Nestlé backs Sundial’s alt-chicken wings with vegan simulated skin, bone and muscle

22 Nov 2021 --- Swiss food giant Nestlé is among the financial backers in a US$4 million seed round for Sundial Foods, a plant-based meats company mimicking chicken wings.

Sundial Wings creates fully plant-based skin, meat and bone chicken wings pegged as going “beyond meat.”

The California-based vegan start-up expects its chicken wings to be available in US restaurants in spring 2022. 

Specifically, the company will use the new funding to expand its team and start production for its US launch at the Rutgers Food Innovation Center in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

More than alt-chicken wings
Co-founded by CEO Jessica Schwabach and CTO Siwen Deng, Ph.D., Sundial Foods uses simple, natural ingredients to create vegan chicken wings with the characteristics of a whole cut of meat. 

The development of Sundial Wings started in Berkeley, California, and continued at the SOSV life sciences program IndieBio in San Francisco.

Sundial’s proprietary technology allows for the simulation of a whole cut of meat with a fibrous meat texture, including muscle and plant-based skin and bone. 

Sundial promotes its alt-chicken as a clean label offering with just eight easy-to-recognize ingredients such as water, chickpeas, sunflower oil and no artificial flavors or synthetic chemicals. The California-based vegan start-up expects its chicken wings to be available in US restaurants in spring 2022. 

Replacing the butcher
Also, Sundial’s wings contain more fiber and less saturated fat than chicken but approximately the same amount of protein.

“Our goal is to make meats that replace the butcher, so our product can be enjoyed as a center-of-plate experience,” says Sundial co-founder Jessica Schwabach. “We want to give consumers, whether vegetarian, vegan, flexitarian, or meat-eating, a plant-based meat-eating experience that’s interesting, craveable, and versatile.”

Nestlé R&D accelerator
Co-founders Deng and Schwabach met in 2019 in class at UC Berkeley’s Alternative Meats program, where they initially became interested in the plant-based space. 

In 2020, they participated in the Nestlé R&D Accelerator in Lausanne, Switzerland, where they took the formula for their chicken from bench-scale testing to pilot production. 

Later in 2020, Sundial co-branded a product with Nestlé’s plant-based food brand Garden Gourmet and ran a successful test launch in more than 40 retail outlets across Switzerland.

Edited by Gaynor Selby