You have undoubtedly heard of the amazing benefits of seeds, but did you know that there is a waste product from the seed oil industry? One company is helping upcycle the solid seed waste and upcycle it into tasty food. The best part of it is the food is a plant-based meat alternative that is delicious and packed with high amounts of nutrition, including protein. This is More Foods.
Joey Thurman:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein, Leonardo Marcovicz, founder and CEO of More Foods.
Leonardo Marcovicz:
Thank you for having me.
Joey Thurman:
Now, More Foods, Leonardo, let's get right into, what is More Foods?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
More Foods is a company that's making clean label, short list of ingredients, very tasty, meat alternative products, and what we do [crosstalk 00:00:31].
Joey Thurman:
Meat alternative, what is distinguishing your product versus all of these other different meat alternative companies?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
So at More Foods, we really explored a different avenue, and that's because we use really different ingredients of what's common in the meat alternative industry. So normally in the meat alternative industry, the three main ingredients used are pea protein, sietan and soy protein. We don't use any of those three ingredients. We actually use, the two main protein sources that we use are pumpkin seed flour and sunflower seed flour. And we're able to achieve a product which is about 27% protein, is clean label and has a short list of ingredients.
Joey Thurman:
Wow. And that's really unique from alternative meat proteins because generally speaking, you're not going to have that nutrient profile. So your meat, if you will, is made from upcycled seeds. Why did you go that route?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
The number one reason that consumers are moving towards meat alternatives is for health reasons. And they really care about products that are clean label and have a short list of ingredients. And we saw an opportunity to do two things. One, to differentiate compared to other ingredients in the market. And then secondly, is to achieve this clean label and short list of ingredients. And if we use these side streams, we're able to achieve those goals, and we're able to achieve those goals while we're still competitive with something like pea protein isolates, per cost per protein.
Joey Thurman:
Okay. And when people are trying your product, what's the general response that they get, whether it's somebody that's used to eating your standard animal-based meat versus your products?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
We've had a range of people test our products, and they're eating our products already. And even flexitarians, they really enjoy our products. And what they like is that it has a good balance. Some products are a bit too rubbery in the market, and some products are too soft. And our product seems to have the perfect chew, a very good chew to it, a very nice bite to it. So this is what they really appreciate. As a company, we're not achieving to exactly mimic the texture and the flavor of meat. What we say at More Foods is that what we aim for is to create amazing center of plate experiences. And when people think about eating animal-based products, they think of something that will make them feel satisfied, and like they ate something substantial. And also, that's also related to protein content as well. And so we're able to achieve both things. And where it comes from, whether it comes from an animal or whether it comes from a plant protein, people don't care. What they care about is the experience. And that's what More Foods does.
Joey Thurman:
Yeah. I mean, you're right. They want the experience, they want the flavor profile. And of course, they want to feel full and satiated. And on top of that, this is helping with sustainability, and the nutritional factor. So can you speak on that?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
Sure. We haven't done a full cycle analysis of how much CO2 emissions are produced for per protein produced of our products, of our final products. But I can tell you that they're very small because we use the side streams from the edible oil industry. And in any case, as you may well know, Joey, the magnitudes of plant-based products, compared between each other, compared to the magnitude of proteins of animals, is significant. So the difference between the sustainability profile between animal proteins, compared to plant proteins, those are orders of magnitude different than everyone that's working on plant proteins, that's quite sustainable. To start comparing between plant proteins, you can do that, but the magnitude is not going to be as significant. So for example, for pea protein, peas don't have such a high protein content. And so you need to do some significant process thing in order to increase the protein content, whether you're doing a concentrate or you're doing an isolate. So you do consume more CO2 emissions than something, for example, like soy.
Joey Thurman:
Yeah, that's fair. And right now, your products are generally in restaurants, correct?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
Yeah. We started pilot launches in January, in Tel Aviv, in Israel. That's where the company's based off of. And we started in January, without doing any marketing or mentioning even our product, the name of the product on the menus. And that's because we wanted to test how it works. And we're happy to say that the customers that we started in January are still our customers now, and every week, we're adding more and more restaurants. So we started with a chain of Mexican restaurants, it's a chain of eight restaurants. They're very happy with the products. And we see that the sales in the branches are either remain equal or they're increasing. And then also, our products are also being served in a Mediterranean food chain restaurant, it's also being served in bistro restaurants, it's also being served in coffee shops, it's also being served in high-end catering. So what that means is that our product is extremely versatile.
Joey Thurman:
So is this taking on the flavor profile of whatever you said, Mexican and Mediterranean, and whatever flavor profile they're going for, yours is able to mimic that?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
Exactly. But the way that we do that is not by us at this stage because we're doing food service. We don't put the flavorings in the product. What we do is we sell a product that has a very good texture, and then the specific restaurants can take it in the direction that they want. So if it's a Mexican restaurant, they'll put the seasonings that's normally associated with Mexican cuisine. If it's an Asian restaurant, it's the same thing, and so on and so forth. So we really give the flexibility to the chefs and the restaurant operators to take it the direction that they want.
Joey Thurman:
Oh, that's great. So they can make it their own essentially. Now what is next on the horizon for More Foods?
Leonardo Marcovicz:
So a few things. We have, so the first product is somewhat similar to beef. I mentioned that we don't aim to mimic exact the experience of any specific animal product, but it is somewhat similar to beef in terms of how it looks, and the texture is similar. And then we have other products in the roadmap. We have lamb coming up, also pork and then tuna, and then we many other products. And that's just with the existing formulations and the IP that we discovered how to use these protein sources for. And then apart from that, the vision of the company is that there's such a massive amount of underutilized ingredients, that the industry hasn't had the guts. More companies, I would love for more companies to also join us in this adventure. There's so many side streams and More Foods is really exploring these side streams.
Leonardo Marcovicz:
And we see that's a treasure trove that needs to be explored. And so the future is to not only do those products that I mentioned, the beef and the pork and the lamb, et cetera, with the existing formulations we have already, and we've produced, but also to explore other ingredients, beyond possibly pumpkin and sunflower, other ingredients that are also side streams in order to create other products.
Joey Thurman:
That's amazing. I mean, More Foods is truly thinking of more ways to incorporate plants into our life. Leonardo, thank you so much for coming on Talking Plant Protein.
Leonardo Marcovicz:
Sure, my pleasure.