Food-upcycling startup Planetarians is on to
something big. The ambition: to disrupt not only the $1 trillion meat market,
but all of conventional animal agriculture, by turning wasted food byproducts
into new foods.
The San Francisco-based business upcycles byproducts and solid food waste
into high-protein, high-fiber ingredients that food companies can use to make
tasty products. Sustainable Brands® has been tracking the firm for the
last few years as its sterilization technology has gained traction with a host
of customers, partners and investors. An early Planetarians signature ingredient
was its protein
flour
made from upcycled, defatted sunflower seeds. It gained plenty of attention
given that it had three times the protein and twice the fiber of wheat flour, at
the same cost.
More recently, the company found its “magic pairing” — combining spent beans and
spent yeast to make whole cuts of carbon-negative vegan meat. By taking spent yeast from
commercial fermentation facilities such as breweries, and native plant proteins
— such as soy flakes left over from vegetable oil extraction — the company can
reproduce the flavor and chewy texture of meat, but with a much cleaner health
profile. In fact, it has near-zero fat content.
Unlike most products in the crowded alternative-protein
market,
Planetarians has managed to hit price parity with conventional meat.
“Many good companies try to reverse climate change by making alternative meat,”
co-founder and CEO Aleh
Manchuliantsau told SB. “But they
all fall short of price parity with animal meat because of expensive ingredients
and/or equipment.”
Understanding that customers are price-sensitive first and environmentally
conscious second, Manchuliantsau knew he had to come up with a solution.
“Because we’re making meat from animal feed, we’ve made it cheap,” he adds —
pointing to the difference in cost between animal feed at $300 per ton and
protein isolates at $3,000 per. Not only that, but Planetarians’ new product is
much less carbon intensive. “The lifecycle assessment shows that our carbon
emissions are 50 times lower than producing meat from animals — and nine times
lower than any other plant-based meat.”
It has taken Manchuliantsau and his team seven years to arrive at this point.
Thanks to the ongoing support of partners such as Techstars, SOSV and
AB InBev, Planetarians has developed and patented its technology, launched a
pilot plant to prove that the commercials stack up, and proved the market is
ready — with billions of dollars in repeat purchases.
Oh, and its meat substitute tastes great too. “Our NPS
score
is twice as good as Beyond Meat,” Manchuliantsau says proudly.
In February, Planetarians announced it had raised a $6 million seed II round
of
funding
that included commercial support from ZX Ventures — the corporate venture
arm of AB InBev, one of the world’s biggest brewers.
Speaking to SB from his base in the Bay Area, Manchuliantsau is in a reflective
mood. Ten years ago, he awoke from a dream that his kids asked him what he had
done with his life. “Spinning around in bed, I came to the conclusion that the
businesses I had built before might have been good cash machines, but it wasn’t
something that would break new ground,” he says.
Not long after, he left his home in Belarus and relocated to the US — a
move that would eventually lead to establishing Planetarians along with
co-founder and chef Max
Barnthouse. “My North
Star is my three boys. I’m working to be a role model to them. ‘Just copy what
I’m doing.’”
Today, Manchuliantsau still considers his firm to be a “fast-scaling, startup
food-technology business,” as opposed to an alternative-meat business. “On our
journey, we’ve created multiple products. We started with chips, then pasta,
then burgers and now meat. The products may change, but we have always worked
with byproducts,” he says proudly.
It’s because Planetarians uses food waste that he can claim to be nine times
better for the climate than the likes of Beyond or Impossible — fermented meats
that still need crops to be grown before production can begin: “We take what’s
already grown, what’s already processed. Somebody else got that main product,
and we take what’s left — the part that represents up to one-third of the whole
agricultural system.”
The key to Planetarians’ success now and in the future is its ability to
develop, evolve and maintain partnerships. As global companies such as AB InBev
start to realise what’s possible, he hopes many more partners will join the
company’s mission: “Companies have a chance to valorize the cost center of their
byproducts and turn it into a profit center, without much investment on either
side.”
Something of a startup veteran, Manchuliantsau says he has constantly been
thinking about repeat purchases among his client base. He had to find a way to
keep them coming back for a second, third, tenth purchase — something he now has
achieved through Planetarians’ latest, tastiest and most price-competitive
iteration. “Once we started seeing companies come back three, four or five times
and buying the same meat, we knew we could scale and justify our pilot plant.
And now, we are shipping truck loads.”
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Content creator extraordinaire.
Tom is founder of storytelling strategy firm Narrative Matters — which helps organizations develop content that truly engages audiences around issues of global social, environmental and economic importance. He also provides strategic editorial insight and support to help organisations – from large corporates, to NGOs – build content strategies that focus on editorial that is accessible, shareable, intelligent and conversation-driving.
Published May 9, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST