Dive Transient:
- Motif FoodWorks is launching completed plant-based meat merchandise for foodservice suppliers, vendors and outlets with personal label strains: Motif MoBeef, Motif MoPork and Motif MoChicken. MoBeef Plant-Primarily based Burger Patties are to be had now, and MoBeef Plant-Primarily based Flooring and MoPork will probably be to be had later this 12 months. MoChicken will probably be to be had in 2023.
- Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition Ventures additionally introduced an funding in Motif FoodWorks. The funding quantity used to be now not disclosed. FootPrint additionally will paintings with Motif on innovation within the plant-based house.
- Within the final a number of years, celebrities have invested in meals corporations that additional their non-public values associated with well being, serve as and sustainability. Downey’s FootPrint, which budget corporations with climate-friendly answers, has invested in companies together with cell-based seafood maker Wildtype, plant-based cheese manufacturer Nobell and worm farmer Ynsect.
Dive Perception:
With this announcement, Motif FoodWorks is stepping past its earlier efforts creating next-generation elements to make higher, tastier and extra practical plant-based meals.
The corporate determined to get into the completed product industry after what it described because the overwhelmingly sure reception to the prototypes it designed for assessments of its elements.
Final 12 months, Motif did eating place and in-home assessments of goods with its Hemami and Appetex elements to exhibit shopper response to merchandise. Motif’s Hemami factor is a heme protein made thru precision fermentation, and Appetex is a texture enhancer. Each elements had been introduced final 12 months.
In step with Motif, those merchandise carried out smartly. After an ordeal run at Coolgreens, the president and COO of the small Texas eating place chain stated many purchasers attempted the plant-based burgers with Motif’s elements and insisted they had been meat burgers, in step with a Q&A at the factor corporate’s company weblog. A number of shoppers had been surveyed, and 93% stated they might consume sandwiches that includes Motif’s meals tech steadily. Greater than six in 10 stated they might acquire the sandwich once more.
Whilst the product launches exhibit the good fortune of the Motif-crafted plant-based meat merchandise, the brand new funding from FootPrint bolsters the corporate’s whole thesis and project. The announcement of the investment states that Motif’s distinctive technique to meals tech, reinventing the way in which that science and culinary arts are implemented to meals, stuck Downey’s eye.
FootPrint additionally intends to paintings with Motif on product building — each supporting new elements and merchandise which might be like animal-derived equivalents. It additionally targets to assist create new kinds of plant-based merchandise which might be wholesome and sustainable, the discharge stated. It is unclear how a lot FootPrint can do with R&D, however the mission company has a BetaTasters program for shoppers who’re focused on making an attempt samples of goods in building and offering comments.
Motif’s announcement on completed merchandise comes at an enchanting time for the corporate.
Motif is embroiled in a criminal struggle with Unattainable Meals coping with patents. Unattainable sued Motif in March, claiming the meals tech corporate infringed on a minimum of one in all its patents when it made the burgers to exhibit its Hemami and Appetex elements — the very factor that Motif will now be making as a product. The patent in query offers with make a plant-based pork hamburger, together with 0.1% to five% of a heme-containing protein.
Final month, Motif answered via submitting a petition with the Patent Trial and Enchantment Board that challenged the validity of Unattainable Meals’ patent. Thru this petition, Motif is calling judges from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Place of business to revoke Unattainable Meals’s patent as a result of a lot of patents relating to meat substitutes, composition of meat analogs and heme proteins had in the past been issued.
Either one of those instances are pending, however via launching completed merchandise, Motif presentations it’s not deterred via Unattainable’s lawsuit. Motif isn’t just depending on those new merchandise for its long term industry building. The corporate stated it’s nonetheless bullish at the elements industry.
Motif has made contemporary actions in elements building. Previous this month, it made an funding in NemaLife, an organization that has a machine the usage of synthetic intelligence and microfluidics to display screen other proteins and different ingredients.
In a press unencumber, Motif stated bringing those functions to meals factor trying out may give a miles previous indication of useful functions, slicing down on R&D time and having the ability to convey protected and cutting edge choices to the marketplace a lot quicker.
