Plant-Based Start-Up The VERY Food Co Raises More Than €1M

French startup The VERY Food Co recently completed an €850,000 funding round, bringing its total financial backing to over a million Euros.

The VERY Food Co specializes in plant-based alternatives to egg and dairy ingredients. Its most recent funding round included angel investors like Frédérick Bouisset and Pascal Viguié, the public sector investment bank Bpi France, and French venture capital investment firm Apok Invest.

In a statement, The VERY Food Co also announced a new partnership with Nantes-based research institute INRAE’s BIA (Biopolymers, Interactions, Assemblies) unit. Furthermore, the company recruited Food Science and Food Process engineer Dr Eugenia Asamoah, along with several new members for its Senior Advisory Committee.

These include Madame Barbara Galli (ex-Mars, ex-McCain), Monsieur Johan Boot (ex-Unilever, ex-Just), Monsieur Frédérick Bouisset (ex-Lactalis, ex-Labeyrie, ex-Fleury Michon), Dr Marc Anton (INRAE), and Dr Maria Cristina Anon (CONICET).

The VERY Food Co noted that the “new resources and expertise” gained through its fundraising and new hires would give the startup “the means to transform consumption patterns by promoting a massive and sustainable greening of our food.”

Plant-based patisserie and French innovation

Photo shows the VERY Food Co's AQUAFABA product next to some crushed almonds and two macaroons — The VERY Food Co The VERY Food Co AQUAFABA can replace traditional eggs in a variety of recipes

Arnaud Delacour and Dr Oscar Castellani founded The VERY Food Co in 2022.

The company’s products include the award-winning VERY AQUAFABA, which is suitable for everything from high-end patisserie to cocktails and mocktails, a powdered egg replacer called NOMELET, an egg white replacer called NOBLANC, and TOURAGE, a dry unsalted butter designed for layered vegan puff pastry, croissants, and Danishes.

Classic French cuisine is well-known for being rich in dairy and other animal products, but as plant-based ingredients become more and more specific, even high-end patisserie is vegan-adaptable – particularly with specialty foods like those produced by The VERY Food Co.

For example, the deceptively simple aquafaba – water in which chickpeas have been cooked or stored – is a notably versatile emulsifier that can be used to replace egg whites at approximately a 1:1 ratio in many different recipes. (Learn more about aquafaba here.)