I’m so excited to have my good friend David Kay on the My Food Job Rocks podcast.
David is employee number 1 at Upside Foods, which used to be called Memphis Meats. You may know them as one of the leaders of the cultivated meat movement.
As we all know, bringing new technology to the world can be risky so you’ll learn a ton of the strategies David has used to what he says, derisks bringing cultivated meat to market
I got a tour of the Upside food facility, called EPIC. Before it was bought out 2 years ago, it used to be a grocery store in the heart of Emeryville. When you enter the building, you are greeted with a open kitchen and then David gave me a tour.
Upside Foods is working on a bunch of stuff. Though I’ve heard a bunch about them when I was in California, it’s nice to see the visual progress. They’ve found a way to produce any type of meat by developing a robust process to generate cells. By the way, haven’t tasted Upsides’ stuff yet! Some day.
Upside Foods is valued around $1 billion dollars and is one of the most well-funded contenders in the space. One could say they’ve always been the tip of the spear when it comes to this industry and it is actually quite interesting to compare Upside with the other global players I’ve interviewed.
The facility can produce 50,000-400,000 pounds of meat a year but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the meat industry.
You’ll also learn the regulatory framework for cultivated meat and what still needs to get done for this to be commercialized!
There’s still a lot of work for cultivated meat to go mainstream. After all, it took 9 years for the concept to light a fire but progress is happening. If you’re in the weeds for this industry, it’s making progress. Most expect the outcome sooner, who doesn’t? but for me, the journey in how this technology has been developing has been amazing.
What’s Up With Adam
So with this episode, it’s proof I’m actually in America right?
It’s been so nice catching up with friends around the Bay Area.
But it also feels really slow. As I’ve been explaining my 3 month journey, I noticed that wow, I did a lot during those 3 months. Almost every day was packed with a new adventure. The month I’ve been back feels pretty slow in comparison.
Anyways, let’s talk about the history of cultivated meat. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you’re probably familiar with the topics. I think what is exciting is that we are still writing the history of this new technology and it’s so exciting to be in the action.
To be fair, there’s not much! But I do want to briefly talk about the key points that caused chain reactions. I think it’s beautiful when there are events in history that explode into all sorts of trials and errors. Two of them today are Mark Post’s cell-based burger and JUST’s ability to sell in Singapore.
Mark Post’s burger was produced in 2013. He grew a whole burger using just beef cells and was able to bring it to a national conference for a few people to try. Dr. Post is a professor at Maastrict University who decided to create a proof of concept after a report from 2011 said that this technology could feed the world. Basically, Dr. Post did what any entrepenuer generally does. They hear something that might work, and then make a proof of concept. $325,000 dollars later, he showcased the burger in which people described it as essentially dry, flavorless, but still tasted like beef. There were a lot of issues from this burger such as the materials used and the time it takes, but these became opportunities for people to solve. This opened up the floodgates in which allowed people to validate that this actually might work and the companies started to roll in.
Another historic moment was JUST selling product in Singapore because it showed the power of working with a proactive governing body to further the future. This happened December 2020, which is not that long ago. What this opened was assurance from a national point of view that this would work. As JUST continues to sell cultivated chicken in Singapore and making progress, this allowed other countries to understand this isn’t that bad which including a bunch of factors, probably allowed the United States to look at this technology more closely and more quickly..
So now it’s December 2022 and Upside recently got regulatory approval for the United States which is a huge win. It’s still too early to tell what impact this will have to the whole ecosystem, but the gears are starting to turn. I hope you enjoy an indepth discussion on Upside Food’s plan to feed the world with their recently approved tehcnology.
We do this in Upside Food’s facility in Emeryville
Links
Upside Foods FDA Approval
New Harvest
Mark Post Burger
MooFree/Perfect Day
Clara Foods/EVERY
Isha Datar
Uma Valeti
Wall Street Journal Piece
IndieBio
Ryan Bettencourt
Arvid and Po’s Interview
Temasek
AMPs Innovation
Association for Meat Poultry and Seafood Innovation Trade Association
Cultured Decadence – Lobster
FDA- 22 page document
Upside’s 140 page document
Upside Foods Career Page
Good Food Institute
Bawk Bawk Bawk Ad for Upside
Twitter: @_David_kay
End of the show
Let’s talk about staying in a job.
David Kay has been in Upside for 7 years. From the start of his career till now, he’s seen the evolution of not just cultivated meat but also the company Upside Foods.
Versus me, where I’ve switched jobs every two to three years. Even my own startup, I wasn’t there that long.
So David and I were talking about it off mike, and I think it’s interesting to notice that we are interested in the lives we never got to experience. Though David loves his job at Upside, he has wondered what it would be like to switch and for me, what would it have been like to stay? I think it’s absolutely amazing that he works in a place which changes so fast and makes so much progress year after year.
I think everyone struggles with this when it comes to their career. In my opinion, both of those experiences, staying or job hopping, are valid and are valuable. I’ve always felt shame when I job hopped. I’ve had 6 jobs in my 8 years in the industry and it always worries me what people think about me for doing that. Over the years, I’ve appreciated what these opportunities gave me, from meeting new people, to trying new things, and seeing that there’s always new ways to do things. I think it’s important for people to see how far they’ve come from either staying at a job versus job hopping around because everyone has a unique experience.
Whether you decide to stay at a company or go somewhere else is inherently situational and there is no wrong path when it comes to deciding things. If you are considering a change, take stock of what you have at life, and think about if you’re ready for a change or not, and whether it’s perfectly ok to stay still.