A global food giant has a new partnership with West Sacramento's The Better Meat Co.
On Wednesday, Hormel Foods Corp. announced that its 199 Ventures unit, which invests in emerging food companies and entrepreneurs, has a new exclusive partnership with the West Sacramento food tech company to develop new food products using Better Meat’s next-generation animal-free protein ingredient Rhiza.
"As a global branded food company, we understand our food culture is changing at a rapid pace and people are curious and willing to try great tasting, plant-based proteins," said Fred Halvin, vice president of corporate development at Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL), in a statement. "We are excited to work with The Better Meat Co. team to continue to offer delicious and convenient mycoprotein and plant-based protein products."
Better Meat opened its 14,000-square-foot facility to research and produce Rhiza in June. CEO Paul Shapiro said companies have been clamoring for it ever since.
“The plant that we built here in West Sacramento, the demand is already far outstripping the supply,” he said.
Shapiro said Hormel wanted an exclusive partnership to ensure it had consistent access to the ingredient while developing new products.
“There’s just not enough to satiate the demand in the market, unfortunately,” Shapiro said.
Founded in 2018, Better Meat is a business-to-business food ingredient maker that produces animal-free protein enhancements for food companies to make products for the plant-based market or to blend into meat products to boost nutrition and lower costs.
Its newest development, Rhiza, is a mycoprotein made by fermenting plants like potatoes and sorghum.
The result is a whole-food product that’s high in protein, iron, fiber and potassium, cheaper than beef, and, Shapiro says, has a meatier texture than previous plant-based protein products.
“Nearly all of the animal-free meats that are made today are made from soy, wheat or peas,” Shapiro said. “When you’re using plants, it’s harder to make plants taste like animals.”
Better Meat is now looking to expand its production of Rhiza.
“This is an R&D plant,” Shapiro said. “We are going to be producing our best material for Hormel, but we still would like to use it for R&D.”
He said the company is scouting locations for a new production facility, one that is 10 times larger than its current one.
“We are going to be designing a plant that is dramatically larger than this one, that will be a full-scale plant,” he said.
Shapiro said Better Meat is looking at sites both within the Sacramento region and outside of it. Once a location is selected, he said the company plans to start construction as soon as possible.
