely to want more details. “Our societies have been centred around meat consumption for thousands of years, supported by over a century of targeted advertising by the meat industry. This deep-rooted history creates a significant barrier to changing dietary habits overnight,” he says.

This is why winning back consumer trust and shifting dietary dynamics are complex tasks that “will undoubtedly take time”. It would mean improving products’ functionality and prices, as well as involving transparent communication to combat misinformation. “As we move forward, understanding and addressing these multifaceted consumer needs and concerns will be crucial for the growth and acceptance of vegan food in the broader market,” says Glover.

He believes it will still be a tough year for plant-based companies. “I can’t see growth being back to the double-digit figures we had previously, and a lot of companies are running on empty financially,” he explains. However, the VFG co-founder says the economic climate generally seems to be improving”, and signals that the “declines are reducing”, with advocacy campaigns like the checkoff programme aimed at reengaging consumers. “I think we’ll be cheering the news that the categories will be back in growth during this year.”

The post Vegan Food Group’s Matthew Glover: ‘We’re Going Big, Because We Have To’ appeared first on Green Queen.

The Cakery founder Shirley Kwok speaks to Green Queen about her new businesses shaking up Hong Kong’s plant-based scene: vegan cheese brand Cultured and plant-forward bakery Maya.

Shirley Kwok is one busy lady. Under her entrepreneur belt so far: a cakery, a bakery, and an artisanal cheese brand, and it’s not even been a decade!

And oh, her products range from better-for-you, allergen-friendly, vegan-friendly and diet-inclusive to a combination of all the above. The best part, though? The flavour is – some would say – bomb.

What started as a pop-up cake shop at Hong Kong’s famous commercial complex Landmark in 2016 has now evolved into five locations that offer cakes in all shapes and sizes, for all occasions and diets. But about a year and a half ago, The Cakery was no longer enough for Kwok, a mother of two.

You see, there was this local vegan cheese she loved, but the brand was sadly closing down – a fate that many of the city’s plant-forward businesses have suffered post-pandemic. Kwok was going to buy out that business, but that didn’t pan out. So instead, she created her own artisanal vegan cheese brand.

“I was doing a lot of tests at home,” she tells me. After testing a few different versions, she brought the cheese to work. “Everybody tried and they’re like: ‘Oh, it’s really nice. And I can’t stop eating,'” recalls Kwok. That’s when the thought occurred – maybe there was a real business in all this.

It came to fruition at the end of last year in the form of Cultured, a CPG brand offering kitchen staples like spreadable cheese blocks, cream cheeses, superfood crackers and curried hummus – all vegan.

Inspired by nations, powered by fermentation

As the name suggests, Cultured is rooted in fermentation, blending a base of cashews with probiotics and ageing them to unlock depth, complexity and umami notes. Plus, there’s the good-for-you bacteria and enzymes to support digestion and a strong immune system. “Everyone’s talking about gut health,” notes Kwok.

“The reason why I use the word ‘Cultured’ is because I wanted to bring in all sorts of cultures into this new thing. I want the brand to be inclusive, so it’s for everyone to try,” she tells me. The idea was to blend global cultures with fermentation cultures, with product flavours linked to different parts of the world (truffles are a nod to Italy, jalapeños to Mexico, and so on).

Her decision to make blocks of spreadable cheese over grated/gratable versions was part of a conscious move away from ingredients like agar or cornstarch, keeping her products as clean-label as possible. ethos intact. That is evident when you take a peek at the label: the sundried tomato and roasted garlic cheese, for example, has cashews, water, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, sundried tomatoes, garlic, salt and probiotics.

The process of making the cheese starts with a 48-hour ferment at room temperature, followed by another two to three days in the fridge, which will make it good to last for at least two weeks. Kwok has tried plenty of nuts, but cashews just work well with the flavour and texture of her current portfolio. “I’m going to start using other nuts,” she adds. Almonds, macadamias, and the like.

But with nut-based cheeses, cost is always an issue. Cultured’s cashew cheeses range from HK$120-135 ($15-17) for less than 200g, which is quite steep. Having said that, it is artisanal cheese, and the prices aren’t much different from high-end conventional counterparts.

“I feel like people who really understand my product should be able to appreciate that,” she says. “Even for my cakes, some people say: ‘Oh, yeah, your cakes are really expensive. But I can tell you use really good ingredients.'”

From The Cakery to a plant-forward bakery

This brings us neatly to the setting of our chat – we’re sat at the site of Maya in the commercial hub that is Taikoo Place. Borrowing similar principles from The Cakery, Maya is Kwok’s newest brand, a bakery with an almost fully plant-based menu. There are vegan versions of local favourites in egg tarts and pineapple buns, international treasures in pistachio croissants and blueberry muffins, and indulgent treats in peanut-butter-filled chocolate cookies.

My favourite part (aside from the flavour, of course) is the price. The vegan egg tart costs HK$18 ($2.30), the pistachio croissant HK$26 ($3.30), and the pandan-fulled pineapple bun HK$22 ($2.80). For high-quality plant-based products, that is excellent pricing. How did Kwok manage to keep prices so low for Maya, especially when Cultured’s rates are relatively high?

“It’s a new concept, and we’re having the shop in a commercial area,” she explains. She was expecting to get some pushback. “I wanted people to give it a try first, and not have a barrier. So then they like it and come back again. But if the price point is too high, they’ll be like: ‘Why would I want to pay so much for something that I’m not even sure whether I would like?'”

It’s a pertinent point for a region where 20% of the population lives in poverty, and inflation has mirrored increases globally, with things costing 2.4% more in December 2023 than the month before. But despite a spate of post-pandemic closures and collapses for plant-based businesses, the demand for vegan food remains, with a June 2023 survey finding that 86% of locals want to see more plant-based options in public places, while 70% don’t think restaurants offer enough meat-free options.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed I described Maya as a bakery with an almost 100% vegan menu. That’s because the menu has one meat-based option: a turmeric chicken sourdough sandwich. “I was debating whether to use ‘fake’ meat,” says Kwok. “But it’s processed, and we really don’t want to use that.” She acknowledges that the menu does have a sandwich with vegan tuna, which she says is “the most processed food in this café”.

“I was also worried that we’re in a commercial area, where probably most of the people are not vegan – I still want to try to accommodate people who are not vegan, you know?” she adds. Explaining her rationale, she says meat-eaters might come to the store and select the chicken sandwich the first time, but they might like it so much that they’d try something else – maybe one of the vegan sandwiches (which incorporate Cultured’s products), quiches or soups – next time. It’s a working example of how flexitarians hold the key to protein diversification.

Kwok isn’t vegan herself but says she really appreciates good plant-based food. “But it’s quite hard to find in Hong Kong,” she tells me. “Even though they say they’re vegan, they’re heavily processed, and I don’t feel healthy after eating it.” It’s a view held by many around the world, with the heightened discourse about ultra-processed foods (UPFs) associating certain vegan foods with ill health – though not all UPFs or plant-based meats are unhealthy. “I try to eat very clean. I prefer wholesome food, rather than really processed food.”

