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Tender Food Appoints Former Oatly President Mike Messersmith as CEO to Lead Next Phase of Growth

Tender Food, a Massachusetts-based food-tech company specializing in plant-based food production, has announced the appointment of Mike Messersmith as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Messersmith, who previously served as President of Oatly USA, will now lead Tender’s efforts to expand its presence in the plant-based food industry.

“The food industry is in desperate need of innovative and pioneering approaches”

In June, Tender secured over $11 million in Series A funding to scale up operations at its new facility. At the time, Messersmith joined Tender’s Board of Directors to help guide the company’s commercialization efforts. Now, he steps into the CEO role, succeeding co-founder Christophe Chantre, who will remain involved with the company.

His decision to take on the role of CEO comes at a pivotal moment for Tender, as the company aims to scale its operations and expand its product offerings.

Carsten Boers, chair of Tender’s board and managing partner at Rhapsody Venture Partners, comments, “Mike’s appointment as CEO marks an important milestone for Tender. Attracting someone of Mike’s caliber is a testament to the progress the company has made and its potential for growth. His extensive experience in scaling purpose-driven companies will be invaluable as Tender enters its next phase of development.”

Tender Food
© Tender Food

Messersmith’s background includes leading Oatly’s US operations from the company’s launch in 2017, helping the oat milk brand achieve substantial growth in the plant-based dairy sector. He has also held senior roles at The Nature’s Bounty Company, Chobani, and Frito-Lay. 

Contributing to industry innovation

Reflecting on his new role at Tender, Messersmith noted the opportunity to contribute to an industry in need of innovative solutions. “The food industry is in desperate need of innovative and pioneering approaches. The technology developed at Tender has the potential to create exciting new products that will appeal to consumers and drive market impact.”

Tender’s technology platform, developed in collaboration with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, enables the production of whole-muscle plant-based products. These products are designed to replicate the taste and texture of traditional animal proteins more closely than other plant-based options on the market.

Tender Food
© Tender Food

Messersmith has expressed confidence in Tender’s ability to succeed in the competitive plant-based meat category in an announcement on LinkedIn. “The next wave of breakthrough consumer brands are not going to be built on equipment and technology that was built 80 years ago and was made to fabricate industrial plastics. Tender has a platform that is built to deliver what consumers want – great taste and texture, simple ingredients, not over-processed, competitive and fairly priced,” he posted. 

Maximizing impact

Dr. Grant Gonzalez, Tender’s co-founder and chief technology officer, added, “We have made tremendous progress in recent months, and with Mike’s leadership, we believe we can maximize the impact of our technology platform in shaping the future of food.”

Under Messersmith’s leadership, Tender is poised to capitalize on the growing demand for plant-based meat alternatives and explore new consumer opportunities in the future. “We are on the cusp of really being able to put the pedal down on some commercial scale-up. […] We think we can win in the plant-based meat category and feel like the underlying tech platform the team has built could be the foundation for some other fun consumer opportunities we are investigating for the future,” he concluded. 

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