Women founders lead the indie beauty industry

The beauty space is a powerful example of how women are changing the status quo. While the big corporations are still largely run by men (although L’Oréal Paris got its first woman president in 2019), the indie sector is dominated by women. In the UK, a 2020 report found that in the indie beauty industry, more than 76 percent of businesses are led by women entrepreneurs. But they’re not just leading. They’re steering beauty towards a better future. Increasingly, the products we see from indie brands reject the gender binary framework of the past. They’re also far more sustainable and diverse than the big giants. 

Take Jecca Blac, for example. Makeup artist Jessica Blackler founded the UK-based vegan cosmetics brand after spotting the lack of representation of trans and non-binary people in the beauty space. “Jessica quickly built up a client base of predominantly trans women and transfeminine people, and during these lessons she realized the oversight of the beauty world in not creating user friendly products which truly recognise the needs of all makeup wearers,” explained Jecca Blac marketing manager Maxine Heron. “This included transfeminine makeup wearers first learning about makeup. She decided to launch Jecca Blac as a makeup retailer.”

Across the pond, women founders are also paving the way towards a better beauty industry. Jazmin Alvarez was frustrated with the lack of regulation around the term “clean.” She felt it needed to go beyond the elimination of toxic ingredients, and encompass sustainability and ethics too. So she created her own curated beauty platform Pretty Well Beauty, which is now home to more than 50 brands that meet her standards of what a clean beauty brand should look like.

An Afro-Latina, Alvarez is also keen to combat beauty’s lack of racial inclusion. And she’s not alone in her mission: Pholk Beauty and Kulfi Beauty are two examples of indie brands founded by women of color, who are working to create a fairer, more diverse, more sustainable, and more ethical industry. (You can read more about them here and here.)

Plastic-free brand Common Heir is yet another example of how women of color are changing the beauty industry. Founded by Asian American Cary Lin and Latinx American Angela Ubias, Common Heir offers luxury vitamin C capsules that biodegrade in hot water after use. It’s a vital innovation, considering the beauty industry as a whole is responsible for producing 120 billion units of packaging every year. “Historically, women of color have not helmed luxury brands,” says Ubias. “We want to upend people’s expectations about inclusion and sustainability in luxury.”

Women are changing the clothes we wear, too

Beauty and fashion go hand in hand. And like the former, the latter is changing thanks to women, too. But again, there’s a glass ceiling to smash. Like beauty, the big fashion companies are predominantly led by men. According to the Business of Fashion, less than 50 percent of well-known womenswear brands are actually designed by women. 

The biggest problem fashion faces today is its environmental impact. It is responsible for up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and contributes regularly to a growing mountain of textile waste. (Every second, one garbage truck of textiles is dumped in the landfill or incinerated.) But again, just like beauty, many of the smaller brands innovating to improve the situation are run or founded by women. 

Algaeing is one example. Led by CEO Renana Krebs, the startup creates biodegradable fabric and dye using algae, a renewable resource that when farmed, actually pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In New York, luxury brand Sylven, founded by Casey Dworkin, is making shoes out of bio-based apple leather, which utilizes organic apple pulp waste from Tyrol, a town in the Italian alps. 

And also in New York, Stephanie Benedetto has founded Queen of Raw, a platform that buys leftover textile waste from the fashion industry and sells it onto design students and small brands. Benedetto founded the brand after spotting a gaping hole in the market. “There’s a percentage of waste material that is actually fine for reuse,” she says. “That’s as well as the material that was ordered and never used, or excess sample yardage. But historically there has been no avenue to resell it.”

OhSevenDays, another women-led startup, also finds a new purpose for old deadstock. Founded by Megan Mummery, the Turkey-based brand buys rejected or damaged materials from fabric mills and then creates new designs with it. Mummery is motivated by her love of fashion, but also a desire to do better for the future of the industry. “As a kid, I didn’t know much about sustainability, and I bought fast fashion like the rest of us,” she says. “But once you learn, you try to make up for it.”

Women are transforming the food on our plates

When we’re talking about industries with a huge environmental impact, we can’t ignore meat. Animal agriculture is not only responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it also wastes huge amounts of water. In fact, 23 percent of the US’s water consumption goes toward cattle feed. The industry is also destroying rainforests. Beef, in particular, is the world’s leading driver of deforestation.

Again, women-led brands are making a huge impact in this space. In South Africa, Tasneem Karodia is the co-founder of Mzansi Meat, a company striving to feed the African continent with protein grown in labs. Cultivating meat with cellular agriculture could cut the need for farming animals altogether. That’s what motivates Karodia. “My main mission is to help solve the inefficiencies in the food system,” she says. “To feed the next billion in Africa, with better meat.”

Getting to this point has been tough for Karodia. As a woman working in science, she’s had to jump more hurdles than her male counterparts to get to where she is. But she’s hopeful that alongside others like her, she can pave an easier path for future generations of women in tech. “Women aren’t taken as seriously as men, we have to work twice as hard to be recognised in most environments,” she says. “But I think those that are in the space are really passionate about making a contribution. With the right passion and motivation we can see past these challenges and hopefully make it easier for other women that will move into this industry.”

New Breed Meats is another example of a women-led company trying to shape a more sustainable future of food. The brand offers non-gmo, protein-packed plant-based products. But New Breeds Meats’ environmental mission is intertwined with its social goals. Co-founder Samantha Edwards is passionate about improving education and access to nutritious food. Because, in the US, millions of people live in places where access to fresh healthy food is limited, the majority of them people of color. And according to 2018 research from Stanford University, the problem isn’t just distance, it’s a lack of food education too.

New Breed Meats hosts health education programs, nutrition enrichment workshops, and healthy lifestyle residential retreats, and 10 percent of its profits goes to their overarching mission. “For too long minorities have needlessly suffered for lack of education on what constitutes health and have been burdened with many lifestyle diseases as a result,” Edwards says. “We want to open these conversations and offer real solutions.”

Supporting mission-focused, women-led companies

From beauty to fashion to food, women are changing the way we consume for the better. And as shown in every example given here, they’re not just motivated by profit, but by purpose and passion too. Each brand has a mission, a drive to scale that is rooted in doing good.

