Is Plant-Based Meat about to Get Chunkier? Amos Golan of Chunk Foods Thinks So

Amos Golan: [00:00:00] Becoming an industrialist or like, you know, becoming someone who actually manufactures something at scale and creates an ethical product that people enjoy and doesn't necessarily harm the world, but does better is not something that fills me with a lot of joy. And it's something that I.

You know, I wanna do. And I wanna do for the rest of my life,

Paul Shapiro: welcome to the business for good podcast to show where we spotlight companies, making money, making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you.

Hello, and welcome to episode number 92 of the business for good podcast. Thanks to those of you who reached out about episode 91 with Lisa Kee, the editor of meeting place magazine. That's me ATT in place. Also of course, the editor of alt meet magazine. And several of you said that you were really interested in hearing what somebody had.

So who was so steeped in the meet industry for so. Was thinking about the alt meat industry. So I'm glad that you found that episode useful. And if you liked [00:01:00] it, you will certainly like this one too, because we are staying in the alt meat vein for a little while here. And so if you think about it, like Lisa was talking about how she wishes that there was better whole cut products because for decades, the alt meat movement is focused on ground meats, like sausages, burgers, nuggets sticks, and more that's cuz it's just a lot less difficult to create these ground products than a more structured product, like a steak or a chicken breast.

It's still difficult, but it's less D. Now several companies though, are trying to reach that holy grail of whole cut products. And one of them is chunk foods hail from the holy land of Israel. As you hear in this episode, almost Golan was a guy who was just fascinated by chemistry. He tried a couple business ideas that frankly didn't take off before starting to make steaks in his kitchen, by putting soy through a special kind of fermentation process.

After many failures, he finally created something he thought was worthy of showing to investors. One of whom was interested enough that they put in $50,000 fast forward to today and almost has been making quite a lot of innovations in his process. He's making stakes that I tried [00:02:00] and really enjoyed and is now overseeing a team of a dozen people, helping him make those stakes.

He's raised millions of dollars and he claims that these stakes are gonna be hitting us shelves by the end of 2022. Time will tell whether that prediction pan. And I certainly hope that it does, but almost has an impressive story that offers a good reminder to never give up and that the most meaningful work of your life may still be ahead of you.

I'm most welcome to the business for good podcast.

Amos Golan: Hey Paul, thanks for having me.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, it's great to be on with you greetings from California to Israel here. So glad to be talking with you, you have really taken much of the alternative protein world by storm because your company chunk foods was founded less than two years ago were recording this in the spring of 2022.

And you were founded less than two years ago, but you're making products that really look very advanced. So let me just ask you before we get into how you did this and why you did it and so [00:03:00] on, what were you doing two years ago? Like what were you doing prior to chunk foods? Cause I, I certainly weren't familiar with you, but what were you doing two years ago?

Amos Golan: So two years ago, I actually lived in the us moved there a couple years before that. And you know, one thing led to another, went to grad school in Boston and then moved to New York to join Ferero the giants chocolate com company as part of the open innovation science team that was based in New York.

So I worked there on a bunch of innovation projects in packaging, AgTech, food, tech, biotech, really interesting. And actually, you know, some of the things I saw there and some of the ideas led to the work on chunk which you know, happened well during the fall of 2020,

Paul Shapiro: why, why go to chocolate?

What was the

Amos Golan: attraction for you? So it's, it's a bit of a long story, but I, I actually got to beat the forever folks. When I was at MIT at the MIT media working on one of the projects so far is a, you know, very large company that has businesses in, in different parts of the confectionary market.

And one of their [00:04:00] businesses is around is the kinder surprise, which is basically the chocolate eggs that we, all of the, you know, kids in Europe know. And some now some kids in the us also know in a different form is like kinder joy. It's a different product. And I did a small project with them at the media lab.

Got to know the. Got really excited about some of the work they do and got an offer to join the open inovation science team, which seemed very very appealing, you know, working on cutting edge technologies, finding solutions for some of the supply chains, issues that we see nowadays and many more super interesting challenges.

So decided to take it and move to New York and join the team.

Paul Shapiro: How did that present it to, to your so how did that present itself to you almost? So if, if you think about, like you said, you went to grad school in Boston, so you were at MIT. What were you studying that you ended up getting this offer and that you're looking at supply chains and packaging and all these other things for a huge chocolate company?

Amos Golan: Yeah. So I think, I mean, to answer that question, I probably should go a little, you know, back and kind of tell you more about my, you know, career path, because it was all over the [00:05:00] place. I started my career. In cooking, I, you know, went to to a cooking school in London at the called and thought that, you know, I'm gonna work as a chef and become a chef worked in a couple restaurants, you know, did that for a while.

And well, at some point said, well, it's not really exactly what I want to do. I'm really interested in how in food and eating food and cooking for people, but I'm also really interested in how things are made and what are they made. And got really curious about the science behind things. So, you know, I decided to, to stop doing that sign up for, for school at televis university and decided to study chemistry.

So I did debt for a couple years, you know, shifted from cooking to sciences. Worked as a science, a scientist, and led R and D in a couple companies. And then at some point I was like, okay, so I'm doing science now, but now I want to turn that into something even more practical again. And I heard about this, you know, crazy program at MIT called the MIT media lab where there's, you know, there's a lot of focus on engineering and on the focus on working with sponsors, where these large [00:06:00] companies that bring in real world problems to the, to the university and they work together to solve them and bring in, you know, Crazy new technologies.

