Meals know-how startup Tender Meals Inc. is a four-year-old startup elbowing its means right into a market that’s already crowded with well-known manufacturers. It’s doing so properly that it already secured a contract with Clover Meals Lab’s fast-food chain within the Boston space.
The Somerville, Massachusetts-based firm, previously often called Boston Meats, develops plant-based different meat, together with beef brief rib, pulled pork, hen breast and crab.
Its know-how entails spinning plant protein fibers, together with soy proteins, just like the way in which cotton sweet is made, to create structured cuts of meat, firm co-founder and CEO Christophe Chantre, instructed gajed. Berlin-based Mission Eaden can be using fiber-spinning know-how to make different protein.
Chantre believes Tender’s know-how beats incumbent plant-based meat merchandise, like Not possible Meals or Past Meat, in style, texture, diet and price. All 4 of these have historically been obstacles to mainstream adoption inside the meals tech trade.
“Customers have been largely disillusioned by what’s available on the market,” he stated. “We’re targeted on investing within the applied sciences in order that we will create higher merchandise. That was the powerful factor, till now.”
Since Tender Meals began in 2020, the market has grown so much. Throughout that point, his firm developed and matured. Two years in the past, he would have described Tender Meals as a know-how firm primarily targeted on R&D. Whereas it’s nonetheless a know-how firm, its focus has shifted into turning into business.
“We’re simply beginning to commercialize, so income was not an enormous focus, however will probably be now,” Chantre stated.
A few of Tender’s merchandise have hit eating places and universities within the Boston space, and a brand new partnership has Tender merchandise now in additional than a dozen Clover Meals Lab places within the space.
“We’re a well-liked vegetarian chain, so, as you possibly can think about, we attempt loads of new plant-based merchandise,” stated Chris Anderson, senior vice chairman at Clover, in a press release. “Tender’s stood out from the beginning — it’s progressive, it’s tasty, it’s an awesome addition to our grain bowls and salads.”
The transfer is buoyed by a brand new money infusion of $11 million in Sequence A funding. Rhapsody Enterprise Companions led the spherical and was joined by current traders like Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital and Safar Companions and new traders Claridge Companions and Nor’easter Ventures. In 2022, the corporate raised $12 million in seed funding.
Along with assembly the demand for its new restaurant buyer, the funding will go towards additional product improvement. It is going to additionally go towards scaling up co-manufacturing with different corporations to thousands and thousands of kilos of product, Chantre stated.
The corporate continues to trial its merchandise available in the market, together with with foodservice corporations and enormous firms that manufacture meals. In the long run, Chantre additionally sees Tender Meals as a know-how enabler for all the meals tech trade, working with a bunch of various gamers throughout the worth chain and maybe licensing its applied sciences.
In the meantime, Tender Meals just lately added Mike Messersmith, former North American president of Oatly, to its board of administrators. After becoming a member of Oatly in 2017, Messersmith pioneered the corporate’s U.S. launch. Chantre stated he met Messersmith by way of certainly one of his traders.
“Since we’re evolving from being a know-how firm, to being a know-how and business firm, we’re recruiting builders and operators like Mike, who’ve that have,” he stated. “In our view, it’s actually precious on this subsequent step of our progress.”