Women have come so far in so many industries, but they still need support. And again, women are leading the way in giving their peers a leg up. Jennifer Stojkovic is the founder of Vegan Women’s Summit, an events and media organization focused on supporting women in sustainable business. Every year in Los Angeles, the organization passes the mic to women at its annual event. It hosts speakers from a variety of businesses, who specialize in everything from sustainable fashion to plant-based meat to cellular agriculture.

This year, actor and vegan activist Alicia Silverstone will give the keynote speech. She will be supported by a long list of influential speakers in the sustainability space, including Deborah Torres, the founder of the  award-winning vegan fried chicken brand Atlas Monroe, bestselling cookbook author and influencer Joanne Molinaro, and Maggie Baird, the founder of Support + Feed, a plant-based nonprofit tackling food insecurity.

But the impact of the Vegan Women’s Summit isn’t limited to one day. With its pitch competition Pathfinder, the organization consistently helps women founders access resources, connections, and funding. The overall aim is to help them expand their networking ecosystems and, ultimately, grow their world-changing businesses. So far, it has helped more than 1,000 women founders in 31 countries.

“This is the existential crisis of our lifetime,” says Stojkovic. “We know that we have about 10 years to get this right before we reach the point of no return. Quite simply, the longer we leave the talent and skills of women on the table, the longer we leave animals on the table. We know that there are tremendous solutions on the horizon.”  She adds: “I tell women all the time, there is still a place for you among the giants. The ship hasn’t sailed here. We have the opportunity for this to be a women led industry.”

There is no doubt, if we can utilize the talent, intuition, and passion of women to grow sustainable businesses, as a consequence, we can change the future of the planet for the better. Find out more about the Vegan Women’s Summit here. This year’s event will take place on Friday April 8.

The Italian luxury car brand has announced the launch of an entirely electric range, called Maserati Folgore. By 2025, the company plans to offer electric versions of every model in its lineup.

Maserati’s first EV in the range will be its new GranTurismo. The car will feature 1,200 horsepower and is set to debut in 2023. Up next, the company will release an all-electric Grecale SUV and GranCabrio GT convertible, followed by electric versions of the MC20 “super sports car,” the Quattroporte sport sedan, and the Levante SUV. 

Moreover, the brand—which is owned by multinational automotive manufacturing corporation Stellantis—revealed that by 2030, all new cars developed by the company will be fully electric.

“Maserati stands for performance and luxury, and that will be protected for sure in the future,” said Maserati’s CEO Davide Grasso. “As we move toward electrification, you will see more dedicated architecture focused on delivering the best in range and performance.”

Maserati goes electric, but at what cost?

Maserati joins a number of other luxury carmakers in ditching fossil fuels, including Bentley, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz.

The move to go all-electric is a “defining moment” for the 107-year-old brand, noted Grasso. It’s also part of the company’s revamp, which was unveiled in September 2020 at its “MMXX: Time to be Audacious” event at the Modena Circuit race track in Italy. 

In addition to widespread electrification, Maserati’s relaunch, which has been in the works since 2018, includes an update of its iconic Trident logo, now ​​”more modern, balanced and elegant.” ​​“We’re proud to inaugurate our new Era,” explained Grasso. “For our Brand, this is a time to build: the time to be forward-looking and construct our future.”

While Maserati’s plans to electrify its entire range are a step forward in terms of mitigating the transportation sector’s leading role in climate change, it’s hard to ignore the brand’s high price tag. A 2022 GranTurismo coupe runs about $300,000. Tack on an extra $35,000 for the new GranCabrio. While information is limited about the release, the starting price for Maserati’s first electric car is also expected to be in the six figures. 

Prohibitive cost is one downside to electric vehicles. In recent years, the likes of Tesla have become status symbols for the elite, rather than clean-fuel solutions. On the low end, a 2022 Tesla Model 3 goes for about $45,000. And on the high end, a new Tesla Model X runs about $105,000. Other luxury electric vehicles are just as pricey. The MSRP for a new Porsche Taycan starts at $82,700; a BMW iX starts at $83,200. Even non-luxury electric vehicles like the Polestar 2, which starts at $45,900, typically feature high price tags. Put simply, they’re inaccessible to most consumers. In order to expand accessibility, the private sector and the government must increase incentives and tax discounts. Without that, electric vehicles will likely remain out-of-reach for the average person.

But, the fact that more countries are pledging to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2050 has resulted in an uptick of car manufacturers like Volvo, Ford Europe, and Honda going all-electric. And as the electric vehicle market broadens and sales volumes surge, conversely, the production costs of electric cars will eventually go down. (For example, the 2022 Nissan Leaf starts at $28,425.)  

Automotive experts predict that electric vehicles prices will drop and reach price parity with their gas-powered counterparts—perhaps even as soon as 2025. “On an upfront basis, these things will start to get cheaper and people will start to adopt them more as price parity gets closer,” said Colin McKerracher, BloombergNEF’s Head of Advanced Transport. Overall, the shift towards electric vehicles is a good thing, so long as it remains equitable.

BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based clean-tech startup, received a $5.5 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in December. Bezos launched the initiative in February 2020, pledging $10 billion in grants to companies and organizations working to fight the climate crisis. BlocPower was one of 44 grant recipients—which the fund dispersed $443 million to in total.

“The goal of the Bezos Earth Fund is to support change agents who are seizing the challenges that this decisive decade presents,” said Andrew Steer, the fund’s president and CEO. “Through these grants, we are advancing climate justice and the protection of nature, two areas that demand stronger action.”

In January, Microsoft invested $30 million to BlocPower through its Climate Innovation Fund—a $1 billion investment initiative that works to develop climate innovations. 

“The funding provided through Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund will fuel BlocPower’s efforts to make a meaningful impact on climate change and bring environmental and economic justice to frontline communities across America that need it the most,” said Donnel Baird, CEO of BlocPower.  

BlocPower tackles climate change

Founded in 2014, BlocPower is on a mission to make American cities greener. 

To date, it’s retrofitted 1,200 buildings in New York City with electric heating, cooling, and hot water systems. Through its no money down leasing and low-interest loan options, the company is helping homeowners decarbonize and electrify their homes, focusing on underserved communities.

