Founder and CEO of Chunk Foods, Amos Golan, joins the CEO of VegTech Invest and host Elysabeth Alfano on The Plantbased Business Hour to discuss the demand and success of thick, juicy, plant-based steaks and the global outlook for foodservice today.
Specifically, they discussed:
- Chunk Foods seemed to pop on the scene out of nowhere. Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you started Chunk in Israel?
- What has the reception been like in the US?
- Why initially foodservice only, and how big of a push is clean label?
- While I am sure IP is proprietary, what can you tell us of your fermentation technique and your production techniques to get whole cuts of meat?
- We speak endlessly of the US market and often of Europe and Asia, but you have collaborations in Latin America/Mexico/Central America. What is your outlook there with Better Balance?
- Speaking of outlooks, what is yours on the sector globally and US specifically? For the capital flowing into the sector in the next year?
Below is a highlight clip and transcription from their long-form conversation. The audio podcast is here.
Elysabeth: He joins me here today live from Tel Aviv, the CEO and founder of Chunk Foods, Amos Golan. Thank you for being with me today.
There aren’t very many competitors, really, in steak. You have Beyond Meat steak tips and you have Juicy Marbles. I can’t really think of another whole cut steak company. There’s lots of whole cut chicken, but not a lot of whole cut steak. So I think it’s easy to differentiate yourself and Juicy Marbles isn’t in the states, so I think again by being really the first in the states that makes a big impact.
But why plant-based steak? As I understand it from your background you could have gone anywhere in food. Why plant-based steak?
Amos Golan: It was very clear that plant-based is here to stay. We all know that there are some challenges to the space. There’s been a little bit of headwind in the last couple of years, especially in retail in the U.S., but it was very clear to me that plant-based is here to stay. It’s a space that’s going to grow. There’s a significant market there.
It was quite surprising to me that everybody is focused on the same segment, which makes sense from a business school perspective. It makes sense to focus on one segment, which is ground meat. It could for about- depending on what data you’re looking at, but let’s say 38% to 40% of the beef market so it makes total sense. The problem is that ground meat is also the cheapest product in the meat aisle.
As we’ve seen in the last couple of years, price and the experience of flavor and texture and so on are the most important things when it comes to a decision to actually buy a product right in the supermarket. So it’s a huge hurdle and it was very strange to me that everyone is focusing on ground meat and not focusing on those other 60% of the beef market which are more fragmented. So you have more types of cuts but they’re essentially two or three times more expensive.
So the hypothesis was very simple. If I can use the same ingredients, more of less the same inputs to make ground meat or many types of different whole cuts, steaks, roasts, you name it, then I’m going to be able to compete with beef a lot faster and get to price parity from day one with whole cuts, which is going to take maybe decades to do with ground meat alternatives. So this was really the reason.
I do still eat meat and I work on reducing the consumption of animal-derived products and so do my family and many of my friends. I just didn’t feel like there was a good enough product from a culinary standpoint as well as from the performance of these products. Because of my culinary background the focus was always to create something which will be clean enough and in terms of the culinary application will be good enough to serve as something that people want to introduce into their daily diet.
So it’s something that would actually become a staple and not just with curiosity or a luxury or something that you buy in a supermarket once in a while like a snack. I wanted this to be an actual food and for people to perceive it as such, it had to be clean, it had to be cheap enough and it had to be something that resonates with their preferences, and this is what led us to make beef.
Elysabeth Alfano is the CEO of VegTech™ Invest, the advisor to the VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF, EATV. She is also the founder of Plant Powered Consulting and the Host of the Plantbased Business Hour.
