Top 10 sustainable food startups
2021-06-09
Confido
8 minutes
This week we’re taking a deep dive into the world of sustainable food.
Worldwide, 30% of all food produced is wasted. In UK households alone, 4.5m tonnes of food is thrown away every year. That’s 10bn meals. Financially speaking, it works out at £700 annually for an average family with children. That’s a lot of waste.
Thankfully, there's a range of amazing startups disrupting the food industry with revolutionary products, tools and apps. This is by no means an exhaustive list – there are so many fantastic foodie startups out there, we were spoiled for choice!
Here are our top 10 sustainable food startups...
About: iFarm is developing solutions for modern urban farming. They create technologies that enable anyone to grow fresh vegetables, berries, greens and edible flowers for personal use or commercial purposes. They offer fully automated, sustainable, eco-friendly and economically viable turnkey solutions suitable for production sites of any size.
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: iFarm has raised a total of $4m in funding over one round. This was a Seed round raised in August 2020.
About: Good Club is the easy way to shop sustainably. Wave goodbye to waste and stop single-use plastic entering the environment. Shop sustainable staples in returnable, refillable pots. Their returnable pots save CO2 as well as waste to help reduce your carbon footprint compared to regular shopping, plus they provide free monthly carbon neutral delivery.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Good Club has raised a total of £2.6m in funding over five rounds. Their latest funding was raised In February 2021 from an Equity Crowdfunding round.
About: The allplants team believe the world (and everyone on it, including us) would be better off if we ate more plants. Eating 100% plant-based meals should be tasty, easy and convenient. That’s why allplants was born – to help people enjoy plant-based eating on their schedule. Their tasty vegan meals are delivered frozen to lock in nutrition and taste. From food to delivery, everything is designed to protect the planet.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: allplants has raised a total of £10.3m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in February 2020 from an Equity Crowdfunding round.
About: Meatable want to satisfy the world’s appetite for meat without harming people, animals or the planet. They’re pioneering a way of producing real meat without harm. By taking a sample from an unharmed cow or pig, they replicate the natural process of fat and muscle growth, and mix the two elements together to produce meat.
Location: The Netherlands
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Meatable has raised a total of $62.9m in funding over five rounds. Their latest funding was raised in March 2021 from a Series A round.
About: Stockeld Dreamery are creating the world’s most ambitious plant-based cheese. As they put it, ‘Making cheese without milk is bloody hard. At Stockeld Dreamery, we are obsessively striving to create the indulging experience of cheese that we love so much.’ The team have a strong conviction that tastier and more nutritious alternatives to our favourite foods can be developed, we just haven’t tried hard enough.
Location: Sweden
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Stockeld Dreamery has raised a total of €3.3m in funding over one round. This was a Seed round raised in January 2020.
About: Kitche is a free app designed to save you money and food waste at home. Ever forget what food you’ve got in the kitchen? Kitche keeps track of your products and gives helpful reminders for food you have at home. Want smart recipes based on food you have already bought? Kitche lets you filter recipes based on your ingredients. Kitche it, don’t ditch it!
Location: London
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Fill your belly and save the planet by rescuing fruit and veg straight from the farm, including the odd curvy cucumber. By going directly to farmers, asking what they’ve got too much of and what’s in season, Oddbox is cutting out the supermarkets and reducing the amount of food chucked away. Better for the planet, better for your plate. And all those dinky apples too. They also donate 10% of everything they save towards fighting food poverty.
Location: London
Company size: 50 to 100 employees
Funding: Oddbox has raised a total of £3.8m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in March 2020 from a Venture - Series Unknown round.
About: Solar Foods have created a revolutionary way to produce a natural protein with just electricity and air. An entirely new kind of food that is natural, can taste like anything, and unlike any other food, not limited to the availability of land or the use of animals, agriculture and aquaculture. Their bioprocess utilises direct-air capture, natural fermentation and renewable energy to deliver the most sustainable protein in the world. Find out they we do it, here.
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Solar Foods has raised a total of $42m in funding over five rounds. Their latest funding was raised in April 2021 from a Debt Financing round.
About: Fareshare believe that no good food should go to waste. They redistribute surplus food from supermarkets and businesses to charities that turn it into meals. The food they rescue is perfectly good to eat but would otherwise be thrown away due to issues like labelling errors, discontinued lines or being past their BBE (best before end) date. So far, they’ve redistributed 24,074 tonnes of food, equalling 57.3 million meals for vulnerable people.
Location: London
Company size: 101 to 250 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: On OLIO, you’ll find millions of people giving away food & other household items to their neighbours, all for free. More than 3m OLIOers have shared over 17m portions of food, saving the equivalent of 52m car miles! The team believes OLIO can help create a world in which nothing of value goes to waste, and every single person has enough to eat – without destroying our planet in the process.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: OLIO has raised a total of $10.1m in funding over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised in January 2019 from a Venture - Series Unknown round.
We want to do everything we can to help support these fantastic businesses and the work they’re doing.
If you belong to a sustainable food startup and would like to have a chat about how we could scale your Product or Tech teams, do get in touch at contact@confidotalent.com.
Have we missed your favourites? Let us know on Twitter or LinkedIn, we’d love to hear from you!