The average American household spends $2,000 a year on energy expenses, according to the US Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. And residential energy is responsible for approximately 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the US.

Older buildings are particularly pollutive, according to BlocPower. Aging buildings produce more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire US transportation sector. By decarbonizing and electrifying these buildings, the company has reduced building energy costs by 30 to 50 percent. Its current projects have also reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent. 

BlocPower currently has projects underway in a number of cities, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Oakland. It’s also spearheading Ithaca, New York’s transition to become carbon-neutral by 2030.
“We’re going to decrease the amount of oil and gas and fossil fuels that these buildings consume, decrease the amount of emissions that are created,” said Baird. “We’re going to save the building owners money.”

Boston-based Tender Foods launched in 2020 with a drive to create plant-based meat with a whole-cut texture, like a conventional piece of pork, chicken, or steak. Along with flavor, offering consumers a realistic, familiar texture is a challenge that a growing number of alternative meat makers aim to solve. Tender has taken a unique approach with its solution: spinning plant protein into long, thin strands in something that looks like a cotton candy machine.

Tender founders Christophe Chantre and Kevin Kit Parker, Ph.D., developed the technology in the latter’s lab at Harvard University. Parker is an Associate Faculty member of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where Kit was a postdoctoral research fellow prior to co-founding the Tender. Harvard is also Portman’s alma mater.

How to make plant-based meat more meat-like

Chantre says that the company’s goal is to “make products that are indistinguishable from butchered meat.” By leveraging its spinning technology, it aims to produce affordable, realistic vegan meats. Most plant-based meat on the market relies on extrusion, a processing technology where proteins are broken down, then formed into muscle-like fibers. But, Tender says its technology takes it a step further by spinning plant protein into long, thin fibers, then forming them together in a shape that better mimics muscle tissue.

“Product quality and price are the two most important drivers for consumer choice, and we believe any new approach should carefully consider these,” Chantre told AgFunderNews. “Our technologies, which look roughly like cotton-candy machines, solve for both. They allow us to create unique product quality [with] a distinctive muscle-fiber texture. And they are fast.”

The $12 million in seed funding will be used to scale up the production of its plant-based meats, which it aims to launch in Boston this year. The company says that it is not ready to share details of what that first product will be, but its lineup will include chicken, beef, and pork.

Celebrity investments are ramping up in alternative protein, and Tender is Portman’s second investment in the space this year. The Academy Award-winning actor backed the French plant-based bacon startup La Vie in January.

When the Impossible Burger debuted in 2016, headlines were quick to hone in on one detail: it looked, cooked, and tasted like meat. This was all thanks to Impossible’s star ingredient, heme, an iron-rich protein that gives meat its distinct, savory flavor and aroma. It’s why Impossible burgers stay pink in the middle when cooked, and it gives them a juicy flavor. 

Up until recently, heme made its products stand out against the frozen plant-based burgers of the 1990s. But, it motivated plenty of other companies—ranging from meat companies like Smithfield Foods to grocery chains like Trader Joe’s—to develop their own meat-like burgers.

The lawsuit, which Impossible filed in Delaware federal court on Wednesday, asks the court to prohibit Motif from selling the new ingredient in question, called Hemami. Motif launched the yeast-derived heme protein designed to provide plant-based meats with an umami flavor last December. 

The lawsuit evokes a lot of questions. But the biggest one is: Should this serve as a reminder to all of us that the bottom line for all companies, despite sharing a common goal to make the food system more sustainable, is profit? Maybe. It’s hard to not recall Impossible Foods’ CEO and founder Pat Brown telling Yahoo finance that Beyond Meat, which also gained fame for its realistic texture, “is not our competition, and I wish them nothing but success.” So, what’s changed? It could be that the well-wishes were because Beyond doesn’t use heme in any of its products, but Motif does.

Impossible produces its heme, which it obtained a patent for in 2020, using a proprietary strain of genetically modified yeast that produced the iron-rich molecule through a fermentation process. Impossible claims that Motif has “had opportunities to obtain non-public information” regarding how Impossible’s heme is made. But, while both companies produce heme using a similar method, Motif’s is made from myoglobin (a protein found in cow muscle tissue) and Impossible’s is made from soy leghemoglobin. 

Fermentation is a fast-growing field in the plant-based food industry. So, Impossible’s goal could be to forewarn emerging companies to not step on its ever-expanding, heme-based turf.

Why is Impossible Foods suing another company?

Boston-based Motif makes ingredients that improve the taste and texture of plant-based foods, such as its Hemami or its dairy-free cheese technology. It does not make or sell products, but it could supply other plant-based food brands with its ingredients. According to Impossible’s 14-page complaint filed in Delaware federal court on Wednesday, by offering Hemami, Motif “actively encourages its business partners to make, use, sell, and/or offer for sale” of what it calls the “Infringing Burger.”

“We applaud other companies’ efforts to develop compelling plant-based products, but we do not tolerate attempts to undermine our brand or products through the deliberate and unauthorized infringement of our intellectual property,” Impossible said in a statement. 

Valued at $9.5 billion, Impossible’s products are available across the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the UAE. Founded in 2019 as a spin-off of the biotechnology company Gingko Bioworks, Motif was valued at $1.23 billion last year. When the smaller company launched, Gingko co-founder Jason Kelly told CNBC that he was inspired by Impossible’s success. 

Impossible Foods has demanded a jury trial, claiming that the alleged infringement on its heme has “irreparably harmed” the company. Last year, Brown said that the company is open to selling or licensing its proprietary heme ingredient to other food companies, according to FoodNavigator. “We just haven’t had the bandwidth to really think about those alternative business models,” he said.

The battle over IPs

“This complaint is not supported by facts or the law and is nothing more than a baseless attempt by Impossible Foods to stifle competition, limit consumer choice, and impede Motif, a new and innovative company with significant business momentum,” Motif said in a statement. The company intends to contest the allegations “vigorously” and continue to “pursue our go-to-market strategy and work towards our mission to bring better tasting, nutritious and sustainable foods to the world.”

