Meati’s mycelium steaks are going national in Sprouts Farmers Markets

These are a smattering of things you can make from mycelium (aka fungi): sneakers, makeup sponges, batteries—and meat. All are getting eyeballs but only the last one has a glimmer of a chance at reducing our climate woes. And yes, we know that plant-based meat has its haters right now.

But Tyler Huggins isn’t one of them, and he’s betting the farm on making meat from mycelium. Huggins is the CEO of Meati, a food-tech startup based in Boulder, Colorado, that’s growing mycelium in giant steel tanks and forming it into happy little “steaks” you can feel good about. “When we started, no one knew that mycelium was even mushrooms,” says Huggins. “People were like, This is pretty wild. Now people are like, This is the future.”

While much of food tech languishes in the barely there world, starting this week you can purchase Meati at your local supermarket. The startup is launching four SKUs at all Sprouts locations nationwide—about 380 stores.

Technically, what Meati is producing—chicken and steak from mycelium—isn’t plant based. If you like foraging for mushrooms, mycelium is the mass of tiny white fibers you’ll find growing underground. (If you watch Last Of Us, it’s not that type either.) This means it’s classified as fungi, which is its own kingdom apart from plants. Whatever it becomes, Meati is laying the groundwork for a tasty new food that’s an alternative to cheaply produced industrial meat.

From Montana to Meati

Huggins’ path to being an alternative-meat innovator is as surprising as the product he’s created. He grew up in Montana and spent a lot of time on the land. His parents own a bison ranch in Nebraska. Unlike Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown, who’s vegan, and Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown, who’s vegetarian, Huggins eats meat. “My parents just shipped out some bison and elk,” he tells me. “I believe in multiple sources of [high-quality] meat.”

Huggins also bow hunts and his uniform matches his hobbies: hiking boots, flannel, jeans. But his upbringing gave Huggins an appreciation for sustainability. Before Meati, Huggins worked for the forest service and even started a company toward restoring the Rockies. It hardly made a dent. “I wasn’t having the scale and impact I wanted,” he says, “and I looked into grad school.” He met his cofounder Justin Whiteley at the University of Colorado, where they first saw an opportunity to use mycelium to create batteries. Huggins grew the fungi, and Whiteley produced batteries. Their startup was called Emergy.

But creating an alternative protein that’s healthier represented a bigger sustainability win over batteries. “My point of view?” says Huggins. “We need more diversity in our food system, not less. More resilience, more options that resonate with people that are really enjoyable.”

So now they have Meati.

For investors, the decision whether to invest or not was easy: Meati had proprietary technology, early versions were tasty, and Huggins and Whiteley both had PhDs from the University of Colorado, Boulder. They were “charismatic and smart,” says Ela Madej, a partner at Fifty Years, a VC firm that invested in both Meati’s pre-seed and Series A. (Fifty Years has also backed Upside Foods, Zero Acre, Rebellyous Foods, and Geltor.)

Since then, Huggins and Whitely have won over many other investors, including Chipotle, two of the three Sweetgreen founders, chefs David Chang and Grant Achatz, former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario, and former Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb. Meati has raised $274 million to date.

Sprouting a plan for mega growth

Some of those investors are also influencers, giving Meati roots in foodie circles. David Chang is also a spokesperson, and you can order Meati Crispy Cutlet Buns at Momofuku in New York. Last fall, Sweetgreen offered a salad topped with Meati at its Culver City, Los Angeles, store. Meati is also now available at the permanent Pop Up Grocer location in New York’s West Village. While it is still to be determined whether Meati can bridge over to the mass market, it’s a gamble that Huggins is willing to make. Soon, he’ll have sales data to prove he’s right.

The Sprouts deal had to be sealed over a Meati tasting—investor tastings were “easy” compared to the one at Sprouts headquarters. Huggins had to win over the buyers and VPs at the $3.7 billion market cap chain of specialty markets. Huggins showed up with Meati COO, Scott Tassani, a former president of General Mills. The boardroom of tasters “were kind of rolling their eyes,” says Huggins. Like: “’Oh, another plant-based product.’ It wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. But then they took their first bites, looked at each other, and grabbed another cut. In an instant it became: “Who else are you talking to? Can we be first?”

It was a huge moment, he says, “a culmination of years of work. We’re finally getting Meati out into the world in a big way.”

As Meati starts to see how consumers react, several questions dominate Huggins’s thoughts. “Do people want new sources of food? Do they want a diverse healthy food system? People are looking to Meati to be successful and as proof that consumers do want that.” Once Huggins has his confirmation, he’ll need to line up additional resources. “I think supply will be our challenge,” he says. “The numbers are in the billions to make an impact.”

The CEO has already started to make this investment. In January, the company announced that it had started to scale up its aptly named “Mega Ranch,” a 125,000-square-foot facility that, when fully commissioned, it can produce tens of millions pounds annually. Whiteley hopes to make enough product to replace about 100 cows a day. Instead of acres of land, Meati’s mycelium (Neurospora Crassa) takes primarily water, sugar, and heat. They affectionately call her Rosita. “It has this wonderful aromatic smell to it when it’s doing well,” says Huggins. “Smells like rosé.” If all goes as the founders hope, the Mega Ranch might replace actual ranches, which is funny given Huggins parents’ business.

While Huggins worries about supply chains, Whiteley wonders about nutrition. To that end, Meati has launched a scientific advisory board. “We want to be sure we explore [mycelium] for its nutritional properties,” Whiteley says. “As a startup, we can’t do everything, especially when it comes to fundamental research and how humans interact with a food resource.”

Justin Siegel, faculty director of the UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food and Health and an expert in biotechnology, is a member of the advisory board. He’s excited about Meati’s fermentation platform and its potential for diversifying the nutrients we get. “And this is just generation one,” Siegel notes. He asks: “What else can you build on top? What happens when you go a little left or a little right [and get] nutrients that are hard to access?”

Founders are often accused of hyperbole, but Huggins’s ego doesn’t go big. Which may point to our food system finally getting a “plant-based” entrant that comes through on taste, convenience, and price—the holy trinity of grocery shopping. For food-tech investors, they may finally have a startup that pays off. For Madej at Fifty Years, it’s simple: “They move fast, [and] everything they said they were going to do they did in the time they said. Their accountability and ability to execute is really strong.”

More importantly to those of us that care solely about food: “They keep improving the product.”