It’s all about the aesthetics – and family

The other reason why Maya isn’t fully vegan is because the espresso bar serves cow’s milk. Don’t worry though, there’s oat and soy too – and the coffee, sourced from a local roaster, is truly great. There are two options: “nutty” and “fruity” (which I assume are layperson’s terms for washed and natural processed coffee, respectively).

Aesthetics are important to Kwok. There’s an underlying pastel theme running through Maya’s exteriors, serveware and the food itself. The hot drinks come in gorgeous stone mugs with golden spoons, with takeaway packaging sourced from local supplier Sustainabl. For iced beverages, there are plastic-free, starch-based straws.

As for the food, take that pistachio croissant, for instance. The top is meticulously half-covered in a pistachio-white chocolate glaze, lined with pistachio pieces. I ask her why she chose to go with an exterior glaze instead of a filling. “I really appreciate things that look nice,” she responds. “So if I put it on top, it can be very catchy.” Traditional croissants can be “shiny and nice”, but it’s hard to replicate that with a margarine-based vegan croissant. So she wanted something that would grab the attention of people standing afar.

But Maya isn’t just a bakery: it moonlights as a bar, with cocktails like Honeybee Gin Tea, Coriander Blast and a classic negroni, alongside craft beers and organic wines. You can grab a vegan cheese platter too, if you’re into that. It’s a whole package, and it makes sense when you consider how personal the brand is to Kwok.

Maya is the name of her 11-year-old daughter, who helped conceptualise the business’s mascot and logo, a bird also called Maya. The new business is a tribute to both her kids, and signals that she’s in it for the long haul. She’s already deep in R&D for future releases (a not-so-subtle hint: if you’re into kimchi and hot sauces, you may be in for a treat).

While Kwok does want to expand eventually, she’s wary that vegan cheese brands in Hong Kong have come and gone, so education for her is key. In the long term, she hopes people recognise she’s trying to help her own community and normalise veganism. “Right now, people are still asking us: ‘Do you have normal cakes?’ Hopefully, in five years, I won’t get those kinds of customers,” she says.

In the end, for Kwok, it’s about convincing people that it’s okay to eat vegan food: “Just give it a try.”

The post Meet the Entrepreneur Taking Hong Kong’s Vegan Bakery & Cheese Scene to the Next Level appeared first on Green Queen.

Christina Dean, founder and CEO of Redress and The R Collective, speaks to Green Queen about the evolution of sustainable fashion, what she’s learnt in her 17 years as an activist, and the impact of online shopping and e-commerce.

A decade ago, we spoke to sustainable fashion icon Christina Dean, founder of the Hong Kong-based charity Redress, who said she felt a personal responsibility towards a green, low-impact lifestyle. “I do what I can throughout my life streams, from the values I teach my children about not wasting resources and about caring about what happens to our future world to the consumption choices I make on a daily basis,” she said.

Then, five years on, we caught up with Dean again, who had begun The R Collective, an offshoot fashion brand from Redress. She reflected upon the future of sustainability, female leadership, and zero-waste supply chains. “We all have a slightly different relationship with fashion, and it is okay. Wherever you are within the fashion industry, make your bit more sustainable,” she suggested.

The Redress charity was founded in 2007 and works on inspiring positive environmental change and promoting sustainability in the fashion industry by reducing textile waste, pollution, water and energy consumption. The R Collective, meanwhile, was launched in 2017 as a circular fashion brand that uses rescued textile waste, sourced from luxury brands, mills and manufacturers and upcycling these materials into elegant clothing pieces. A quarter of its profits go back to Redress. “We all need to satisfy our desire for creativity, but it should not come at the cost of the planet,” Dean explained in 2019.

Now, we touched bases with the activist and entrepreneur again, exploring the changes she’s seen in the fashion industry, her growth as a leader, and the evolution of Redress, 17 years from launch.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Green Queen: We interviewed you 10 years ago (and five years ago too). A lot of the data shows waste is getting worse. How much has changed when it comes to fashion, waste and the Redress mission?

Christina Dean: Redress is 17 years old, and it was fashion’s horrific waste rates that led me to start an NGO focused on reducing textile waste. I stumbled upon fashion’s waste and pollution problems purely by chance as a journalist writing on environmental pollution. At that time (2005/06), fashion’s waste was a ‘hush-hush’ issue, basically swept under the carpet.

Seventeen years on, the cat’s out of the bag on fashion’s highly wasteful and polluting ways. We have data that makes everyone – from the C-suite to everyday citizens – sit up and take notice. One headline estimates that the equivalent of one dumper truck of textiles is either landfilled or incinerated every second around the world. As if that wasn’t a smack in the face, it’s estimated that textile waste is set to increase by about 60% between 2015 and 2030. Left unchanged, the fashion industry is projected to use 26% of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. So, this spells very bad news for the planet.

So with a worsening situation, you might wonder what on earth have we been doing for 17 years if all that we’re seeing is a worsening textile waste landscape! Yes, the reality can be quite dispiriting because, on a bad day, we might feel like we’re on a sinking ship. But on all good days, which are most of them, we continue to strongly believe that the fashion industry is a highly impactful industry to influence positively, so we forge on.

In terms of our mission, over the last 17 years, we have adapted our first founding mission three times to reflect the changes in the problems and solutions that we seek to influence. We’ve gone from “promote sustainable fashion” to “reduce waste in fashion” to now “accelerate the transition towards a circular fashion system by educating designers and consumers to reduce fashion’s negative environmental impacts”. Despite these apparent changes, the essence of our spirit and resolve is unchanged, and that is, basically, to shift fashion from being a polluter to a pioneer.

GQ: How much have you changed as a leader and activist in that time?

Christina Dean: I’ve grown up so much in 17 years, in so many aspects of my life and work. Looking at the fashion industry, I’ve gone from the early days of pointing angry fingers at various parts of the fashion industry to now wholeheartedly understanding that we must embrace the industry and work within the reality of business and its various parameters. I am very pro-industry as a sustainable way to drive long-term change.

I have also put my pointy fingers away when it comes to consumers. I used to be relatively frustrated and judgmental about what could be considered rather negligent consumers who shop until they drop, so to speak. I am now humbler and more understanding about why consumers love to shop, the deeper psychological desires underpinning this, and I also accept why many are not really that interested in sustainable fashion issues, with so many other competing worries, like how to pay their bills being one obvious example.

I guess 17 years of life – that saw us found Redress and The R Collective and have four kids and get divorced – has given me a better understanding of life and self. So I’m more accepting of the disorder around me, whether that’s in the office, in the supply chain, in an ESG report, or in my own head! Despite this acceptance, I’ve not mellowed at all. I see the urgency to act as being greater than ever before, and so my focus and resolve are as they ever were. I just realise that change happens slowly and that our work is just a few little sprinkles of goodness at this point in time.

GQ: What’s your biggest learning, 17 years later?

Christina Dean: I’ve come to respect the fashion industry, its suppliers, its spinners, weavers, farmers, etc., very deeply, and I see such wonderful and enormous talent, generosity, determination, and humanity and love throughout the business. I’ve met the most incredible activists working in the fastest and cheapest of the big fast-fashion brands; I’ve met recyclers with bigger brains than their machines; and I’ve met CEOs with more conviction for change than prolific activists.

