Amid Mounting Prices, Lindt Backs Swiss Startup to Bring Cell-Based Chocolate to the US

Swiss food tech startup Food Brewer is targeting US regulatory approval for its cell-based chocolate this year, having just raised $5.6M from industry giants Lindt and Puratos.

Zurich-based Food Brewer has attracted investment from two of Europe’s largest confectionery companies to bring cell-based chocolate to the US market as cocoa prices reach record highs.

The Swiss firm has secured CHF 5 million ($5.6M) from Lindt & Sprüngli, Sparkalis (the VC arm of bakery and confectionery group Puratos), and existing investors in a seed extension round, which takes its total raised to CHF 10 million ($11.2M).

Lindt and Sparkalis have joined on as both strategic investors and collaborators, according to Food Brewer, although the company declined to comment on any plans to co-create products as part of the deal.

“Having players like Lindt and Sparkalis backing us demonstrates the real need the market has for our products,” Food Brewer co-founder and CEO Christian Schaub told Green Queen. “For us, it is incredibly valuable to benefit from their chocolate-making know-how, their industry expertise and networks.”

He added: “The close relationship with Lindt and Sparkalis is key for the development of our products, which address the requirements and expectations of both the producers and the customers.”

How Food Brewer makes its cocoa-free chocolate

Founded in 2021 by Schaub, Yannick Senn, Géraldine Senn, Corinne John, Stefan Bingisser, and Klaus Kienle, Food Brewer is part of a growing crop of startups using plant cell culture to grow commodities like cocoa, whose climate threats are becoming increasingly evident.

To make its chocolate, the startup takes cells from a cocoa bean and places them in a nutrient gel, where they regenerate and form a callus. After two weeks, it chooses the right cells to put in a bioreactor with a nutrient-rich solution of sugars, vitamins, minerals and other substances – a process enhanced by microsocopic analyses and artificial intelligence (AI).

It only takes a few weeks to establish a new plant cell culture on average. Once the cells reach the desired biomass quantity, they’re harvested, dried and roasted.

“Once we established the production in tanks (similar to beer-brewing tanks), we run it semi-continuously. We grow the biomass and harvest a part of it every few days to process it to our cocoa powder, letting the remaining biomass in the tank grow again. This allows for an efficient production,” explained CFO Mathilde Dupin.

Using AI and brewing industry equipment to lower costs

“We currently operate out of our pilot plant close by Zürich, Switzerland, which is equipped with bioreactors ranging to up to 700 litres, and with an output that allows us to run prototyping runs at our client’s facilities,” said Schaub. “Our production will, however, move to external sites within the next year to allow for larger scales.”

Food Brewer has established several partnerships to improve and acclerate its process. It has teamed up with Fruitful AI to utilise advanced algorithms to track plant cell growth under controlled images. Further, the company is integrating the brewing technology from Steinecker (the brewing division of German manufacturing giant Krones) into its bioreactor platform, sidestepping the biopharma industry to lower production costs.

“Bringing our products to a competitive price level is the motivation behind all our activities, be it optimising the price of our media components or ensuring access to affordable production facilities. For that reason, since the beginning, we have focused on partnering with established industrial players who share the vision of reliable yet affordable food production,” said Schaub.

“Such partners include Krones,” he added. “Jointly, we advance the adaptation of existing fermentation infrastructure towards being suitable for plant cell cultivation at reasonable costs. This approach will allow us to reach a competitive pricing.”

Food Brewer eyes US approval as giants invest in alt-chocolate

Speaking of prices, Food Brewer’s fundraise comes at a time when, thanks to climate-change-induced shortages, cocoa prices are soaring – and have been for many months.

While dark chocolate production itself generates more emissions than all other foods bar beef, a bar of chocolate requires 1,700 litres of water on average. Plus, rising demand for land has meant that the industry is responsible for 94% and 80% of deforestation in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Meanwhile, climate change is wiping out cocoa crops, with global cocoa stocks falling to their lowest levels in a decade. If things remain the way they are, a third of the world’s cocoa trees might die out by 2050.

As a result, cocoa prices shot up by three- to fourfold in 2024, reaching all-time highs – in New York, cocoa futures reached an all-time high of $12,565 per tonne in mid-December. In fact, cocoa was the fastest-gaining commodity in the value chain last year, and prices are likely to stay high this year.

All this has had an impact on the bottom lines of large chocolate companies too. For example, Hershey’s profit forecast for 2025 is below analysts’ expectations. This has prompted industry giants to infuse cash in low-carbon solutions like cell-based and cocoa-free chocolate.

In Israel, Celleste Bio has attracted investment from Mondelēz International, which also included fellow cell-based cocoa player Kokomodo in its second CoLab Tech programme. Puratos’s Sparkalis, meanwhile, has invested in California Cultured too, which is co-developing products with Japanese chocolate giant Meiji.

Alongside the support of Sparkalis and Lindt, Food Brewer also counts Swiss chocolate maker Felchlin as an investor, which is testing its cell-based cocoa powder in chocolates.

Food Brewer is first targeting the US market, with plans to secure self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status and concurrently notify the Food and Drug Administration to obtain a ‘no questions’ letter. “[We] anticipate the first products made of our cell-cultivated cocoa to hit the market shortly after obtaining the approval,” said Schaub.