Toronto–(Business Wire) – Today, plant-based seafood producer New School Foods publicly announced its proprietary, scalable plant-based meat industry technology capable of producing whole fish alternatives that look and cook like regular seafood. The company also announced $12 million in seed funding from global investors including Lever VC, Blue Horizon, Hatch, Good Startup, Alwyn Capital, Joyance Partners, and from a variety of institutions including Protein Industry Canada grants.
For three years, New School Foods CEO Christopher Bryson has invested heavily in academic R&D projects alongside some of the world’s leading food science universities and identified a scalable platform that creates A number of firsts:
1. Muscle fibers made from plants: Replicates the diameter, length, strength and structure of fish muscle fibers to provide the same texture and taste.
2. Full Cut Scaffolding: Fish fillets that combine aligned muscle fibers with plant-based connective tissue, fat, color and flavor.
3. Raw and cooked: Unlike nearly everything else on the market that is produced precooked, New School Foods’ cold process technology creates fillets that start raw and deform like fish when cooked.
4. Scalable by design: Unlike many other new food processing technologies, New School Foods’ process uses off-the-shelf equipment from adjacent industries, offering an exceptional ability to scale up globally.
The overall alternative protein market has yet to seize the biggest opportunity: whole meat, which represents the majority of meat sales in North America. Whole-body cutting poses many complex challenges, such as texture, connective tissue, muscle fibers, and other macrostructures present in animal proteins.
Whereas existing production methods, such as high moisture extrusion, use high temperatures to precook food and denature proteins, New School Foods’ technology uses a series of cold-based processes that produce a “raw” product and transition to cooked, Make the cooking experience as close as possible to regular salmon.
“The next frontier in meat alternatives is whole meat, and from day one we understood that New School Foods needed to address two closely related issues: the quality of meat alternatives on the market, and the quality of meat our industry uses to produce them.” limited toolkit,” said Chris Bryson, CEO and founder of New School Foods. “What is now commonly available to consumers is rubbery, ground, pre-cooked products that are not going to convince the average customer to change their lifelong habits.”
New School Foods will continue to focus on research and development, using the $12 million in seed funding it raised to expand its team of food scientists, expand its scaffolding technology, and establish research and production facilities.
“We invested in New School Foods because they recognized that the existing production technology in the plant-based meat industry was not enough to produce a whole piece of product that consumers actually want to eat,” said Nick Cooney, general partner at Lever Ventures. In terms of texture, taste and culinary experience, their technology is unlike anything else we’ve seen in the industry.”
New School Foods also announced the launch of a chef-only pilot program, as they expect to roll out the salmon alternative to numerous restaurants in North America in 2023. Chefs interested in joining can apply today at newschoolfoods.co.
About New School Food
New School Foods Inc. was established in 2020 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Develop plant-based whole-cut seafood that mimics the same texture, taste, nutritional value and culinary experience of traditional seafood.