Future Food Quick Bites: Burger King Rib, Cured Swede Bagels & Ikea Vegan Sausages

Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Burger King Germany’s new vegan option, a cured root vegetable bagel at Deutsche Bahn, and the UK parliament’s cultivated meat research.

New products and launches

Burger King has released a new plant-based King Rib sandwich in Germany. The limited-edition menu item uses plant-based meat from The Vegetarian Butcher, which may be in the process of being sold by its parent company, Unilever.

Also in Germany, national rail operator Deutsche Bahn is offering a bagel with cured, smoked rutabaga (or swede) from Verrano, which makes whole-food-based alternatives to meat. It’s available at its on-board restaurants and bistros.

German chemicals and ingredients specialist Brenntag has collaborated with Berlin-based biotech firm Cambrium to launch NovaColl, a skin-identical vegan collagen for the personal care industry in the UK and Ireland, France, Italy, and Iberia.

Fellow Berlin-based company BettaF!sh has linked up with Austrian supermarket chain Billa to introduce a co-branded vegan Tu-Nah Sandwich in the latter’s stores.

In Hong Kong, White Owl Group has launched a joint location for its plant-forward F&B brands The Cakery and Maya Bakery at K11 Musea, with new menu additions including vegan pistachio croissants and cotton cake inspired by the famous Dubai chocolate.

Ikea has teamed up with UK plant-based meat leader THIS to put its vegan pork sausages on the menu for its £4.95 Veggie Sausage & Mash meal at 19 locations.

Aussie startup Fascin8foods, which makes mushroom-based burgers, mince and meatballs under its Froom label, has released a 24-recipe cookbook for Veganuary.

Are you struggling to keep up with all the new launches and announcements for Veganuary 2025 in the US? Hear about them from the horse’s mouth.

Vegan chicken startup Rebellyous Foods has partnered with Great State Burger, a Pacific Northwest restaurant chain, for a new crispy chicken burger menu addition.

Company and finance updates

Rebellyous Foods has also raised $2.4M in an extension of its $9.4M Series B funding in 2023. It will use the fresh capital to expand sales of its new Mock 2 production platform.

Across the Atlantic, UK plant-based energy bar brand Tribe has secured £2.4M ($2.9M) to support the launch of a new adaptogen-centric ‘Protein + Focus’ range.

The Grocer has uncovered that London-based vegan ready-meal startup Allplants owed creditors £13M ($15.8M) when it fell into administration last year.

In yet another move linked to protein transition, discount retailer Lidl has become the first major supermarket to use The Vegetarian Society‘s Plant-Based Trademark, which will appear on its own-label Vemondo Plant! range.

Israeli minerals company ICL Food Specialties has announced a follow-on investment in duckweed protein player Plantible Foods‘s Series B round, which netted the startup $30M in November. The two firms launched a Rovitaris Binding Solution using the latter’s Rubi Protein in October.

Swedish energy and tech giant Alfa Laval is building a Food Innovation Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark to support sustainable food production. It’s scheduled to be completed in 2027, and will initially focus on proteins, including plant-based and fermentation-derived ingredients.

European fermentation association Food Fermentation Europe has appointed Sebastien Louvion – chief regulatory officer at animal-free casein startup Standing Ovation – as its new president.

Israeli molecular farming startup Plantopia has switched from lettuce to sprouted oats to produce casein protein for animal-free dairy products.

Research and policy developments

Latin America now has 22% more vegan-friendly restaurants than it did in 2023, numbering over 10,000, according to research by Veganuary and HappyCow.

The number of care home residents in the UK who are vegan or vegetarian will continue to rise over the next five years, doubling by 2031, according to a study by Swansea University’s OMNIPlaNT research group for Vegetarian For Life.

In its latest move to advance novel foods, the British parliament has commissioned a new research project to consider the opportunities and challenges of cultivated meat production. It’s expected to be published in May.

Speaking of cultivated meat research, this was a hot topic in 2024, and Trove Biosciences founder Tarika Vijayaraghavan has laid out five takeaways after closely monitoring this space.

At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, engineers have devised a way to leverage metamaterials to create whole cuts of plant-based meat that offer a more scalable and cost-effective solution to 3D printing.

Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology have developed a method to use autoclaved vegetables as scaffolds for muscle and adipose cell growth for cultivated meat.

The Good Food Institute has selected 14 researchers for its 2025 Research Grant Programme to accelerate alternative protein innovation.

Finally, plant-based granola maker Bio&Me and vegan pet food startup Omni have been named in the UK’s 2025 Startups 100 Index.

Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.