Miami — If you’ve ever had a delicious veggie burger, you know one is not like the other. Unlike regular burgers, many restaurants generally buy ready-made veggie burgers - or the mix - from a supplier and add their own finishing touches.
Today, Argentina-based Tomorrow Foods, makers of a plant-based burger, announced a $3 million funding round, bringing their total raised to date to $3.5 million. This round was led by Grid Exponential.
Tomorrow Foods creates plant-based food and proteins that can be used by other businesses to make their own recipes.
“We focused on the plant-based sector because all of our R&D was pointing toward the local, added value that we have in the region [Argentina],” said Agustin Belloso, CEO of Tomorrow Foods.
Latin America has always had a rich food history, but in the last few years we’ve seen the foodtech sector boom as consumers demand more plant-based foods, alternative proteins, and more sustainable foods in general.
Despite the fact that Brazil is the largest meat exporter in the world, it’s also the country in LatAm with the most vegetarians totaling about 30 million or 14% of the population, according to a 2018 poll by the Brazilian research firm IBOPE. With a neighbor like this, it’s not surprising that Tomorrow Foods plans to expand to Brazil very soon.
Tomorrow Foods was founded in 2018 in Argentina, but didn’t launch their first product, the plant based burger, until just two months ago.
“Our objective is to allow other food brands to launch plant based products in an agile way,” said Belloso, explaining that the company looks to position itself as a plant-based ingredients company. Right now, the business is B2B.
The company’s biggest competitor in Latin America is NotCo, the Chilean hyper-growth company that in three years has already expanded to the U.S. and onto Wholefoods’ shelves.
The competition is only going to get stronger as Tomorrow Foods expands its product offerings to mayo, milk, and eggs - all plant based of course.
Belloso, who is a lawyer by trade, grew up around industrial farming in Argentina because his father worked in the business. When plant-based products started becoming all the rage, he realized that he was in a great position to go after a piece of the pie.
Today, Tomorrow Foods has seven full-time employees and 15 clients. The money from this round will be used to develop new products, expand their sales to Brazil, and build out an innovation lab to accompany its already existing R&D lab.
“Their great capacity for execution confirmed they were a great team and allowed us to renew our bet by taking part in this new round. Latin America needs companies like Tomorrow Foods, with great ambition to change the food industry forever,” said Matías Peire of Grid Exponential.