– USA, MA – Tender Food – formerly Boston Meats – a food technology startup, announced a $12m seed financing round led by Lowercarbon Capital, to scale production of its plant-based meat products.
“Our ambition is to make products that are indistinguishable from butchered meat. By recreating the textures and fibers of animal-based meats, we can ensure that no matter what cut of meat you want, a plant-based product from Tender is what you reach for,” said CEO and co-founder, Christophe Chantre.
The round led by Chris Sacca (Lowercarbon Capital) is joined by pre-seed lead investor Rhapsody Venture Partners, actress, and renowned animal rights activist Natalie Portman, Safar Partners, Bread and Butter Ventures, MCJ Collective, and food tech specialist investor Unovis.
Tender’s unique approach is enabled by innovations in materials and protein fiber manufacturing originally conceived in the Harvard lab of Dr. Kevin Kit Parker (Ph.D.) who is the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an Associate Faculty member of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Before launching the company, Christophe Chantre, Tender’s CEO, was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Wyss Institute.
“The roughly 6 billion carnivorous humans that eat meat drive about 15% of total carbon emissions. Cheers to the vegans, but to win over everybody else you need steaks and chops made from plants that are just as tasty off the grill as what gets cleaved off a carcass,” said Chris Sacca, co-founder of Lowercarbon Capital.
“The texture of real meat has been very difficult to imitate with current alternative meat texturizing solutions,” said Dr. Parker, who is also a co-founder of Tender and former guest judge on the Food Network. “Our technology’s ability to replicate the architecture and mechanics of animal muscle in a plant-based protein food item, while meeting the nutritional goals of protein consumption, should impact the industry significantly.”
About Tender Food
Tender Food is a food technology company in the Greater Boston Area, a biotech research and innovation hub. Launched in 2020 by Harvard engineers, Tender specializes in creating alternative meats with authentic textures. Tender is on a mission to make alternative meats so delicious, nutritious, and affordable that eating animals won’t make sense anymore.
For more, visit www.tenderfood.com.
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