So I decided to try my luck and, and, you know, sign up for second masters at the media lab. And this is how I, you know, got to the media lab. Now, the way the media lab is structured there are tens of sponsors that basically there are large corporations like ERO BOS, you know, target and many, many others.

Google Facebook. And they bring in some of the challenges or the things that they're interested in and present them to the students and professors. And basically they form these interest groups. They form these collaborative projects where student professors work, conduct some of these pro problems and also suggest, you know, new creative ways to solve them, or just new creative ways for interacting with the world.

And this kind of this collaboration between students, professors researchers and these companies really sparked my interest. And so at, at one point we were working on a project with [00:07:00] Ferrero around these chocolate eggs that I mentioned. And there's a long history of, you know, why kinder surprise chocolate eggs are not sold in the us.

And some other pro products that were brought to the us as a, you know, as an alternative to these chocolate eggs, but it's a very successful product in Europe. And most kids, you know, most people, my age, who grew up grew up eating those and, you know, sharing the, the joy of you. Finding a toy and assembling a small toy and, you know, eating great chocolate.

So, you know, it was a childhood experience. It was a really interesting project. How can you bring these products to the us? How can you make the toys super safe? How can you make them more intriguing for kids and that project, which was very successful and it's gonna lead to a launch of a toy, you know, new toy category for kind surprise in the us to join in the.

Really spark my interest and got me to know this amazing company. So then when, you know, they got to know me, I got to know them and they made this offer to join a team that was looking into all [00:08:00] these super interesting challenges around supply chain, around, you know, new technologies and a tech and food tech.

It really sounded amazing and sounded like something that, you know, I may have an edge in because I've done so many things around engineering, science, and also cooking and, and eating food. So this, this was kind of the background for this

Paul Shapiro: So what happened? I mean, you're doing toys, you're doing chocolate.

And then all of a sudden you're thinking actually I want to disrupt the meat industry. Like, what was it? Did you have an interest in, in sustainability? Are you a vegetarian? Like what was the, the impetus for you to think? I'm not, I don't wanna do toys. I don't wanna do chocolate. I wanna do meat. Well, I, I think

Amos Golan: it's again, the couple reasons I think I was lucky to move to the.

In the summer of 2016, which I think was a pivotal moment for, for the whole industry. I mean, you had the, you know, the impossible Momo collaboration beyond launched in whole, in whole foods. It was, you know, meat alternatives were older age. And you know, I came from Israel, which is quite advanced, but still these things didn't happen [00:09:00] here and moved to the us.

And suddenly it's all around. It's all around you. Got super curious. You know, you started, you started seeing the beyond burger in every cool restaurant and you started seeing it at whole foods. And I got really intrigued by the. The offer and the offering, and also the prospect of this really making an impact on, on, on all of us.

Right. And then, you know, when, when you, when I went to the, the supermarket, I, you know, I, I looked at the meat case or, you know, and, and I saw the, these, some of these products and I, I was thinking to myself, You know, why, why is everyone fighting for the cheapest product in the meat case? Like, why are we not looking at the other products that are out there, which are, you know, the stakes and the roasts and you know, what the fish fillets, why are we not looking at products which are, have a higher price point where we could really make a difference, because we will be able to sell the product at, at price parity or.

And then make the choice a lot easier for people. I mean, people are very sensitive to [00:10:00] price. This was my hypothesis. And I think time and time again, we see that in surveys, people are very sensitive to price. So I was thinking, you know, what, if we could offer them the premium products that they like, but just to offer a better alternative.

And another thought that I had was, you know, you, you take the package from the, from the shelf and you look at the back and you look at the label. And you see quite a lot of ingredients and some of them today are more familiar to people. But back then, you know, I didn't know many people who knew what, what meth and sells was.

And I was thinking, you know, we're trying to take something like meat or fish out of people's menus or at least reduce the amount of product of these, these products that they use. And these things are stables, right? People are used to eating them and considering them as an in. So we really need to make an offering with whatever we we offer that will replace these things that is that people will see as a healthy option as a, a good replacement for a staple.

And that just seems like something that's harder to do when you have 20 or 30 ingredients than something that would have less ingredients. So this was, yeah, this was the [00:11:00] motivation basically.

Paul Shapiro: So let me ask you a provocative question then almost. So if you think about, let's say somebody going into burger king mm.

And they're faced with a choice. They're basically the choice between a regular Whopper mm-hmm and the impossible Whopper. What, how, how many of those people do you think are contemplating the length of the ingredient list of the impossible Whopper or whether it has something like methyl cellulose as an ingredient versus other considerations that are on their mind?

I think

Amos Golan: none or very few. I think you just came, you know, you've just brought up. Single best use case for these products. I think and to me it's a, no-brainer like I would never eat a, you know, a meat based burger king again, because I think that the, the plant based option is better. And I think it's, you know, it's obviously you know, it's better in any, any single way.

I think what becomes an issue is when people who are used to eating meat and fish on a daily. They eat, you know, they they'd eat a burger once a week or twice, you know, [00:12:00] once a month or twice a month, but they eat other types of meat. They eat, you know, they're, they have, you know, moms and dads and, and grandmothers and grandparents who, who, who cook the food that they grew up on.

And they would want to cook the same kind of food for their kids. And I think a lot of people are looking for something that's more versatile. Than just a burger. And when that, that becomes something that you eat on a regular basis on a daily basis, then people are looking for something different.

So I think as a replacement for something like a, a burger king burger, I think what we have now is, is perfect. And I think it's only getting better, but I think for the other use cases we're still lacking and I think we don't have good enough options specifically around whole cut, you know plant-based fish and seafood alternative.

