🚴🏻‍♀️ Oatly’s putting pedal to the metal

Oatly has opened a first-of-its-kind “bike-thru” in Amsterdam. Cyclists can roll up, grab a coffee, and pedal off without ever leaving the saddle. It’s fast, funny, and perfectly built for a city where two wheels outrank four.

It’s wheely clever, really: Oatly has tapped into cycling culture, urban convenience, and sustainable choices in one move.

The campaign also shows how experiential retail can still, ahem, brake through in an algorithm-heavy world, especially when it’s oat-standingly shareable. No wonder it’s getting a latte attention!

This week in FoodTech:

🫘 Brami bagged $33M for lupini bean pasta
🤖 Capra Biosciences’ “chickpea-sized” biosensors
🥬 M&S launched vertically-farmed salad leaves

The Digest

🍝 Chicago-based inventor Patrick Tannous has patented a rice-cooker-style pasta appliance that cooks and strains pasta in one kettle-like device, and is now seeking manufacturing and retail partners to bring it to market.

🇩🇪 Germany’s federal government unveiled a biotechnology roadmap to open a national alternative-protein innovation hub in 2027 and push EU novel food regulatory sandboxes, aiming to commercialise cultivated meat and precision-fermented foods, lower production costs and strengthen its agrifood biotech sector.

🍓 UK trade body British Berry Growers says cooler spring weather has delayed the British strawberry season but improved flavour.

👩🏻‍🌾 Interesting: SWARM Engineering CEO Shail Khiyara argues that AI can help preserve and transfer ageing farmers’ operational knowledge.

New in Funding

🫘 California-based Brami raised $33 million Series B funding in a round led by VMG Partners, with participation from La Molisana, Pentland Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Gather Ventures. It will use the funds to expand its high-protein, high-fibre pasta made with lupini beans and durum wheat across the US.

🇮🇪 Ireland’s Munster Technological University secured €3 million from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to lead Grass4Value, a green biorefinery project converting grass and legumes into animal-feed proteins, human food ingredients, bioenergy and fertilisers.

🐟 Oshi secured $3 million from Latin American seafood giant Grupo Almar to accelerate retail expansion of its plant-based whole-cut salmon into 686 US grocery stores and scale production ahead of broader distribution.

🐮 Netherlands-based Triple Bio emerged from stealth with €1.5 million from Nucleus Capital, Positron Ventures and Climate Club to develop lipid-based cattle feed additives that boost milk yields and reduce methane.

🥛 Fenton Food and Beverage, owned by Ya Ya Foods founder Yahya Abbas, received a $960,000 state grant to build a $56.2 million plant-based milk ingredients facility which will use water-based nut extraction technology.

🇺🇸 US startup B-Sides raised a $500,000 seed round led by Cap Ventures 8182 to grow its upcycled-ingredient snack puffs, with funds going toward retail expansion and vertical integration of its upcycled ingredient supply chain.

💰 Big Idea Ventures has invested $200,000 each in five food biotech startups - Saku Biosciences, RheaPlant, XiA’H, BioClé and CryoVera - to help scale technologies in fermentation, plant cell biomanufacturing, enzyme extraction, bioactive delivery and frozen-food preservation. 

🍫 LA-based Harken Sweets received an undisclosed investment from Taste Tomorrow Ventures and grt sht ventures to expand its date-caramel candy bars, including a launch into Costco Northwest.

New in Startups

🧃 Austria Juice launched market-ready fruit juice concentrates made using yeast fermentation to cut sugar by 30%, helping beverage brands offer clean-label reduced-sugar juices and comply with new EU Breakfast Directives. 

📉 Berlin-based Cultimate Foods, which makes cell-cultured fat ingredient CultiSense for cultivated and hybrid meat, has filed for bankruptcy and begun financial restructuring while seeking investor and financial-partner support to keep operations running and return to long-term growth.

🪲 Canada’s Renaissance Bioscience unveiled a yeast-derived virus-like particle platform for RNAi biopesticides, designed to make stable, cost-effective dsRNA pest-control products that can target a wider range of insects, fungi and weeds.

🤖 US startup Capra Biosciences is working with Boston University on wireless “chickpea-sized” biosensors that could cut biomanufacturing costs by monitoring fermentation in real time, helping optimise production of ingredients like retinol and salicylic acid.

🌏 Mosa Meat has joined APAC-SCA to deepen Asia-Pacific regulatory and industry ties, collaborate with startups, researchers, investors and policymakers, and support the region’s cellular agriculture ecosystem.

Plant-Based

📈 Heura announced that it has officially reached profitability and is launching a white-label B2B strategy, offering its plant-based meat technology, formulation expertise and supply-chain efficiencies to retailers and brands in markets where it does not directly compete.

💵 Vancouver-based The Better Butchers is planning to go public via a reverse takeover of Health Logic Interactive, to expand its clean-label plant-based meat range into more retail doors, new product lines, and eventually the US and Europe.

🚴🏻‍♀️ Oatly has opened a limited-time “bike-thru” coffee pop-up in Amsterdam, letting cyclists order and collect oat-based drinks without dismounting as a playful, low-emission alternative to the drive-thru.

Big Food

🥬 UK retailer M&S launched three exclusive vertically farmed Collection salad leaves that it says last five days longer, use 96% less water and 97% less fertiliser than conventional salad leaves.

💧 Japan’s Suntory Group launched a Brisbane River catchment water replenishment initiative in Queensland, Australia, to restore waterways, improve water sustainability and support future water management strategies.

🧁 Tate & Lyle has expanded its partnership with Canada’s BioHarvest Sciences to develop multiple plant-based, non-GMO sweetener molecules using BioHarvest’s Botanical Synthesis platform, aiming to create flexible sugar- and calorie-reduction solutions for food and beverage manufacturers.

From the Community

✅ The next ClimateHack Meetup is on Green Production and Biomanufacturing. It will take place in Stockholm on May 28th, See you there!

🍷 The future of wine is being poured in Sion Switzerland. Join our next FoodHack Meetup and discover what's in your glass 20 years from now on May 28th.

🙌 The High Protein revolution is here. Join our next FoodHack Meetup in Dubai on June 9th.

🌱 Plant-forward incubator Kickstarting For Good has opened applications for its 2026 cohort, offering more than $1 million in seed funding to graduates.

🍞 Just for fun: Apparently everything needs an internet connection these days!

What did you think of today’s round up?

I love it 😁 Meh 😐 I hate it 🙁

Got a news story to share? Hit reply.

Until next time - Stay Hungry