Sustainable snacking: Cargill backs Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate and nut-free spreads

28 May 2024 --- By decoupling foods from traditional source material, US-based food technology company Voyage Foods creates new, sustainable and scalable alternatives to F&B products, which are comparable in taste and application. Cargill recently partnered with Voyage Foods to scale up the company’s cocoa-free chocolate and allergen-free nut spreads globally.

Food Ingredients First sits down with Anne Mertens-Hoyng, category director of chocolate, confectionery and ice cream at Cargill, and Adam Maxwell, the founder and CEO of Voyage Foods, to discuss the development of its alternative cocoa collaboration and the next steps. 

Maxwell explains that Voyage Foods aims to have a global impact with its developed products. “It makes the most sense to find partners with similar ideas of what the world needs and who can help in areas we’re not experts in and have the reach we don’t.” 

Cargill first came across Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate technology three years ago, says Mertens-Hoyng. 

“We’ve been looking into indulgent solutions, in any shape or form, whether it’s sustainability, which is the biggest one here — the carbon footprint, land and water use — or accessibility for people with allergens. We like to engage with small start-ups with this type of thing.” 

Both partners discussed the future possibilities, how the products could fit customer demands and how both companies would find synergies in their businesses, using Cargill’s knowledge of “customers, application, sensory and ingredient” and Voyage Foods’ technology. 

“How do we merge this to make it a good business decision to continue together? Since then, we’ve become the exclusive B2B distributor for Voyage Foods,” Mertens-Hoyng continues. 

“Now, we’re starting to map out what customers are reacting to. Where should we start? Are the most questions in chocolate chips and cereals or cookies, or more the ice cream coating?”

Accessible F&B
Voyage Foods initially started to make “better food for a better world,” says Maxwell. “Everything intersects with that through line and the through line of accessibility.” 

He explains that the company’s nut-free spreads aim to increase accessibility to quintessentially US food products, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or chocolate-peanut butter cups, with an allergen-free option. 

Voyage Foods’ nut-free spreads are also part of the partnership with Cargill.In bean-free coffee and cocoa-free chocolate, Maxwell underscores the sustainability of resources and the sustainability of experiences. He illustrates that chocolate is part of the culture — adding that there are not many food commodities that people feel so viscerally about. 

“Seeing people’s faces light up when you get a chocolate cake is something the world should work to preserve.”  

He adds that the company was looking 20–30 years into the future to ensure “we can have these experiences from the human side of consumption available for everyone, forever, in an accessible way, and to be able to also do that in a way that’s even more sustainable than the products are currently there.”

Applications in the market 
Mertens-Hoyng says Cargill’s customers’ response to the cocoa-free chocolate has been positive. The discussions and projects are starting with clients, but the team doesn’t know when the first launch will be. 

“We’re starting up a lot of conversations, but we haven’t mapped out yet the recipe or how to do that, and that’s also how we sell our chocolates, coatings and fillings. We go to the customer with an example.” She explains that based on a client’s reaction, the projects evolve. 

Mertens-Hoyng underscores that the collaboration with Voyage Foods complements Cargill’s existing portfolio of chocolate and cocoa-based products and compounds. “We see this as a broadening of our portfolios. It does not affect what we want to do with chocolate. We remain a big supplier of chocolates, and we are very much dedicated to sustainability.” 

Looking at product applications, Maxwell explains that there are “nuances of how chocolate appears,” whether in a whole tablet or a chocolate chip cookie. 

Cargill is mapping out demand for cocoa-free chocolate from its customers, with initial feedback being positive.“But they’re chocolate — both are indulgent, both are great products, but where these will be used, our convictions early on was the people making full tablets are not going to be the early adopters because their brand is that specific tablet flavor.” 

He sees more potential for the chocolate alternative in other product applications, such as chocolate chips or ice cream, which also make up a larger share of total chocolate consumption. In those commodity markets, the sensory profiles are very close to traditional chocolate. 

Nutrition and functional parity 
Maxwell highlights that cocoa-free chocolate is at par with conventional products. The products are similar in macro nutrition, fats, carbohydrates, fibers and proteins, as there are variations in standard chocolates. 

He adds that downstream applications also have functional parity. “Whether chocolate chips for baking or ice cream coatings, we can produce the whole gamete.” 

“On the flavor side, chocolate and coffee are distinct in the food space.” Therefore, Voyage Foods does not focus on high-end, luxury chocolate products with a distinct sensory profile. 

“A lot depends on the perception that people come into it,” he continues. “Also, Europe and the US have completely different expectations for what chocolate is, and the same is true for Japan and Europe. At the global disparity, people’s expectations add a level of nuance.” 

Mertens-Hoyng adds that this is where Cargill’s expertise comes in. The company has expertise in application and sensory technologies and how these differ among regions. 

“We have open discussions about the taste and specific applications we want to work on and how to tweak it,” she continues. “With our knowledge on the application side, the customer and consumer desires, and then Voyage’s knowledge on the tech and how to tweak it to tailor for it — it’s an excellent combination.”

Voyage Foods decouples foods from traditional source material to create new, sustainable alternatives to F&B products.Product development process 
Maxwell explains that Voyage Foods’ process for creating cocoa-free chocolate started with the idea that “chocolate doesn’t grow on trees.” 

“Raw cacao seed tastes foundationally nothing like what we experience as chocolate. Chocolate is a product of the process and an input; you take a starting material that tastes probably more like lychee than a chocolate bar, and you put it through a set of processes, and then it comes out as a chocolate bar.”

“The molecules in that cacao seed that then become a chocolate bar don’t only exist in a cocoa seed. The work is really — how do we map what happens from that stage one, all the way to the finished product in much more of an analytical chemistry type setting.” 

Next, the company took sustainable, low-cost, stable input materials, such as grape seeds, and processed them slightly differently from cocoa beans to extract the flavor of chocolate. 

“One of the exciting things to me is that we’re building this engine that’s getting better and better and better,” underscores Maxwell. He details that the development process for chocolate took around 3.5 years to reach a point where “we feel proud of it.” 

Meanwhile, the company reveals that developing a hazelnut-free spread only took eleven months from the initial idea to getting products on the shelves of a national US retail chain. 

By Jolanda van Hal