And the only way to convert people is to create different and better options.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, sure. I definitely agree. I, I think that the, the only way people are going to switch is if they have something better that to switch to that's pretty much gonna be the only way. And I don't mean better from an ethical [00:13:00] or a sustainability perspective, although that's of course extremely important for me.

And I presume for you, but I, I doubt it is for most people who are thinking about whether to buy a, a, a Surine steak versus in the future, a chunk foods steak, for example, You, you mentioned almost the price issue and how the there's a difficulty getting to price parity with conventional plant-based products that are relying on the ingredients that they do.

So first, let me ask you, why do you think it is that it's so difficult to get to price parity right now, and then let's get into what you are doing that you believe will enable you to actually quickly get to price parity with conventional.

Amos Golan: Sure. I think, you know, obviously we, we still still own manufacturer.

It's very large scale. So challenges around supply chain are always gonna be an issue until, you know, until you scale to a certain size and, and then you, you get different kinds of challenges of course. But I think that the core issue with the products we see in the market today, [00:14:00] Is that they're competing with very cheap animal based products.

I think that when your starting point is an expensive product, so when consumers compare your product to a more expensive product, and I think you mentioned that in your show Paul. Around, you know you know, if someone were, was able to make a plant-based lobster, you know, and you would be able to compare that to the price of lobster, then obviously there's a lot, a much bigger margin to be made there where you can scale up, you know, more easily there's more room to make error.

And more room to kind of build supply chains as you scale while, you know, taking, taking on some of these higher prices. But I think when you take, when you take, when you, you are after something as cheap as a burger or ground beef, which is, I don't know, the average in the us is probably around $3.80 a pound.

At least that was a price when I was, when I lived there. There's very, very little room for you. For two for margins. And that's why we still see the leading products at the price premium of about two X. So I think the starting point of having just like competing with a much more expensive product really allows you [00:15:00] to be at price parity or even cheaper.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. So you're making an argument then by going after these whole cut stakes, let's say that it's not necessarily that you, your products will be cheaper than let's say beyond ingredients, but rather that you're just going after a category where the bar is much easier to meet because the initial starting competitor product is so much more expensive.

That's what you're saying. Exactly. I

Amos Golan: mean, we are relying on, on, you know, on commodities trying to work with ingredients that. Cheaper, but still great, you know, very very nutritious and, and, and of the best quality, of course we do have less ingredients, which also simplifies your bill of materials.

Of course. And we, we may talk about it a little later. We, we are using fermentation to also, you know, give some PAMI flavors which reduce the need of, you know very high amounts of natural flavors, which add obviously to the bone to the bit of material. But yeah, I mean, essentially what you're saying is absolutely right.

If you're able to, if consumers compare you to a more [00:16:00] valuable product, you're able to sell the, your product at a higher price point and that by doing so absorb some of the associated costs and still make a margin while selling the product at the price clarity, or potentially even cheaper.

Paul Shapiro: right.

Yeah. You know, it's an interesting it's an interesting thought experiment because right now the conventional wisdom is that if plant-based meat were cheaper, it would take up a much bigger share of the market. So plant-based meat today, you know, it's like less than 1% of the total volume of meat that is being sold pretty much anywhere, including in the United States.

And Jason Lusko Purdue university recently did a study where it was, you know, based on self-reported willingness to pay, but essentially. People said there, if the beyond burger were priced the same as a conventional burger, that 27% of them would switch, which is obviously a huge number to switch 27%.

But I've wondered, like if, you know, we have, for example, plant-based lobster, like you mentioned, or plant-based crab cakes or plant-based flaw GRA these are all extremely expensive products. I mean, crab in some species of [00:17:00] crab right now are going for like $30 a pound, not $3. $30 a pound and fo Gras generally like $50 a pound.

And so if you create alternatives to them that are substantially less expensive, how many people would switch to them? And I don't know the answer, like it's an interesting thought experiment. But do you know, like at what point does the person buying crab cakes say OB, you know, as long as I get the same experience, I'm willing to switch to plant based, cuz I'm gonna save some money.

And I wonder that with stakes too. And so I'm, I'm eager to see. When you come onto the market, what happens to that? We're gonna get into that in a second. I will just note, you know, companies like beyond are relying heavily on P protein, of course. And when I started my own company, the better muco just over four years ago, I, I was thinking a lot about P protein and I wondered, you know, would P protein become more.

Affordable or less affordable over time. And I didn't really know, but I thought it was gonna be tough to see that price come down and indeed P protein prices have skyrocketed they're way more expensive now than [00:18:00] before. Despite the fact that they've become more mainstream. And so even in the last year or so P protein prices have more than doubled due to drought and increased demand and so on.

And so it's really hard to envision how they. Getting down to price parity with meat, when the number one ingredient in their product just keeps increasing in cost. But I don't think you're using P protein. Is that right?

Amos Golan: That's absolutely right. And you know, one of the strategic decisions we had very early on was to use soy as an existing commodity that has pretty established supply chains and slightly better price point.

With all the challenges associated with soy, right. The alleged ethnicity and, and so on, and maybe a little bit of that publicity. But yeah, I mean, soy is frankly a magical ingredient and used all throughout the industry. And yeah, so we decided to make the decision to work with soy. We work mostly with soy flour.

So. So with the isolates and concentrates, like most of our our peers but we have this fermentation process that we use, which is quite interesting that allows us [00:19:00] to, you know, make the most out of these these this soy flour. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Well, I'm eager to talk about that fermentation process, because that really is the the secret sauce people have been using soy flour to make alternative meats for literally decades.

