🛫 How to S-t-r-e-t-c-h your Startup Runway

Are long experiments, manufacturing challenges, hardware costs and regulatory hurdles holding your FoodTech startup back?

This week, Insa Mohr, Co-Founder and CEO of Offbeast, argues it’s possible to stay lean and nimble in FoodTech, a capital-hungry space.

She shares 5 powerful strategies with AgFunder that helped her plant-based steak startup stretch its runway.

Tl;dr: Low-cost in-house taste tests, early direct-to-consumer launches, “scrappy” packaging, lean product cycles, and shifting to commercialization when the product is good enough.

If you want to learn how frugality combined with smart iteration can beat the funding crunch, this is a must-read.

This week in FoodTech:
🍫 Barry Callebaut partners up with NotCo
🍊 ‘Miracle crop’ growing on former orange groves
🌾 AI-powered plant ‘wearables’ to detect crop stress

The Digest

📈 What’s up? A ProVeg Brazil survey at 19 COP30 food outlets found that plant-based and vegetarian dishes made up 51.2% of offerings, exceeding the event’s 40% target, while noting remaining challenges such as beef still on menus, higher prices for some plant-based meals, and inconsistent labeling.

📉 What’s down? Data from The American Farm Bureau Federation reveals that Thanksgiving dinner costs are down 5% from last year, mainly due to a sharp drop in turkey prices.

🇭🇺 Hungary has voted overwhelmingly to ban the production, distribution and marketing of cultivated meat, citing protection of tradition and health while experts warn the move undermines sustainable food innovation.

🍌 President Trump issued an executive order exempting 237 classifications of agricultural products, including coffee, bananas, beef and tropical fruits, from reciprocal tariffs, citing progress in trade deals as justification.

🌳 Pongamia: The miracle crop growing on some former orange groves.

New in Funding

🚜 India’s Tractor Junction raised a $22.6 million Series A round - $17 million equity led by Astanor with participation from InfoEdge Ventures and Omnivore, plus $5.6 million debt - to scale its marketplace and fintech services that help farmers buy, sell, finance and insure tractors and other vehicles.

💡 AKA Foods, a Netherlands-based food tech company, raised $17.2 million seed funding in a round led by Alex and Michael Bronstein to launch and expand AKA Studio, its secure AI-powered platform designed to accelerate food product development.

⛓️ Keychain is launching Keychain360, an AI-powered supply-chain and product-management platform for retailers’ private-label brands, backed by a $10 million investment from W23 Global (funded by five major grocery retailers) to enable unified product design, sourcing, manufacturing and compliance.

🌾 Vivent Biosignals secured €7.5 million from Agri Investment Fund, Horticoop, Pymwymic and Swiss investors to scale its AI-powered plant “wearables” that detect crop stress early and improve sustainable farm management across Europe and North America.

🛤️ Voltrac raised €7 million in a seed funding round led by Cheaper & Green with FoodLabs, Antler, PUSH and Prototype Capital to scale Thor, its fully electric, autonomous 100-hp tractor designed to cut costs, reduce emissions and tackle labour shortages in agriculture.

🍹 Australian alcohol-free drinks startup Hopr secured $3 million seed funding to scale production and distribution of its hops-infused beverage. The round was backed by supportive customers and angel investors convinced of its fast growth and “better-for-you” appeal.

🫒 US-based Freestyle Snacks, which makes convenient liquid-free olive and pickle pouches, secured $300,000 for 11% equity on Shark Tank to help build its team and fuel continued retail expansion after strong early sales growth.

New in Startups

🍭 Oobli secured GRAS approval for its pioneering protein-based sweetener, produced via fermentation, making it the first of its kind to be commercially used as a sugar alternative that mimics sweet taste without carbohydrate-based metabolic effects.

☀️ Solar Foods has partnered with OHB System AG to pilot its Solein® gas-fermentation technology in microgravity as a potential sustainable protein source for future space missions.

