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Since Beyond Meat went public on the New York Stock Exchange just over a year ago, two more plant-based food techs have followed suit. In mid-June, The Very Good Food Company, the parent company of The Very Good Butchers, began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange, making them the second vegan company to be publicly traded. Another Canadian company, Modern Meat, a female plant-based meat startup, is the most recent to go public.
In May last year, California-based vegan food tech famous for its meatless burgers and sausages, became the first plant-based company to list IPO on the NYSE under the ticker symbol BYND, marking a watershed moment for the plant-based world.
Now, two more vegan companies have gone public, a true indicator that the fast-growing sector that had long been overlooked as a marginal trend is unstoppable at a global scale.
On June 18, The Very Good Food Company, the parent group of The Very Good Butchers, began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) under the ticker symbol VERY. At CAD$0.25 per share, the IPO of 16,100,000 common shares resulted in gross proceeds of over CAD$4 million.
Founded by James Davison and Tania Friesen in 2016, The Very Good Butchers opened its first permanent storefront in Victoria Public Market a year later, making them the first vegan butcher shop to launch in western Canada selling dishes made with its housemade plant-based meats such as pepperoni, burgers and sausages. It has since grown to offer a subscription vegan butcher box to customers, and is also selling its vegan meat products at retailers across Canada.
Another Canadian vegan startup commenced public trading on July 1, making them the third plant-based publicly traded company. Modern Meat, a women-led vegan food tech, is listed on the CSE under the ticker MEAT, and is an RTO – a merger – conducted with Navis Resource Corp, which is listed on the CSE under SUV.
“In terms of share structure, the company currently has 28,306,498 common shares outstanding, a large portion of which come from the split that was conducted on the issuers shell,” reported Deep Dive. “A further 11.5 million shares were issued by acquiring certain assets related to its fake meat operation, while 2.76 million common share options were issued at a price of $0.05.”
Vancouver-based Modern Meat was founded in 2019 by Tara Haddad, and offers vegan meat substitutes such as burgers, meat crumbles, crab cakes and meatballs featuring clean non-GMO whole food ingredients such as pea protein, chickpea flour, mushrooms and brown rice. It also has a line of plant-based sauces and dips, and is sold across a number of grocery stores in 7 different cities in Canada as well as on e-commerce sites.
In a video announcement, CEO Tara Haddad said that its public launch comes as the plant-based market is experiencing explosive growth.
“With this increase in demand and the plant-based market growing so quickly, we have implemented an aggressive distribution strategy to expand to the US as well as eastern Canada so we will require this additional capital to fulfill our strategy.”
“In the coming months we are focusing on production and distribution and we are hoping to ten times production to keep up with demand,” added Haddad.
Lead image courtesy of Modern Meat / The Very Good Company / designed by Green Queen Media.
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