So I’ve come to realise that the humans behind the machines, spreadsheets, steering wheels, and boardrooms of fashion are pretty amazing people, who bring optimism to the challenges at hand. We are all only human, against some inhumanly complex issues, so I’m lucky to work with incredible people.

GQ: Did you plan for Redress to become this big? Was this always your plan or did it get bigger than your original ideas?

Christina Dean: Redress becoming what it is today is a bit of an accident really. When I founded it, I never thought for a moment that 17 years on, I would still be as passionate and excited about the mission as the day I decided to start it. I’m lucky that I am a curious and collaborative person and that this, coupled with a good sense of humour and a glass-half-full nature – which is important when certain things hit the fan! – have enabled Redress to rise from a toddler, tween to teen.

It’s my dream that Redress survives without me – I’m always watching out for that bus; you just never know! We are well on our way now, with a strong board, great executive director and senior management team, and with a longer-term strategy and fundraising approach.

We have a saying at Redress: “I’d rather be a pirate than join the navy.” And this sums up our spirit, so each day remains a hustle in the office as we’re always on our toes for the next rollercoaster ride.

GQ: Did you foresee the negative effects of e-commerce and online shopping?

Christina Dean: Not really. I would not call myself highly astute at consumer trends and habits. That said, it’s obvious that when something becomes cheap and convenient, it takes off. This is as true for takeaways as it is for buying clothes online. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the proliferation of e-commerce, especially during COVID, has changed the way we buy clothes – i.e., more, more, more – as indeed e-commerce has changed how some clothes are produced – i.e., more poorer quality fabrics can get away with it online.

I remain shocked by e-commerce’s high return rates, which are around 30% of all purchases globally. I’m personally not a very ‘typical’ fashion consumer, in that I don’t sit around online surfing for clothes that I don’t really want/need, so I find it surprising that people would overconsume styles and sizes and then post clothes back. I’ve seen firsthand the waste this creates because many businesses are unable, for various reasons, to get their customers’ returns back.

The post Q&A with Redress & The R Collective Founder Christina Dean: ‘Our Work is Just a Few Little Sprinkles of Goodness Right Now’ appeared first on Green Queen.

Marc Washington, CEO of superfood brand Supergut, speaks to Green Queen about riding the Ozempic wave, the importance of prebiotic fibre, boosting GLP-1, and formulating plant-based products.

For Marc Washington, it was a head-meets-heart story. His sister Monica lived with diabetes and hypertension and was clinically obese. Due to complications with her health and a high-risk pregnancy, she tragically passed away far too young.

“That tripped me to my core,” recalls Washington. “That was something that clearly should not have happened… I knew there had to be better ways, but nothing else allowed Monica to change her trajectory. ‘I think this is my purpose”, he thought at the time, “to help create something out of this tragic situation and help other people [towards] a healthier path where they’re more in control.’  In many ways, the kind of things that I wish Monica had access to while she was here.”

This painful part of his family history inspired Washington to start Supergut five years ago, a gut health brand leveraging prebiotic fibres for better digestive and metabolic health, and backed by nutritionists, scientists and medical professionals. Previously called MUNIQ – a portmanteau of ‘Monica’ and ‘unique’ – it was built upon the science of unique prebiotics, particularly resistant starches. These carbohydrates don’t get digested in the small intestine, but instead ferment in the large intestine to feed ‘good’ gut bacteria.

As MUNIQ, the business focused on supplements that transformed the gut, but also improved overall health, specifically targeting people “who need it the most”: those living with metabolic syndrome (a condition that affects a quarter of Americans). “I consider that phase an unbelievable proof of concept that this works,” says Washington. “We could take a food-as-medicine approach, and we can fundamentally transform people’s health in a significant way.”

But his goal was to impact broader public health. The more impactful way to do that was to be preventative and help people never get to the point where they’re living with metabolic syndrome. Prevention is better than cure, after all. In June 2022, the company rebranded to Supergut to focus on the mission.

In the second phase of the business, the idea was to transform focus from blood glucose or weight to the gut. “Whatever you’re dealing with in your life, we know that your gut microbiome has a significant role,” suggests Washington. The company carried out a peer-reviewed clinical study to validate “just how pervasively we could affect people’s health”.

Coming from a business background himself (with a supplements brand called Beachbody/BODi), he surrounded himself with scientific professionals to inform Supergut’s approach. “We really took more of a biotech approach, but just in the wrapper of a consumer brand,” says the Supergut CEO.

And it’s in the last few months that the Supergut has entered its third era, one where it’s creating gut-healthy superfoods as a “natural approach for appetite control”, which subsequently means better weight management, healthier blood sugar, and many other benefits. “We are doing that by helping naturally regulate your body’s production of these hormones in your gut called GLP-1,” explains Washington.

Is Supergut a natural Ozempic alternative?

GLP-1 has been a buzzword in health discourse over the last year with the rise of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, which are prescribed to people with type 2 diabetes and obesity, but have become popular as weight-loss drugs: about 1.7% of American adults were prescribed one of these semaglutide (the drug’s generic name) medications in 2023.

Consumer awareness about GLP-1 is driving a step-change for Supergut, which is “made for these times”, according to Washington.

“We talk all day, every day about Ozempic: its impact on health, the secondary impacts on functional foods, its impact on our customers, how we complement it in some ways that we can be a natural alternative for somebody who doesn’t want to use them… We’re very much here for this Ozempic era.”

“We’re designing nutrient-dense, functional, high-protein, high-fibre, low-sugar foods that can amplify or complement the appetite control effects, but also balance out your digestive tract. That is Supergut.”

While the Supergut team was very familiar with the effects of GLP-1 hormones and their effects when it they first launched the company, Ozempic came onto their radar around two years ago. The company was conducting a 200-person “gold-standard” study using its shakes when one investigator who was impressed with the results mentioned breakthrough medications like Ozempic. Supergut spoke to leading experts in the field, who lauded these drugs’ transformative effects as well as “unbelievable promise” in weight-loss trials. As Washington puts it, “physicians were losing their mind”.

Washington and his team continued to focus on their product range before GLP-1 agonist drugs really exploded last year and forced Supergut to pay attention. The human gut has its own version of GLP-1, incretin hormones, which can be regulated with nutrients like dietary fibre and prebiotics like the ones Supergut is using, such as resistant starches and beta-glucans. “A big part of how [Supergut products are] actually doing their job at keeping you full, maintaining healthier weight and improving insulin response to manage blood sugar is GLP-1,” explains Washington.

The brand conducted a tongue-in-cheek stunt last year, branding its superfood bars as Wozempic. You know, Ozempic, minus all the woes. Those include the cost of the drugs, the needles and the side effects. “We’re saying: Hey, guess what? Our products help curb cravings, but we do it naturally,” says Washington.

It was a precursor to Supergut’s dialled-up brand positioning based on mimicking Ozempic. “This is a tsunami that’s about to take over not just pharma, it’s going to impact many people in broad, significant ways,” he notes. “So what are the secondary and tertiary effects of this? What’s the effect on food? People are going to eat less of certain types of food, but, they’re going to need more of other types of food, right? That’s us.”