💡 PlanetDairy has acquired equipment and technical know-how from the now-closed Stockeld Dreamery to accelerate development and improve performance of its hybrid dairy-plus-plant products as it scales partnerships and growth across Europe.

🍓 Israeli agtech startup DailyRobotics is set to commercially launch a robotic strawberry harvester next year that can pick 2–3 times faster than human workers while grading and packing fruit directly in the field.

🪄 MOA Foodtech unveiled the MOA Box, a turnkey platform that uses AI-powered fermentation to transform starch-rich byproducts into high-value, market-ready ingredients, designed to help manufacturers innovate quickly, affordably, and sustainably.

🔐 “Protein from air” company Calysta has closed its US and UK R&D and pilot facilities after proving its gas-fermentation process at a 20,000-ton/year commercial plant in China, and is shifting focus to manufacturing and sales, especially into the higher-value pet food market.

🎨 Steakholder Foods has acquired Twine Solutions to combine its 3D food-printing expertise with Twine’s digital, waterless textile-dyeing technology, expanding its digital manufacturing capabilities and advancing sustainable production.

Plant Based

🧀 UK dairy-free cheese brand Julienne Bruno has been acquired out of insolvency by Harvey & Brockless of The Compleat Food Group.

📊 Check out the Alt Protein industry’s consolidation over the last 14 months thanks to Green Queen.

🧀 Prosperity Organic Foods has acquired Miyoko’s Creamery out of insolvency and plans to grow the brand while maintaining its quality and roots, after founder Miyoko Schinner’s bid to reclaim the company was unsuccessful.

🥛 Danone is launching Silk Protein, a higher-protein plant-based milk with 13g of complete protein and half the sugar of dairy milk, to help ‘reignite interest’ in the plant-based dairy category and meet growing consumer demand for protein-rich options.

🇪🇺 TiNDLE Foods is exiting the US market and shifting entirely to producing affordable private-label plant-based meats for European retailers as price-sensitive shoppers drive private-label growth across the region.

🍗 Eat Just launched its new plant-based Just Meat chicken in over 3,000 Walmart stores across all 50 US states and Puerto Rico after independent testing showed consumers prefer it to conventional chicken.

🌭 A new survey of 20,000 consumers finds that 96% clearly understand terms like “plant-based sausage” and “vegan burger,” challenging the European Parliament Agriculture Committee’s proposed ban on meat-related labels for plant-based products.

Big Food

🥩 Tyson Foods has agreed to settle a greenwashing lawsuit by halting climate-friendly and net-zero claims on its beef products for at least five years unless independently verified.

🤝 Barry Callebaut has partnered with NotCo AI to use artificial intelligence in accelerating chocolate recipe innovation, improving taste, texture and sustainability while reducing development time. Michael Wolf asks: Can AI help chocolate survive?

🍫 CSM Ingredients launched Nuaré, a carob-based cocoa alternative range, marking its entry into cocoa-free chocolate to address rising cocoa costs, supply challenges, and sustainability concerns.

🌟 Bühler Group has selected Foreverland, Green Spot Technologies and Kawa Project as winners of its New Chocolate Challenge to scale and commercialise cocoa-free, climate-resilient chocolate alternatives developed with its support in Switzerland.

🤖 Uber Eats is set to roll out autonomous delivery robots in the UK, starting in Leeds this December, through a global rollout partnership with Starship Technologies, before expanding to Europe in 2026 and the US in 2027.

From the Community

Get a job in FoodTech

• Startlife (Netherlands) is hiring a Startup Analyst

• Multus (UK) is looking for a Lab Automation Engineer

• Thalya (France) is recruiting for a Operations and Funding Lead

• Rentenbank (Germany) are hiring an Investment Manager, VC

Are you hiring? Hit reply to be included next week.

🍊 Car interiors, belts, bags and all this, made from oranges.

🔔 Sign up for the next FoodHack Meetups in Berlin (Dec 3rd).

🚬 Not so fun: Protein cigarettes, anyone?

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Until next time - Stay Hungry