A sandwich made with Next Gen Foods’ plant-based chicken product called TiNDLE on Sept. 8, 2022 inside their new research and development facility at the Hatchery in East Garfield Park.
Menezes is now the CEO of Next Gen Foods, a plant-based food-tech startup founded in Singapore in 2020 with bold American ambitions. The company announced Wednesday it has selected Chicago, where Menezes now lives, as its U.S. headquarters, becoming the latest entrant in a growing field of alternative protein producers.
On a September day in their new research and development facility at the Hatchery, a food business incubator in East Garfield Park, Tindle’s vice president of product development, Julie Ip, served up two Tindle samples: a super-crispy breaded tender and a fried not-chicken sandwich topped with pickles, a tomato slice and lettuce. Tindle doesn’t quite pass as real chicken, but it tastes good.Menezes said he chose Chicago for Next Gen’s U.S.
“Right now, for a lot of smaller companies it is a very challenging period, and so different product differentiation is key,” Bryant said. Lots of companies are producing meatless chicken nuggets; the question for any one company, Bryant said, is how to make their product stand out. From its River North research and development facility, Aqua Cultured Foods has developed fishless seafood using a process called microbial fermentation. The company has the ability to create a wide range of seafood, from calamari to whitefish, shrimp, ahi tuna and salmon, said Palermo. It plans to soft launch products this fall or winter at restaurants and universities; its first fishless fish on plates will be sushi roll tuna.
The meatless breakfast sausage made by the company Nature's Fynd at their Chicago headquarters on Oct. 28, 2021.The company had initially planned to open that facility by the second quarter of this year, but supply chain and construction delays now point to an opening by the end of the year, said CEO Thomas Jonas.Legacy food brands still have the biggest share of the plant-based protein market, Bryant said.