Revo Foods: CEO discusses plant-based octopus alternative amid US octopus meat ban
21 Mar 2024 | Revo Foods
Robin Simsa, CEO and co-founder of Revo Foods discusses the company's recently launched plant-based octopus tentacles made from mycoprotein and the technical challenges in replicating conventional octopus’ texture and taste. Robins also tells us about the consumer demand for octopus meat and how recent bans on octopus farming in the US are set to fuel innovation in alt-seafood.
Hi, this is Insha Noreen from CNS Media, journalist at Food Ingredients First.
I'm happy to introduce our guest today, Robin Simsa, who is the CEO of Austrian food tech company Rebo Food.
We will be discussing the company's recently launched plant-based alternative to octopus tentacles.
Hi Robin, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Hello, thanks very much for the invite.
So, Robin, could you start by telling us about your company and what's your role in it?
Sure.
So Rebel Foods is an Austrian company based in Vienna.
Started about 4 years ago with the idea that we wanted to use a new additive manufacturing process or 3D ft printing to create new food functionalities and new food textures, especially for the field of meat or fish alternatives because we saw that.
Extrusion technology, which is commonly used for meat alternatives such as hamburgers or chicken nuggets, works quite for, let's say, simple structured products, however, for the next generation products, it's really important to combine.
At least 2 different materials with different functionalities.
So for instance, a fat phase together with a protein phase, because what you achieve there is a new functional behavior that's much more realistic compared to conventional animal products.
So in our case we have a salmon filet based on microprotein as the first showcase.
And by combining different materials, you really see the separation in layers when you press on it with a fork for instance after frying it, and this is like gives you a very realistic mouthfeel.
Yeah, we're right now scaling up our production technology.
OK, that's wonderful.
And the product that recently launched, is interestingly called the Kraken.
So would you like to tell us how you came up with the name?
Of course, so, we recently launched another product which is octopus alternative that we call the kraken, inspired by octopus, which is mainly a playful, playful name based on this, there's a slogan from a movie from the eighties where they say release the kraken and then this mystical creature is being released for an underwater fight.
It's just pop, pop culture, it's iconic, it's funny I think and also for us you many plant-based brands take themselves very seriously and stuff and I think there's some room for some playfulness and some, some humor in this as.
Oh, that, that's wonderful, very interesting.
And how would you access the consumer demand for octopus meat specifically in Europe, and why did Rever Foods specifically focus on developing octopus tentacle alternative?
Octopus is quite an interesting product because.
It is niche, that is true.
The market demand is not as high as for salmon or tuna or things like this.
It's mainly being sold in Southern Europe, in Europe like Italy or Spain or Greece, and it's mainly sold in quite traditional channels like tavernas or the typical old school restaurants, in these countries.
This makes it a bit challenging, but what makes it very interesting is that, first of all, it's very unique, like an alternative like this doesn't exist yet and we believe.
That it's always an advantage to give alternatives to to any type of animal product in the future to make consumers that love this type of products but, but don't like how they're produced or all the animal issues that are involved with it that seek for an alternative that now they have this option.
And also because it's an interesting, it's an interesting market because more and more people are aware of the, the negative aspects of eating octopus.
Like there's many documentaries like my my octopus Teacher on, on Netflix or something like this that many people.
Watching it's really, it's really intelligent animals and like really social animals and stuff, so it raises the question like hey these are fascinating creatures, should we really should really overfish them and eat them, like maybe there's a better way.
So that's the approach that we have.
OK.
Yeah, and there's been a recent ban on octopus farming in Washington state just the other day.
So what are your thoughts on that and how do you think such ban would impact the scalability and the growth of your product?
It it helps us in a certain way, but I'm not sure if that drives market demand because at the end people who really like to eat octopus or lobster or something like this, probably, like many of them might not perceive our octopus as a good alternative because they say no, I only want the real thing and if I don't get the, The real thing that I don't eat anything at all, like this is more an offer for a specific type of people that for instance, liked to eat octopus in the past but chose not to consume it anymore because, for instance, they watched a documentary and learned how social and emotional these animals are or they chose not to.