Actually even longer than that. So I wanna talk about what makes you all unique, but before we do, you know, you mentioned bad publicity for soy, so I'm just gonna use this opportunity just to state. Soy is awesome. it is shown. It is shown to increase your muscle mass, decrease your risk of cancer. The myths surround it are completely false and it's a really great food.

It's high protein. It's a complete protein. It's just a, a really wonderful food. IE like edamame and tofu, pretty much on a daily basis. And here is my free idea for any entrepreneur out there who wants to start something. Have you followed almost, do you know what liquid death is that brand of water that have you seen them cared about it?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we all kinda laugh at it, but the company's doing pretty well and it's, it's just marketing, right? It's just [00:20:00] can, it's just canned water, but it's this really funny marketing and people are really into it. Right. And so, you know, there's these myths around tofu and people think of it. Oh, this is like either, either they think it's like, oh, this is food for women, not for men.

Or for women even they have like negative associations with it, but pretty much it's perceived by some people you know, fallaciously as a, as food, not for. So, what about if somebody did a tofu for men and get this? Here's the name of it? You ready? Almost tofu. It's gonna be called profu and you know, like this doesn't, this isn't your grandmother's tofu.

And it's got, you know, like all types of images, kind of, you know, like men flexing, like doing curls with the. With the bricks of tofu and you know, like I could see like the guy in the ad finishes the, the the brick of tofu, and then he like drinks the juice from the garden. like all this stuff like that.

That's my idea. So if anybody wants to start profu I hope you'll do it. And let me know, you don't, you don't have to cite me. I'm fine, but I, I want that company to exist. So I'm a huge [00:21:00] advocate for soy. I, I think it's maligned and a very good food, and I'm glad that you're using it. Now first, before you tell us what you're actually doing to soy, that's actually novel.

What do you think about profu? I think

Amos Golan: it's a great idea. And I think there's I think very few things that are more mentally than tofu. So, you know, can't really understand why. Yes. And here it's, it's a great food. It's a, it's a miracle food. And you know, I had let Mount made last night for dinner as well, so I

Paul Shapiro: very nice.

Very nice. Good. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Good. Well, your, your, your biceps must be pumping in cause it's a great way. It's a great way to build muscles. Alright good. Well, if if chunk foods doesn't work, you can always do profu okay.

Amos Golan: Oh, thanks for the idea. I'll I'll keep it. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: okay. So let's talk about what you're doing, man. Like I really wanna know. So you have so flour and obviously, you know, don't give away anything that's proprietary, but I presume you're filing for IP. So it's all gonna be public anyway. Like, what is the innovation that chunk foods is spearheading here?

Amos Golan: So there a couple of things there, I think, you know, some of [00:22:00] the challenges associated with soy in our industry are some of these green beanie notes that are associated with it.

And oftentimes, you know, People just say, you know, you need to mask flavors, you need to get you know, to add a lot of natural flavors to it, to, to cover or mask it. So one thing that we do, which, you know, we're really working hard on is to use the fermentation as a way to remove some of these off flavors and get some nice umami base.

Below the natural flavors at the end on top to really compliment the flavor of the product. So that's one thing that we try to do. The other thing is really to create structure. So, you know, what we see today in the market is obviously mostly in, in the ground beef and, and Patty kind of section is basically different kinds of, you know Granules made in different ways that are formed into, into a Patty with binders.

But we don't have this directionality that's quite quite dominant in, in hol cuts meats. Right? So, so meat is made of these fi [00:23:00] fibers that are bundled together into fiber bundles and then have this connective tissue that holds everything together. Into a cuts and obviously there's the interim muscular and extra muscular fat that kind of compliments the whole thing and makes it the stake that we we know.

And we see in the supermarket shelf. So what we we do is we try to replicate this structure by creating, you know, re replicating this structure, basically creating fibers and creating something that holds these fibers together. So we have a way to form the soy flour into this unidirectional structure, basically something that has the shape of these fibers.

We ferment that with natural you know, natural non GMO organisms. And as a result, what we get is a solid cut that has directionality. We can control this directionality that cut also. Water and fence quite well. So we get a very moist and juicy product and we do all that without binders like method.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. So, and just to be clear, you know, there's various styles of fermentation. Sometimes when [00:24:00] people think about fermentation, they're thinking about, you know, stainless steel fermentors that are filled with liquid, and then you introduce organisms to it. You're not doing that kind of fermentation though.

So tell us about what exactly your type of fermentation at chunk is all about.

Amos Golan: Yes. So, you know, some parts of this process are obviously proprietary. But the, as you mentioned, rightfully so Paul, the, I think the, the, you know, two types of ferment gen, generally speaking, two types of fermentation, one that's done in these giant stainless steel fermentors.

Either bios or, or precision fermentation. And then there's the more traditional fer types of fermentation, which are essentially all versions of solid state fermentation. So a process in which you take a. Source of protein. It can be animal source. It can be like milk or meat and it can be, plant-based like, you know, the, the soybeans that are used for making meso and then you ferment them with different organisms, either natural flour that is found on these, these ingredients or organisms that you add basically that you inoculate the product [00:25:00] with.

So we Closer to the, this category. So we're closer to the category of, so say fermented foods, just like coffee and cocoa and bread and some cheeses and some sausages and many other foods that we all you know, many of us consume on a daily basis.

Paul Shapiro: cool. So when I think about like solid state soy fermentation, what comes to my mind is Tempe.

So you take a bunch of whole soybeans and you inoculate them with an organism called Raus and you let them basically partially digest those soybeans. And it creates this cake, right? It's like a brick and you, you cut it open. You can see the whole soybeans that are in there. And then that white filament that is holding everything together.

