Will Change Foods Change the Dairy Industry?
By early 2021, Change Foods had raised close to $1 million, and set its sights on $5 million more by year’s end. Today, after four total rounds of funding, the Australian-American start-up has earned funding in excess of $15 million.
Now headquartered in Northern California, Change Foods is working to produce real dairy proteins using microbes — rather than the bodies of animals — through an innovative process called precision fermentation. Without relying on the exploitation of a single cow, Change Foods is working on producing a microbe-based cheese that behaves exactly like traditional cows’ milk cheese, even down to the way it melts — because it is actual dairy protein.
As the company’s leadership has pointed out, we can’t expect current animal agribusiness products to fulfill the world’s seemingly unceasing demand for proteins without further serious harm to the environment. So Change Foods has set itself the goal of helping drive an international shift toward sustainable food production, while offering alternative dairy products rich in taste and quality. In fact, they have the same composition as traditional dairy products, but they’re made entirely without the use of animals, and without the giant environmental footprint of animal-based dairy.
Irina Gerry is Change Foods’ chief marketing officer, and she dropped by the Business for Good podcast in 2021 to describe the company’s raison d’etre, business model, marketing strategies, and goals.
Always choosing adventure
Gerry is originally from the former Soviet Union, which she left to attend Harvard Business School. Because she sees life as an adventure rather than something that requires adherence to a rigid plan, she’s enjoyed some remarkable educational and professional opportunities.
Irina grew up in a science-centered town north of Moscow, and most of her high school classmates ended up in biotech careers. After her mother learned about United World Colleges, offering international baccalaureate degrees combined with strong community service and real-world experience components, Gerry enrolled. She met students from South Africa, Sweden, Japan, and beyond, expanding her window on the world.
Gerry went on to Macalester College in Minnesota, then worked in business consulting that involved travel across the United States. Her growing insights from her travels and experiences led her to choose Harvard Business School as the next part of her journey.
She joined first the American processed food giant Procter & Gamble, then yogurt-maker Dannon (or Danone, as it’s known internationally) as manager for its plant-based dairy brands. The move was part of Gerry’s growing commitment to the food aspect of sustainability, and she educated herself through documentaries like Forks Over Knives. At Danone, she refused to move over to the traditional animal-dairy side, preferring to continue with brands like Silk soy milk, which Danone had acquired from WhiteWave Foods in 2016. Gerry’s meeting with WhiteWave founder Steve Demos proved to be one of the most inspirational of her life.
Danone was Gerry’s springboard to Change Foods, co-founded in 2019 by Australian entrepreneur David Bucca. After a chance meeting with the CEO over LinkedIn during the pandemic, Gerry saw the alignment in their values left her secure corporate job to become part of the team at one of the world’s most innovative very early stage alt-dairy start-ups.
The third pillar of alternative proteins
David Bucca and his team’s core work is built on the realization that we can now use microorganisms to produce real meat and dairy proteins that are molecularly identical to their original animal counterparts.
So are Change Foods’ products vegan? It depends. Ethically, they certainly are, because no animals are harmed or even used in production. But because Change Foods’ cheese is made from actual dairy proteins, it’s an allergen for people allergic to milk products (a huge portion of humanity).
The precision fermentation process used by Change Foods is sometimes referred to as the “third pillar” in the alternative protein space. Plant-based foods — think pea protein-based burgers —are the first pillar, followed by cultivated meats (meats grown from animal cells without harming the animals). Precision fermentation is the newest of these overlapping waves, and for Gerry, it holds the greatest promise. Instead of growing animals to produce protein or making products that resemble animal ones, we can now teach microorganisms to produce meat and dairy proteins biologically identical to their animal-based analogues.
Food is emotional
“Food is so emotional,” said Gerry, and that’s the insight that informs her pre-market messaging for Change Foods. Humans’ approach to food encompasses culture, tradition, and connections based in enjoyment. Which means it’s hard to expect people to look at their food rationally, and companies that have touted their technological prowess have often failed to drive the “buy me” message home.
But done right, food marketing tells a powerful story, and can move people to make “incredible changes” in terms of ecologically sustainable choices.
Impossible Foods, with its plant-based meats, was an early over-achiever in this market, and an example Gerry likes to cite. Impossible opened up a bigger playing field for all the companies in the plant-based food space, just because of the way they went to market. In challenging the beloved fast food hamburger model, Impossible went, in Gerry’s words, “right at the heart” of the experience of eating a meat-based burger, making direct connections with people’s emotions. Impossible didn’t emphasize its technical wizardry, but the consumer’s experience.
In addition to taste, availability, performance, and price, people — especially younger people — choose products they can relate to. So brands need to think about the human experience they are creating with their products.
This is what Change Foods is doing by focusing first on the food product they want to create, then looking for the right tech to achieve their goals. The team saw early on that it’s hard for people considering going vegan to give up cheese. So their goal is to make it easier, and that’s the emphasis of their R&D efforts, which have run parallel with product development and pre-revenue marketing. It’s this multi-faceted strategy that should help the company get to market faster.
Companies like hers, Gerry told our listeners, are “on a mission to feed the world.” So go check out my interview with Irina Gerry; I think you’ll get a lot out of it.
