The proof of the plant-based burger is in the eating. Okay, so maybe an update to that old saying won’t catch on, but eating plant-based meat is. While plant-based options are more sustainable to produce and better for the environment, they fail to mimic the all-important taste and texture of the real thing and are often accused of being flavorless and mushy. That’s keeping more consumers from adopting them into their diets.
At Motif, we set out to fix that. We’re using our unique scientific approach and new food-tech—HEMAMI™ and APPETEX™—to revolutionize taste and texture in plant-based meat. Our food-design experts included our new food-technologies in a plant-based burger to test their performance with consumers. This kind of testing is an essential step in developing better technologies for our customers.
Of course, testing with consumers during Covid is not without its challenges. So, how did we safely deliver our burgers to the brave gastronauts testing our food-tech?
Much like every other meeting that couldn’t be held in person over the past year, we took our focus group to Zoom! Plant-based burgers showcasing our technology were served to individuals who could share their experience while sitting safely by themselves in cozy Ohio conference rooms.
For our next focus group (and to escape the captivating conference rooms of Ohio), we built a ‘50s style Car Hop drive-in dining experience that would put even Grease to shame. Consumers could enjoy their food and share their thoughts on our technology from the comfort of their cars.
Lastly, we wanted to see how well our food-tech behaved in the wild. So we sent our showcase burger directly to consumers’ homes. In what can only be described as consumers pretending to be mukbang Youtube stars, they recorded their whole process of cooking and devouring our burger. (We sent all the fixings too, don’t worry.)
How do you think our brave gastronauts fared exploring the road less-traveled of plant-based burgers? Well, the results are in. In the focus group, our showcase burger was well-liked and scored high in those important factors like flavor, juiciness, appearance, and burger-like texture.
- 73% of core plant-based consumers preferred our showcase burger to 80/20 beef burger
- 63% said they preferred our showcase burger over a leading plant-based retail brand
- One in three participants preferred our showcase burger over an 80/20 beef burger
I guess the proof of the plant-based burger really is in the eating.
The proof of the plant-based burger is in the eating. Okay, so maybe an update to that old saying won’t catch on, but eating plant-based meat is. While plant-based options are more sustainable to produce and better for the environment, they fail to mimic the all-important taste and texture of the real thing and are often accused of being flavorless and mushy. That’s keeping more consumers from adopting them into their diets.
At Motif, we set out to fix that. We’re using our unique scientific approach and new food-tech—HEMAMI™ and APPETEX™—to revolutionize taste and texture in plant-based meat. Our food-design experts included our new food-technologies in a plant-based burger to test their performance with consumers. This kind of testing is an essential step in developing better technologies for our customers.
Of course, testing with consumers during Covid is not without its challenges. So, how did we safely deliver our burgers to the brave gastronauts testing our food-tech?
Much like every other meeting that couldn’t be held in person over the past year, we took our focus group to Zoom! Plant-based burgers showcasing our technology were served to individuals who could share their experience while sitting safely by themselves in cozy Ohio conference rooms.
For our next focus group (and to escape the captivating conference rooms of Ohio), we built a ‘50s style Car Hop drive-in dining experience that would put even Grease to shame. Consumers could enjoy their food and share their thoughts on our technology from the comfort of their cars.
Lastly, we wanted to see how well our food-tech behaved in the wild. So we sent our showcase burger directly to consumers’ homes. In what can only be described as consumers pretending to be mukbang Youtube stars, they recorded their whole process of cooking and devouring our burger. (We sent all the fixings too, don’t worry.)
How do you think our brave gastronauts fared exploring the road less-traveled of plant-based burgers? Well, the results are in. In the focus group, our showcase burger was well-liked and scored high in those important factors like flavor, juiciness, appearance, and burger-like texture.
- 73% of core plant-based consumers preferred our showcase burger to 80/20 beef burger
- 63% said they preferred our showcase burger over a leading plant-based retail brand
- One in three participants preferred our showcase burger over an 80/20 beef burger
I guess the proof of the plant-based burger really is in the eating.
Rick Prostko, Managing Director, TIP, North America shares why TIP invested in Motif – and how he believes the future of food is an appetizing prospect
Today, Teachers’ Innovation Platform (TIP) together with funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, co-led a $226 million funding round for Motif FoodWorks.
TIP is part of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a C$221 billion plan that invests for the retirement security of teachers in Ontario, Canada. TIP invests in late-stage venture and growth equity investment opportunities in the likes of SpaceX, Epic Games, Attabotics – and now Motif.
