A Chicago startup that makes meatless breakfast patties and dairy-free cream cheese is gearing up to add a major new R&D center as it prepares to bring its products to more stores, including Mariano's in Chicago.
Nature's Fynd announced Thursday that it's planning to open a 200,000-square-foot facility at Marina Crossings on Chicago's South Side. It adds to the startup's current 35,000-square-foot facility in the Union Stockyards, also on the South Side.
The new building will serve as Nature Fynd's R&D and innovation center and will help ramp up production of its product, called Fy. Fy is a fungi-based protein created by a fermentation process that's based on NASA research, which discovered a way to efficiently grow edible and nutritional fungi protein from microscopic organisms.
Nature's Fynd first launched its breakfast patties and cream cheese in California, and it expects to bring its products to Chicago and across the region in the coming weeks, starting at Mariano's.
The company currently has 150 workers in Chicago. It expects to add another 200 local employees by 2023.
The new facility comes after Nature's Fynd raised $350 million in new funding this year, bringing its total capital raised to date to over half a billion. Founded in 2012 by CEO Thomas Jonas, the startup's investors include big names like Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management, and SoftBank. Nature's Fynd is among around a dozen new startups in Chicago to hit a unicorn valuation of $1 billion or higher this year.