That is the cilium that's the, the Rium that is. Essentially keeping all those soybeans intact and that's very different from what you are doing though. Am I right about

Amos Golan: that? It's quite different. Yeah. It's quite different. But you know, I think some of the foods that come to mind when one talks about solid state are definitely.

Tempe, you know, NATO, that's quite famous in [00:26:00] Japan using the and, and many more bread. Of course. So

Paul Shapiro: how so, how did you come across this? Are you the inventor of this product? Did you think you're just gonna tinker you have a chemistry background, maybe you're gonna tinker yourself and then see what happens.

Like how did this actual process get invented here?

Amos Golan: Yeah, so, I mean, I had this idea how to create structure with fermentation basically, you know, I saw a bunch. Read a bunch of patents saw a bunch of companies doing really interesting stuff around fermentation and fermentation of different plant materials.

And, you know, I had this hypothesis, you know, there's a way to create structure. I had this idea and there's a way to use the fermentation process to slightly improve the, the soy and beanie notes of different different grains in the GOs. And I just started experimenting. So actually, you know, I.

Looked up on Amazon, on eBay, started buying equipment and retrofitted my Brooklyn apartment. Back then I lived in New York and turned it into a small improvised lab. And you know, between that small [00:27:00] lab and our kitchen. I created the first prototype. There were quite a few terribly terrible tasting prototypes before the first one that actually tasted like something interesting.

And then that, you know, my, my wife and I were tasting them regularly. And at some point she said, well, you know, it's, it's quite quite good. When are you making this again? And at that point, you know, something clicked. And I decided to send the couple samples to to investors. I knew you know, and this was following, you know, conversations I already started having with the GFI in the us and with other people and kind of learning the field and understanding what the white spaces are.

So one thing led to another, I managed to raise a very small check. This led to the, the company, what is very small. It was a $50,000 check. It was a safe from a fund called E 14, which is a fund that supports. Greater MIT community. And I knew these folks, so, you know, it was easy to send them a product and couple weeks later yeah, you know, just turned into a, an investment.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. That's really great. That's really great. So for those not familiar, a safe [00:28:00] as a acronym, it stands for a simple agreement for future equity. And it basically is a way that early stage companies can raise some cash without actually having to start selling shares just yet. Cuz the equity will get converted when you do an actual an actual more conventional equity round.

So that's really cool. So I mean, who, who would've thought or maybe you would've thought that just tinkering around in your kitchen would land you somebody who believes in you at least to to put $50,000 into your idea.

Amos Golan: Yeah. You know, I tried a couple of times with other ideas before and it didn't work.

I think it's really a matter of finding no, it's a matter of finding the, you know, the right thing. You know, looking back at the things I did, you know, when I did them, they didn't necessarily make sense. But nowadays I really see how the docs connect and you know, how each and every experience really.

Gave me something that is now part of the business that I'm building. So very grateful for all these experiences. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I wanna talk about the business that you're building, but just let me ask you first, almost what's your motivation. Like what's the thing that gets you out of bed in order to keep doing this.

You know, lots of people have different motivations who are in this particular field of alternative [00:29:00] protein. Some are in it because they really care about animals. Some are caring about sustainability or feeding the world. Others just want to succeed and they think this is a good business opportunity.

There's other reasons too, people were interested in public health or pandemic prevention. What is it that really motivated you? Like, obviously you didn't come from a background of necessarily. You know, looking at alt protein or animal welfare or anything like that, like you were in toys and chocolate, you said you had other ideas that presumably were not meat related that you were tinkering around with when you were in Brooklyn as well.

So, Is it that leads you to want to do this?

Amos Golan: I think nowadays it's really about sustainability. I think it's something that kind of grows in you, you, when you understand, you know, when you learn a field as you know, by, by, by learning that field, you'll learn all the problems that are associated with it.

Right? So, You know, it, I think the initial interest was just curiosity. Like, can we make something better? Can we solve this challenge? I was interested in the challenge of solving something that was wasn't solved until, until these days basically like how can we address these other [00:30:00] markets? But I think that the more I learn about it, the more I, you know, I.

I, I read about it. The more I meet you know, founders and I, you really understand the, the, the problems, right. And I think sustainability to me is today the biggest driver it affects the way I, you know, I try to live my life also. Not really, not necessarily only related to food and the way I see things.

So definitely the biggest motivation would be sustainability. And also curiosity and you know, and last but not least, you know, always and this is kind of a personal note, but becoming an industrialist or like, you know, becoming someone who actually manufactures something at scale and creates an ethical product that people enjoy and doesn't necessarily harm the world, but does better.

It's not something that fills me with a lot of joy. And it's something that I, you know, I wanna do and I wanna do for the rest of my.

Paul Shapiro: definitely inspiring. I feel you on that for sure. It's also interesting. There's a saying that is often I don't know who originally said it. I first heard the author, a J Jacobs say [00:31:00] it, but I don't think that he is the one who invented it, but since I heard it from him, I'll attribute it to him where he said that it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into new, into a new way of acting.

And so basically, you know, you could start out saying, Hey, I care about sustainability. Therefore I'm gonna go start this company, but really in your case, the opposite was true that you have acted your way into a new way of thinking that sustainability is more important to you now than maybe it was a couple years ago because you have been engaged in this endeavor.

Wouldn't you say?

Amos Golan: I think it was also always important. I think, you know, saying that something is important to you when actually acting on it is very different. And I think, you know what, this afforded me. A way to actually dive deeper into what that means to care about something like sustainability or animal welfare in the case of many other founders.

