Redefine coffee! American Compound Foods Co., Ltd. spent $4.5 million to create coffee beans.

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world. In everyone's conventional wisdom, coffee beans are the key to a delicious cup of coffee.

But recently, a foreign company called compoundfoods (compound Food) may be about to break this inherent perception. The food company, which was founded in 2020, is developing the world's first sustainable bean-free coffee.

Hearing this news, you should be as confused as Da Ding in front of the mobile phone screen. don't worry, let's check it out with Da Ding now.

What kind of company is compound food?

Compound Foods is a privately held research and development food and beverage company founded in 2020, headquartered in San Francisco, USA. The company currently has seven employees, including founder and CEO Maricel Saenz (Biotechnology Entrepreneur).

What's a bean-free coffee?

According to Maricel Saenz, Compound does not use any beans to make coffee, uses microbial fermentation technology to synthesize biology, and extracts molecules to make a basic coffee formula. The taste, appearance and smell of this "coffee" is even the same as the caffeine dose of traditional coffee, but is more sustainable. Not only that, the company is also working to achieve the goal of remaking coffee based on flavor information obtained from different parts of the world. "Coffee is the fruit of a plant that is processed, fermented, roasted and finally brewed-an extract of a compound that produces a typical taste and smell," Maricel Saenz said. Compound Foods is currently hiring coffee experts to help it set up the corresponding database.

Why develop bean-free coffee?

As a big fan of coffee, Maricel Saenz doesn't think they are competing with the entire coffee industry. She thinks coffee is one of the foods most affected by climate. In terms of the current world coffee market, the situation is not optimistic, and there is frequent news of production reduction this year. Not only that, coffee is the fifth most polluting crop in the food value chain, and large-scale production has contributed to the growth of problems such as land clearance, overuse of pesticides and destruction of wildlife.

"compound food stems from my deep concern about the future of coffee," Maricel Saenz said. "Compound is where I combine my love of coffee and sustainability."

Compound said that in its initial life cycle assessment, its fermented coffee produced only 1/10 of its emissions compared to traditional coffee and reduced about the same amount of water consumption.

According to Tech Crunch, Compound has raised $4.5 million in seed money from investors including Lowcarbon Capital, SVLC, Humboldt Fund, Collaborative Fund, Maple VC, Petri Bio and angel investors.

This brings the total amount raised by startups to $5.3 million.

Maricel Saenz said that because Compound Foods is working on a soft start by the end of this year, it will use new funds to improve the formula and expand the brand size. At present, Compound Foods is still constantly optimizing the formula and is expected to test the product on a small scale by the end of this year.

Fashion trends and climate change have exposed the weakness of agriculture and supply chains, and synthetic food and beverage manufacturers do have opportunities to develop. These companies are not limited by weather conditions and can recreate food we are familiar with and love with fewer resources.

For any synthetic food and beverage company, the most important factor is taste. If the product does not pass the taste, consumers will not buy it.