A GLP-1 complement, not an Ozempic replacement

With all the focus on prebiotic fibre, it’s become an increasingly crowded CPG space – think Olipop, Pendulum, Uplift Food and Poppi, to name a few. Does this breed consumer confusion? Washington believes so, adding that this is not likely to change for the foreseeable future.

So how do Supergut’s products stand out? The idea is to focus specifically on the most efficacious types of prebiotic fibres that the body can tolerate at high concentrations. “You do need to get a fair amount of fibre in your diet in order to have some of these benefits,” he says. This is how the company landed on its unique, proprietary, patented resistant starch fibre blend (featuring green banana powder, beta-glucans from oats, soluble vegetable fibre from maize, and potato starch).

Supergut’s products help to diversify the prebiotic fibre content you’re ingesting and marry complementary elements like resistant starches and beta-glucan. This blend forms the base of its shakes, bars and add-to-anything powders.

The other aspect that differentiates Supergut, according to Washington, is the fact that the company has conducted primary clinical research, which revealed how its shakes can improve HbA1c (a measure of average blood glucose levels), appetite control, weight management (showing a steady decline instead of a massive dropoff), and blood pressure. “We also saw improvements in other dimensions connected to gut-brain access: better sleep quality, better energy, less brain fog,” he states.

“One thing we’re very clear about is this is not a replacement for Ozempic. This is not a magic pill. This is food. So this is going to work naturally in your body, and by no means are you going to just drink a shake and lose 20% of your body weight. They haven’t even made drugs that have been that effective, so clearly, you’re not going to get the same kind of results from a food product,” says Washington. “Plus from a regulatory standpoint, we have to be very careful. We don’t prevent, treat or cure any diseases. That is not us: we are loud and proud [about the fact] that we are a food.”

If you’re a semaglutide user, you might be wondering how complementation works with Supergut products. Washington suggests that Ozempic is, in effect, a Band-Aid, with studies showing that it does not “solve your metabolism”. When you come off the drug, the weight comes back on, a phenomenon dubbed the Ozempic rebound.

“We’re a very natural complement to help maintain and sustain those results over time, and tap into some of the same mechanisms, not at the same magnitude, but for healthier maintenance,” explains Washington. “And even while you’re on it, you need to get more nutrients from the fewer calories that you’re going to consume… it needs to be nutrient-dense – that is sort of our product.”

Then there are the side effects, which range from vomiting and nausea to constipation and diarrhoea. These can take months to subside, and for those who suffer longer-term, many end up withdrawing their use. The Supergut founder says its products can improve those digestive symptoms, something he ascribes to anecdotal evidence from the brand’s customers who also use Ozempic. The company hasn’t done any clinical testing on this aspect, but its research was done on consumers with metabolic syndrome, and it did showcase improvements in things like constipation, diarrhoea and nausea.

What about the Ozempic-curious? “A natural approach to appetite control and not walking around feeling hungry, maybe wanting to lose a couple [of] pounds – that’s relevant for almost every person with a heartbeat, right?” asks Washington. “We present that for them… It’s even relevant for a crowd that’s not going to use Ozempic per se.”

Opportunism, mixing prebiotics, and child use

With more and more companies riding the Ozempic wave, could there be a case of opportunism in the GLP-1-food space? Washington doesn’t lose sleep over it – why would he? It’s inevitable, after all, he says. “Whether or not their products have anything to do with Ozempic or cravings or GLP-1, there are definitely people – and for sure, there will be more that come into the market – that do try to position themselves as GLP-1-complement,” he explains. “That’s the nature of business.”

Instead, Supergut aspires to be the “first brand you think of when you’re thinking of natural ways to control appetite, boost GLP-1, and also get some great gut health benefits” in the meantime. “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity – we have been preparing for this moment for five years,” says Washington. “We’ve been iterating, grinding, investing and preparing, and now I think it’s our opportunity.”

Asked if you can consume Supergut products alongside functional fibre offerings such as Olipop prebiotic sodas, Washington says it’s complicated. “That’s where it gets a little complex,” he responds. “The main thing people need to know is that all fibre is good, and we essentially need to get a lot more of it in our diets than we do.” When it comes to daily amounts, most recommendations average out at 30g. In the US, only 5% of adults meet that requirement from their daily diet, the average person gets 16g per day).

But while all fibre is good for you, there are different tolerability aspects of different fibres – even at relatively small dosages: some can cause bloating, gas, and other side effects – which is why you have to be careful combining fibres from different products. Getting the right blend is key, something Supergut has prioritised with its high-tolerance, certified low-FODMAP prebiotic fibre mix.

So to answer the question, the average person could potentially consume both Olipop and Supergut’s products, but if they did too much, it could start to present some issues. “What does have pretty solid evidence – and we’ve seen some of the research – is a diet high in fermented foods, if you really want to get more live microbes into your diet,” suggests Washington.

He adds that children can consume Supergut products too – only the serving size needs to be adjusted. “We typically recommend cutting the serving size in half,” he says. “Our bars have been quite popular [among kids]… because they’re like a sweet treat.”

With his kids, he adds the unflavoured prebiotic powder into smoothies, juices, drinks, sauces and oatmeal to get more prebiotic fibre into their diets. You can even bake with it. “There’s different ways to try to get this into the diets because… it’s not always easy to get them to eat their whole-food, high-fibre diets,” he says. “This helps supplement that by getting it in without them even knowing.”

Why Supergut isn’t 100% vegan

Supergut isn’t a fully plant-based brand – of its current range, the prebiotic fibre blend and some shake flavours are vegan. But for a country where 36% of people have lactose malabsorption, and between 80-90% of African Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans are lactose-intolerant, how important is it to have a wider range of non-dairy products?

“We’re straddling the worlds of plant-based versus just general nutrition,” says Washington. He adds that a future fully vegan product line is possible. “I’m really trying to have the broadest impact possible at the end of the day, and so I tend to not focus too specifically on restrictions around diet or making things that aren’t available.

“From the very outset, I didn’t want to just create plant-based products, I wanted to create products that I think will have the broadest impact and exposure. And that means some plant-based, but some that are not plant-based. That sort of reflects my personal belief and our approach as a company.”

He cites food writer Michael Pollan’s much-repeated axiom: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants’, calling the phrase “really, really powerful”, and reflective of his and the business’s outlook on a whole-food, plant-forward diet, “if not 100% vegan”. Having said that, the next couple of products in Supergut’s pipeline are plant-based versions of existing products.

Primed for success

With a five-year lead on gut health food products that naturally boost GLP-1 hormones, Supergut is very much meeting the Ozempic moment and the company is on track for robust commercial success. Washington says sales are up nearly threefold since Q3’23 “based on surging consumer awareness and interest around our gut-healthy, natural approach to curb cravings”.

The company recently launched in physical retail stores including Sprouts and Erewhon, and has additional upcoming launches at Bristol Farms, GNC and Fresh Thyme, going from zero retail shelves in 2023 to over 1,000 locations by the end of Q1’24, a rocketship momentum in CPG.

Can Supergut claim the ‘alternative Ozempic’ market? With more than 10,000 satisfied customers even before the semaglutide drug took over the world and orders for the brand’s bars exploding just in the last month alone, you wouldn’t bet against it.

