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Josh Tetrick[/b] tucks into pancakes made using plant-based egg-substitute Just Scramble]
This article was taken from the March 2016 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Hampton Creek's headquarters is in an unassuming building in an up-and-coming part of San Francisco. There's nothing to suggest it's home to one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups.
Yet inside it's buzzing with staff crammed MacBook-to-MacBook around a large table and on sofas. There are rows of kitchen equipment, with chefs mixing, tasting and baking. The smell of fresh cookies hangs in the air.
Hampton Creek, a food company powered by technology, makes egg-free mayonnaise substitute, oil-free dressings and plant-based cake mixes. It's not the first to do so, but Hampton Creek isn't just another vegan startup. Its founder, Josh Tetrick, has a more lofty ambition: to use food as a platform for change, swapping resource-intensive animal ingredients for plant-based ones to create delicious products that are accessible to the masses. "The food system is degrading to our planet and to our bodies. How can we change that?" 35-year-old Tetrick asks in a soft Alabama lilt. "I am using food as a means to solve problems that have an impact." It's a mantra that WIRED hears repeatedly, uttered with the fervour of a preacher. "Everything I do, everything I say, every person I hire, every customer we acquire, every policy we try to change is animated by that," he says.
With the exception perhaps of California-based Soylent -- which makes a meal-replacement shake for culinary killjoys -- it's hard to think of another food startup that has attracted as much attention as Hampton Creek. In its four years of operation, the company has raised more than $120 million (£80m) in funding from investors such as Asian billionaire Li Ka-shing, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. It has also secured distribution deals with retail giants including Walmart, Whole Foods and Target, as well as the world's largest contract food service company, Compass Group.
Sales of Hampton Creek's products have grown by 250 per cent in the past year, with its valuation among investors growing from $3 million to $1 billion over the past four years. At the same time, the company's journey has been punctuated by controversy, ranging from a lawsuit with Unilever over the description of its egg-free Just Mayo product, a smear campaign from the American Egg Board and a couple of high-profile articles questioning the science and ethics of the startup based partly on interviews with former employees. "It's incredible they've been able to scale so quickly -- particularly when dealing with a lot of logistics and transportation. Most companies are only dealing with scaling software and building servers," says Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of London-based AI startup DeepMind and an investor in Hampton Creek. "This is bigger than eggs. It's a whole new approach to food science that has enormous potential."
The first time WIRED meets Tetrick, he bounds over with enthusiasm and delivers a firm handshake and a big smile. Wearing the startup founders' uniform of a T-shirt and jeans, he speaks purposefully and repetitively, falling back on well-trodden mission statements at every opportunity. At times he lowers his voice to share an off-the-record anecdote.
Tetrick grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in a small apartment with his mother and brother Jordan, who also works at Hampton Creek. Most of his youth was spent focused on trying to become a professional American football player: "That was my identity, my fixation, my entire sense of self," he says. Although bright, he made no effort with academic work; his high-school friends would, he says, describe him as a "dumb jock".
After winning a football scholarship to West Virginia University, Tetrick realised he wasn't good enough to play professionally, so he knuckled down and focused on academia, transferring to Cornell University in New York. After graduation in 2004, he won a Fulbright scholarship that allowed him to travel to Nigeria and South Africa -- the first time he'd left the US -- to teach street children.
He returned to enroll at the University of Michigan Law School. It was around this time that he started experiencing abnormal heart rhythms and was sent to a cardiologist, who diagnosed him with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially life-threatening disease that thickens the heart muscle. The diagnosis meant that the sports-mad student could no longer lift weights or play basketball or football - even recreationally. "If I think of moments in my life that were utterly devastating, that was one of them," he says.
It's this condition that explains the daily alarm that pops up on his iPhone every day at 7am: "Prepare to die." It's a morbid reminder to make the most of the time he has in this world.
The diagnosis motivated him to channel his energies into pursuing a more meaningful lifestyle. He headed to Liberia after graduation to help reform investment laws while working on social campaigns to help children -- particularly girls -- get back into school. "I liked telling people about it. I was creating a new identity," he says. He enjoyed the reactions he got from people who thought he was a "good dude", but he started to question how much impact he was really having. This realisation made him return to the US and study complex systems involved in food, energy and education. "The more I drilled into food, the more I thought capitalism could be used to reorient the system," he says.
