Future Food Quick Bites: EcoButter Chocolates, La Vie Sneakers & Bold Bean Co
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Savor’s United Airlines showcase, La Vie’s foray into fashion, and Bold Bean Co’s sales milestone.
New products and launches
Alt-fat startup Savor showcased its carbon-derived EcoButter as part of chocolates made by TCHO Chocolate at United Elevated, an event held at the LAX hangar of United Airlines (an investor in Savor).
Vegan frozen food brand Blackbird Foods has expanded the availability of its five-inch Pizza Minis, whose cheese and pepperoni variants can be found nationwide at Sprouts Farmers Market.
New Zealand startup Nutrition from Water has partnered with China’s Jiangsu Jiangshan Pharmaceutical to produce its microalgae-derived Marine Whey on a commercial scale.
In the Netherlands, Schouten Europe has introduced a new plant-based fillet with a proprietary fibre structure that resembles animal muscle while reducing the level of processing.
And Dutch snack manufacturer De Bourgondiër has rolled out blended beef croquettes and bitterballen, combining the meat with brewers’ spent grain.
French startup La Vie has become the latest plant-based brand to launch a fashion collaboration, partnering with MoEa to create a 100% vegan sneaker, all proceeds of which will go to animal rights charity YouCare France.
Company and finance updates
La Vie has also announced a brand refresh, changing its visual identity from pink to green after studies found the current colour didn’t make it “sufficiently identifiable” as a plant-based brand. Shifting to green was also found to boost the ‘natural’ perception of its products by nearly 17% among its target consumers.
London-based firm Bold Bean Co has become the top-selling brand in the canned beans and chickpeas category in the UK, with year-on-year sales growing by over 94%.
After a year where its sales grew over 10-fold, UK vegan pet food startup Omni has appointed Mike Stevens as its new managing director. He was previously the founder of Peppersmith and head of operations at Innocent Drinks.
Elsewhere, Californian precision-fermented egg startup The Every Company has hired Riley Jackson as its sales manager. She has held roles at Ivy Farm Technologies, TiNDLE Foods and Impossible Foods.
Swiss supermarket Coop has delisted Emmi‘s Beleaf brand of plant-based milks, cheeses and yoghurts from its stores, suggesting that they fell short of the retailer’s expectations. Other Emmi products continue to be stocked at Coop.
Research, policy and awards
JBS-owned meat-free leader The Vegetarian Butcher Collective hosted a political delegation from the Dutch and European parliaments to discuss the protein transition and share insights about the plant-based market.
French startup Nūmi, which is working on producing breast milk from cell-cultured mammary glands, has won PeakBridge and PariSanté Campus‘s Shaping the Future of Health and Nutrition competition. German seafood alternative firm Koralo, meanwhile, won the Coup Coeur.
Time Magazine has released its list of America’s Top Greentech Companies for 2026, with Upside Foods the highest-ranked food tech firm (23rd). Other alternative protein startups appearing on the list include Impossible Foods, BlueNalu, Livekindly, Ripple Foods, Nature’s Fynd, MycoTechnology, Mission Barns, Prime Roots, and Wildtype, among others.
A new study shows that cultivated pork has higher protein digestibility and conversion into free amino acids than conventional pork, albeit with a lower overall protein content.
Finally, an assessment of alternative proteins shows that plant-based meats have the greatest potential to contribute to a sustainable food system. Fermentation-derived proteins also have high potential, while cultivated meat has high potential on the animal welfare metric.
Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.