The post Supergut’s Marc Washington is Meeting The Moment: ‘We’re Very Much Here for the Ozempic Era’ appeared first on Green Queen.

One Planet Pizza co-founder Joe Hill tells Green Queen about the company’s uphill battle in the face of Brexit, war and a pandemic; going on The Apprentice; his trouble with misinformation about veganism, and selling a million pizzas.

Friday night was always pizza night at the Hills’. Joe Hill and his sister made everything from scratch: the dough, the sauce, the works. Their dad Mike, however, was missing out on what is every kid’s favourite thing about pizza: the cheese. “He had always been a passionate and devoted vegan,” explains Joe, recalling how he himself was vegetarian, before Cowspiracy convinced him to make the switch to plant-based.

Soon after, though, Mike came to him with a “crazy idea”, as he puts it: he wanted to “set up a vegan pizza company together and try to save the world one slice at a time”. That was 2016, and since then, they have sold a slice or two – recently, Joe announced that One Planet Pizza has shipped a million frozen plant-based pizzas.

“It actually took me by surprise that we’d hit that number recently,” he tells me. “We’re still a small team, but we’ve always punched above our weight and aimed for the stars. Selling a million vegan pizzas has given us even more motivation to keep pushing forward and sell the next million.”

Eight years since launch, One Planet Pizza is available in over 1,000 locations across Europe – from Gibraltar, Sweden and Spain to Iceland, Malta and Cyprus. But in its home country, the UK – a country that eats over 5,000 pizza slices per capita in their adult life – it has made a huge splash through Asda and Getir.

“We’re also listed with three major wholesalers who distribute our pizzas out to smaller retail and food service customers,” notes Hill. “The big volume for pizza comes from the major retailers and so my focus this year is to win that second listing here in the UK.” (One Planet Pizza has been campaigning to get onto Sainsbury’s shelves.)

Turning the tide with passion and pizzas

You don’t see many father-son duos in business leadership – at least in the alternative protein space. Wonder what that’s like? “Great fun,” Hill says of his dad, who turned 60 last weekend. “We have plenty of disagreements and heated debates as we’ve grown the business together, but we’ve always remembered to have a laugh and enjoy ourselves along the way,” he explains. “I’d like to think we’re closer than ever, but you’d have to ask him for his take on that!”

As a food company – especially a vegan one – One Planet Pizza has had its fair share of challenges, especially in the last few years. The company was launched the same year the UK voted to leave the EU, though that wouldn’t actually happen until 2020, the year all CPG brands had to pivot to online as the world shut down. “But I think 2022 was our hardest year to date,” says Hill.

“With a war in Europe, soaring inflation, ingredient shortages, staff shortages, nervous investors, [and] retailers reluctant to take on new brands, we hit rock bottom,” he recalls. “Within a few months, our outgoings had rapidly overtaken our income, and it was only going to get worse. Fellow vegan brands were collapsing around us and, if I’m being honest, we were pretty damn scared.”

It was sink or swim for the business. “The only way we could keep the company alive was to close down our family kitchen and office, and move our production out to a contract manufacturer in the Netherlands,” says Hill. He likens it to a chicken-and-egg situation: “Manufacturers always required the volumes that came from a major listing, but to get those listings we often needed the support and backing of a manufacturer.”

After pushing its Norwich facility to its limits with the Asda listing, One Planet Pizza quickly made hay out of Brexit, moving production overseas and ensuring an overlap to avoid any stock issues. “This was by far the hardest project we’ve ever tackled,” suggests Hill. “But now, it’s been over a year and we’re starting to see the many benefits: freeing up our time as founders, reducing our overheads, protecting our margins, and hugely improving our capacity. Not to mention opening up new opportunities abroad through our manufacturer’s existing sales channels.”

The move also allowed the company to achieve accreditation from the British Retail Consortium, certifying it is a supplier with high food safety standards in place. Plus, shifting operations to the Netherlands likely made the frozen pizza producer’s partnership with local vegan cheesemaker Willicroft. “This B Corp is 100% plant-based and they work with local farmers to incorporate white beans into their delicious cheezes,” he explains. “They can make cheeze better than we ever could and it pairs perfectly with our range of pizzas. Healthier, sustainable, and melts perfectly – what’s not to love?”

It’s this pragmatism that has propelled One Planet Pizza to its current heights. “As long as we’ve got air in our lungs, passion in our hearts, and pizzas in the oven, Mike and I have always believed in each other and our mission,” notes Hill. “It’s this unwavering belief that’s kept us going through all these years and against all the odds.”

Misinformation is confusing consumers and hurting the vegan sector

The global vegan frozen pizza market was estimated at $854M last year, and is set to cross $1.9B by 2033. In the UK, even in 2021, 35% of consumers said they’d want to try vegan pizza toppings. Clearly, Brits want pizza, and as more of them eat plant-based – the number of vegans in the UK rose by 78% from 2022-23 – restaurants, companies and retailers have come up with an increasing number of plant-based options to satiate consumers’ wishes and appetites.

“We currently divide our competition into three groups,” explains Hill. “Supermarket own-label pizzas (cheap and not-so-cheerful), smaller brands (White Rabbit and Zizzi), [and] bigger brands (Chicago Town and Goodfellas). But we see our real competition as the big multinational corporations that fill the shelves with cheap and unhealthy meat and dairy pizzas that are harming our health and planet.”

Speaking of big multinational corporations, One Planet Pizza partnered with Unilever-owned ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s last month for an Asda-exclusive bundle offer. “We’re always keen to partner with bigger brands to reach as many people as possible. And Ben & Jerry’s have always been a fun, exciting, taste-first brand that we’ve been inspired by from day one,” says Hill.

“After a couple of emails and a lot of favours, I was absolutely chuffed to get a call with the right person on their team. They have a fantastic dairy-free range of ice creams and were keen to work with a challenger brand in this space to show customers just how delicious and indulgent vegan food is and can be,” he adds, before teasing that more such meal-deal partnerships are incoming.

Collaborations like these will certainly build exposure for the vegan pizza startup, and – forgive the pun – help it make some dough. Hill says was the first UK vegan company to crowdfund, back in 2016/17: “Since then, we’ve gone through several rounds of investment and added a few major private investors to our board.” This includes a £360,000 ($490,000) funding round in 2021.

One Planet Pizza is fundraising again currently to fuel its global expansion, supporting “a couple of new listings this year, one in the UK and another in the UAE”. Moreover, it will launch a new product to complement its four-strong pizza portfolio (which comprises Margherita, Peppernomi, Tex Mex and Hawaiian). Plus, Hill is appearing on BBC show The Apprentice this month (he has previously pitched the business on Dragons’ Den years ago, but the episode never aired).

“Expect more partnerships with big brands in frozen this year and plenty of embarrassing pizza costume stunts across social media,” he adds. Social media is a place where misinformation about alternative proteins is rampant. Hill has trouble with the narrative that the “plant-based bubble has burst”, which he believes confuses consumers and hurts the sector.

