Tender Food is a Boston-based company specializing in plant-based meats, aiming to replicate the texture and taste of whole cuts like chicken breast, pulled pork, and steak. The company’s proprietary technology uses plant proteins to mimic the muscle fibers found in animal meats, providing a more realistic texture and satisfying eating experience compare to other plant-based options. Founded by a team of scientists and entrepreneurs, Tender Food seeks to differentiate itself in the alternative protein market by targeting whole cuts rather than processed products.
Christophe Chantre is the co-founder and CEO of Tender Food. In this interview, he discusses the company’s mission to create whole-cut plant-based meats using fiber-spinning technology developed at Harvard. He also explains the company’s focus on scaling production, the role of recent funding in meeting demand, and collaborations with partners like Tufts University to further innovation in alternative proteins.
Please introduce us to Tender Food and the company’s mission.
Tender Food is a food technology company in the Greater Boston Area, a hub for biotech research and innovation. Launched in 2020 by Harvard engineers, Tender uses proprietary technology that spins plant fibers like cotton candy to create whole cuts of alternative meat, including pulled pork, chicken breasts, and beef short rib. The result is delicious, affordable food that’s better for you, animals, and the environment.
Can you explain the fiber-spinning technique you use and how it sets your products apart from other plant-based meats?
At the heart of this project is the ambition to provide ethical and sustainable meat alternatives that are nutritious and taste great. To do this, Tender transforms plant protein into fibers that mimic real meat muscle fibers. In contrast to other plant-based products that imitate ground, processed meat like sausages and burger patties, Tender’s products boast textures and cooking properties that are indistinguishable from animal meat.
“We need technology breakthroughs to […] rekindle growth of the alternative meat industry”
Based on innovations developed at Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Tender’s technology enables the creation of whole muscle cut products (e.g. chicken breasts, pulled pork, and steaks) that look, taste, and feel like the real thing.
What innovations from Harvard helped start Tender Food, and how have they evolved since then?
At Harvard, we developed high-throughput, ingredient-agnostic fiber spinning technology (think an advanced cotton candy machine) that can convert any input (plant proteins, mycoproteins, precision fermentation-derived proteins, etc.) into fibers – the building block of animal muscle. These patented platforms allow us to create incredible products that fully replicate the experience of meat across any format (shredded, whole cuts, steaks), animal type (chicken, pork, beef, seafood), with minimal, clean label ingredients, at extremely low cost. We believe these platforms will replace extrusion as the industry-standard production technology by solving the industry’s key pain points – quality and cost.
What are your key goals with the latest round of funding, and how will they drive Tender Food’s growth?
Scale, quality, scale! We have accumulated significant demand for our delicious, unique products. This latest financing round will help us scale to fulfill that demand, while we invest in our next iterations of even better products.
How do you plan to expand product distribution beyond Boston, and what markets are next?
We have lots of exciting plans in the works, but can’t share anything just yet!
Can you share details about your collaboration with Tufts University on hybrid meat products?
We see ourselves as a technology enabler, creating the new standard of manufacturing for this industry, and accordingly, we are always excited to partner with leading companies or academic institutions pushing the envelope on various foodtech efforts. With Tufts, we are providing them with our latest and greatest R&D plant-based products to be combined with their cultivated cells, leveraging each other’s expertise.
What advancements are being implemented at your production facility to scale up to millions of pounds of plant-based meat?
It’s mostly automation and just increasing throughput on our lines. We’ve proven that our technologies enable uniquely low production costs, now it’s just about executing at scale.
What’s next for Tender Food, and where would you like to be in the next 3-5 years?
As a technology company, our belief has always been that we need technology breakthroughs to create a new generation of tastier, healthier, and more affordable products that will rekindle growth of the alternative meat industry. We’ll be happy if we are fueling that growth again – getting to 5,10, 20% of overall meat market share in the next decade.
