“The restaurant dinners we held at China Chilcano in Washington, DC, last summer went extremely well,” wrote Eat Just’s director of worldwide communications, Carrie Kabat, in an emailed assertion to WIRED. “We plan to resume these dinners this year.”
Good Meat/Eat Just’s hen had additionally beforehand been on sale in Singapore, however gross sales there have additionally been paused. “In Singapore, we are ramping up production and plan to begin serving shortly,” Kabat wrote.
The aim of those early cultivated meat gross sales was prone to generate buzz, gauge public response, and lift consciousness of the trade, says Steve Molino, an investor at Clear Current Capital, a plant-based and cultivated meat enterprise capital agency, who has not invested in both Eat Just or Upside Foods. “It accomplished what it needed to accomplish and now it’s time to refocus,” Molino says, noting that the businesses most likely made a loss on the sale of their meat given the excessive prices of manufacturing.
Eat Just is presently embroiled in a authorized dispute with a former accomplice over alleged unpaid invoices. In a November 2023 WIRED investigation, former staff alleged that the corporate was struggling financially and didn’t pay distributors on time. “The reality for us now is we need to figure out a way to build large-scale facilities without spending north of half a billion dollars, because it’s simply not viable long-term,” Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick advised WIRED on the time. “There has to be a better way of doing it. And if we can’t figure out a different way of doing it, then what we’re doing won’t work.”
Although cultivated meat is not on sale within the US and Singapore, each Eat Just and Upside Foods advised WIRED that they deliberate to relaunch gross sales in 2024. And final month, Israel-based Aleph Farms acquired regulatory approval from the Israeli Ministry of Health for its cultivated beef product: a mixture of beef cells and plant protein. The firm nonetheless requires an inspection of its pilot manufacturing facility in Rehovot and instructions on labeling and advertising from Israeli regulators earlier than it may well promote its product in Israel.
“Post inspection of our production facility, Aleph Cuts will be introduced in targeted tasting experiences for consumers and relevant stakeholders,” says Aleph Farms CEO and cofounder Didier Toubia. “This phase of limited market activations allows us to gather feedback from consumers, refine our brand positioning collaboratively with them, and lay the foundation for a successful long-term launch.”
Sheila Voss, senior vp of communications on the various protein nonprofit the Good Food Institute, says she expects the rollout of cultivated meat to proceed within the US.
“As we saw in Singapore, the first country in the world to approve the sale of cultivated meat, the rollout to consumers migrated across fine dining restaurants, home delivery, and hawker stalls, highlighting the versatility of this product, and we expect similar introductory rollouts in the US,” she says. “We are still at the very early stages of cultivated meat’s entrance into the marketplace.”