And so on. I mean, obviously I care about animal like welfare, but this was not the motivation. So this is why I'm not putting that as, as, as a, as the main driver there. But yeah. And I think once you realize that your actions can actually make a difference and that you can actually build so. , you know, [00:32:00] considerably large with engaging other people in, in, in the mission that becomes very different than just talking about something or writing about something trying to really make a difference through action.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Well, speaking of making a difference almost, let's talk about how you're building this. So you're tinker around in your kitchen in Brooklyn, you come up with something that's like a prototype or a minimum viable product here. You get $50,000 in a safe as an early investment. So what happens next?

You take that 50,000 and what do you do?

Amos Golan: It , it's a, it's a funny question, cuz I basically continued doing exactly what I did before I had the money and to spend everything out of pocket. No, I, I mean, I'm trying to, so I I've tried to look for a co-founder for quite a while. And this was really at the decision point, whether we're gonna move back to Israel or not, it was, you know, kind of a couple months into COVID.

And New York was a bit of a scary place to be in at the beginning of the pandemic. So you know, I started looking for a co-founder had some engagements with people, hired some consultants to help with some aspects of the business and, [00:33:00] and digging a little deeper into the feasibility of this thing.

And and then we had to move. So I had to move to, we had to move to Israel. And I used the money to set up the company. So, you know hire a lawyer incorporate, do all these things that that one needs to do. And then and then started hiring a couple people started the first team members.

We hired a biologist to do some of the work around the fermentation. Then we

Paul Shapiro: hired a, had, had you raised, had you raised more money by that point? I mean, you hired a lawyer, a biologist you're incorporating, is that all coming out of that initial 50 K

Amos Golan: so I mean, we already started having conversations on a proper precede round which at that point was, you know, so I, I, for the first couple months, I'd say 70% of my.

Time was dedicated to fundraising. So to trying to raise more funds and the other 30%, which was probably another 130%, cuz I feel like at that point, that point in time, I was probably working like 20 hours a day was dedicated to improving the prototype and creating samples. So, you know, buying raw material, [00:34:00] buying some equipment hiring that biologist we managed to get to an agreement with the law firm.

So we had to defer the payment. We actually be paying them now for the first time. so you know, we managed to kind of save money, but yeah, hiring that consultant doing some of these things was what we were able to do with the 50 K and it was, it got a little stressful, you know, I worked out of my, we moved to Israel, I worked out of my parents' house.

We still didn't have an apartment. You know, basically working out of my old equipment, I brought my equipment with, from Brooklyn, with me. So yeah, it was, it was a challenging time, but we didn't spend that much. I tried to keep the you know, the burn rate very, very low.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah. It reminds me of the saying that Ben Horowitz from Andrewsson Horowitz says where he said this a start your own company. You will sleep like a. Because you will wake up every two hours and cry and so, you know, and it it's like you, you see this you, you see that there is a highly causal relationship between the amount of money in your startup's bank account and the amount of [00:35:00] cortisol and your veins and it's like, you know, and it's an inverse relationship.

Like, and, and whenever people say, oh, like money, isn't the answer to your problems? You know, for what I've found, talking to a lot of startup founders is that actually, it, it really is the answer to a lot of the problems that people face that having more money makes it much, much easier. And so what happened then?

So, you know, obviously you've raised a lot more than 50 K now, so you went to work, you started creating more and more products and then what occurred.

Amos Golan: So, yeah, I mean, there was a bit of a learning curve, how to, you know, how to make, you know, how to. A food product, right? So it's very different to make product in your kitchen and, and put it in a vacuum bag and send it to people and to make something that actually can, can keep in the fridge or in the freezer and, you know, maintain its color and flavor and traditional profile and so on.

So. Yeah, we basically, I, you know, I was pitching all day, you know, all day and old night you know, with different time zones, you just wake up early in the morning and just pitch all the way all the way through the night and then prepare samples, wake up at 5:00 AM to prepare samples cuz to [00:36:00] send them all over the world.

Cause I didn't really know how to even ship stuff. And you know, we had to, it had to be it's perishable. So we had to be frozen or kept chilled. And at that point we just didn't really know how to do that. With different shipping companies. So yeah, so anyway, we did that for a while. Then I had my wife's sister at that point was looking for, for a, a job.

So I said, you know, why don't you come and help me? So she started working with me and she's now, you know, leading all our operations and, you know, started kind of attracting talent. And so people joined. The product improved and then we managed to secure enough interest to have E 14 who gave me that, that first small safe to basically lead the round.

So we managed to, we negotiated the, the, the terms and we raised one point 75 million on another safe this time with valuation and, you know, proper, a proper save with valuation and discount and so on.

Paul Shapiro: Nice. What was the, what was the valuation on that 1.75 million

Amos Golan: realm? Yeah, I prefer not to, not to share these numbers, but it [00:37:00] was, you know, it was market market rates at that point in time.

It was, you know, I thought it was, you know, it was great. You know, it's always a little lower than you than you wish, but it was great. And, and we had a bunch of really great angels as well. And, you know, if I. Say one thing is that, you know, angels, I mean, all of my invest, I, you know, I think all of my investors are super, super, I mean, they've helped a lot, but angels and it doesn't matter how big their check is.

They've just, they've just been great. They, I have, you know, some of my mentors today or people who didn't do a very large check, but it just been meeting on a regular basis of week or so. And it just helped me build this business from the ground up. So yeah.

Paul Shapiro: It's one of the things that I find most interesting about the idea of investors, cuz so many people who I talk to who are like thinking about starting their own companies.

