Source: The Urgent Company

Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. Here are some of this week’s top headlines.

Startups developing innovative food and ingredients, including alt-proteins, raised a total of $1.4 billion in the first half of this year. Animal-free dairy company Perfect Day raised $350 million to fuel its ingredient and product development as well as launch its dairy-free cream cheese under the brand Modern Kitchen.

Last but not least, Melibio has launched the world’s first bee-free honey.

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Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

1. Alt-Protein, Functional Foods Raise Record $1.4B in H1 2021 – AFN

Innovative Food includes cell-cultured meat, plant-based analogs, fermented and fungi-based proteins, functional foods and other novel ingredients.

2. Perfect Day Raises $350M and Announces Animal-Free Cream Cheese – Food Dive

Some of the funds will go towards The Urgent Company, which announced a new brand of animal-free dairy staples: Modern Kitchen.

3. Europe: Five Seasons Venture Pulls in €180M Fund to Tackle Human Health and Climate via Food Tech – TechCrunch

The fund will make Series A and B investments into European food tech companies, with an emphasis on fast-growing consumer-facing food with a quantifiable environmental or social impact.

4. Meat Startup Focused on Cutting Food Waste Plots Grocery Debut – Bloomberg

Do Good Foods, a meat producer that uses recycled food waste to make supplemental animal feed, is poised to roll out its first product after securing a $169m investment from asset-management giant Nuveen.

5. The Big Food Redesign – Ellen Macarthur Foundation

The new report details how food brands and supermarkets can make nature-positive food the norm. Alpha Food Labs, Food+Tech Connect’s sister company, is thrilled to have worked with Ellen Macarthur Foundation to design the concept products for the report. Check them out!

6. We Tasted the World’s First Real Honey Made Without Bees From MeliBio and We Couldn’t Taste the Difference – Green Queen

MeliBio has just unveiled its flagship product, the world’s first-ever real honey made without bees. It is now ready to take orders from foodservice businesses and ship out its bee-free honey by the end of the year.

7. Restaurants’ Fragile Recovery is Fizzling in the US – Bloomberg

Customers are back but the rebound is threatened by soaring food prices and labor shortages. A survey found that 51% of small restaurants in the country couldn’t pay their rent in September.

8. Restaurants Have More Jobs Than Jobseekers Right Now: OpenTable and Indeed Want to Close the Gap – Fast Company

Amid Covid-19 and the great resignation, labor shortages in the service industry abound.

9. Eleven Madison Park Explores the Plant Kingdom’s Uncanny Valley – New York Times

Now vegan, Daniel Humm’s acclaimed restaurant does strange things to vegetables. Almost none of the main ingredients taste quite like themselves in the 10-course, $335 menu.

10. US Farm Belt Revival Prompts Mad Dash for ‘Dirt and Iron’ – Wall Street Journal

As crop prices climb, American farmers are unleashing spending and investment that had been subdued for years—leading to escalating farmland and equipment prices that could leave them exposed in years ahead.

11. Did the First UN Food Systems Summit Give Corporations Too Much of a Voice? – Civil Eats

Critics say many of the solutions championed at the global gathering of food systems leaders were shaped by the same conglomerates behind the problems.

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