That reorientation began with chicken eggs. "We had to start somewhere," he says. He adds that 1.8 trillion eggs are laid each year, the majority of which come from battery farms, where birds are packed into tiny cages. Beyond animal-rights issues, egg farming is also inefficient, requiring 39 calories of energy to produce one calorie of protein -- compared with the 2.2 calories of energy required to make one calorie of plant protein.
Another reason for focusing on eggs is that they are a "hidden" ingredient throughout the food system: you can find them in cakes, scones, pastries, custards and pies. "Would anyone really care if they had a muffin without a battery-caged egg in it?" Tetrick asks.
Hampton Creek was founded in December 2011 with an initial business plan to sell plant-based ingredients to food giants. However, Tetrick realised that to make change happen quickly, he had to sell products directly to consumers. The first product, Just Mayo, swapped eggs, which account for ten per cent of traditional mayonnaise, for Canadian yellow peas.
Hampton Creek soon found other plant proteins to develop a line of dressings and bake mixes. Its Just Cookies dough uses sorghum instead of dairy products. The same core ingredients can be used for waffles, cakes and muffins.
Much of 2015 was spent developing Just Scramble, a liquid egg substitute -- based on a bean (kept secret for now) -- that can be fried like a regular egg. WIRED tried a version in August 2015, and found it to be persuasively omelette-like, recognisable as cooked egg, but slightly more chewy and less flavoursome. The formula was still being tweaked in November, with a launch date pegged for the first half of 2016.
So far, there have been no Hampton Creek product launches that are dramatically different from those already created by explicitly vegan brands. California's Follow Your Heart, for example, creates a vegan mayonnaise called Vegenaise as well as dressings, dips and an egg replacement called VeganEgg. What separates Hampton Creek is the leaping ambition and an ability to make vegan products appealing and accessible -- partly by avoiding talking about the fact that they are vegan.
People don't buy our products because they care about animals. They buy them because they taste good and are affordable," Tetrick says. The marketplace for plant-based products is dominated by what Tetrick describes as alternative brands aimed at a niche audience. Hampton Creek, on the other hand, is aimed at the mass market: the average parent who is "too damn busy" and doesn't have the time or money to feed their family better.
By chasing the mainstream market, Hampton Creek believes it is better placed to drive a systemic change in the food system. This explains why Tetrick is so proud that his products are stocked at the Dollar Tree discount store. "How many other brands that are better for the environment are at a price point that works for Dollar Tree?"
Another major milestone in the company's expansion was securing a deal with Compass Group to distribute its egg-free cookies, mayo and dressings to 2,300 public schools, healthcare organisations and other institutional food providers.
"The world's biggest food service company would never eliminate its incumbent mayo [Hellman's] for Vegenaise," Tetrick says. Time and time again he relates Hampton Creek's mission to Apple's -- not aiming to be the first to market but the best. "Was there an MP3 player before the iPod? Yeah. Did it take off? No. Probably because the iPod was better."
It's fighting talk like this that has helped embroil the company in a series of disputes with Big Food.
WIRED's second visit to Hampton Creek's headquarters comes four days after the CEO of the American Egg Board (AEB) resigned in the wake of revelations that the government-backed group conducted a smear campaign against the food startup. Joanne Ivy took early retirement after emails published under the US Freedom of Information Act revealed how the egg lobby had used shady tactics to tackle Hampton Creek, which it described as a "major threat" to the $5.5 billion US egg industry.
The emails show that the AEB attempted to prevent the sale of Just Mayo at Whole Foods, advised Unilever on its lawsuit and assessed Hampton Creek's patents for flaws. In one email thread, an executive even joked about killing Tetrick: "Can we pool our money and put a hit on him?" asked Mike Sencer, executive vice president from AEB member company Hidden Villa Ranch. AEB executive vice president Mitch Kanter replied, offering to "contact some of my old buddies in Brooklyn to pay Mr Tetrick a visit".
The revelations prompted an investigation by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) into the board.
WIRED asks Tetrick for his reaction to Ivy stepping down. His eyes light up and he grins. "It's not the first time an organisation has come after us," he says, mentioning a lawsuit filed by Unilever in 2014 that was withdrawn after 34 days. "It's an admission of something being a little screwy here."
Unilever's quibble was over Hampton Creek's use of the word "mayo" to describe its product. According to the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) standards of identity, a foodstuff can't be classified as "mayonnaise" without eggs. The year after Unilever dropped the case, the FDA issued Hampton Creek with a warning over its use of "mayo".
