Tomorrow Farms wants to revamp the pantry – TechCrunch -

Admin | Post Friday, 6 May 2022 - 09:51 PM | 35

Tomorrow Farms is fueling a sustainable food train with ingredients to transform the pantry and refrigerator staples we now know into foods that are better for us and kinder to animals and the planet.

The company is set to launch its first product later this month — co-founder and CEO Ben Berman didn’t know what it would be — thanks in part to an $8.5 million seed round, led by Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from Maveron, Valor Siren Ventures, Simple Food Ventures, SV Angel and a group of angel investors including Ron Conway, Ryan Tedder and Max Mullen. The new round awards Tomorrow Farms a total funding of $10.5 million.

Berman started Tomorrow Farms about a year ago after a career in the food space. At 18, he had a food truck called Mainely Burgers, which grew into three trucks and 16 employees. From there, he launched Good Pizza from his apartment and, during the global pandemic, he brought down pizzas from his windows to people as he raised money for local charities. This business is now part of Philabundance, a hunger relief organization in Philadelphia.

With many investment funds invested in the future of food businesses, Tomorrow Farms. which was incubated at the SALT Venture Fund in early 2021, is on a mission to be the initial partner for many of these high-tech food science companies creating new products and brands.

“We saw this wave of food products, precision fermentation and cell cultured meat technology, but they needed help with commercialization,” Berman told TechCrunch. “We do all the marketing, go-to-market, creative and branding work for them. We also look at what resonates with customers and what the next generation of foods should look like and find companies to make those foods.

As mentioned, Tomorrow Farms is gearing up for its first product launch and has worked with an ingredient company to create a product around that company’s formulation.

The new funding was dedicated to the product launch and the definition of a second product. This will involve growing the team, building relationships with retailers and finding new food technology partners. Berman said the company is already working with a few companies developing ingredient inputs and more are coming in every day.

“There’s so much activity in this space, and it’s helping us build the future of our food systems,” he added. “We are opportunistic, with all this activity, that we will find the right products. We don’t try to create trendy products, so we devote time and capital to the brands we want to launch.

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