To eat seafood or meat altogether because of the environmental damage that the production causes or other reasons.
So I think these are more the markets to start with, but then of course these are generational trends that are, are happening right now with how we perceive food, how especially the young generation is perceiving, perceiving food and what we should eat.
Like now when I, I go out and I ask like 20 year olds or something that that work in our company.
How, how their diet looks like, but it sometimes feels that up to 50% of them already like don't eat meat anymore, so like, no, I'm I'm not doing this anymore.
Like it seems to become the new norm and I think it's good for all of us.
Yeah, but do you think it would drive that kind of innovation that would make seafood alternative?
Yeah, yes, 100%, like laws like this can drive innovation, I think.
I don't know, forbidding something always sounds a bit extreme.
In this case, 100% support it.
I don't think we should farm octopus, but like it's not very popular with people.
I think there need to be compelling alternatives in place, and I think there's other political measures that can be taken.
So for instance, I don't understand why the value added tax, at least in most European countries, is, is lower for animal products than for plant-based products.
Why, why should we support it?
Why does the taxpayer need to subvention, animal products which are way worse for the environment?
The European Union, for instance, there's the EU Green Deal where they say they want to cut back on emissions, cut back on.
On environmental damage, etc.
And agriculture and especially animal agriculture plays a huge factor in this, but it appears that nobody of the politicians wants to touch this hot potato because it's quite unpopular and it is instrumentalized by a lot of groups like here in Austria, like the, the right wing party wants to forbid naming any type of plant-based product like like give it meatlike names like sausage or burger or something like this from like.
How does this align with your value?
You wanna reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which means in the food industry 100% to like less animal products means less greenhouse gas emissions because plant-based products are always perform better on these metrics.
Why don't you stand to your word?
Why, why don't you touch this measurement as?
So these are things that I cannot, or I do understand because it's unpopular, but sometimes unpopular decisions need to be taken, I think, and I hope that companies like ourselves or the products that we release can.
Be part of this discourse and I don't even want to be very confrontative here.
I would like an open, honest dialogue, but what I've seen from certain lobby groups is that I'm not sure that everyone is interested in having an honest dialogue, but tries to score, score points and I don't know, marketing messages.
Yeah, certainly, I think it's, it should certainly at least drive some kind of innovation so that consumers also have a sustainable alternative to the normal octopus meat.
And coming back to your product, the kraken, what were the technical challenges that you faced while replicating the taste and texture of the real octopus because it's supposed to be complicated with the suckers and the red colors, so you would love to know more about it.
It certainly is.
We're testing a new 3D structuring method with this product where we try a new technique to, I cannot say too much about it, but basically to give it this realistic shape of this, this typical octopus like looks where I don't know since we.
We released it, last week, the press release and the product, and since then many people on social media, media wrote like it looks way too realistic, like I don't even like something like this, so I don't know, maybe we need to see what the market says because some people do not want it to look like the conventional animal product.
However, our goal is really to reach the people who are used to to it.
Maybe they'd like to eat it when they were children or they'd like to use it in traditional dishes, especially in like Spain or Greece or Italy or people that like to, for instance, go on holiday in these places and enjoy these dishes, to give them an alternative that.
And I think for this, like it is.
It is good and almost a requirement if it looks and behaves authentic, and this is maybe one interesting thing, or octopus that is based mainly on mycoprotein.
It's one of the products that can be used or consumed both in a cold state.
So like a salad for example, or it can be heated and being eaten in a warm state, so like a fried octopus or something like this, which is very hard to achieve for plant-based products because often it's either either cold or either warm.
But it works for both, like that's quite, was quite a challenging development and I'm I'm happy that we, we did it.
Yes, indeed, I think if you're offering them two options either to have it hot or cold, it gives more convenience to the consumer and more flexibility.
