🥄 ¡Ole! for OleoPro

A new record: 8 Meetups in one week. And over 800 of you signed up to join.

Huge thanks to our FoodHack Ambassadors, as we hosted Meetups in: Cape Town, San Francisco, Lisbon, Berlin, Wageningen, Milan, Basel and London.

Missed out? Here’s where we’re off to next.

This week in FoodTech

• 6 trends for the future of agriculture

• Leonardo DiCaprio’s neat expansion

• Joining forces on EU novel food regs

The Digest

📈 What’s up? A new survey by the Hartman Group, created in partnership with Perfect Day and Cargill, shows that 77% of consumers would try precision fermentation products once they understand the benefits.

📉 What’s down? Another speedy grocery delivery startup bites the dust: Food Rocket, based in the US, has ceased operations, citing difficulty in securing funding in an unstable market.

🧂Data from the World Health Organization shows that the world is “off-track” to achieve its global target of reducing sodium intake by 30% by 2025, put in place to help save an estimated seven million lives by 2030.

🤝 A group of European precision fermentation startups, including Formo, Onego Bio, Imagindairy, Better Dairy and Those Vegan Cowboys, has formed Food Fermentation Europe, a new trade association aiming to help startups navigate the regulatory pathway for approving novel foods in the EU, a difficult and lengthy process described as a “black box”.

📊 Six trends shaping the future of agriculture.

🧀 Something funny: A US retiree created a Facebook group called “Cheese Toast Love”, as part of his quest to create the perfect cheese on toast. It now has nearly 400,000 members “toasting and posting” their creations).

💡 Good Read: Eben Bayer in Forbes explains why, in spite of the headlines, plant-based meat isn’t “cooked”.

New in Funding

🇩🇪 Foodji, based in Munich, raised $23 million to “revolutionise vending machines” by filling them with fresh and healthy meals, such as sushi and falafel bowls, instead of unhealthy snacks.

🇺🇸 US-based Entrée raised $2.5 million pre-seed funding to expand its fine-dining meal delivery service, which supplies restaurant-quality, globally-inspired meals packaged in recyclable and plastic-neutral packaging so that they don’t arrive soggy or cold.

📲 London-based nutrition startup ZOE secured £2 million from the Flight Fund for its data-driven personalised nutrition programmes, accessible by an app, designed to improve the health and wellbeing of its consumers.

🍔 UK vegan fast food chain Neat Burger secured strategic investment from Leonardo DiCaprio to open its first US location, and to support its longer term plan to expand to 1,000 corporately owned, franchise, and dark kitchens by 2030.

🍼 Cerebelly closed an oversubscribed Series A round for its organic baby food, developed by a practicing neurosurgeon, that includes nutrients that support early brain development.

Regenerative crop snacks

🇺🇸 San Diego-based startup Brutal Foods has created a line of puffed snacks made with chocho, a nutritious, regenerative crop which boasts more protein per serving than salmon, tofu or chickpeas.

🇸🇬 Singapore’s TurtleTree launched the world’s first precision fermentation-produced lactoferrin, a “highly prized” bioactive milk protein and one of the most powerful components found in cow’s milk.

🌱US-based startup FarmWise has developed autonomous weeding robots that use artificial intelligence to remove weeds whilst leaving crops untouched, helping farmers to avoid issues with herbicide resistance and labour shortages.

🔬 Protein engineering startup Arzeda has successfully scaled its ProSweet Enzymes™ that “allow sweetener companies to efficiently and cost effectively make Reb D and Reb M from stevia leaf extract.”

🍻 Award-winning UK-based startup Fungtn debuted Shiitake Dark Lager, an alcohol-free lager with a stout flavour provided by adaptogenic organic Shiitake mushrooms.

🥓 Cultivated meat startup Fork & Good came out of stealth after four years to announce the launch of its cultivated ground pork pilot facility in New Jersey.

Alt Protein

🍳 Californian startup Shiru unveiled its patent-pending OleoPro, a solid-at-room-temperature plant-based fat that “looks and behaves like animal fat”, but with 90% less saturated fat.

🍯 MeliBio released its first commercial bee-free honey product, Mellody, to more than 65,000 consumers at Expo West last week, and is set to launch it into foodservice companies in the US.

🍖 Motif FoodWorks debuted its second food technology ingredient, APPETEX™, which it claims enhances the texture of plant-based foods by providing the unique springy and juicy chew found in animal meat products.

📘 The US Cellular Agriculture Society has released the world’s first textbook on cultivated meat, titled Modern Meat, designed to support future courses in the sector.

🇲🇾 Malaysia’s first cellular agriculture startup, Cell AgriTech, is beginning construction of its first cultivated meat and seafood plant in Penang, set to open by the end of next year.

Big Food

🤍 Kraft Heinz and Chile’s NotCo launched plant-based NotMayo, made with chickpea flour, marking the second product of the joint venture.

🏭 Meat giant Tyson is closing two of its poultry processing plants, laying off approximately 1,700 workers, due to a “period of fluctuating demand”.

☕️ High street coffee chain Costa Coffee launched dairy-free, vegan whipped cream across all 2,467 of its UK outlets.

🤝 South Korean tofu giant Pulmuone is joining forces with local cell-based startup Simple Planet to co-produce hybrid cultivated meat products.

🎬 ADM unveiled a new DTC food ingredient line, partnering with small, underrepresented farmers using regenerative practices to produce the products, which include flaxseed, hemp seed, flax oil, hemp oil and quinoa.

Trends: Green metals

From electric car batteries to decarbonised steel for constructing buildings, there’s no question that sustainable metals are vital to a low-carbon future. ‘Green’ copper, steel, lithium, cobalt, aluminium and beyond will be the foundations of a sustainable world. But there’s a long way to go to get there: in the majority of cases, the supply needed to keep up simply doesn’t exist yet.

🔎 Discover in the full FoodHack+ Report:
- 2x case studies (Magrathea Metals, Genomines)
- The why, the challenges and the figures behind the space
- List of 23 companies in the race to decarbonise

From the Community

Find your dream job:
- Synonym (USA) are hiring a Wordsworth and a Marketing Associate
- Gourmey (France) are recruiting for multiple roles including VP Engineering, Senior Scientist and Pilot Plant Lead
- Michroma (Argentina) are looking for a Business Development Manager 
- New Wave Biotech (UK) are looking for a Full Stack Developer

💸 Closing soon: Pitch for $100K investment in front of 100+ top Food and Climate investors at the HackSummit. Apply today to pitch live on stage.

🗺 Join us next in Mexico City (21st March), Prague (23rd March), New York City (29th March), Wageningen (4th April) at the HackSummit in Lausanne (11-12th May).

🌍 Applications are open for Greentech Europe 2023, an accelerator for women-led startups in Europe working on Greentech products. Apply here

🏆 Green Spot Technologies was crowned the winner of the Kraft Heinz Innovation Challenge at Future Food-Tech.

💸 Just for fun: The Simpson’s take on the SVB collapse.

Wishing y’all a much more relaxing weekend.

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Curated by Nicola and Laura 

Until next time - Stay Hungry