Entrepreneurship and alternative proteins

GFI’s company database tracks emerging and established companies in alternative proteins. It provides information on each company’s focus, location, year founded, founders, and websites. The company database can help with competitive landscape analysis and identification of collaborators or customers. It can also increase your company’s discoverability.

If you would like to add or update your company’s information in the database, please fill out this form. 

Explore our market overview of U.S. retail sales data for plant-based meat, egg, and dairy products, including size, growth, and purchase dynamics.  To understand the retail landscape, you can review our Good Food Retail Report which ranks the top retailers in the U.S. on their plant-based product assortment, merchandising, and marketing strategies.

The Good Food Restaurant Scorecard ranks the top 100 U.S. restaurants on their plant-based menu items and marketing. View GFI’s summary of NPD market data on plant-based foodservice growth in the United States, and check out our plant-based foodservice market overview webinar for a deeper look at foodservice data.

Alternative proteins exist because of groundbreaking scientific innovation. Dive into the science to learn exactly how innovators are harnessing the power of plants, animal cell cultivation, and microbes to create the next generation of protein products. 

If you want to conduct groundbreaking R&D (and are willing to share your findings), GFI has three grant mechanisms in place for open-access scientific alt protein research. The grants vary from $50,000 to $250,000 across our yearly Competitive Research Grant Program, special White Space grants RFPs, and nimble exploratory grants. 

You can also join the 4,000+ people who have signed up for GFI’s free massive open online course (MOOC), an introduction into the science of making meat from plants and animal cells. 

Maybe you know you want to start an alternative protein company but don’t know precisely which product or service to provide. Maybe you’re looking to launch an additional product line, or even pivot your company.

To get you started, GFI has identified key challenges and opportunities in plant-based, fermentation-enabled and cultivated meat, eggs, and dairy as well as several opportunities specific to seafood. 

Reading industry white papers, like our reports  on plant-based egg alternatives and production methods for cultivated meat, can also increase your understanding of the field and help uncover potential white spaces. 

Accelerating Solutions for Alternative Proteins Initiative

Based on surveys and interviews with dozens of scientists, business leaders, investors, and other experts, GFI is now offering the alternative protein industry’s most comprehensive analysis of opportunities and challenges, including a list of innovation priorities and a continuously-updated database of commercial opportunities, research ideas, and ecosystem-level solutions for a wide variety of stakeholders.

Crafting a pitch deck is both art and science, and is vital to raising funds and shaping the narrative for your company. Our pitch deck review form offers a checklist to ensure your deck is what investors are looking for. We recommend you work through this exercise and also ask an advisor to do so. 

Show (or build) evidence of customer traction, market pull, and/or product-market fit 

Even in pre-R&D, you can provide evidence of consumer demand for your product through a variety of creative ways like product crowdfunding pre-sales, focus groups, surveys, and letters of intent from future customers.

Refine your go-to-market strategy 

Whether launching direct-to-consumer, B2B, or in foodservice, how will your strategy impact your product formulations, marketing plan, company culture, and fundraising ability?

Identify your value proposition and what makes it defensible

Investors want to see that you’re innovating in product development rather than simply pursuing a market niche in the short term. What is your advantage when there are ten companies pursuing the same market?

Calculate or project your unit economics

The venture capital model is driven by exceptional returns. You’ll need to be highly profitable when you are at scale. Even when it requires assumptions, knowing your unit economics is critical to demonstrating feasibility.

Tell a compelling story

If you are mission-driven, absolutely lead with that, but don’t rely on the problems inherent to animal agriculture to carry your pitch. Investors want more. Focus on what makes your company unique and what makes you well-positioned to succeed. 

GFI’s investor directory contains more than 200 investors who have opted in to sharing their information with fundraising alt protein startups. The directory has a variety of angel and institutional investors and can be filtered by typical investment round, typical check size, types of companies most interested in, and location. This resource is only available to alternative protein companies that are actively fundraising — you’ll need to submit a pitch deck for approval. To access, fill out our fundraising support form and we will follow up.

Joining an incubator or accelerator like Big Idea Ventures, Brinc, Food-X, IndieBio, ProVeg, or Y Combinator can be an excellent way to refine your business, build networks, and raise funds. Check out our map of incubators and accelerator programs relevant to alternative proteins. We recommend exploring the map to see if there are any programs that might be a good fit.

GlassWall Syndicate is a third-party non-profit organization consisting of mission-driven accredited investors devoted to removing animals from supply chains. We highly recommend GlassWall Syndicate to fundraising early stage alternative protein companies. Learn more and apply.

Join GFI’s fundraising database to get your company in front of interested investors. First list your startup in GFI’s company database and then add your fundraise details to the fundraising database. You can add your fundraise details at any time. 

Looking for a little help with technical and scientific, business and strategic, and/or regulatory and food safety topics? Download our list of industry experts who have indicated that their knowledge of one or more segments of the alternative proteins industry makes them well-positioned to serve as consultants across these areas.

Finding the right talent is critical to growing your company. Add alt protein jobs and  internships to our jobs board to maximize visibility for new roles at your organization. And request access to GFI’s talent database. This is the go-to resource for employers and founders in the alternative protein space seeking mission-aligned talent, including employees, contractors, advisors, and more. This database contains resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information for professionals, scientists, and students who want to be a part of the future of food.

GFI’s plant-based meat manufacturing guide provides an introduction to the process of extrusion. And our plant protein primer compares various plant proteins on cost, allergenicity, sustainability, and other factors. 

If you are not building your own production facilities, working with co-manufacturers will be essential. We have a non-exhaustive directory of co-manufacturers, co-packers, private labelers, and consultants to help with your search. When evaluating prospective co-manufacturers, feel free to consult GFI’s co-manufacturer evaluation checklist.

GFI has a dedicated webpage with other resources for food manufacturers, like our white paper on formulating with animal-free ingredients.

Life cycle analyses (LCAs) are crucial in evaluating products’ environmental impacts and for businesses to make substantiated, credible environmental claims. However, the absence of robust, standardized data in the alternative protein industry makes LCAs difficult and costly to commission. 

To address this gap, GFI teamed up with Foodsteps to create an LCA modeling software for alternative proteins. A free version of the software allows companies to assess up to five products across five key impact categories: carbon emissions, water use, land use, acidification, and eutrophication — measuring their product’s ecological footprint from cradle (agricultural stage) to factory gate (end of manufacturing but pre-packaging). 

This software guides effective, sustainable decision-making in product design, production scale, and location while providing internal and external (via the premium version) sustainability reporting. This can be pivotal to enhance your market position and attract eco-conscious investors.

Our best practice guide provides a standardized approach to undertaking life cycle assessments (LCAs) for alternative protein manufacturers. The guide offers insight into commissioning and overseeing the development of LCAs, as well as interpreting and leveraging their results.

The Good Food Institute & FAIRR Initiative co-developed ESG frameworks to supply investors and companies involved in the alternative proteins industry with powerful, standardized tools to monitor, measure, and report industry-specific risks and opportunities.

Whether you specialize in alternative proteins or produce alternative proteins alongside other products, you can access a customized framework and technical guide to learn about ESG best practices within the industry and get started reporting.