So far, Motif has demonstrated what Impossible claims is a “replica” plant-based burger at trade shows, such as Natural Foods Expo West. It also sold a Hemami-infused plant-based burger at Coolgreens, a restaurant chain with a location in Dallas, Texas, in summer 2021. 

This isn’t Impossible’s first lawsuit against a competitor. In June 2020, it won a lawsuit against Nestlé, the world’s biggest food and beverage company, over the Incredible Burger sold under its plant-based Garden Gourmet brand.  Last week, FoodNatigator broke the story about a heated dispute between two fungi-based startups: Colorado-based Meati Foods and California’s The Better Meat, which are filing lawsuits against each other. In this case, Meati claims that a former employee stole its IP and brought it to Better.

Competition is seen as healthy in any market. But as the alternative protein market heats up, we may see more companies become tangled up in battles over patents, which are designed to protect the holder’s economic interests. At the moment, there’s no telling what the end result of the lawsuit will be. Right now, we can only wait and see how it unfolds. 

The multinational tech company says it will halve its food waste by 2025 and send zero food waste to landfills by the same date.

Google currently employs upwards of 150,000 full-time workers worldwide. That’s more people than live in Gainesville, Florida; Berkeley, California; or New Haven, Connecticut.

In short, this means that Google’s in-house food team serves hundreds of thousands of meals every day across 56 countries, which presents the company with a huge opportunity to take action in the fight against food waste as well as the mitigation of climate change.

Google is fighting food waste

To accomplish its new pledges, Google will first work to prevent waste during food sourcing, procurement, and throughout the supply chain. Then, within its staff kitchens and cafes, by making sure all excess or unused food is tracked and repurposed or disposed of properly.

The company has been measuring its kitchen waste since 2014, which has helped to divert 10 million pounds of food from landfills so far. (That’s the equivalent of taking 5,000 cars off the road for a year.) But Google also plans to buy “imperfect” fresh produce as well as snacks and products that are themselves made using upcycled and often-discarded ingredients.

While the majority of waste occurs at the consumer level in wealthy countries, Google is also working with agricultural partners to improve overall supply chain transparency, another key area for improvement. It plans to continue emphasizing technology in its efforts to cut back on food waste and hopes to pass on successful solutions to other countries and industries.

“As we make progress toward our food loss and waste goals, we’ll keep sharing what we learn with others in the industry,” writes Michiel Bakker, Vice President of Global Programs, Real Estate, and Workplace Services at Google. “Together, we can keep our planet healthy.”

Google is already a member of the Food Waste Action Plan, which is co-led by food waste nonprofit ReFED and lobbies the federal government to adopt national food loss reduction goals.

Cutting food waste will be an essential part of climate change mitigation, as up to 10 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are currently associated with wasted food. This is broadly via the inefficiency of using land, water, and energy to grow food (and usually fossil fuels to transport it) only for it to end up discarded and uneaten.

Food waste is a growing problem

In the US alone, up to 40 percent of the national food supply is wasted every year. Globally, one-third of all produced food (1.6 billion tons worth approximately $1.2 trillion) also goes uneaten. Despite the United Nations’ goal to cut food waste in half by 2030, studies indicate that the amount of food wasted is still increasing and could reach 2.1 billion tons by the same year.

Reducing this waste will help improve the efficiency of global food production and could feed millions of people around the world without enough to eat. (According to the UN, the world already produces more than 1.5 times the amount needed to feed everyone.)

If food waste does end up in landfills, it also creates significant carbon emissions via the uncontrolled release of methane, a GHG that’s 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. California recently passed a law specifically to keep organic matter such as food scraps out of landfills for this reason.

Google’s pledges to cut back on food waste are typical of its increasing dedication to sustainability and minimizing its overall footprint. Last year, the company announced that its Maps and Search products would include the sustainable practices of featured businesses, followed by the launch of sustainability ratings when searching for hotels.

Both programs are aimed at supporting Google’s users to make more sustainable choices.

These findings came from the Good Food Institute’s (GFI) latest report, which revealed a record $5 billion invested in alternative proteins overall in 2021, a 60 percent increase from last year. For years now, investors have been paying close attention to the companies that are making and developing products that can disrupt conventional animal products like meat, seafood, dairy, and eggs.

While motivations for investing may vary, sustainability is often part of the conversation. Industrial animal agriculture, otherwise known as factory farming, is driving climate change. And, as the most recent IPCC report on the impact of climate change pointed out, the food industry needs a hard pivot into something that the planet can actually sustain for generations to come. 

Alternatives are part of the answer, making the category an alluring portfolio addition to VC firms and angel investors who are looking to make money while keeping the planet’s best interests in mind. Plant-based foods, which includes products from companies like Impossible Foods and AI-powered startup NotCo, secured $1.9 billion in investments last year, a decrease from 2020’s $2.1 billion. This doesn’t mean that interest in the market is falling—it’s still going quite strong. But, the report reveals that new technologies are courting the VC world.

Fermentation and cultivated meat take the lead

Notably, fermentation companies dedicated to animal product analogs and cultivated meat and seafood both saw about three times as many investments, respectively. But, why? It’s not that plant-based food is suddenly falling out of favor. 

“Investors are naturally diversifying their portfolios by investing in fermentation and cultivated meat and seafood companies as these segments of the industry mature,” says Sharyn Murray, senior investor engagement specialist at GFI, adding that as the plant-based market begins to mature, several later-stage companies are undergoing liquidity events—like Oatly’s $1.4 billion IPO or Brazilian meat giant JBS’s acquisition of Dutch plant-based meat brand, Vivera. 

Fermentation and cultivated meat are both burgeoning industries that investors want a piece of while they’re still on the precipice of coming to the market. And, these industries are working on more than just products that consumers will be able to buy at a restaurant, or in a store. 

More investors are tuning into technologies that can be used to improve plant-based products. For example, Motif FoodWorks uses precision fermentation to make Hemami, a yeast-derived, iron-rich protein that makes meat taste meatier. (It’s also developed technology that helps dairy-free cheese stretch and melt.) Several cultivated meat companies are also in the ingredients game, like Mission Barns, which is developing fat made with animal cells that, when incorporated into a next-generation veggie burger, will arguably not melt into an oily mess. 

