Seattle-based startup backed by some of the investors behind Beyond Meat (BYND.O), opens new tab is launching the world’s first beanless coffee this week as it bids to slash the environmental impact of the popular brew.
The innovation has caught the eye of investors, who have poured $51.6 million into Atomo Coffee in the hope that its brew – which uses superfoods and upcycled ingredients to mimic the molecular structure of coffee – will be a hit with consumers.
Christopher Mims in Wall Street Journal:
The intense demand for coffee has driven mass deforestation, poverty wages for farmers who see little of the rising prices for their commodity, and substantial carbon emissions due to both production and long supply chains. Research suggests that around half of the land best suited to growing coffee will become unsuitable for that purpose by 2050, thanks to climate change. In Brazil, that figure reaches 88%.
For all of these reasons, at least a half-dozen companies are using biotechnology and food science to replace the coffee in your cup with something that lacks all that baggage, and isn’t nearly as vulnerable to climate change. This pseudo-coffee can be made from a variety of ingredients, including chickpeas and “upcycled” agricultural waste like date pits. Other approaches use lab-grown cells from actual coffee plants. Companies like Voyage Foods, Minus Coffee, Atomo, Prefer, Stem and Northern Wonder have all either begun selling, or are working on, so-called beanless coffee alternatives.
One of the world’s largest food companies, Cargill, has taken notice, and recently signed a deal to become the exclusive business-to-business distributor of beanless-coffee maker Voyage Foods’ cocoa- and nut-free products.
Since we’re messing with the life-support system on planet Earth by filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, it makes sense that someday we might produce more of our food the way NASA has proposed growing food for space stations and moon bases.
Bioreactors—basically, big steel vessels—have been used for decades to manufacture pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food additives. Any plant cell can be run through a process that makes it possible for it to grow in a bioreactor, subsisting on nothing but sugars, says Heiko Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
Rischer’s team demonstrated in 2021 that it is possible to grow cells from coffee plants inside a bioreactor, and that the resulting powder, when roasted, has many of the characteristics of coffee. Researchers at his institute are also working on a similar process for growing the cells in cocoa plants that give chocolate its distinctive flavor.
Ultimately, there is no limit to what plant cells can be grown in bioreactors, says Rischer. That doesn’t mean this process is magical or a quick fix, since every plant you want to grow this way must be studied individually and has its own requirements.
Cost is an issue—growing coffee and cocoa cells isn’t nearly price-competitive with the real thing yet, even as those commodity prices continue to rise. While his team has already grown enough coffee cells in bioreactors to create a substance that approximates the real thing, it isn’t clear when the process will be scaled up enough for lab-grown cocoa and coffee to be competitive, says Rischer.
Yes, please.