Editor's note: This year we honored some of the brightest young minds in the Bay Area innovation sector as part of our Inno Under 25 feature. Check out all the profiles from this year's honorees here.
It started as a class assignment. Jessica Schwabach was studying molecular biology and thinking about going into medicine, but then she took a course at UC Berkeley’s Alternative Meat Lab where she met her future co-founder, Siwen Deng, 30. They were tasked with solving a problem that many plant-based protein products have: dryness. Vegetables just don’t have fat caps like a pork chop does. As the semester wound down, they were both swamped with coursework but an adviser at the lab suggested their project had real business potential. They founded Sundial Foods in 2019 and have developed an edible film that can keep their proprietary chickpea-based chicken wings moist. The company says its manufacturing process can create whole cuts of alternative protein which mimic the texture of meat — though, there’s no edible “bone” in it yet. Sundial Foods’ wings are sold at Manny’s Café and Foghorn Taproom in San Francisco, and the company is lining up more launches with food service and retail partners in 2023.
Jessica Schwabach
- Age: 23
- Education: UC Berkeley undergrad
- Title: co-founder and CEO of Sundial Foods
- Location: Berkeley
- What the company does: Developing plant-based whole cuts of protein that mimic the real texture of meat and retain moisture
- Funding: $4 million
Boil down your elevator pitch to 10 words or less. Creating plant-based, whole cuts of meat from simple ingredients
When you think about the company long-term, what’s the ideal future or exit strategy? I think our goal really is for Sundial to be a name brand. We want to be behind revolutionary change in whole cuts and for consumers to see that and to know that they’re going to be getting quality products. If there’s a path that takes us there, where we are still behind Sundial and continuing to grow and work on it somehow, that’s where we want to go.
Who would you say is your greatest influence? In my personal life, definitely my mom. My mom immigrated from China when she was finishing a biomedical degree and wanted to get a Ph.D. and to move to America. She came here with like $80 in her pocket and just decided that she was going to do it. And she did. So she’s very inspiring to me.
Why have you become an entrepreneur? I became an entrepreneur, not because I ever thought that I was someone who was equipped to be an entrepreneur, but really because the opportunity presented as we learned about the market and the challenges and our unique ability to provide a solution. It felt like an opportunity that needed to be taken, and I couldn’t step away from that.
For you, what does that mean to be Gen Z? I think it means to have grown up very much immersed in a world that doesn’t have the same boundaries that it used to. We had phones and access to the internet and access to social media at a really young age. I think I made a Facebook account when I was 6 or 7. It keeps telling me happy 28th birthday. But I don’t know if Gen Z looks at borders quite the same way that other generations do.
Who is another Gen Zer who’s really killing it right now? Zendaya. I think that she’s really successful and hardworking, and keeps a really cool air about her.
The original version of this story incorrectly cited the ages of Jessica Schwabach's as 19 and Siwen Deng as 29. Their correct ages are 23 and 30.