Though fermentation is thousands of years old, precision fermentation is showing huge promise in its early stages. “Researchers today are exploring how the extraordinary diversity of microorganisms and the target proteins and other molecules they can produce can reshape the future of food,” says Emma Ignaszewski, corporate engagement manager at GFI. 

The race to get to market

So far, there are a handful of products made using precision fermentation available to consumers. 

There’s the aforementioned Perfect Day protein, and Nature’s Fynd, which makes vegan meat and dairy-free cheese using microbes found in Yellowstone National Park. These products occupy a small market share, but investments will give these companies access to critical areas, like research and development, along with scaling up existing products to make them more affordable and accessible. These changes spurred by investments will arguably help the companies compete better with conventional animal products, and as a result, we can likely expect to see more products hit the market this year.

So far, only one country in the world has granted regulatory approval to the sale of cultivated meat: Singapore. In December 2020, the nation approved the sale of chicken made by GOOD Meat, the cultivated meat arm of Eat Just, the food tech company known for the Just Egg. 

But, the US may be getting closer to approval. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture sought out public comments on what cultivated meat should be named. And, companies are taking technology out of the lab and to the public. GOOD Meat, which is currently working with regulators to obtain approval, says that it cannot comment on the specifics, but it is “pleased with how things are going.”

Wildtype, which makes sushi-grade cultivated salmon, opened a pilot plant in San Francisco last year that people can actually tour. So did Upside Foods, formerly known as Memphis Meats, which makes cultivated chicken. (The company recently announced that its Emeryville, California-based plant is now open for tours.) Israeli startup Future Meat Technologies opened up a pilot facility on its home turf, but is looking to bring its slaughter-free meat to American diners this year.

Cultivated meat producers still face several challenges, but consumer appeal is a big one. Both Upside Foods and Wildtype hope to demystify how cultivated meat is made by opening up their pilot facilities to the public.  “In order for cultivated meat to have a positive impact on the world, consumers need to understand it and embrace it,” says Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of UPSIDE Foods. 

Another strategy that cultivated meat companies appear to be taking looks very similar to how Impossible Foods introduced the public to the Impossible Burger back in 2016: start small, but impactful, and work your way up. When the Impossible Burger made its debut, it was only available at one venue: Chef David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi in NYC. But now, it’s everywhere. 

At the moment, GOOD Meat is the best example of the ways in which cultivated meat can hit the market: it began serving its cultivated chicken in high-end Singapore restaurants and then moved on to home delivery. Most recently, it was served at the historical Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice hawker stall in Tiong Bahru, replacing conventional chicken in a dish that’s been served for 76 years. The company recently partnered with Michelin-starred chef and philanthropist José Andrés, who will serve GOOD Meat cultivated chicken at one of his US restaurants once regulatory approvals allow. Upside Foods has also tapped into the influential power of chefs: it is working with Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn, who has agreed to serve their cultivated chicken once regulatory approvals go through in the US. Now, it’s all a matter of waiting.

For the seven-year-old vegan brand—and for the plant-based food industry—this is a landmark moment. Kraft Heinz brands, besides obvious Kraft and Heinz products, include household names like Oscar Mayer, Lunchables, and Philadelphia. Many US consumers may only be familiar with NotCo’s NotMilk, which hit the states in 2020. However, the Chilean company made a name for itself in the Latin American plant-based food market in the years prior thanks to its portfolio of products developed using artificial intelligence (AI), which includes mayonnaise, milk, ice cream, and burgers.

Kraft Heinz CEO Miguel Patricio said in a statement that the partnership will help the multinational food company “deliver on our vision of clean, green, and delicious products for consumers.”

The team-up will put NotCo’s unique AI platform, affectionately called “Giuseppe,” front and center, in order to create realistic products. Essentially, the AI is taught the composition of an animal product at a molecular level. Then, using an algorithm and its database, the AI pieces together a recipe that mimics the conventional version. (For example, NotMilk’s ingredients include pineapple, cabbage, chicory, and coconut—combined, it tastes pretty darn close to dairy milk.) 

Can big brands and vegan companies really be friends?

For Kraft Heinz, which wants to create “greener” products, and for NotCo, which centers the environment as its raison d’être, it sounds like the perfect match. Animal agriculture is one of the key drivers of human-caused climate change. And, the scientific community is practically unanimous in saying that food production cannot continue unchanged if we’re to lower global greenhouse gas emissions enough to lessen the severity of the inevitable effects of global warming. 

But, Kraft Heinz is a food giant—one whose products meat and dairy products are among those major contributors to climate change. Shouldn’t this partnership be an ethical dilemma for a company like NotCo? Not necessarily.

Kraft Heinz is the third-largest food and beverage company in North America and the fifth-largest in the world, and it has a mighty big reach. Its products are sold in over 40 countries, while NotCo’s products are available in 10. Despite this, NotCo has proven itself to have mainstream appeal: it’s available in Latin America’s biggest supermarket chains and its high-profile partners include Burger King Chile, Burger King Paraguay, and Papa John’s Chile. 

NotCo is one of the fastest-growing food tech companies in Latin America. Last summer, it raised a $235 million Series D round, bringing its valuation to $1.5 billion, achieving “good unicorn” status. And, its investors include disruptor-driven venture capital firm The Craftory, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, and athletes Lewis Hamilton and Roger Federer. And, the company’s plant-based NotBurgers are about to hit the US market.

In order to truly disrupt the $1.33 trillion global meat market and the $827.4 billion global dairy market, though, you need to reach more people. Working with big brands, even ones that appear to be counterintuitive, is a way in for many plant-based businesses. And, that should come as no surprise: it’s been happening for years in a number of ways. Big corporations have taken several plant-based brands under their wings through acquisitions. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are working with fast food giants to put plant-based options on the menu. And, legacy food brands have been investing in plant-based startups for years—Kraft Heinz included. It’s backed the precision fermentation-based vegan dairy startup New Culture twice now.

Investments aside, the alternatives market is new territory for Kraft Heinz. Its only company in that category is Boca, a brand that was one of the earliest vegetarian meat brands to hit mainstream supermarkets back in the ’90s. But, a lot of things have gotten better since the ’90s, including plant-based food. Brands like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Eat Just, and OmniFoods lean on ever-improving food tech to bring their products as close to “the real thing” as possible, courting discerning flexitarian consumers. 