Rick Prostko, Managing Director,
Teachers’ Innovation Platform, North America
“For the sake of your health and that of the planet, modify your eating habits by switching to a diet of sustainable, plant-based foods.”
I’m hearing that sentiment shared with greater frequency and often from people I don’t expect. When it comes to the topic of food, suggesting that our seemingly insatiable appetite for meat may be unhealthy (or unsustainable) is a surefire way to a heated debate. Fortunately, resolving this argument is not the objective today. What I hope to do is find some common ground on the subject, with respect to what I believe is one of the principal drivers of consumers’ food choices: taste.
Whether one supports a transition to a more heavily plant-based diet or not, taste plays a critical role in what consumers choose to eat. I feel strongly that consumers should have nutritious and sustainable food options that serve as alternatives to today’s mainstream diets. However, success requires more than augmenting consumer choice. Driving consumer adoption requires innovation efforts that change the experience consumers have at their plates.
It’s this belief that’s led to TIP’s investment in Motif.
Human behavior is complex
Humans need to eat in order to survive, but that’s not how most of us think about it*. Ingrained in the human experience is the ritual of coming together and breaking bread. There’s a concept referred to as “the joy of food”: capturing our desire to eat for reasons beyond sustenance. We eat for comfort, nutrition, and sometimes simply for the sake of the experience itself. And, as much as food unites us, food can also be a topic of heated debate. Others are quick to weigh-in with respect to what, and how, we “should” be eating.
So how do people actually decide what to eat?
What people aren’t doing en masse is going online and searching for “the ideal human diet” (incidentally, Google returns 63.8 million results, so there is a lot to read on the topic if you are so inclined). Buried in these results are reports warning of the dangers of animal protein-laden, “western” diets. Doctors and nutritionists citing rising obesity rates, skyrocketing cardiovascular disease, and the increasing prevalence of childhood type 2 diabetes. There appears to be mounting evidence that the diets we’ve come to love, don’t love us back.
While I personally come away from this research convinced that I should eat more of a plant-based diet, that veggie burger just doesn’t transport me back to my favorite 4th of July BBQ—and therein lies the problem with mainstream adoption. Available plant-based foods, largely, fall short of consumer expectations. Consumers are creatures of habit, seeking familiar foods with flavors that are part of their existing diet or they follow taste and convenience as a guide. Sadly today, taste is often “engineered” in highly processed foods featuring combinations of protein, fat, salt and sugar designed to drive consumption vs. serving nutrition. To break this cycle, we need to apply the advanced science of food engineering to drive more nutritious consumption habits.
Start playing with your food!
We all heard it from our parents growing up: “Stop playing with your food and eat your vegetables!” Fortunately, for all of us, there’s a team of talented food scientists at Motif FoodWorks who ignored the first part of this lecture. A spin-out of renowned synthetic biology pioneer Gingko Bioworks in 2019, Motif’s team of scientists and food engineers hunkered down in their R&D lab and began playing with our food. Leveraging the advanced techniques of precision fermentation, materials science and soft-matter physics, in just a few years, Motif’s brewed up a series of proprietary technologies with the potential to transform plant-based foods.
Taste, texture, and color (after all, the eye eats before the stomach) all play key roles in how consumers experience food. The challenge with developing delicious plant-based foods lies in the complexity required to manipulate these traits and deliver the desirable, familiar, outcome. This is where Motif shines. Motif provides modern food manufacturers an opportunity to partner with a highly-specialized team of researchers and food scientists, capable of quickly addressing these fundamental food traits. Motif has designed their platform to address the unique needs of their partners, whether they’re looking for individual ingredients, ingredient systems, or entire finished formulations.
This unique recipe, pairing talented food scientists with a technology platform designed to accelerate scientific innovation, is attracting some of the most forward-thinking food manufacturers to the table.
A tastier tomorrow
With our investment in Motif’s Series B round, we’re investing at an earlier stage than is typical for TIP. In this instance, we were motivated by the combination of Motif’s visionary management team, the strength of their technology platform and the traction they’ve demonstrated in solving some very specific issues with plant-based foods.
We believe Motif’s contributions towards taste, texture and nutrition have the potential to increase consumer adoption of products in this category. And when I say increase, that’s underplaying the significance of shifting consumer demand: the plant-based protein market is a $25B category and is growing 4x faster than the animal protein market. Our research suggests that it is increasingly difficult to find consumers who, for either health or environmental reasons, don’t signal a desire to change their eating habits to include more plant-based foods. In fact, two out of three Americans say they would eat more plant-based foods (instead of meat) if plant-based foods tasted better.