“Here in the UK right now, a government-backed campaign is targeting younger people and encouraging them to eat British meat and dairy for their own health,” he points out. “This goes against what many experts and scientists are saying and is leading to wide mistrust amongst consumers who are looking to make healthier and more sustainable food choices.”

Looking to the future, Hill hopes to see One Planet Pizza as a go-to vegan pizza brand available “in every freezer in the country”. “Mike may be retired and working on his animal sanctuary,” he predicts. “But I’ll probably still be handing out pizza samples to the masses and working on new products that will keep raising the bar for plant-based food.”

The post One Planet Pizza’s Joe Hill: ‘Selling A Million Vegan Pizzas Took Me By Surprise’ appeared first on Green Queen.

In the 1980s, Willem van Eelen began working on the technology that produces what we know today as cultivated meat – now, his daughter, via RESPECTfarms, is extending his vision to help farmers take the plunge, beginning with the world’s first cultured meat farm.

If the whole world transitioned to alternative proteins like cultivated meat, what would happen to all the farmers? This is one of the most pressing questions surrounding the industry.

It’s an important one, too – how do you diversify the world’s protein intake without wiping out the livelihoods of a quarter of the global population, which forms the backbone of our food system? To answer it, Ira van Eelen, Ruud Zanders, Florentine Zieglowski and Ralf Becks came up with RESPECTfarms, presenting a way one could grow cultivated meat on conventional farms.

Van Eelen is the daughter of Willem van Eelen. Known as the grandfather of cultivated meat, he began working on the tech in the 1980s and led the first-ever public research project on these proteins in the early 2000s, funded by the Dutch government.

The outcome of this research focused on how cultivated meat could be an additional business model for farmers. It’s the seed that sparked the idea to launch RESPECTfarms, which is hoping to decentralise cultivated meat production on traditional farms. Ira van Eelen calls this “the bare necessity”, viewing cultured meat as a solution to climate protection and food security.

“Not all farmers should make cultivated meat tomorrow,” she tells me. “But we need to diversify the current protein production for a more resilient agricultural system.”

Why not grow ingredients for plant-based proteins, then, like some transition projects are doing? “Not all plants are useful for cultivated meat production either (but rather for plant-based meats),” van Eelen responds. “Some others (including sidestreams) make sense in terms of processing costs or composition for cell culture media.”

Why RESPECTfarms advocates growing cultivated meat on farms

Do livestock farmers really want to make the switch from something they’ve known all their lives? “It depends on why meat has been their entire livelihood,” she suggests. “Is this because they love to work with animals? Because they see it as a viable business? Is it because they are proud to contribute to food security and feed the world? Cultivated meat does not mean you need to give up on your motivation on why you are a farmer. They can still produce meat, just in a different way (and with some key additional benefits).”

And what might those benefits be? As RESPECTfarms explains in a hypothetical video, farmers would be able to produce more meat with fewer cows – and they don’t need to be slaughtered. It safeguards them against any disease risk to the livestock (and that transferring into the meat produced), because you’re essentially taking them out of the equation. Plus, there are the environmental benefits too – cultivated meat can mean 92% fewer emissions, 94% less air pollution, and 90% less land use than conventional beef, if produced via renewable energy.

The next question that springs to mind is why grow cultivated meat on a farm instead of at a manufacturing facility? As van Eelen explains in the video, the farm is a smart location for this, because everything you need is already there. You’ve got the animals and their cells, a place to generate energy, as well as the people who are adept at handling them, are familiar with following processes and know how to deal with hygiene. Farmers can play a role in feeding the cells, and process residual flows via recycling and waste management. “So why wouldn’t we do it in a place like that?” asks van Eelen.

“It will secure [farmers’] place in rural areas and secure food production,” she tells me, before adding: “But yes, for those farmers that aim to stay in the way they have always been practising agriculture, they might want to transition towards another form of agriculture.”

Addressing design challenges for existing farms

RESPECTfarms’ demonstrative video explains how farmers can work with experts (like architects) who can retrofit their stable with new designs that are fit for cultivated meat production and a farm of the future. It combines sustainable production with local agriculture to make a circular chain – hitting a key consumer concern.

There are other potential pain points too. What do farms do with existing animals, if not slaughter them the way they were raised to do? “Our proposition is that they can produce the same amount of meat that they used to produce, only with fewer animals needed. This opens up the opportunity to hold the few animals in an animal-friendly way,” says van Eelen. “What farmers do with their animals at a certain point is up to them to decide.”

And in terms of redesigning stables, how do smallholder farms with limited space and facilities fit in here? Van Eelen explains they could still technically produce cultivated meat, with external inputs on the cell culture media. “Current agriculture already shows different strategy practices – from differentiating the farm practices (like income on feed, milk, and meat) to focusing on one practice only (such as specifically breeding sows). We expect this to happen also for cellular agriculture farms in the future,” she notes.

“Further, It is all about how we can design the process most cost-effective for farmers: What is the investment needed by the farmer? What is the input and output? What are the price points? This is still part of the research and will develop over time. Farmers are traditionally used to work in collaboration, so we expect [to work with] regional cooperatives.”

RESPECTfarms is working with 60 farmers in the EU

Van Eelen and her co-founders are working with farmers on different levels. This includes partnerships with the German Agricultural Society (DLG) and Swiss farmers’ union Fenaco, both of which are leading organisations in their respective countries with thousands of members, and have expressed support for RESPECTfarms’ concept. “We intend to expand on these engagements and conversations intensively in the next months,” van Eelen reveals.

Have farmers been receptive to the idea? “We have not experienced extraordinary negativity around cultivated meat by farmers. We have validation that there is a group of farmers that wants to produce cultivated meat,” she outlines. “There is also a group that does not want to tap into this field, but it is an assumption that farmers would not want this. And we focus on the ones that aim at transitioning with us.”

RESPECTfarms is part of the Horizon Europe programme, which helps fund the feasibility of farm-scale cultivated meat production. “We will research opportunities and key blocking issues [in] Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Norway,” she adds.

Currently, van Eelen and her colleagues are having one-on-one talks with about 10 farmers in Switzerland and Germany, and 50 in the Netherlands. And it’s the latter where it is looking into the possibility of its first farm (planned for 2025), with Germany being an alternative. “The construction of a pilot farm represents a risk to investors and other private funders. Therefore, we see an urgent need for the public sector to support a first farm – both to de-risk and increase the value over time.”

RESPECTfarms began running an 18-month feasibility project in January 2023, armed with €900,000 in funding from European governments, NGOs, and industry partners like Rügenwalder Mühle, Fenaco, Rabobank, and the Belgian animal rights group GAIA. “Current agriculture is heavily subsidised,” notes van Eelen. “There are also subsidies to transition towards more sustainable practices. Farmers should be subsidised to transition towards this model in the future, too.”

Another aspect to consider is the expensive machinery and equipment required for cultivated meat production. “At the moment, bioreactors are still expensive. That is partly due to the design of these bioreactors that are not suitable for food production. We aim at developing a design that is feasible, viable, and desirable for farmers to invest in,” van Eeelen explains.