And would you like to tell us a bit more about the microprotein part that you mentioned?
How, what other properties does it have that helps you achieve the particular texture?
So microprotein is super cool and because it, it's a really, really interesting protein source because it has a complete amino acid profile, it means it's very nutritious, it's inherently fibrous, that means I would even argue that it's a low processed products because there's a lot of discussion about like high processing, ultra high processing at the end, what we take is, The microprotein component, which is like inherently fibrous, we don't need high temperatures, we don't need high shear forces to texturize it, so more of the vitamins and omega 3 are staying in the product, and we basically just put it into a new form.
So I would say this is like a very nutritiousous and clean label product.
I don't think like it fits with any preconceived notions that consumers might have about like dry processed, like high salt, high fat, like no, for us it's mainly like high omega 3 fatty acids like.
Like the best fatty acids you can have, high in protein content, high in fibers as , we put a lot of emphasis on.
Like that it's, that the ingredients that we use also add up to the overall nutritional benefit of the product, which is why for instance, for this product also we have a nutri score A, so the best nutrient score you can have.
Yeah, I'm quite proud of that.
OK.
That, that sounds great.
And coming to the cost factor, Robin, how do you think how cost effective your product is if consumers compare it to the conventional octopus meat?
So for instance, right now, here in Austria, we have a price of about a bit less than €60 per kilogram for this product and remember like we released now a limited edition to test the market basically and get consumer feedback, which increased our production price, but it is already cheaper than octopus that is on sale in Austrian supermarkets, at least, because octopus is a quite high priced product.
However, like, we still need to decide this 100% if we want to release it because it's a niche product, it's a niche market, but it's a really cool product also.
So if we decide to release it on a larger scale in like, fall, winter, it will be, we like definitely we will bring the price down, quite a bit, just which comes from producing regularly and like in a larger scale production.
And yeah then we hope that we can of course reach a much more competitive price but it's it's a specialty product, it is not a high volume product that's for sure.
But I think it's very interesting for instance for vegan restaurants or for very innovative restaurants to show what is possible because it just looks amazing, the products.
Yeah, my next question was going to be about the future plans.
You've already told us about that.
So do you also plan to venture into other kind of meat apart from, this, because you have done fish, you have, you're now into octopus, and what's the future plan?
Sure.
We're about to finalize our production plan for this new 3D food structuring approach that we have, and this will be the first industrial scale, food structuring plant in the world, and we can produce quite significant outputs with it.
We start mainly with the salmon filet, which is a showcase product and which is also quite unique because there's not, not really any competitor in the market right now for this type of product of this quality.
But then of course we would like to venture into more use cases, but most likely.
Even more so in the use case of customizing food items because what the 3D food printing approach allows us to do is to, to really create completely new structures, new textures, new forms, also for specific customers like have a very unique product for one type of customer that is immediately recognizable.
Like for instance, I don't know.
In the US there's a company called White Castle, they have small burgers.
There's no difference to anything else, it's just they're small, so everybody immediately recognized, ah it's from this company, and you can do this with basically anything in food, but now you buy a hamburger, maybe a hamburger's not the best example, they all look the same, more or less, you cannot differentiate yourself anyhow or like the the bread or something, it's pretty, pretty similar.
But then if you have a differentiation way there where you have the crazy shape like ah it's the star shape or something or it's the, I don't know, fish shape or whatnot, like you immediately see that the the ability of the technology to, without any hardware changes.
Only with software control, make 500 pieces of this shape for this customer and 700 pieces of this shape for this customer and then like it goes on and on, like this incredible flexibility that you have with this production process where other producers would either say like look, we cannot produce it, it's too complex, we're only like super high volumes, or we do it very manually by hand, it's getting super expensive, we're right in the middle there, so we really offer people a new way to think about.
What food can mean for us or how food can be produced for this customized personalized cases.
Yeah, that's a wonderful way to end our discussion here today, Robin.
Thanks a lot for your insights and have a nice day.
