Countless Meals Co has raised €1 million in pre-seed funding to advance its revolutionary chocolate various, THIC (This Isn’t Chocolate), aimed toward tackling sustainability and provide chain points within the chocolate business.
The funding spherical was led by Nordic Foodtech VC, with participation from EIFO and Rockstart, and can allow the corporate to scale manufacturing, set up a pilot plant, and increase its workforce.
Countless Meals Co’s THIC is created from ‘upcycled’ brewer’s spent grain, a main byproduct of beer brewing, and serves as a sustainable, cost-effective various to conventional chocolate. Not like cacao, which faces rising provide challenges resulting from local weather change, THIC is positioned as a scalable resolution that reduces reliance on cacao and addresses environmental and moral issues within the chocolate business.
”Our core mission is to offer a scrumptious, long-term, and price-friendly resolution for the present chocolate and meals industries. Hopefully someday, we will help coat each Mars bar with our various chocolate resolution,” says Maximillian Bogenmann, Co-founder and CEO of Countless Meals Co. “Till then, providing a flavour-first, sustainable various to chocolate on a big scale presents an enormous alternative to positively influence our present meals system. Partnering with a forward-thinking retailer like 7-Eleven provides us an incredible first step towards realising the Countless imaginative and prescient.”
Based in 2022 by Maximillian Bogenmann, Christian Bach, and Matt Orlando, Countless Meals Co leverages its founders’ culinary experience from eating places reminiscent of Noma and The Fats Duck. The corporate’s method to scalable upcycling options highlights how sustainability and indulgence can probably coexist, providing an answer to chocolate’s mounting challenges.
Countless Meals Co has additionally introduced a key industrial partnership with 7-Eleven Denmark to convey its product to market. The collaboration will initially characteristic a collection of THIC-based merchandise, together with a co-branded cookie with TIM’s Cookies, out there in all 180 Danish 7-Eleven places by the top of the yr.
Jesper Østergaard, CEO of 7-Eleven Denmark, expressed enthusiasm for the partnership: “7 – Eleven is consistently exploring new alternatives and difficult the normal manner of doing issues. In our eyes, THIC is a very thrilling product as a result of it’s a extra sustainable various to chocolate – with out compromising on nice style. We’re excited to supply our prospects THIC in our cookies as early as subsequent month – and with out giving all of it away , I’m fairly certain they will look ahead to extra of this sort in our shops sooner or later.”
In line with Countless Meals Co, the normal chocolate business is beneath strain, with cacao costs greater than doubling over the previous yr resulting from climate-induced disruptions within the world provide chain. Moreover, the sector faces vital moral and environmental points, together with deforestation, biodiversity loss, and labour exploitation.
THIC offers a possible resolution, providing the identical style and texture as conventional chocolate however with as much as 80-90% decrease carbon emissions, in response to a current life cycle evaluation.
“Countless Meals Co is a superb guess within the various cacao area. Their components playbook aligns fantastically with our technique round backing founders fixing the deep underlying issues in our world meals system: Cacao is a local weather – threatened crop that can develop into costlier as provide turns into scarcer and demand continues to extend,” says Louise Rørbæk Heiberg from Nordic Foodtech VC. “We’re proud to help this high-powered and impactful workforce of their journey as they develop and increase, beginning wi th this key partnership with 7-Eleven. And let’s be clear , they’ve nailed the style and high quality from the start.”
