Sunny Kumar, CEO of Black Sheep Foods, joined Cheddar News to discuss how the company is redefining faux meat starting with lamb. “It tastes better than real lamb,” he said.

Black Sheep Foods Raises $12.3M In Funding Round

I want to turn to another startup, shaking things up. I hope you're hungry. Food tech company black sheet foods raising at 12.3 million in a series a round. This is pretty impressive. The company says it's reimagining the words meat alternatives. Starting with lamb made from plants. Well, the Prada is available at Michelin star fine dining and quick service eateries on the west coast and joining me now is sunny Kumar Ceo and co founder of Black sheep Foods. Sunny. Hi, thank you so much for coming on the show. Does it taste like real lamb? It tastes better than real lamb? And I'll tell you why. So the reason why we slaughter lambs at nine months is not because they taste the best. It's because they have the least amount of off notes. So what have we done? We've actually projected what a lamb or sheep would taste like at three years old and we have the off notes from like a newborn cap. So essentially we're creating a lamb alternative. That's better than the animal counterpart. And don't take my word for it. Go to black sheep eats. Um, which is our social media and check out the reviews. Right? So people have told us, I don't like lamb, why do I like your product? And it's because of that fact. Um, lamb is polarizing because those off notes gotten rid of them creating a better animal uh, alternative than even the animal itself. So another question that I have for you, sonny is oftentimes a lot of these faux meat alternatives. They're made from p pro proteins. I think rice to other sort of plant based proteins in certain cases. What are the ingredients that make your faux lamb, your plant based lamb have the taste and nutrients that it provides. So uh the protein comes from p protein, that's all non Gmo we use beat or color uh cocoa butter, coconut oil, sort of the typical main characters. But I think what separates us is our flavor compounds which we have patent pending regulatory approval. Um They're they're a class of compounds called branched chain fatty acids. And what they do is they give gamey meats that gamey flavor. And so that's what sets us apart and we're starting off with land, but we have a skew of other uh flavors coming down the pipe which are going to just blow people's minds what else is in the pipeline? So there's big three meats, right, beef, chicken pork, We want to attack all three were starting with lamb to attack the giant, the gorilla in the room which is beef, but we also have to take on chicken, our duck product. And then for pork we have wild boar. So um you know, we're gonna keep form factors that you all love. So the burger patty is gonna stay the same, but it's just gonna have lamb flavor the chicken nuggets gonna, you know the nuggets gonna stay the same or we're gonna put duck flavors in there. So we're just gonna totally reimagine what flavors that you get to experience and the form factors that you love. So You know it's gonna be a brave new world in in the next 3-5 years. So it is impressive. I mentioned in the intro sunny that you're in, that you have your products in Michelin starred restaurants as well as some more fast casual eateries. So kind of high and low culture if you will just depending on where people actually want to get these at any given time, any plans to bring the product to the grocery store so people can cook with it at home. Yeah. We want to be thoughtful about our roll out I think a lot of times and you know, you know the market um It's not the same market where you could, you know uh spend a dollar to get 70 cents back and growth growth growth is the end all be all the market now is a little bit more about how are you operating? Are you gross margin positive? Are you seeing reoccurring sales? And what we wanted to do is really be thoughtful and roll and and make sure our chef partners are being successful. So just a data point, we're at 44 restaurants on in san Francisco and L. A. And we're seeing 22% month over month sales increased right, which shows that people are coming back for our product and that's what we want to continue doing. So um we'll let the data guide us, but for the next year too, we have pretty much no competition in indian mediterranean Middle Eastern restaurants whose main red meat of choice is land. So it would be foolish for us to sort of jump to retail when we haven't satiated that demand that currently exists. Okay, so here's my question, because now I'm hungry, one of the best recipes to make with your product. Um Great question. Maybe I should call the chef, but I love the carnitas. So there's uh our chef makes these amazing carnitas, which again, I think the cool part about this product is, and I think we're seeing this from our customers. People love to see it in just a variety of formats and it's, again, the new world, you're wanting flavor freedom. You want more flavor choice and meat hasn't given you that it's weird to me that there's more variety in the salt. I'll, there's Himalayan salt, there's truffle salt, there's salt with spices than in the meat aisle, the meat aisles, chicken, beef and pork. And we've been fed the same three meats for our whole life. So anything that you could do with uh beef you can do with this product even better because those flavors are just so exceptional and they really just uh sing in your mouth. Um and then uh so that's that's what I would say, those are my favorite. But the choice that we give uh customers is what really gets me excited and and their creativity has just been blowing us away. I can't wait to try it. Well, sonny, if you're ever here on the East Coast, you have to bring some to the new york Stock Exchange and we can do a little taste test on set. You can hold me to that. Alright, let's do it. I love it. All right, Sunny Kumar Ceo and co founder of Black Sheet Food. Sunny. Thank you.