By Miri Eliyahu
Following over half a decade of plant-based product launches leading the retail space in many categories, 2022 was the first year of stagnation in sales for plant-based meat alternatives in the US. Some have proclaimed this the end of the plant-based era, claiming “the experiment was unsuccessful” as the iconic Beyond Meat brand struggled to generate profits for the first year since going public. However, while there are certainly issues with some specific brands, there is little evidence that plant-based alternatives are disappearing altogether. In fact, the plant-based alternatives space is ripe with emerging start-ups adapting to the food industry with rapid pace, promising continual innovation for protein alternatives.
Looking to the sea
One such company is Chicago-based Aqua Cultured Foods, co-founded by Anne Palermo and Brittany Chibe. Aqua Cultured Foods is a food tech start-up taking aim at the seafood alternatives market, a white space for protein alternatives until recently, even though demand for processed seafood is still growing in the US. Using fermentation technologies on fungi, the company can produce a variety of seafood alternatives, some of which Euromonitor International’s Food and Beverage team taste-tested this past May.
Like other emerging brands present at the National Restaurant Show, Aqua Cultured Foods is not targeting the retail space, but rather foodservice. This shift in route to market is evident among many companies adapting to a maturing environment, by working towards the next phase of plant-based expansion. For foodservice, the value proposition is not simply about the relative health of the product, animal welfare or sustainability, it is also about consistency in the supply chain, pricing, and malleability of the products for chefs.
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