Tetrick's defence is semantic: he argues that Hampton Creek purposefully chose to name the product "mayo" rather than "mayonnaise" to make sure it didn't have to conform to the FDA's standards of identity. In December 2015, Hampton Creek said the FDA had agreed to the Just Mayo name remaining, in exchange for some label clarifications.
Although the AEB may have overstepped the mark, some observers argue that the Big Food versus startup conspiracy is being overplayed in a way that fits in with the David and Goliath narrative Hampton Creek is spinning. "A lot of it is a storm in a teacup," says John Ruff, president of the Institute of Food Technologists and former senior vice president at Kraft Foods. "The idea that Big Food is bullying poor little Hampton Creek I take with pinch of salt. Hampton Creek has been very negative about Big Food so it is hardly surprising there has been some pushback."
Ruff believes that the egg board probably went too far, but doesn't think there's anything particularly sinister about the FDA going after Hampton Creek for its product name ("Like it or not, food companies have to follow the rules"), nor Unilever attempting to sue. "Food companies file lawsuits the whole time. It's not personal. I would be surprised if more than one or two people at Unilever even care about it."
Ruff believes that Hampton Creek is "fuelling the fire" to create hype around its products. If it is, it's working. Bart Swanson from Horizons Ventures, which has invested in Hampton Creek, describes the Unilever lawsuit as "a godsend". "It gave us a lot of free publicity, which helped sales," he says.
Lee Chae[/b] leads the team searching for plant proteins to replace animal products##Credit¬Gregg Segal##DisplayStyle¬11]
Lee Chae is Hampton Creek's head of research and development, leading a team of 17 people with backgrounds in food science, biochemistry, data analytics, material science and molecular biology. The team focuses on finding plant proteins that could be used to replace animal proteins in common foods. They do this using a proprietary platform that scans databases of plants to isolate attributes that are desirable in food, whether that's texture, flavour or mouthfeel.
The team will take a piece of plant material, grind it up, split it into samples and then carry out a series of tests to extract and analyse different subsets of molecules. Chae, who has a PhD in plant molecular biology and studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford, says the team has tested around 100 plant samples to date. Each piece of plant material generates hundreds, if not thousands, of data points. All the results are stored, along with hundreds of thousands of publicly available data points relating to molecules that have already been sequenced, botanical information and the evolutionary relationships of plant species. "We are creating a predictive model that lets us target particular proteins with the functionalities we desire so that we only need to test 700 samples instead of 7,000."
This technique has helped identify a "roster" of candidate plant materials that they wouldn't otherwise be using, including the bean that forms the basis of the Just Scramble product. The candidate plant materials are passed on to a team of five chefs -- which includes former Top Chef contestant Chris Jones -- to play around with. "We hand them the information and they try to come up with a formula that tastes great," Chae says.
Nailing the formula can take months. "It can take 2,000 tries or it may take 50 to nail, but as a company we will not release it until it's perfect," Jones says.
Progress at Hampton Creek has at times been slow and frustrating. "Not every experiment we do or machine we have is going to work," Chae says.
In one instance, the team was isolating proteins from a bean source and a cereal source and combining them to make a dip; the proteins became gritty when mixed. Another time, the team was trying to make a soft spread based on pea sources, but the prototypes came out with a hard texture. "We couldn't make them spreadable, but they did bounce well," Chae says. "The science we're doing is a combination. It's a new focus and there aren't any models out there we can copy. We're figuring it out on the fly. Sometimes we try 17 things that don't work; it sucks sometimes."
Because of this, he understands why some of the early scientific team -- since departed -- have been quoted in magazine articles criticising the company. In a Business Insider piece in August 2015, former Hampton Creek staffers said it overplays the scientific innovation taking place and described it as a "food company masquerading as a tech company".
In addition to the criticism that Hampton Creek overplayed its science, ex-staffers also claimed the company exaggerated a database of plant samples it analyses and mislabelled ingredients.
They also alleged that the original formula for Just Mayo wasn't developed in-house, but instead by food-technology company Mattson (Tetrick admits the first formula was developed by Mattson, but it has since been reinvented in house) and that the company guaranteed a six-month shelf life for the product without sufficient testing to make the claim, something Tetrick denies.
In isolation, none of the claims are particularly damaging. Startups are prone to exaggeration and ex-employees often trash talk. The stories provided gossip fodder within Silicon Valley and Tetrick, who has addressed most of the claims publicly already, is clearly tired of talking about it.