The need for regulatory support

She calls on the public sector to “pave the way” in terms of regulatory frameworks to open up the possibility for cultivated meat farms. Currently, no country in the EU has received applications for approval, with the bloc’s novel foods regulation being the most stringent in the world. Within Europe, though, Switzerland and the UK are currently evaluating filings from Israeli cultivated beef producer Aleph Farms (which last month received clearance in its home country).

So how do farmers make money in the meantime? “Unfortunately, with their current agricultural practices – or [if] they have already transitioned towards plant-based alternatives,” notes van Eelen. ‘If we don’t work on this now, we will be too late for the farmers in need of another alternative, futureproof business model.”

Speaking of the future, RESPECTfarms is working towards fully optimising its first farm by 2029, in the hope to start a movement that can help scale out its process from 2030 onwards. “Our first long-term vision is the transformation of 1,000 farms in 2038, with a growing network to expand and sustain,” says van Eelen.

Buy-in from governments, farmers and consumers is crucial – can RESPECTfarms get the ball rolling with the world’s first cultivated meat farm?

The post Safeguarding the Future: How RESPECTfarms is Helping Farmers Transition to Cultivated Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

In an exclusive interview with Green Queen, Wild Earth co-founder and alt-protein investor Ryan Bethencourt talks the death threats he’s received, his experience with Shark Tank and Mark Cuban, his investment criteria, learning from Tesla, media bias, and his company’s upcoming cat food and Basics lines.

“It was honestly pretty brutal,” says Ryan Bethencourt, recalling a trip he took with his father when he was 10. “I loved animals, cared for lots of our dogs and cats, and I then went to see a pig slaughtered in front of me.”

He recalls seeing the fear in the creature’s eyes – as if the life had been drained out of them. “They were sliced up in front of me,” he describes, noting the day he quit pork.

That was over 30 years ago now, a period since which Bethencourt has emerged as a leading scientist, entrepreneur and investor in the alternative protein industry. His trip to the farm provides a snapshot of a man who deeply cares about animals – he grew up with a bunch of dogs, cats and other “exotic pets” – and his company Wild Earth, which makes food for our furry friends, extends that image.

It took him until his late teenage years to go fully vegetarian, but it was really in his late 20s that he gave up animal foods altogether, after watching the 2005 documentary Earthlings. “I went vegan the next day,” the now-44-year-old tells me. “As Ursula Le Guin wrote in one of my favourite short stories, once I had seen the wrongness of our society, I chose to walk away from Omelas and go vegan.”

What Ryan Bethencourt the investor looks for in startups

A few years after taking the plant-based plunge, Bethencourt and a few friends co-founded Indie.Bio in 2014, a biotech accelerator based in San Francisco, which has funded dozens of leaders in the alternative protein industry. It marked the beginning of his journey as an investor.

Bethencourt calls his journey of becoming an angel investor accidental. “I wanted to keep supporting ‘future of food’ companies post IndieBio, and I started to invest tiny angel cheques to help founders just get off the ground (most were their first cheques),” he says, naming companies like cultivated meat leaders Shiok Meats (Singapore) and Newform Foods (South Africa). “Over time, I realised I needed more capital to support so many founders that were approaching me.”

This is when he launched Sustainable Food Ventures with food and flavour scientist Mariliis Holm. It’s a rolling fund that backs 60 companies over three years (50% of which are first cheques). Over the last decade, Bethencourt has been involved in the angel or VC funding of more than 180 companies. Some of his favourites? Upside Foods, Mycoworks, NotCo, Geltor, Jellatech, Galy, Hoxton Farms and Farmless, among many others.

What does a serial investor like him look for in a company? The North Carolina resident has three simple criteria. He calls the first “missionary over mercenary”, indicating support only for people who deeply care about a sector. “They’ll keep going no matter what, and you need that when building a business. No company or industry stays hot forever, and when it gets brutally hard, that’s when missionaries shine,” he explains.

The next is a focus on new and interesting insights or technology, “ideally with a deep understanding of why others that have tried failed and why this time it’s different”. Finally, he asks the question: “Do I want to work with this person/team for the next few decades?” He believes this is his most unusual insight, as he views backing a founded as a lifelong commitment – it’s not just their first startup, but those that follow too. For example, he invested in Alan Perlstein’s Miraculex (now Oobli) years ago, and has since funded Perlstein’s latest startup, California Cultured.

“I still get founders of large commercial companies who call me and ask for my perspective on their companies or their next startup, and I love the fact they feel comfortable reaching out to me as the years roll on,” says Bethencourt.

Creating Wild Earth and securing a Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban

It was at Indie.Bio when Bethencourt first became “obsessed about pet food”. There were a few reasons for this. The investor had learnt that 30% of the meat consumed in the US goes to feeding pets (which, to him, meant that 25-30% of factory-farmed animals could be replaced). He also realised that dogs, as omnivores, could “survive and thrive” on a plant-based diet. And he was even more shocked to find out that cats (traditionally seen as obligate carnivores) could similarly prosper on a nutritionally complete vegan diet.

It sparked an idea that propelled Bethencourt to mainstream popularity. “I really believe in the saying: ‘Let food be thy medicine.” And most pet food is honestly horrible,” he says, invoking the dreaded 4Ds – dead, diseased, dying or downed animals – and referring to the contamination with euthanasia drugs and melted plastic.

“All of these contaminants have been found by the FDA in pet food, and that’s before you actually understand what our pets are being fed: ground-up chicken feathers, beaks and other horrible things,” he notes. “The great irony of this all is we can replace the entire rotten pet food industry with nutritionally compete plant-based and yeast-based proteins, clean and not gross.”

He took it upon himself to transform the pet food industry for all the animals, and started Wild Earth with his co-founders in 2017. Two years later, he appeared on national television with the aim of generating interest and investment in his company. Suffice it to say, he was successful in reaching his goal, and then some.

On Shark Tank, Bethencourt landed a deal with Mark Cuban, securing $550,000 for 10% of the company. (Since then, Wild Earth has closed Series A and A+ rounds to bring total funding to nearly $50M). “Shark Tank was a surreal experience,” he reveals. “A lot of people don’t know this, but there aren’t any redos on the show. When the doors open, you get one shot and that’s it, and the pressure is intense as they make sure you never meet the Sharks prior to the pitch.”

The Sharks went hard on Bethencourt after he revealed that Wild Earth had no commercial sales yet (with plans to launch its first product soon), despite essentially valuing the business at $11M. He expected that response. “We were trying our best to make sure we made the best dog food possible and it was taking a lot longer than I originally hoped,” he tells me.

“I hoped one of them would see the vision behind Wild Earth and why we had to bring change to the pet food industry, and luckily, right at the end when all the Sharks had declined, Mark looked at me and made me an offer. I honestly thought he was going to pass too, but he really understood where the future was going and was willing to take a chance.”

Bethencourt says Cuban and his team have provided “incredible support” over the years, adding that he speaks to Cuban every few weeks. “I think Mark also deeply understood the opportunity in the plant-based/vegan space,” he suggests. “After he backed us, I kept sending him studies on plant-based diets’ health benefits and strength/exercise benefits too. A few years back, Mark went mostly vegetarian, and I think it’s helped keep him in great shape on top of his commitment to lots of exercise.”