Precision fermentation, 3D printing, and AI are emerging as technologies that will usher plant-based food into its next generation. With NotCo and its AI platform, Kraft Heinz is getting ahead of the curve in an increasingly competitive market.

But, don’t big brands just care about profit?

Joint ventures with the end goal of launching co-branded products may also be the Next Big Thing for the plant-based food industry. More consumers, motivated mainly by sustainability and health, are dabbling with flexitarianism, and food giants are happy to cash in on it.

Last year, Beyond Meat and PepsiCo—the world’s second-largest food and beverage company—kicked off their own joint venture and their first product, a plant-based jerky. Though, it’s not co-branded. 

For NotCo, working with Kraft Heinz will help it get more earth-friendly food products in front of consumers. Working with the brands who have the infrastructure to support their ambition was part of its goal all along. “When we started NotCo, it was our goal to make our technology a [catalyst] for a more sustainable food system not only for us, but for other brands and manufacturers who share the same ambition,” NotCo co-founder and CEO Matías Muchnick said in a statement. 

And, this strategy could very well work: consumers gravitate towards the familiar. Seeing the Kraft Heinz label on a vegan product (or, perhaps, a plant-based version of one of its beloved products) could be the nudge that the consumers need to buy the product. For NotCo’s goal of getting people to eat more sustainably, it makes sense. 

But what about Kraft Heinz, or any other food behemoth that’s acquired or worked with a vegan brand? Surely, it’s all about the profit to be had from the plant-based food market, which is projected to hit $162 billion over the next decade, rather than for a truly noble cause? (Case in point: Tyson Foods has a vegan brand, but their meat operations are still going strong.) Sure. We can assume that capitalists are going to capitalize. But, we cannot pretend that working with vegan brands will fix anything if the big brands continue to mass-produce meat and dairy products. If anything, they need to simultaneously launch sustainable options while scaling back on the ones that are responsible for the majority of the food industry’s GHG emissions.

We’re falling short on time to clean up food’s carbon footprint. The most recent UN IPCC report, released earlier this month, detailed some frankly depressing realities about the state of climate change. At this point, we cannot stop global warming, we have to adapt, and we have to do it fast. Governments and corporations need to be less incremental, and more transformative in their climate change solutions. And maybe a joint venture between a food giant and a plant-based food tech brand will inspire the former to dial it back on the animal products. Fingers crossed. 

Did Leonardo DiCaprio make sustainable investing cool?

DiCaprio is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, known for his wide range of roles, from gritty neo-noirs to satirical melodramas. His latest, the Oscar-nominated Don’t Look Up, has everyone talking about his other life-long passion: climate change. DiCaprio has been a climate activist for almost as long as he’s been an actor. He launched the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, his environmental charity, in 1998 when he was 24, one year after Titanic was released. Titanic was hardly DiCaprio’s first film, but it was the one that launched him into the stratosphere. Titanic became the top-grossing film of all time, and it held that ranking for more than 20 years. With that notoriety came access. It was a visit to Washington. D.C., and a meaningful talk with former Vice President Al Gore, that DiCaprio credits with igniting his activist fire.

“[Gore] sat me down, drew a picture of the planet, drew our atmosphere and said, ‘This Is the most important crisis facing humanity,’” DiCaprio tells People. “And from that point on I really became not only fascinated with the issue but really concerned why we as a collective world community haven’t done enough about it.”

To date, The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has raised more than $100 million for various causes, including supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as donating to restore carbon-storing mangroves in Mexico, Kenya, and Somalia. The foundation has also helped bring clean electric energy to Fiji, supported community gardens in low-income areas of Los Angeles, and even boosted a non-profit law firm that represents young activists fighting climate change through legal action.

The Academy Award-winner has also used his substantial wealth to back startups, starting in 2011 with the now-defunct photo-sharing app, Mobli. To be clear, he wasn’t the first actor/investor. According to market research firm CB Insights, the top 75 famous investors gave $4.6 billion to private companies between 2007 and 2016. Kutcher, one of the biggest celebrity investor success stories in Tinseltown, has been investing since 2007, and the That ’70s Show star co-founded his VC firm, A-Grade Investments, with Madonna’s talent manager, Guy Oseary and American businessman Ronald Burkle, in 2010. (And in 2015, he and Oseary co-founded the firm Sound Ventures.) Rapper Nas has also been investing in tech since 2007. 

But, DiCaprio’s portfolio shows that sustainability has been his primary focus, years before environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing became the cool thing to do on Wall Street. 

After Mobli, DiCaprio turned his attention to the electric vehicle (VC) market in 2012, just before sales were about to skyrocket, and years before practically every legacy carmaker started talking about electrification. He became an equity investor, advisor, and brand ambassador to the American electric vehicle maker Fisker, called Fisker Automotives at the time. The upstart brand was founded in 2007 by German industrialist Bernhard Koehler and Henrik Fisker, who has designed cars for companies including Aston Martin, Ford, and BMW. 

Sustainability stars like DiCaprio and Al Gore were the first to receive Fisker’s debut EV, the Karma, an ultra-luxury plug-in hybrid with an interior trim featuring reclaimed wood and body paint made from recycled glass. The $100,000 Fisker Karma hit the market one year before its rival, Tesla, launched its flagship Model S.

Throughout his investing career, DiCaprio has shown that he believes that technology can be a powerful tool to drive environmental innovation, whether that’s helping drivers get away from fossil fuel use or even something as ordinary as waste collection. After Fisker, he invested in Rubicon in 2015. The Lexington, Kentucky-based software company uses its app to help other businesses manage their waste and recycling more sustainably. At the time, the tech startup managed 60,000 service locations, but that number has increased to 8 million across all 50 states and in 20 countries, according to company data. It’s been a Certified B Corp, a mark of a business that has met high standards for social and environmental responsibility, since 2012. 

The next year, DiCaprio backed the lab-grown diamond startup, Diamond Foundry, three years after it launched. Lab-grown diamonds, also called “cultured” or “man-made,” are visually and chemically no different from the real thing, but they’re more sustainable, and humane—the diamond industry is rife with environmental issues and worker exploitation.