Chae acknowledges some teething problems. "We hired certain skillsets prematurely," he says. "Some of the positions may have seemed more plug and play when actually we still had to build a lot of the processes. I feel bad because some people were hired before we were quite ready."
A major coup for the company was the August 2015 hiring of Jim Flatt, the former chief technology officer at Synthetic Genomics, who has a solid track record of using synthetic biology to develop sustainable fuels and chemicals for agriculture. Tetrick views Flatt's arrival as a validation of the work Hampton Creek is doing. "Lee and Jim wouldn't work here if we weren't doing science," he says.
Flatt, who has taken up the role of chief of R&D, describes the environment as "contagious" and, having scrutinised the company's research capabilities, says the science is sound. "Many of the underlying tools, such as instrumentation to perform high-throughput screening of compounds, large data set analysis and model-building algorithms, have been developed in other applications such as drug discovery or cell systems for renewable production of commodity products," he explains.
It's unusual for food companies to talk enthusiastically about their technology -- most try to conceal how the proverbial sausage is made with a façade of earthy wholesomeness, focusing on fields and sunshine rather than test tubes and protein isolation. However, Tetrick has had to speak to Silicon Valley as Hampton Creek looks to attract investment from venture capitalists and lure talent away from other startups. This requires putting extra emphasis on Hampton Creek's technological capabilities -- something the likes of Unilever and Kraft don't need to do. "Food is an emotional topic. We have to find the right balance between art and science," Tetrick says. "Nobody wants to think a computational biologist contributed to their pancake."
Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many items there are in the company's database, what equipment it has in the lab or how groundbreaking the science is. It only matters that the company can produce a high-quality, low-cost sustainable product that major retailers stock and people will buy.
Chris Jones[/b] cooks up omelettes to figure out how to get the texture and taste of Just Scramble more palatable##Credit¬Gregg Segal]
When Tetrick finds out that WIRED has been asking investors questions regarding Hampton Creek's bad press, he is quick to intervene, threatening to stop co-operating on what he assumes will be another "negative" article.
Tetrick starts screening WIRED's emails to his colleagues. He takes time out from a conference he's attending to complain about an email sent to his head of communications -- intended for Jim Flatt -- just five minutes earlier.
But, for all Tetrick's nervousness about WIRED's line of questioning, his investors are unfazed. "To disrupt an industry you have to upset the apple cart," says Bart Swanson, a UK-based Hampton Creek board director.
Mustafa Suleyman adds: "To scale quickly you need to have a high error rate. Successful companies need to take risks, make judgement calls and, if wrong, correct it and move on."
Tetrick wouldn't discuss some of the high-profile departures, such as Google Maps developer Dan Zigmond and Hampton Creek CSO and investor Ali Partovi. Zigmond was hired in 2014 as vice president of data, but left in early 2015 and is now listed as an adviser. Partovi joined the company in September 2014, but left after nine days.
"The people that work for this company come in early and work hard. We can't build what we want to without grinding. This is not sexy," he says, gesturing at the chaos of kitchen equipment strewn around him.
He adds that he's come to realise that the people who sound good on paper aren't necessarily the ones prepared to grind the work out. Creating the right culture has involved a steep learning curve. The hiring of Allison Hopkins was, he says, a turning point.
Hopkins is a HR veteran who helped to scale Netflix from a company of 250 employees to one of 4,000. She was coaxed out of retirement to join Hampton Creek as VP of people in October 2014. "I've worked with very disruptive companies, but this one took the cake," she says. Everyone eats, and I thought what the company was doing was a much bigger legacy play than an app or some other hi-tech gizmo."
Within months, she had laid off 17 staff, about a fifth of the team -- which she describes as a "healthy move". "They were all smart, well-intentioned people and were right for the company at the start, but companies go through phases," she explains. Hopkins has helped to double the size of the company to around 90 employees. She says she looks for people with the right mindset over and above the right skills. "Have they stepped out of their comfort zone or pivoted? We want fight, not flight or freeze." If people don't fit the culture they need to be dealt with quickly. "You can teach skills but you can't teach culture," she adds.
Three months after the first visit to Hampton Creek in August 2015, WIRED is invited to the new HQ -- a huge warehouse with a ten-year lease indicative of the startup's long-term vision.
