Chicago startup Tovala, maker of a smart countertop oven and meal delivery service, has a new partnership with Beyond Meat where customers will now have the option to cook plant-based meals in their Tovala ovens.
Tovala announced Thursday that it will begin offering Beyond Meat meals starting in June. The startup's professional chefs will incorporate the plant-based protein in several new menu options that customers can choose from, including green chili with Beyond Beef crumbles and Italian sausage & eggplant pasta with Beyond Beef Italian sausage crumbles.
Tovala will offer a total of six Beyond Meat meal options, which work like all of Tovala's chef-prepared meals. Users scan the meal's barcode on the oven, and the oven automatically cooks it with the correct technique. Tovala's oven uses a combination of steam heat, baking and broiling to cook meals in 20 minutes or less.
Tovala will also have eight recipes featuring Beyond Meat on its mobile app recipe library, allowing customers to make their own meals using Beyond Meat and cook them in their Tovala oven.
CEO and co-founder David Rabie said the partnership will last throughout the month of June, and could come back depending on customer demand.
"We're super aligned (with Beyond Meat) on what our customers want," he said. "I think there's a ton of overlap between our customers and theirs."
Beyond Meat went public earlier this month and has been the most successful IPO of 2019. Its stock has climbed almost 250 percent since trading began May 2.
Tovala, founded in 2015, has raised $13 million to date from investors that include Tyson Foods and Origin Ventures.
