New School Foods said its muscle fiber and scaffolding technology for producing whole-cut fish replacement products is now at a stage where demonstration and pilot facility construction are possible. The company’s first product is a plant-based fillet that looks, cooks, tastes and flakes like wild salmon.
The announcement comes after the Toronto-based plant-based seafood maker has secured $12 million in seed funding. Participating investors include Lever VC, Blue Horizon Ventures, Hatch, Good Startup and Alwyn Capital. New School Foods has also received grants from Canadian government agencies such as Sustainable Development Technology Canada and Protein Industries Canada. The company has now raised a total of $13 million.
The three-year-old company is swimming in recently crowded waters as startups around the world enter a market poised to reach $1.6 billion in value over the next decade.
Venture capital is also pouring into this space, with around $178 million invested in the first half of 2022. One of his biggest venture capital investments in alternative seafood last year was Wild Type, where he raised $100 million in a Series B round. its farmed salmon products. Meanwhile, Planish, Bluu Seafood and ISH Company are also working on alternatives to salmon.
“At the moment, seafood is a new piece of the puzzle in terms of technology,” Christopher Bryson, CEO of New School Foods, told TechCrunch.
find technology
Bryson got involved in alternative seafood about five years ago after selling a company called Unata, a major grocery e-commerce platform, to Instacart. He went on a quest to find the next “big thing”, eventually learning about factory farming and working with animals. He described it as a “life-changing event”.
“Not enough people seemed concerned about it,” he added.
Bryson said the startup ecosystem didn’t reward R&D and didn’t have a product for investors to try, so he took an angel investor approach instead. protein.
In searching for research to invest in, what he found was not many technologies that addressed whole protein cuts, but few that focused on seafood. I’ve seen extrusions used frequently, but I’ve noticed that the high heat used pre-cooks the food.
“That’s why we decided to create a new technique that doesn’t rely on high-moisture extrusion and is better suited for whole-cutting,” he added.
New School Foods came up with a unique muscle fiber and scaffolding platform to create a whole-cut meat alternative with the same color, flavor, fat, texture and mouthfeel as traditional fish.
Its technology relies on a series of cold-based processes, rather than hot methods, that appear “raw” at first and turn into flakes similar to traditional salmon when cooked.
“All these cold steps in our process use freezing but not for this purpose and we can use off-the-shelf equipment from adjacent industries. Because a lot of what we’re doing is pretty science fiction, there’s no scaled-up infrastructure,” Bryson said. “If we’re talking about feeding the world in a relatively short period of time, using off-the-shelf, scaled-up mass equipment to feed a very large number of people very quickly and reliably. can do. “
New School Foods Raw Vegetable Salmon Fillet Image credit: new school foods
Scaling and production
Bryson will continue to focus on R&D with the new funding. Expand the company’s team of about 12 people, especially in the field of food scientists. Scale-up of scaffolding technology. Build research and production facilities.
New School Foods broke ground on its Toronto facility last month and plans to announce plans in the coming months.
Meanwhile, the company plans to sell through restaurants, launching a chef-only pilot program across North America to garner interest by launching product councils and getting the product ready for distribution later this year. I’m here.
“In parallel with building our salmon product this year and improving it in our restaurants, we are also building our own production facility,” Bryson said. We know there is potential, so we’re not going to stop there.”