When WIRED sits down with Tetrick, he explains why he reacted so defensively over previous questioning. He doesn't want to get involved in Silicon Valley gossip. It all comes back to the mission: "All I want to do is maximise the impact and do something positive." Despite being based in San Francisco, Tetrick doesn't see Hampton Creek as a Silicon Valley company. In fact, he's scathing about the amount of energy in the Bay Area being used to build companies that solve trivial problems.
The next major product launch will be Just Scramble. The team needs to work out how to get the egg patties to not "taste like mush" after they've been frozen, but he's confident it will be on sale in the first half of 2016.
Hampton Creek is turning its attention to the chicken: a plant-based nugget substitute is now in development. "We just did a big taste test," explains Tetrick, who briefly gave up his veganism to try a range including the McDonald's Chicken McNugget.
In the next year the company will announce a number of major partnerships outside of the US, including a five-year global deal with Compass Group and one with a major UK retailer. Tetrick maintains he wouldn't be content if Hampton Creek was bought out after two years for several billion dollars. "I want to create more of a positive change in the world," he says.
That wish extends to his how he plans to use his own personal fortune. WIRED learned that Tetrick had in the past year set aside all of his equity in the company to a trust, which he plans to put towards girls' education in Africa and other causes. It takes days of negotiation to get Tetrick to talk about it -- he says he feels "queasy" when he reads about others seemingly "bragging" about their philanthropy.
He eventually relents. "I want to have kids one day, but beyond that I don't crave for a whole lot else in my life. I feel even more motivated being here knowing that whatever financial outcome I have personally can be used to make a bigger impact."
Success, he says, isn't being acquired and cashing out, or people giving him applause. "Success is measurable as water saved, carbon emissions taken out of the atmosphere and the lives of girls in Liberia changed. That's what gets me up in the morning."
Big food versus Hampton Creek
In September 2015, a US Freedom of Information request revealed these emails showing how the American Egg board was planning to undermine Hampton Creek.
From: Joanne Ivy [then CEO of the American Egg Board, since retired] Sent: August 20, 2013 To: Maher, Missy [then a PR at Edelman]; Jensen, Elizabeth; Schaffner, Serena Subject: RE: Beyond Eggs
Missy, I am getting a lot of emails about this product from egg producers and further processors. The further processor considers this a serious threat to their business. We think it would be a good idea if Edelman looked at this product as a crisis and major threat to the future of the egg product business... I was wondering if we should hold a conference call this week to discuss or if Edelman would like to present your recommendations and move forward. I am feeling this is turning into a crisis!
From: Joanne Ivy Sent: December 03, 2013 To: Chad Gregory [CEO, United Egg Producers] Subject: Beyond Eggs
Chad, the article on Beyond Eggs [Hampton Creek's former name] in your November 22 United Voices reminded me of a comment made by Anthony [Zotezzi, an entrepreneur]... Although it was first publicized that Whole Foods had the Beyond Eggs Just Mayo on their shelves. They are now saying it will be fall. According to Anthony,it would only take a single call to Whole Foods to have them not take the mayo. Anthony said he would make that call. However, I feel sure he wants to be paid for doing it. I will contact Anthony and remind him to make the call unless his price is too steep.
From: Joanne Ivy Sent: November 20, 2014 To: Howard Maguire [government relations specialist] Subject: Beyond Eggs
Howard: I just got off the phone with a guy working with the Unilever case with Hampton Creek. He wanted to say that we supported Unilever in this lawsuit against Hampton Creek, but I told him that we could not take a position. However, since the regulation requires egg in mayo and their product does not, I said that they should make sure that the FDA is aware to address this situation.
I feel sure they are aware, but maybe they need to be pushed. He also asked for a spokesperson and I said that we are not able to provide a spokesperson, but he may want to contact his egg supplier, because possibly someone with that company would be willing to talk about the benefits of real egg in mayo and false advertising with a non-egg product. Just a thought.
From: Mike Sencer [of AEB member Hidden Villa Ranch] Sent: October 31, 2014 To: Debbie Murdock [of California Grain & Feed Association] Cc: Arnold Riebli; Steve Gemperle; Gary West; gforster; Joanne Ivy; Chad Gregory Subject: Disruptors in 2014: Hampton Creek Foods - Comments on Chickens and Eggs
Can we pool our money and put a hit on him?
From: Mitch Kanter [of the Egg Nutrition Center] Sent: December 03, 2013 To: Kevin Burkum [AEB] Subject: More Beyond Eggs Love
In the meantime, you want me to contact some of my old buddies in Brooklyn**to pay Mr Tetrick a visit?
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
