great deal of both Many types of food technology and innovation from cultivated meat to 3D food printing have been the source of excitement and investment over the past few years, but have struggled to meet initial hype when it comes to reaching consumers at scale or growing into full-fledged businesses.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“There has been an emerging trend over the past few years within the food industry, where Innovation has been decoupling from Growth,” VC investment firm and Future Food Asia (FFA) 2025 organiser ID Capital Founder Isabelle Decitre told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“Here, we saw that there was abundant funding and investments being poured into Innovation across the various food technologies, with everyone believing that these were the ingredients to create something new, bold, exciting and world-changing – but the fact is that not everyone can do this even with lots of investment.
“A lot of this was based on something of a mental hotwiring in the industry that ‘time will tell’ as long as the technology works and is good – which meant that the more practical aspect of this, the Growth, was left to a later stage.
“But this later stage eventually became such that growth has been flat and stagnant for years, which is an issue as it means that the innovations are not making the impacts expected – and shows that Innovation and Growth should never have been decoupled in the first place, but they were.”
The protein sector has become a clear example of this, where many alternative protein companies entered the market with ambitions of changing the global protein supply in the name of sustainability, health and other reasons – all noble causes, but though these ambitions have had success in mostly Western markets, there has been far less impact in Asia.
“The big problem with the protein issue was that it was very dramatised early on, making things seem very catastrophic and thus driving increased cynicism amongst meat consumers beyond the room,” she added.
“Alternative protein was given a sort of white knight position in this regard, and expected to be the saviour of the food system in the long run.
“That was the long-term vision, but eventually as the years passed, there has needed to be a decision on just how long is too long for a long-term vision, and that is the issue the sector is facing now that the food industry has increased in maturity and has come back down to earth from the initial hype.
“There is no denying that the big picture shows that climate change is an issue, global warming is an issue, but there is also no denying that we live in a real, practical world where practical problems need to be solved accordingly.”
Starting small
Decitre believes that there are many ways for firms, including start-ups, to make an impact as long as this is centred in realism.
“I think the first thing that must be done is for the industry to embrace that small can also be important – it is good to have a grand vision, and maybe after 10 years or so if well-implemented a small firm can make a big difference, but this is based on having the relevant funding already in and execution and management being stable,” she said.
“We have seen far too many cases of Innovation not keeping up with Growth as it is – many do a lot of high-end marketing with restaurants and other establishments once they get investments, hoping to grow in that route, but the issue is that to really grow they still need to see traction once the marketing support is pulled or there is no way they will grow.
“So even though glitz and glamour may seem great at first, if the basic supermarkets aren’t still selling your product once you pull the marketing dollars, you have nothing left as consumers are not going to access your product – and continuing to pour in those marketing dollars also means nothing as it will be just like a black hole.
“Remember that impact is a matter of size but only if you can scale up and establish a trajectory to a decent profitable business can the business continue to exist and survive – and there is nothing wrong with owning a niche initially too.”
Innovation and Growth is the main theme of this year’s Future Food Asia (FFA) 2025 which is set to take place in Singapore this year from May 20th to May 22nd.
