• 🐣 Supply Chain Update: Another Spike In The Avian Flu?
• 📦 Soom Shutters Online Store
• 💰 Frost Ventures Changes Name, Adds Co-Packing Capabilities
• 🌌 Bright Idea: Icelandic Provisions Releases Northern Lights Skyr Kit

Intellectual property (IP) is the tech industry’s most treasured resource and the food tech space is no different. Yet, as the industry has matured, new proponents of an open-sourced approach to research have taken the stance often taught to preschool classrooms: Sharing is caring. Here’s a look at why it’s on the front burner:

☕ Lab grown coffee (also called molecular coffee) is the most recent innovation to enter this conversation. This week, researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland published its recipe. (Don’t get too excited – it's slightly more complex than mixing in a bowl and baking for 20 minutes.)

Molecular coffee makers claim it to be a solution to the industry’s main challenges: deforestation and land use from coffee production, unfair labor practices and sourcing transparency. By opening its books to others, VTT hopes to help the industry hurdle the time and capital intensive research necessary to make lab grown coffee a viable retail product. It’s an approach that’s been favored by software developers, Tesla and other tech ventures, but does it have a role in modern CPG? 

🧑‍🔬 This approach to sustainable innovations has also been advocated for by Miyoko Schinner, the founder and former CEO of Miyoko’s Creamery. During a keynote at Natural Products Expo West 2023, Schinner argued that sharing innovation and technology freely was the most viable path to rebuild the food system with a more sustainable and ethical foundation.

Schinner is not alone. Israel-based, cell-cultured meat company SuperMeat has taken a similar stance to open-source research and aims to create a platform in the cell ag food industry to move innovation forward.

💸 But debate over open-source research is “complicated” because not-for-profit research can become the building blocks for scaling innovation; yet, “investors and stakeholders want us to keep and protect our IP,” said Maricel Saenz, founder and CEO of alt coffee company Minus Coffee.

💭 “Ultimately, we're all on the mission of trying to create solutions related to climate change… it's important that it comes with a combination of intellectual property to bring value to these companies and the people who are developing [it] and, at the same time, open source research that can create a really solid baseline to properly accelerate change,” she said.

Go Deeper: The Question Of Open Source Research In Lab Grown Coffee.

Cal-Maine Foods – the country’s largest egg supplier – reported yesterday that one of its Kansas facilities tested positive for avian flu, affecting about 684,000 laying hens. 

🥚 The flock represents only 1.6% of Cal-Maine’s total chick count, but considering the company supplies three-quarters of the U.S. egg supply, if the infection spreads the impact could be felt (once again) across the food industry. 

🐥 Cal-Maine said it has implemented strict protocols to prevent exposure to other locations, including its nearby layered complex that houses approximately one million hens. About 5 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been slaughtered this year due to the disease.

🍳 Egg prices skyrocketed throughout 2022 and peaked at $4.82 a dozen in January; while the illness has not been eliminated, egg prices ($2.09 per dozen) and flocks have largely recovered from the height of the outbreak.

Closing out the year, and closing up the (online) shop. Tahini food brand Soom announced that it will shut down its digital store on December 22 as it switches focus to sales in the physical realm. The decision was made with two primary factors in mind: 

1️⃣ DTC accounted for just 5% of Soom’s revenue, yet 24% of its warehouse’s workload consisted of packing orders.

2️⃣ Factor in the marketing spend to drive online purchases and the ROI was not balancing out. The company decided dollars would be better spent where consumers are already shopping Soom – like at retail partners Whole Foods and Publix. 

🛒 But Soom isn’t totally ditching omnichannel just yet: The products will remain available on Amazon, Thrive Market and Misfits Market. In 2024, the brand plans to focus efforts on growing retail distribution and expanding sales across its existing channels.

Frost Investments now goes by Frost Ventures and the name change brings more than just an indication for early stage brand support. Frost has added a new subsidiary – dubbed The Vegan Co-Packer – that specializes in fully vegan baking manufacturing.

🍪 Frost has invested in numerous plant-based CPG brands including Woah Dough, Blackbird Foods, Maya’s Cookies and Trupo Treats.

⚙️ The investment vehicle has also expanded its financial services to offer lines of credit and equipment leasing.

Surely we’ve all longed to view the Northern Lights up close, but has anyone ever wanted to taste them? 

⭐ Icelandic Provisions is bringing the atmospheric phenomenon straight to breakfast bowls with a limited edition Northern Lights Skyr Kit, launching December 21 – the best day to view the dancing auroras. 

🥣 The $11 kit includes a cup of Icelandic Provisions Northern Lights-flavored skyr as well as ingredients like green matcha, Icelandic blue spirulina, wild blueberry syrup and edible gold glitter to bring the aura borealis to life. 

✈️ In partnership with Icelandair, fans who sign up to buy the kit will automatically be entered to win a trip to Iceland to see the Northern Lights up close.