San Francisco plant-based chicken nugget startup Nowadays has closed a seed round of more than $7 million it will use to add new products and distribution channels, the company announced Monday.
With the latest funding, bringing the company's total to just under $10 million to date, Nowadays plans to launch a new chicken cutlet product this summer available on its website as well as some restaurants. It also aims to debut its nuggets in retail stores including Whole Foods Market by the end of the year.
Like other local protein startups, Nowadays told me it will also use the funds to establish a larger-than 15,000-square-foot production plant in California it says will produce thousands of pounds of whole cuts of meat on a weekly basis and will house a test kitchen and research and development space. The company declined to specify if it would be in the Bay Area.
The round was led by Kansas-based Stray Dog Capital, which specializes in alternative protein companies and has invested in local startups including Miyoko's Creamery, Upside Foods, and Hooray Foods as well as plant- and cell-based industry forerunners like Beyond Meat and BlueNalu, respectively. Other investors this time included returning sources VegInvest Trust, Tenacious Ventures, Cornucopian Capital and the Good Protein Fund as well as newcomers Selva Ventures, FoodHack, Beyond Impact, and Gaingels.
Next quarter the company told me it also plans to transform its finished products at greater scale with the help of a co-manufacturer "in the middle of the U.S.," which appears to be Dallas-based Standard Meat Co., a conventional meat processing and packaging business supplying national restaurant chains, supermarkets and club stores. Nowadays announced the company would be lending "additional strategic support."
Nowadays says its product has an easier pathway to cost parity with conventional meat because it doesn't require the kinds of thickeners or additives to hold its ingredients together like its competitors, allowing its whole cuts to fit into existing manufacturing finishing lines quicker and more cheaply.
"Our piece of plant-based meat behaves the same as a real piece of meat, which is why we can much faster and easier scale; we don't need to have all this blending and forming and preparation," co-founder Dominik Grabinski told the Business Times last year in describing the production process, which involves extrusion in a similar manner to the making of pasta, cereals, and Cheetos.
Improved scaling could conceivably lead Nowadays to lower its potential barrier price point of about $40 per box of 50 frozen nuggets. However, the price hasn't changed in the past year, while current orders are on back order, per its website.
Nowadays aims to distinguish itself from competitors with a comparatively "simple" list of seven ingredients, including non-GMO yellow pea protein, whole wheat flour, sunflower oil, maple fiber, and yeast and mushroom extracts (for a savory "umami" taste). Despite marketing associations, many varieties of plant-based meat are not more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. These nuggets contain about 13 grams of protein and 120 calories, no saturated fat, and 250 mg of sodium per serving, the company says.
Nowadays was founded in 2020 by Grabinski and Max Elder and has worked out of a San Mateo incubator space, Kitchentown, while also maintaining a headquarter address in San Francisco's Mission district. Prior to the latest funding round its valuation was $11.5 million in March, as estimated by PitchBook.
