Future Food Quick Bites: Vegan Hot Honey, Dairy-Free February & Earthshot Prize


5 Mins Read

Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Eleven Madison Park’s new vegan hot honey and Kite Hill’s post-Veganuary dairy-free campaign.

New products and launches

Famed New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park has released a private-label version of MeliBio‘s Mellody plant-based honey. Launched under the Eleven Madison Home label, the hot honey is made from plant extracts and red habanero chillies, and is available on its website for $28 per 375g jar.

In the UK, Singapore-headquartered HAPPIEE! is taking on McDonald’s with its plant-based alternatives, launching a new truck with HAPPIEE Meals featuring its vegan scampi right in front of the Golden Arches.

US alt-dairy producer Califia Farms has brought its Simple & Organic range of three-ingredient plant-based milks to the UK, starting with almond and oat milk in Waitrose.

califia farms organic
Courtesy: Califia Farms

Now owned by Oddlygood, British plant milk brand Rude Health has introduced a chilled soy milk with added calcium. Available from February in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Tesco, the four-ingredient offering contains 120mg of calcium (or 15% of the daily recommended intake) per 100ml.

Meanwhile, TiNDLE Foods has brought its vegan chicken to all Call a Pizza locations in Germany, where it will be part of menu items like crispy tenders and juicy burgers.

In the Netherlands, Unilever-owned meat-free brand The Vegetarian Butcher has revamped its beef mince, rolled out tender beef stripes, and relaunched its Cordon Blij and Little Willies SKUs at Albert Heijn.

the vegetarian butcher
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher

And agrifood firm Jaouda has launched Nabatlé, Morocco’s first homegrown plant-based milk brand. It’s available in three varieties: oat, almond, and coconut.

Company and finance updates

Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize has set a ‘protein split’ target to achieve 50% of its protein sales from plant-based foods across its European operations by 2030.

Also in the Netherlands, AI-led food waste scanner startup OneThird has raised €3.5M ($3.6M) in Series A funding and appointed Henrike Langbroek as CEO.

onethird scanner
Courtesy: OneThird

Danish biotech firm Enduro Genetics has secured €12M ($12.4M) in a Series A round to expand its “synthetic addiction” technology to boost yields and lower costs of microbial bioproduction across industries like alternative proteins, green fuels, bioplastics, and specialty chemicals.

British cocoa-free chocolate company Win-Win has named Mark Golder as its new CEO. He has previously worked at Bosh!, Ripple Foods, and Rhythm 108.

European firm The New Originals Company has acquired Dutch tofu maker SoFine Foods and its production facility in Landgraaf.

sofine tofu
Courtesy: SoFine Foods

Now that Veganuary is over, plant-based dairy brand Kite Hill has launched a Dairy-Free February campaign, after a survey found that 36% of Americans would consider trying more plant-based products if they had more information about their health benefits.

North Carolina startup Biomilq, which specialises in cell-based breast milk bioactives, has filed for bankruptcy amid a protracted IP dispute.

Speaking of legal battles, precision fermentation leader Perfect Day has ended its dispute with co-manufacturer Olon, with the case voluntarily dismissed and each entity paying its own legal fees. It’s now on the hunt for a new CEO, following the exit of interim chief Narayan TM.

perfect day whey
Courtesy: Perfect Day

Positioning cultivated meat as a direct alternative rather than a substitute, German cultivated meat startup MyriaMeat has developed pig muscle tissues from pluripotent stem cells that exhibit spontaneous contractions.

Israel’s Vanilla Vida has completed the first scaled harvest of vanilla plants grown via an indoor farming system, which cuts the growing time in half and delivers higher yields than vanillin.

Finnish precision fermentation startup Onego Bio has completed a successful large-scale bakery run with its animal-free egg protein, producing cookies, muffins and cakes.

onego bio
Courtesy: Halle Redfearn/LinkedIn

Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has announced a plan to readjust the ratio of its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) – instead of one ADR representing one ordinary share, the change would see each ADR represent 20 ordinary shares.

In more news from Sweden, dairy giant Valio has teamed up with food tech startup Melt&Marble to use its precision-fermented fats in a variety of “next-generation plant-based products”.

Policy, research and awards

Environmental action charity WRAP and the International Food Waste Coalition have joined forces to launch WRAP EU in an effort to tackle food waste in Europe.

wrap eu
Courtesy: WRAP EU

As part of the WIDERA ERA Talents call, the EU has invested €3M in a project to develop new types of plant-based proteins from Turkish staple crops like chickpeas, lentils, and other legumes. The four-year APRISE project is led by the Middle East Technical University, and the investment falls under the Horizon Europe scheme.

In Canada, the government of Nova Scotia has invested over C$1M to expand the Verschuren Centre, a precision fermentation facility in Cape Breton. The capital will create skilled biomanufacturing jobs, help enhance automation, and increase its client capacity.

Replacing meat with plant-based and fungal alternatives can reduce total cholesterol by 6%, LDL cholesterol by 11%, and body weight by 1% in eight weeks or less, a new study has found.

senara
Courtesy: Senara

German cultivated milk producer Senara has been shortlisted for the 2025 edition of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, after being nominated by the WWF.

Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.

Author

  • Anay Mridul

    Anay is Green Queen's resident news reporter. Originally from India, he worked as a vegan food writer and editor in London, and is now travelling and reporting from across Asia. He's passionate about coffee, plant-based milk, cooking, eating, veganism, food tech, writing about all that, profiling people, and the Oxford comma.

    View all posts

You might also like