Also like a growing number of famous faces, DiCaprio is in the board room at several sustainability-driven startups. He joined the board of directors at Bluon Energy in 2017. It makes energy-efficient replacement refrigerants for existing HVAC-R systems—which are notorious energy users. 

One year later, he joined the advisory board of and invested an undisclosed amount in Kingo Energy, a Guatemala-based startup that brings clean, decentralized solar energy to remote, off-grid communities around the world.

The stars embrace sustainable investing

It makes sense that DiCaprio, who has produced 13 feature-length environmental documentaries, including last summer’s The Loneliest Whale; the conversation-starting 2016 film about factory farming and the environment, Cowspiracy; the 2016 National Geographic, DiCaprio-narrated flick where scientists discuss solutions to climate change, Before the Flood; Netflix’s BAFTA and Peabody Award-winning documentary about protecting endangered mountain gorillas from poachers and oil production, Virunga; and more. Nearly all of the docs that DiCaprio has produced are tied to climate change—the causes, the effects, the solutions, and struggles on a macro and micro scale.

DiCaprio’s investing track record isn’t just noble, given the causes he supports, it’s also market savvy. Following his success in solar and EVs—ahead of each industry’s respective boom—DiCaprio ventured into the plant-based food sector. The Wolf of Wall Street star invested in Beyond Meat back in 2017, before the brand started working with food and snack industry giants like McDonald’s and PepsiCo, and predating a slew of celebrity and athlete investors like Shaquille O’Neal, Alex Honnold, Derrick and Charity Morgan, Kyrie Irving, Chris Paul, and more. 

Last year, DiCaprio joined the board of advisors at the Lewis Hamilton-backed Chilean food tech company, Perfect Day, and became an advisor to and an investor in the cultivated beef startups Aleph Farms and Mosa Meat. The companies Hippeas, a snack brand that makes vegan Cheez Doodles-style puffs made from pea protein, and Califia Farms, which makes plant milks, are also in his portfolio.

“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to fundamentally reshape our global food system,” he said of his Mosa Meat investment. The star himself has promoted eating less meat for sustainability reasons in the past.

Did DiCaprio’s laser focus on sustainability influence others?

Over these past few years, celebrities have been targeting scrappy startups versus Fortune 500s. It’s clear they have an interest in building profit in a more eco-friendly way. Even money itself has the potential to be more environmentally sound, and DiCaprio spotted that trend, too. He’s an investor in Aspiration, a sustainable banking service that doesn’t loan out money to the fossil fuel industry. (Which, sadly, is the norm.) Orlando Bloom, Drake, and Robert Downey Jr. followed suit.

Celebrities now lead conversations around sustainability and tout their impact investments. Jay-Z, Serena Williams, Jaden Smith, Katy Perry, Trevor Noah, and more have become high-profile eco investors, and have helped sustainable brands such as Cloud Paper (a bamboo toilet paper startup), Impossible Foods, Oatly, Simulate (a vegan chicken brand), and Pela (which makes compostable tech accessories) grow, and in many cases, set a new sustainability standard for businesses everywhere.

As climate change becomes a bigger threat to humankind and the natural world, as countries fail to meet climate goals, and as bills continue to be stalled or weakened to appease conservative lawmakers, VC is another piece of the puzzle that could help slow down the looming consequences of human-caused global warming. Stars like DiCaprio, who have used their money to invest in fast-growing sectors like clean energy and alternative protein could very well help tip the scale in favor of climate-friendly solutions. 

If there is one thing London has become really, really good at in the last few years, it’s vegan food. Next to the Chinese restaurant, called Vegan Planet, you can find Temple of Seitan, a vegan fried chicken shop, and Purezza, a plant-based pizza parlour. In fact, in total, London has around 1,000 vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants. It’s exciting for a plant-based foodie, but not exactly unique; capital cities often showcase a country’s most diverse and exciting culinary options. But what’s more noteworthy is that London is now just one part of a wider, plant-based picture. From supermarket shelves to country pubs, not only is vegan food starting to become a given everywhere in the UK, but an abundance of it is too. 

A world leader in vegan food

In 2018, meat-free products made up 16 percent of food launches. This was double the amount from 2017, and resulted in market research firm Mintel awarding the UK the title of world leader in vegan food. For a nation famous for its love of roast beef and fish and chips, that accolade seems initially surprising. But earlier this year, a YouGov study commissioned by Veganuary—an initiative that encourages people to give up animal products for January—found that one-third of Brits are interested in becoming vegan.

But increasingly, it seems that whether or not people decide to make the dietary switch is irrelevant. Because a key driver of the plant-based food market isn’t vegans, it’s flexitarians. These are people who choose to reduce meat rather than cut it out completely. Another study commissioned by vegetarian meat brand Quorn last year found that 41 percent of British families follow a flexitarian lifestyle.

Though the start of the pandemic saw the flexitarian movement slow, this was only temporary. According to Mintel, nearly half of Brits are limiting their meat consumption again. The market research firm also predicted that meat sales will fall this year.

Richard Caines, Mintel’s senior food and drink analyst, says the start of the pandemic likely saw meat sales rise because people were seeking comfort in familiar food habits. Now that they are more used to COVID-19 restrictions and changes, they are starting to limit their meat intake again. “Meat reduction has returned to around the level seen in 2019,” he explained. “This follows a dip in 2020, when other priorities likely became more pressing in food and drink choices.”

Flexitarians drive a vegan food boom 

It turns out, caring for the planet—and the climate anxiety from worrying about our environmental future—may be spurring the flexitarian boom.

In the last few years, mainstream media platforms have reported on major studies—like the largest ever food production analysis in 2019—that link meat and dairy with some of the planet’s biggest environmental problems, like carbon emissions and deforestation. Trusted environmentalists, like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have advocated for meat-free living for the purpose of protecting the planet. And celebrities play a role too. Paul McCartney, arguably one of the most famous of all Brits, co-founded Meat Free Monday with his daughters Stella and Mary. The organization encourages consumers to ditch animal products for one day a week.