Exploring cultivated meat and health benefits of vegan pet food

Wild Earth didn’t stop at vegan pet food, though. In 2022, the company announced its foray into cultivated meat with a cultured chicken broth topper for dogs. A year and a bit later, it remains one of only a handful of producers working on cell-based pet food.

“I’ve spent a lot of time talking to everyone, including the biggest critics of the plant-based industry, cattle ranchers, self-proclaimed carnivores, and some of the biggest meat producers on the planet. I’m convinced that while many of us (at least 50% of us) are happy with plant-based and fermented protein options, there’s still a large group of consumers who want ‘real’ meat, and I think we can make those products for them too, [which] are slaughter-free, but real meat,” Bethencourt explains.

Did the company receive any concerns from its vegan consumer base? “Yes we did,” he confirms. “We had lots of conversations and as we’ve seen, this topic is controversial. It’s likely that we’ll launch a separate line of cultivated pet foods under a different brand to ensure that there’s no confusion.”

While all of Wild Earth’s consumer products will be vegan, this possible future line of cultivated products will cater to people who still want “real” meat for their pets, but want to skip the low quality and cruel use of animals in factory farming. “Our mission at Wild Earth is to make killer food without the killing,” states Bethencourt.

Consumer apprehension over the health aspects of alternative proteins is a key challenge for the industry in 2024. The Wild Earth CEO says he’s seen a “dramatic change” in perception about the health credentials of dog food in the last seven years. This shift has occurred both in consumers who’ve noticed benefits for their pets when eating vegan, and veterinarians who are recommending plant-based diets for dogs to tackle food allergies, weight control, diabetes and other clinical applications, according to Bethencourt.

“We’ve also seen a dramatic shift in who the average Wild Earth consumer is: when we started, the majority of our customers were vegan/vegetarians, but today, the majority of our customers aren’t (over 70%). We’re seeing widespread adoption from consumers just looking for cleaner and healthier food, and they’re now comfortable with plant-based pet foods.”

That has given rise to an increasing number of vegan pet food brands and products. One estimate put this market at $26B in 2022, predicting it to double to $57B by 2032. Companies like The Pack, Omni, Hownd (all UK), Noochies (Canada), Paleo (Belgium) are all innovating in this space, and that’s without looking at the larger players launching dedicated plant-based lines.

“The vast majority of both vegans and vegetarians still feed their pets meat-based pet food,” asserts Bethencourt. “I know because I get lectured almost daily (particularly) by vegans who tell me that dogs can’t be vegan (after we’ve fed tens of thousands of dogs plant-based diets for many, many years and they’ve thrived).

“I’m thankful I no longer get the death threats though,” he adds, recalling people’s uproar over feeding dogs vegan food. “Those were weird.”

He calls recent research about the benefits of plant-based diets for pets his “favourite new development” in the space, particularly the studies by University of Winchester professor Andrew Knight. In 2022, he published a paper revealing that dogs fed vegan diets were healthier and required fewer veterinary interventions. He followed it up with similar research for cats, showing that felines on a plant-based diet could be healthier than those fed meat.

Bethencourt believes the increase in such studies has led to vets getting more receptive of vegan pet food, and industry giants like Mars, Nestlé and General Mills experimenting with plant-based launches. “We’re still early, [but] I’m confident we’re starting to reach a tipping point in the US, Europe and the UK, and hopefully soon globally,” he says.

‘Plant-based industry can learn a lot from Tesla’

While Wild Earth did develop its lines of cultured chicken (and beef), it has been forced to pause their development due to the challenging financial environment globally, doubling down on its commercial plant-based products instead. “We’re now in conversations with other companies who have developed cell-based lines about partnering to produce future slaughter-free meat lines,” reveals Bethencourt.

It’s reflective of the wider challenges for alternative meat across the world, a slump he calls “brutal, but… inevitable”. “All industries move in boom and bust cycles. In the plant-based space, most funding has frozen, but – and here’s the important part – the customers are still out there, and across Europe, the US and Asia more customers are becoming open to plant-based products,” he explains.

“I think one of the biggest challenges for all of us is competing with some of the planet’s largest companies in the food category. Most plant-based food companies are tiny in comparison to today’s food giants, but if we focus on making incredible products, with great customer benefits and very competitive prices, we can win.”

The narrative around plant-based hasn’t been helped by the attacks from some mainstream media outlets, which Bethencourt agrees are biased, given most of their advertisers still sell animal-based products, meaning they can’t be too critical. “In an era of AI and information warfare from both nation states through to large incumbents, we all have to think more independently and question everything,” he implores.

The Wild Earth CEO says the plant-based industry can learn a lot from the likes of Tesla, which launched with a premium line and has since aggressively increased product benefits and lowered prices. “People will want to buy tasty, healthier and cost-competitive products – we just have to push our industry harder to deliver on these, and that’s a hard challenge for us all,” he notes.

Going back to the media aspect, Tesla – a company that’s “probably the most hated by mainstream media” – is doing “an incredible amount of good”, despite governments and petrochemical giants being against it, according to Bethencourt: “They continue to win market share by focusing on innovation, their customers, and making better and increasingly more cost-competitive products.”

One company that’s doing it right in his eyes is Chile’s AI-led vegan startup NotCo. “From day one, Matias [Muchnik], their founder and CEO, has always said tastier products, healthier products and better-priced products will win, and they have all across Latin America.” (Most recently, the company’s collaboration with The Kraft Company bore fruit to a vegan version of the latter’s iconic boxed mac and cheese).

Wild Earth will launch cat food and a Basics line for dogs

Since raising the half a million from Cuban on Shark Tank, Wild Earth has managed to release 14 products, feed tens of thousands of dogs, launch online and in retail nationwide, and sell over $42M worth of vegan dog food, treats and supplements. In the company’s early days, it was able to grow revenue by 25-50%, and last year, that figure crossed $10M. This year, the target is $15M, though the focus is on cost-efficient growth, keeping in mind the precarious economic landscape.

Its D2C business remains its most successful sales channel. “One of the hardest things for us was transforming from an R&D organization to a commercial organisation,” says Bethencourt. “It’s hard for any company but particularly for a mission-based company we’ve had to learn a lot of lessons, staying true to our mission means being effective and scaling sales.”

Now, Wild Earth is looking to expand into retail and diversify its product portfolio by launching a new cat food SKU, as well as an essential Basics line. The latter – set to launch later this year – will provide a lower-cost entry point for vegan pet food to cater to a wider audience. The company also hopes to return to India and Asia (where it was selling pre-pandemic), and enter Europe and Canada – international expansion is on the cards for 2025.

“We’re very optimistic about the future for plant-based pet food and think the first plant-based food boom and bust (for us and our pets) was just the end of the beginning of market adoption,” predicts Bethencourt, who foresees continued growth in the sector over the next decade.

“One of our guiding principles at Wild Earth is to be bold and push the pet industry to change,” he says. “We did this when we launched our plant-based dog food, treats and supplements, we’re doing that again with our vegan cat products and we’ll challenge ourselves again in the future to grow the space for cell-based meat to end the use of factory-farmed animals in pet food.

“It’s hard, but it’s something we believe is important to do for the world we want to see in the future.”

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