They think of investors as just a source of capital and what they don't think so much about is that actually, you know, there's capital out there and sure you need it of course, but you really want investors who are going to provide more than [00:38:00] capital, who are gonna provide you with advice, with connections, with information like you don't know everything that you need to know.

You don't know, even a small fraction of what you need to know. Most likely. And when you have investors, they're pretty people who are literally invested in your success and why not utilize them. It's like having members of your team who aren't out on the field. Like you want to get them out on the field because they put them to work.

They own part of the company. So put 'em to work and make sure they can increase the chance that one day their shares are gonna be worth something.

Amos Golan: I totally agree. I mean, I couldn't agree more and I think. I think it depends on the, on the specific stage of the company, right. Different investors would be bring in, you know, they have different flavors and they would bring different value of different stages.

But I think the early stage investors really. They're the ones who would help you raise the next round. They'd help with introductions. They help, they, they help so much. And the problem with the first, you know, especially for me as a first time founder and, you know, solo founder was also, it's not so much about the stuff that you, you know, the unknowns, [00:39:00] it's the unknown unknowns, right?

There's so much stuff that you don't know that you should know and people with a lot of experience, just tell you, you know, this is what you should do now. Did you think about that? Did you think about this? Just super helpful to have these mentors.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So where is the product now? I ate it recently, as you know, you were kind enough to send me one of your steaks and my colleagues and I tried it.

We really liked it. It kind of reminded folks, especially our chef of like a flank steak and it was really good. It was definitely not like something else that I had had before. And so it seems like you're really onto something and I'd love to know where is the product now? How much can you produce?

And when will you start selling and where will you start selling?

Amos Golan: So most of the work in the last I'd say. Six to 12 months was focused on scale up. We have a product that we're pretty happy with. It's obviously V1 and it's gonna continue improving all the time. And the work now is really on taking in the process that we've developed and scaling it up scaling it up, cheaply enough.

so with food grade equipment [00:40:00] and without building too much fancy equipment or too, you know, spending too much on CapEx and setting up that, setting that up in a food safe facility where we can actually make food and sell food out of. So today we stand about, you know, we can make tens of kilograms.

Per day also, depending on how many employees we have, but that's more or less a scale. We're building now a pilot facility with about 10 times that capacity which will be ready by the end of this.

Paul Shapiro: and then so, so, so by the end of 2022, you'll be producing hundreds of kilograms a day of stakes.

Yes, exactly. Great. And I presume that's in Israel. So

Amos Golan: the first pilot is gonna be in Israel. We're gonna export that produce to other countries with a focus on the us markets.

Paul Shapiro: Why? Well, I mean, aren't there people who want to eat it in Israel? No.

Amos Golan: Unfortunately Israel, Israel is quite small. No, I mean, Israel is quite small.

I think also the habits of Israel is quite different when it comes to, you know, consumer products. [00:41:00] So and branding is obviously very different. So in order to really explore the market and understand how people respond to these, this essentially a new category that doesn't really exist in retail yet we wanna work with the target audience from the get go and not start with a smaller market.

That's quite different. And then. You know, utilize the, the learnings that we had and, and, and bring them to a different market. We wanna start working with the us market from the very.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So if that is so why, why not just come back to the us and, and build a plant here?

Amos Golan: So I think the idea is to have this dual structure where which is what I started with.

So I started the mother company chunk foods. Us is a us company. And we have this daughter company, the Israeli company does R and D and engineering for the Malik company. And I think that structure works pretty well. We're gonna have the commercial side and manufacturing in the us. But the iterations, the R and D iterations in Israel are quite quick.

I think it really works well with the kind of the Israeli character of, you know, moving quickly and [00:42:00] breaking things. You know, and just like the, the, the like one or two degrees of separation between. You me and every other Israeli is because it's such a small country. So this really helps with, you know, getting to the right people quickly just planning and, and moving on, moving really quickly with product development.

So I think there's benefits to both things, and we're gonna have this dual structure where engineering and R and D happens in Israel. And then we take this technical package and we bring it onto the us where the manufacturing side and the commercial side can really scale that up and start selling the product and put them on the supermarket shelve.

Paul Shapiro: Nice. Very nice. So I'm looking forward to that. Can't wait, hope you make it all the way over to California so that I can go out and be one of your first customers then almost, but how many folks work at the company now? How many are working at chunk foods? So we're 11 now. We're 11. Okay. And I, I presume you're gonna need a lot more than that.

So you raised, you know, nearly 2 million to date then. So are you gonna be back out in the market seeking to raise again sometime in the near future then? Yeah, so

we

Amos Golan: [00:43:00] actually, I mean, we haven't announced yet, but we just closed a very significant round three weeks ago. Congratulations. Thanks.

So yeah, we will announce that, you know, in the coming weeks and we're gonna use these funds to expense. So yeah, we're definitely planning to start hiring both in the. And the us and also expand the team in Israel hoping to grow to about 25 to 30 people in the next year. You and half

Paul Shapiro: nice.

Oh, congratulations. So let me ask you, unless you you've been on quite a ride, I mean, just two years ago, you were thinking around in your kitchen, you tried some ideas that didn't work and that nobody wanted to invest in apparently. And then you finally made something that somebody wanted to invest in.

Now you're overseeing a team of about a dozen people. You've raised millions and maybe even tens of millions of dollars by now. It's quite a change in your life from two years ago to today. And just a good example of how you really never. What fate is going to bring for you in your life. So have there been any resources almost that have been useful for you in these past couple years in this rollercoaster ride that you're [00:44:00] on, that you would recommend to somebody else who's in there thinking, oh, I really am impressed by what this dude has accomplished.

