Current Foods, a startup that provides plant-based tuna and salmon, promising higher scalability than cultured meat and price parity with conventional seafood, has just closed a $18 million seed round. The company's flagship tuna products are primarily available through B2B across food service and fine dining locations, including celebrity chef Matthew Kenney’s restaurants. Jacek Prus Co-Founder and CEO of Current Foods joins Cheddar to discuss the challenges within the alt-protein industry and how the company plans to allocate funds for growth. 

Closing Bell

Current Foods Raises $18 Million to Accelerate Expansion of Alternative Protein

current foods, a startup that provides plant based tuna and salmon has just closed an $18 million seed round. The company's flagship tuna products are primarily available through business to business sales across food services and fine dining locations. This includes Celebrity chef Matthew Kenney's restaurants here discusses just six process co founder and Ceo at current foods. Welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you, I hope I said your name correctly, Can you say it for me? Yeah, Bruce. You got really close. My deepest apologies, Jason that is on me. Thank you. Well, tell us more about current foods and the tools the platform provides. Yeah, thanks for having us. I mean, our whole mission is to provide the world with 50% of its seafood and um, the way we envision doing that is through a more sustainable system of making seafood plants. Plants can provide everything we need from protein and nutrition and most importantly, taste um spoke recently with kevin O'leary and you know, that's, that's the product's gonna taste great and we really are market leaders when it comes to creating genuine seafood alternatives. Um, and we're able to do this in a way that's price competitive to the animal counterpart. So, um, you know, the customer can get something they love, uh that tastes great, that's affordable. Um and most importantly, also aligns with their values of eating sustainably. That's really important in these times, especially in these times. What challenges did you see Jason facing the alternative protein industry right now? I'm sure there were some obstacles here. Sure. I mean, making great food products is, it takes a lot of time. It takes money. Um but it's it's very doable. So I think that's our first and foremost challenge. Um you know, we've done pretty well there, especially in the time and money that we have um you know, the industry in itself, the products have to be readily available. Um They have to, you know, be price competitive, the consumers, you know, getting more conscious with price nowadays. Um and you know, it really has to um you know, be backed by the places providing food, so restaurants, retailers, um the ones that take the bet and they put the alternative where you can find the animal product will see that it succeeds very well. You see this in the adult milks. Um we saw this with the meats right when they got next to the animal counterpart takes off. So I think that's really important and and you know, companies need to continue making good products even better products and getting those products into a place where people will naturally find them. Um sure. Not the vegan penalty box that we joke joke about sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. And we know current food secured $18 million dollars in a recent funding round. Congratulations. How does the company plan on using these funds? Yeah, thank you. Um Yeah, I mean, one big thing about that is the funding from whom, like from whom we received it. Um you know, these these people are the people who did a lot of work at beyond meat. They were the initial backers, they supported Ethan from from the early days and we're really excited about that. Um you know, the funding is primarily to improve our current products, so we want to, you know, you know, more complexity and and and just create the products taking the next level. We're always going to be focusing on that as a company. Um And the other is to really get them out there. So um one of our investors that came in um said something that really stuck with now the job is to get the product into people's mouths. So, you know, we want to expand out, get into many more restaurants, um get into retailers where people will be able to find our smoked salmon product um and just be able to taste that, you know, these products are gonna taste really good, they're gonna be really good for the planet. Um So that's that's really, I would say the big focus is always getting product better. Getting it out where you were talking about this earlier, it's all about making the product better. Where do you see the alternative protein industry, let's say in the next five years? Yeah, that's a that's an interesting question. Um You know, I think a lot of money was invested in the past couple of years, so that the products, hence should should get a lot better. Um You know I can talk about the details and that I think um the fat content will become more stable through the product was recently on four July with some friends and um you know they're grilling burgers and you just see how much fat there is an animal products and some of the fat is really not healthy but it tastes good. And so I think there would be you know an increase in in in you know healthy, hopefully fats um plant based products um You know I know with our products we'll we'll have a layering system that's gonna be really cool. You'll you'll see the layers that you kind of see in and um an animal meat. Um And I think you just see like the dairy industry will continue to take more, the alternative dairy industry will continue to take more and more market share. Um The same with the all meat industry, you know, people think like all meat isn't doing well, but if you look at impossible foods and beyond meat, their sales are they're increasing quite a lot. Um You know they're just facing some headwinds right now. Um I am curious out of all the old protein options, why seafood. Yeah. Yeah, it's um got pretty good at answering that one. Well there's there's a couple of numbers, We repeat ourselves a lot at current foods. Um one of those is 5070 97. Um and the reason we repeat those numbers is since 1970, of the ocean fish have been pulled out of the water. 70% of the sharks and the rays. And then 97% of Pacific Bluefin Tuna. Um So that's quite an environmental catastrophe. Like my grandkids be able to swim with the, you know, ocean full of life. But that's also an economic opportunity. And this is the kind of overarching thing that we see with climate now is it arches on the opportunity that is found through the crisis. So seafood prices, believe it or not, or, or I would say a pilot scale and production, we are price competitive to the seafood products. We are, you know, uh replacing. So seafood has a huge, huge advantage in that we start price competitive and eventually we will be cheaper than all of the fish. And when we deliver the great taste and we deliver the nutrition there, it becomes a no a no brainer. Um So that's why we chose seafood. We also chose seafood because it wasn't a space that was so occupied. Um Impossible foods beyond meat are doing a great job with terrestrial animals. There's other products there. So I think there's a lot of meta trends that are, that are gearing up and, you know, seafood was the one for us. That's exciting and we can make products that are really differentiated. So we can, you know, advance the tech technology for the space and very quickly I have to ask any plans to go public. Yeah. Great. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, you know, for us it's whatever serves the end of the company right? Like to, to provide 50% of seafood if that's going public, if that's through working with a really good strategic, um, you know, we like to go public. I think that's uh, it's just between us on live news, but whatever serves the company best. Well, we hope you come back here to talk about it. We always appreciate you coming on. I can't wait to try your product. Prus co founder and Ceo at Current Foods. Thank you Again, We appreciate it.