As I’ve outlined, there is a lot to consider around this topic, but Motif’s objective is clear: create plant-based foods that people crave. This means foods that are more nutritious and environmentally sustainable, but most importantly, foods that taste great. We’re thrilled to partner with Motif on this mission and look forward to tastier and more nutritious versions of the foods we love.
*It’s important to acknowledge that millions face the challenge of food security. According to the World Food Program, in spite of enough food being produced to feed everyone, one in nine or 821 million people on the planet go to bed on empty stomachs. Even more, one in three, suffer from some form of malnutrition. Please consider taking an active role in helping organizations in your community, or globally, address these challenges (https://www.foodaidfoundation.org/world-hunger-statistics.html).
An interview with Motif partner Dr. Alejandro Marangoni, University of Guelph and Coasun, Inc.
The food industry has been working to create better tasting, more nutritious plant-based foods for decades, but traditional approaches have not lived up to consumer expectations. At Motif, we believe the best way to tackle a difficult problem is to break it down to its fundamental elements, thinking beyond traditional food-science constraints to design new and craveworthy innovations that consumers want.
At the heart of our unique approach is a network of strong partnerships with academic and technical experts across a wide range of disciplines – from materials science to biotechnology. By bringing together leading researchers and commercial partners to apply science in new ways, we’re able to deliver breakthroughs for plant-based foods.
Today, we announced an update on one of those major partnerships with Dr. Alejandro Marangoni, Professor of Food, Health and Aging at the University of Guelph and founder of Coasun, Inc.
The expansion of our collaboration provides Motif exclusive access to two new technologies – extrudable fat and prolamin – that will enable plant-based cheese on a sandwich or pizza that actually stretches and melts, and plant-based meat with marbleized fat like a ribeye steak.
We sat down with Dr. Marangoni to learn more about his work with Motif and where he’s excited to see plant-based food innovation go next.
Dr. Alejandro Marangoni, Tier I Canada Research Chair of Food, Health and Aging at the University of Guelph and founder of Coasun, Inc.
MOTIF FOODWORKS: What drew you to the research challenge of improving plant-based foods?
DR. ALEJANDRO MARANGONI: My interest in plant-based foods stems from an altruistic reason. If we do not change our relationship with the planet, we will not survive much longer. We need to drastically change our diet and energy usage. Food production is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases and habitat destruction. We need to substitute much of our animal-based foods with their plant-based counterparts to try to slow down the detrimental effects we are having on the planet.
MF: Can you tell us more about your role and work at the University of Guelph and Coasun? How did you come to work with Motif?
AM: I was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph in August of 1991. My work focuses on the materials science of foods, with particular interest in fat structure and crystallization. The expertise I gained as a professor allowed me to develop a novel structured emulsion used to replace palm oil and hydrogenated fats in baking applications. We also developed oil-gelling technologies based on ethylcellulose. The patents related to fats and oleogels are held through my company, Coasun Inc. I first started collaborating with Motif in 2019 through an existing relationship with Stefan Baier, the company’s Head of Food Science.
MF: Were there any surprises you encountered or a significant lesson learned during the collaboration with Motif?
AM: During this work we became aware of the great variability that exists in the raw materials for plant-based foods, specifically proteins. Commercial proteins can have very large differences in functionality even from the same source. This is an area that needs improvement and will be the focus of future research.
MF: How would you describe your experience partnering with Motif’s team?
AM: Motif has been very open to innovation and working together with me. They have allowed for considerable freedom in the development of the science and technology they are interested in. The scientists at Motif have always been keen in getting involved and contributing directly to projects. They also move very quickly from a commercial perspective.
MF: What future opportunities to continue collaborating in the plant-based space are you excited about?
AM: Developing fat systems for extrusion, as well as other plant-based food applications. We want to fully replace coconut oil as the fat of choice in plant-based food applications. We would also like to develop a deep understanding of the molecular and microstructural basis for plant protein functionality in meat and dairy alternative products.
MF: Is there anything else about the science behind creating these extrudable fat and prolamin technologies that you’d like to share?
AM: It is important to think outside the box and do something different, but also to base your work on solid chemistry and physics. Motif’s unique, science-forward approach to collaboration is helping to unlock new possibilities for plant-based food that is better for people and the planet.