The year 2020 shattered our assumptions about food. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional supply chains and caused health crises in meatpacking plants, plant-based meat went from novelty to reality. Rapidly introduced in fast-food chains and grocery aisles, products made by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods led the charge in introducing the public to plant-based burgers that look, taste, and smell like traditional animal-derived meat. A host of start-ups and legacy food companies joined the fray, offering consumers healthier and more environmentally friendly meat alternatives at price points that are nearing parity with traditional meat-based products.

While plant-based food grabbed headlines during 2020, more fundamental innovations entered the picture as well. Cellular cultivation, which produces foods from animal cell cultures, aims to offer consumers products that are molecularly identical to the animal-derived products that are central fixtures in many diets globally. It took a major leap forward in 2020 when the Singapore Food Agency became the first regulatory agency to approve cell-based chicken made by Eat Just, a Bay Area FoodTech company. With more regulatory approvals expected in the near term, 2020 positioned cellular cultivation for an introduction to consumers.

Beyond plant-based and cell-culture meat replacements, more changes are on the horizon. Fermentation, a process in which proteins are produced by genetically modified microbes that is similar to those used to brew beer, is one of the most promising developments. Many companies in the FoodTech space are using fermentation to create proteins that are molecularly identical to and/or replacements for traditional animal-based proteins. These companies are both producing new foods and creating the ingredients that will be used by other consumer-facing FoodTech businesses in the future. Other companies are creating additional ingredients and the processes for further innovations and commercial scale-up of FoodTech companies.

All of these changes were both validated and spurred forward by an unprecedented wave of private financing in 2020. PitchBook, a private capital market data provider, reported that FoodTech companies raised $18.1 billion in venture capital financings over the course of the year. This total includes a wide variety of food-oriented companies that experienced success in 2020, ranging from food-ordering platforms to ghost kitchens. This white paper, authored by  and James Huie, focuses on trends in PitchBook’s data for food and beverage producers and FoodTech-oriented biotechnology companies.

Click here to read the white paper.

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