Mintel’s research noted that around 47 percent of consumers believe that eating less meat has environmental benefits. People are also concerned about the health consequences of eating meat, with several widely-reported studies linking processed animal products with an increased risk of disease. Animal rights is another key argument; thanks to the growth of social media, organizations like the UK’s Humane Society and activists like Earthling Ed, have bigger platforms than ever.

Caine agrees that the media plays a significant role in changing people’s habits. “The fact that nearly half of adults now either don’t eat meat or are limiting intake poses a challenge for the meat industry and points to vast further potential for meat substitutes’ growth, if they can win favour as the alternative,” he observes. “It offers compelling evidence of how media coverage around meat has reached consumers.”

But it’s not enough just to give information. The UK is proving that change comes when it is easy to act on that information. People have routines, families, busy lives, so even with the best will in the world, making changes to food habits can be hard. Hunting down a health food shop or finding a specific restaurant that caters to every person’s needs and desires can be a feat of labor. And that’s why a key factor in Britain’s plant-based boom is easy accessibility.

The rise of supermarket vegan ranges

In 2022, every single major supermarket in the UK has a vegan range. But it all started with the nation’s biggest, Tesco.

Back in 2017, a spicy bean burger was still the standard veggie option on supermarket shelves. But Tesco spotted a gap in the market. It quietly hired Derek Sarno—one half of vegan chef duo Wicked Healthy (the other half is Chad, his brother) and former Senior Global Executive Chef for Whole Foods—as its director of plant-based innovation. Tesco’s goal was, in Sarno’s words, “to pop the cap off the vegan movement in retail.”

Together, they created Wicked Kitchen, a 20 product-strong range of vegan ready meals, pizzas, sandwiches, and desserts that hit shelves in 2018. Though by today’s standards, it would be viewed as a notable but standard UK launch, at the time, it was groundbreaking. The range was a hit with shoppers, so before the end of the year, Sarno and Tesco doubled it in size. Other supermarkets were noticing its popularity and beginning to launch new vegan options, but not at the same rate. “Retailers were scrambling to catch up and make their own offers,” recalls Sarno.

Tesco was ahead of the game in working out that consumers wanted more plant-based options. But it was also unique in how it chose to address the situation, explains Sarno. The supermarket giant hired a mission-driven chef with extensive vegan food experience to guide innovation. And as a vegan who loves meat—his Wicked Healthy cookbook includes recipes for meals like BBQ jackfruit sliders and vegan lobster rolls—Sarno knew exactly what he was doing. “Most other retailers and brands have a bunch of meat eaters sitting around a boardroom table trying to decide what vegans and meat eaters might want,” he says. “They were trying to capitalize on an industry without leading by example.”

Tesco had a head start, but it didn’t take long for competitors to adapt. From expensive Waitrose to affordable Lidl, vegan products are now commonplace on supermarket shelves—and every launch gets more creative. Retailers have moved on from the basics of nuggets and sausages, and are now coming out with products like steak, chorizo, salmon, and fish cakes, all made from plants.

The UK’s vegan boom may be driven by major corporations, but it seems that even small vegan brands are benefiting from their support. Many were offering plant-based products before the movement hit the mainstream, but now they can reach a wider audience. White Rabbit Pizza, for example, started off as a small vegan-friendly brand in 2015. It now offers vegan pizza in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, two of the UK’s biggest supermarkets. Dairy-free chocolate company Vego used to stock products in specific vegan or health stores, but now it’s partnered with Asda and Co-Op. 

With McDonald’s and the local pub on board, are Brits looking at a vegan future?

Restaurants have caught on to plant-based food’s popularity too. Happy Cow reports there are more than 14,000 vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants in England alone. KFC, Greggs, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and PizzaExpress are just a few of the nation’s biggest chains with plant-based options on the menu. Just like a stroll down Camden high street, if you visit a chain restaurant today, there’s a slim-to-none chance you’ll be met with zero plant-based options.

The situation is only going to improve. McDonald’s UK opened its first net zero restaurant last year. At the time, Beth Hart, the chain’s spokesperson, hinted that its future menu could feature even more vegan options. “I think it will look very different,” they said. “It’s not so much about influencing choice, but offering alternatives.”

Many of the nation’s most popular and influential chefs have embraced vegan cuisine too. Gordon Ramsay, formerly renowned for his anti-vegan stance, publicly changed his mind in 2019 when he made vegan roasts available at his London restaurant Bread Street Kitchen. In response to criticism (namely from notoriously controversial presenter Piers Morgan), Ramsay said: “Veganism is on the rise. We’ve got to adapt and eat a slice of humble pie.” Since then, vegan recipes have shown up frequently in his online content, and he has even devoted several YouTube videos to Veganuary.

Jamie Oliver has also forged into meat-free food, with his 2019 cookbook “Veg” and Channel 4 cooking show Jamie’s Meat-Free Meals. And last year, Michelin star chef Alexis Gauthier removed all of the meat from his London restaurant Gauthier Soho and opened a new plant-based cafe, called 123V. 

The average Brit isn’t visiting Michelin restaurants on the regular. But most of them are going to the pub, arguably a cornerstone of British culture. Greene King, Wetherspoons, and Fullers are three of the nation’s biggest pub chains, and all of them now offer vegan options. As for independent-owned spots, there has been more than one recent news story about landlords choosing to switch up their pub grub with a new meatless menu.

A more flexitarian lifestyle even has government backing. Last year, a report outlining a new food strategy for the UK labelled meat consumption as unsustainable. A reduction in animal products was necessary for freeing up land, it noted. It recommended the government set a target of slashing consumption by 30 percent by 2030. If this was implemented, it would show the rest of the world that meat is a serious climate issue that constitutes serious action. It would give flexitarians even more validation, and the positive reinforcement to keep going.

All things considered, Sarno reckons a plant-based future is the only feasible conclusion for the UK’s food industry. “It might not be in my lifetime,” he says. “But it will happen.” And who knows? Maybe he’s right. Unprecedented changes happen all of the time. Just half a decade ago, a McDonald’s net zero restaurant would have been the punchline of a joke.

The views expressed in opinion pieces are those of the author(s) and do not represent the policy or position of LIVEKINDLY.