Hey,
As lockdowns are back in Europe, I hope you are all doing as well as possible.
At least, we are living the best of times for Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) brands. In our just realised report on European FoodTech brands, we have deep dived into the mechanics of such brands. And as a way to make this clearer we have worked on a shortlist of the 30 top European FoodTech brands of 2020. As we’ve done for our recent mapping of the top French FoodTech startups, we’ve started with the startups that have raised money recently and selected those that represent the best each category and its current trends.
You can find much more detail here on the startups selected. In a nutshell:
- 🍺 Drinks: While many entrepreneurs have been working on launching new beverages, very few succeeded in Europe at developing a strong brand. This category is growing with low or non-alcoholic drinks, but few have emerged locally and European retailers seem to be more interested in selling American startup brands.
- 🍽️ ⇒ 🍼 Meal Replacements are an exciting category. It illustrates one of the main challenges of European startups: scaling internationally. Three startups have reached scale in Europe, in the three biggest markets (Huel in the UK, Feed, in France, and YFood in Germany), yet none is strong outside its home country.
- 🥩 ⇒ 🥜 Alternative protein startups are maybe the most discussed topic in FoodTech brands. Beyond Meat’s IPO (in mid-2019) has demonstrated a food startup’s potential to become as attractive as a software one. This has led to a surge in the creation of new protein alternative startups and reinforced the ecosystem’s investments.
- 🏅 💊 Fitness and nutrition brands are a natural fit for a Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) strategy. Many startups have been venturing into this space in the last decade. Interestingly, few of them have either entered a more traditional retail distribution or become truly international (on this part, MyProtein and FoodSpring are almost exceptions).
- 🍫 As for the meal replacement startups, many DTC snacking startups exist, but few have crossed their home market borders. For this top 30, we have selected Proper Corn, Nicks, and Mister Freed.
- 🧪 Finally, even if we try to avoid it as much as we can, we had to create a miscellaneous category for this DTC mapping. In some areas such as baby food, we can find many startups but most are still small and looking for a path to grow.
Find more here and in our report!
Contact us if you have any questions on this mapping or would like to discuss how to move your (traditional, International, or startup) business into the DTC space! (Or for any other Ag/FoodTech question for that matter)
Have a great week!
Matthieu
TOP INSIGHTS FROM DIGITALFOODLAB #1 – Nestlé acquires fullstack delivery startup Freshly for $1.5B
Freshly substitutes itself for the need to cook at home (or at the office). A customer can choose each week 4 to 12 meals among a list of 30, get them delivered at his door, ready to be heated and eaten. Currently Freshly says it delivers 1 million meals a week (that would make around 150,000 customers) and is on the path for $430M in revenues in 2020…
More here #2 – Urban farming leaders are raising (a lot of) money to scale
Plenty, the US vertical farming leading startup, raised an additional $140M at a valuation of just under $1 billion. Among Plenty’s new investors, the farming giant Driscoll’s, specialized in berries, is a testimonial of the startup’s ability to grow at scale this category of high-value fruits over its competitors. Just one month before, it was the European leader, the German InFarm, which raised $170M for its in-store farms….
More Here #3 – A Spanish lab-grown startup receives a grant from the EU commission
BioTech Foods, a Spanish startup, received a grant from the EU commission. It is working on lab-grown pork (under the brand Ethicameat). This is the first major European-level public grant financing a project aiming at producing cellular agriculture food at scale…
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As you can see, FoodTech is indeed moving faster than ever in 2020. But you are not alone. DigitalFoodLab is here to help you :
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No matter if you are a startup or a food giant, we are here to work with you and change the world of food! (contact us).
