August 9, 2018

Pennsylvania-based vegan seafood company Good Catch Foods has done it again, announcing the successful completion of an $8.7 million Series A led by New Crop Capital. Additional investors in the round included online natural food platform Thrive Market, Fresh Direct, Stray Dog Capital, Blue Horizon, EverHope Capital, Baleine & Bjorn Capital, M13, Starlight Ventures, and a significant showing by European poultry company PHW Group, which recently also partnered with plant-based burger producer, Beyond Meat.

Co-founded in 2017 by New Crop Capital, conscious agency BeyondBrands, and The Good Food Institute, and with the culinary expertise of chefs Chad and Derek Sarno, Good Catch offers high protein, nutrient-rich, plant-based seafood products made from a proprietary mix of six beans:  pea, soy, chickpea, lentil, fava, and navy beans. Each product is dairy-free, gluten-free, non-GMO, and contains sea algae oil, providing essential omega-3 fatty acids.

The company’s flagship three SKUs include shredded tuna, frozen crab cakes, and fish patties with the line of plant-based tuna in three flavors: original, olive oil and herbs, and Mediterranean, which is slated to hit the market through Whole Foods by the end of this year.  

A Critical Moment

Growth in global demand for seafood has increased at 3.2 percent per year since 1960, outpacing the 1 percent annual growth in global population, according to Philippe de Lapérouse, co-head and managing director with HighQuest Consulting. Over the same time period, per capita consumption of seafood has more than doubled from 10 kilograms per person to more than 20 kilograms per person today, driven by demand from Asian markets where seafood has historically been a cornerstone of the regional diet, and by consumers in developed markets who are looking to include healthier protein in their diets.

This unsustainable dynamic, however, is creating a scenario that will see global fisheries collapse before 2050, according to Good Catch.

“The only truly sustainable seafood is seafood that allows fish to remain in the ocean,” said co-Good Catch CEOs Kerr and Schnell. “It is abundantly clear that we need a new approach to seafood. Importantly, this is a global concern and we need global stakeholders to put this approach into action; time is not on our side.”

A School of Rivals

Right now, there roughly 30 or 32 brands internationally that are addressing chicken, beef, and pork, but no one’s really touched seafood yet,” Schnell told Food Navigator-USA.

This apparent gap in the market is leading to an increasing number of startups dedicated to commercializing plant-based seafoods in one form or another.

~ New Wave Foods, an alum of the Silicon Valley-based  IndiBio tech accelerator, launched two products: an algae-based popcorn shrimp, and an un-breaded, cooked shrimp ahead of schedule in April 2017 due to high demand.

~  Wild Type, a company growing cultured meat in a laboratory, recently raised $3.5 million through a Seed Round in March of this year led by Spark Capital and including Root Ventures and Mission Bay Capital, along with other unnamed investors, to further the production of lab-grown salmon.

~ Similarly, another startup, Finless Foods  (another alum of IndiBio), is also engaged in tissue engineering to develop lab-grown bluefin tuna after raising a $3 million seed round last year.

~ And most recently, at the end of July, True Ventures and Collaborative Fund co-led a $4.25 million seed round for Terramino Foods, an alternative protein startup making meat and seafood products from fungi that have the same texture, taste, and nutrition as animal-based meats.

-Lynda Kiernan