Maybe I could do something like that too. So has there anything that you would recommend that was useful in your journey so far?

Amos Golan: Yes. I mean, I, you know, first of all, I just wanna say, you know, Rely on your friends and family, as much as you can because you know, that's more important and more helpful than any, any book or podcast or anything like that that I can recommend.

Right. I mean, well,

Paul Shapiro: aside from this podcast, but the other ones, for sure, except for

Amos Golan: Paul's podcast, of course but I mean, yeah, I mean, I think this, this roller story is something that's, that's quite challenging and relying on the people you love and the people who can support you is, is really. The only thing that really helps, but I think, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of things that help me a lot you know, in making less mistakes I want, I wanna think they helped me like make less mistakes or at least know what to expect.

So when it comes to just, you know, the technicalities of what the deal looks like, you know, term sheets [00:45:00] and so on I love the, the book venture. It really helped me a lot and helped me know what to expect. And even it helped me a little bit with like the negotiation the round that we just closed.

So I highly recommend that to any entrepreneur. That's kind of looking into a price round. Another book that I really love. I actually read that in school, but kind of, you know, I keep it next to my bed and I read, read it in, read in it from time to time is never split the difference. I think it's you know, it's a great book about negotiation.

It's, it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of like, you know, background stories there, but there's also quite a few, you know, things that you can learn about having you know, a negotiation where you don't necessarily the, the, the, the positive result is not necessarily you know, winning in the, in the, in simple sense, but, you know, actually getting you know, getting, getting to a situation.

Beneficial for both sides usually is the, the win-win situation is really what you're looking for. Yeah. So these are kind of the more technical books I'd say. Obviously, you know, there's, there's huge number of, of podcasts that that I, you listen to. [00:46:00] I think, you know, Your podcast is obviously incredible.

Paul and I think you bring amazing guests. It's always very inspiring. Especially,

Paul Shapiro: especially in

Amos Golan: this episode episode, of course, no, but I I've, you know, you get to actually get the feel of like who the other founders are, you know, other, you know, very interesting characters and so on. But I also think that, you know, I think I learned a lot and, and, and.

There's a book that I, you know, I, I always love talking about that. I actually wanted to, you know, mention here because it's, it's, it's not a, you know it's not a technical book. It's a, it's, it's a novel it's called the periodic table. And by Premo levy, and it's a collection of short stories that kind of, you know, they, it's a autobiography through these stories.

And each one is named after a chemical element and it was that book was the reason why I went to study chemistry. And it's a book that I. You know, keep on reading again and again, probably read it four or five times, and I think it's more than anything, it's a life, you know, it's lessons in life. And I very cool.

I recommend it more so

Paul Shapiro: awesome. Hey, by the way, almost did you [00:47:00] hear about why it didn't work out after the date between the biologist and the physicist? no. They didn't have any chemistry. yeah. I, I, I was going to tell a periodic table of elements joke, but I thought I might be out of my element if I did.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, well it's cool that you're so into chemistry. Let me just ask you if you weren't doing this, or maybe even if you were, but you wish that there was some other company almost that existed to do something good in the world. What would it. Like you're doing chunk foods. You're committed to this.

You're gonna be on this ride for some time. It seems. What else do you wish existed that maybe somebody who's listening might be able to go take up the mantle and start on their own?

Amos Golan: Yeah, I mean, I tried to think about it for a little bit before the, before this episode, because there's so many interesting challenges right around sustainability and, and, and specifically now I think sustainability is what all founders should think about.

Whether their startup actually focuses. Sustainability related question or just if they do something else and sustainability is just something that they you know, they could [00:48:00] affect in one way or another. I think in, if we're talking, I think since, you know, we talk a lot, a lot about food here. You know, there are two things that I'm very passionate about when it comes to food.

I think fat and sugar are two unsolved challenges in the food industry. You know, So many startups, so many corporations are working on replacements for different fats on sugar reduction solutions. And I think there's just, you know, there's such a blue ocean there that I encourage every single founder who's interested in these things to, to work on these huge challenges.

It's huge markets. With huge impact on people's health and on sustainability. And then another thing that I'm super fascinated about, you know, I don't, I don't know if I have an interesting angle on it, but you know, there's so much salt water around us. And on the other hand, there's such a shortage in, in drinking water in, in water for irrigation.

You know, I had this vision once of growing growing food and, and crops. And so on, on, on the water. And using the sun, basically free energy from the sun [00:49:00] to desalinate this water and use it for irrigation. So I know it's a bit of a dream, but you know, if someone wants a bigger challenge than making whole muscle cut products out of soy, maybe I should try and pursue something like that.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Well, I know Israel was a leader in ization efforts for obvious reasons being by the Mediterranean and without a lot of fresh water. And it was in Israeli who SIM bla, who invented drip irrigation as well, by the way, which is now saved billions of liters of water all around the world since he invented that.

So maybe there's some Israeli out there. Who's gonna figure out the most effective way to actually desalinize water and we'll have a, a major breakthrough for sure. But for now, I'm really glad that you're focused on whole muscle cuts made from soy. Again, I can't speak highly enough of soy, and I'm also speaking highly of you and chunk foods.

Almost. I hope that you all succeed. Can't wait to see your product, get out on the market and congratulations on the fundraising success, the actual product innovation success that you've had so far. And I can't wait to see what happens in the next chapter and chapters of [00:50:00] your particular journey.

Amos Golan: Thank you very much, Paul.

And thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to be here.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you of doing good.