Manufacturing In other cases, the manufacturer’s process or equipment is not a good fit with the product. For example, a pork plant would not be ideal for manufac-turing a kosher plant-based product, or a factory with extruding equipment is likely not a good choice for a product that needs to be formed. It can take multiple attempts to find the right partner and get aligned on things such as scheduling, quality and scalability. According to Cordaro, it’s not unusual for the brands he works with to go through 30 attempts. “There were a lot of inconsistencies in the quality of the deliverables with our last co-man, which resulted in Though she declined to name her manufacturing partner, Wilson does say the woman-led company is a perfect cultural fit for Bayou Best — very com-municative and innovative. For some companies, the stars only align after several false starts. Many alt-meat start-ups have come across co-mans who won’t even work with them. Cordaro, whose company helps startups get in the door, explains that manufacturers often find startups to be too high a risk or too much of an upfront investment. Some simply find the personalities overwhelming. “As plant-based brands have gone out of business, manufacturers have been burned. For them, working with a plant-based brand requires a lot of ef-fort, such as adjusting equipment with adapters, filters or even custom parts, and sanitizing and conducting microbi-al analysis between runs, so they take on a lot of risk,” Cordaro says. “They’ll also often turn down brands because they aren’t ready for production; they don’t have their microbial analysis, formulations, process flow or essential documents ready.” some real grief when it came to reviews on Amazon,” says Christoffel, of All Y’all Foods. “My current co-man — my fourth — has more expertise and aware-ness around issues that are important to my product, such as moisture and correct packaging. The quality with them has been consistent.” His first co-man partnership ended when Christoffel found himself sending people to supervise quality in the bag-ging process, which was being done by hand. While things improved with the second co-man, All Y’all was pushed out when a larger contract came along. Eventually, finding the perfect fit was the result of a referral. “A former mentor pointed me to somebody and said, ‘Look, they’ve got a vegan, glu-ten-free facility, and they know how to do this,’” Christoffel says. “I have never worked with so many professionals who truly care and are capable from R&D to production and packaging. While I always had to work to get other man-ufacturers to do better, this company proactively worked with me to help improve my product and find me the right packaging.” As a result, Christoffel has driven his packaging costs down by a quarter apiece, which is, he says, a huge percent-age of his overall cost per unit. And his co-man’s helped him reformulate and tweak his process in ways he hadn’t con-sidered. They’re now working together on another shelf-stable protein food. Future Foods found its way to a co-man relationship through an entirely different path. In 2020, pre-Covid, the company built a facility to manufacture PAOW! Chef Style plant-based protein, a soy-based product that mimics other proteins based on how it is flavored and prepared. At the time, customers in the plant-based marketplace wanted a highly versatile product they could experiment with to create their own offerings. Then, during the pandemic, things changed. “Suddenly, kitchens were short-staffed, and they just needed formed products ready to pop in an oven or on top of a skillet so they could get it out the door with minimal touches from a chef or sous chef,” says Alex Kramarchuk, CEO of Future Foods. “We were faced with a marketplace that was no longer looking for versatility, but machines are expensive, especially to make some of the formed products. We decided to go to co-packers who had the capability in-house to finish the prod-ucts we manufacture in our facility.” Future Foods now makes the protein and sends it to their co-packers to create a finished product. With varieties such as chicken tender pieces and meatballs, they have established relationships with multiple co-packers who have differ-ent equipment and processes to form, mold, deep fry and bread their different products. As they create new products through their R&D process and prepare Alt-Meat May 2025 19
Alt-Meat May 2025: Page 19
