Hampton Creek is an American food company headquartered in San Francisco that sells plant-based foods. It was founded in December 2011 by Josh Balk and CEO Joshua Tetrick. With around 110 employees, the company's products include mixes, dressings, cookies, mayos and cookie dough.
Video Hampton Creek
History
Background and founding (2011)
Hampton Creek was founded in the summer of 2011 by Josh Balk and Joshua Tetrick. Balk at the time was the senior director of food policy for The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) farm animal division, and prior to that had been known for his work at Compassion Over Killing (COK). Tetrick was an American entrepreneur who had worked on social campaigns as a Fulbright Scholar. Both founders had been friends since their teenage years, and together they developed the concept of a plant-based food company stemming from problems both of them noticed in the global food system. Explained Balk, "if there were a [cheaper] plant-based egg product that had the same taste and texture as normal eggs... that would meet a need consumers and food customers have that hasn't been filled yet."
The duo set about finding a technical partner who "understood the biochemical properties of food and how to manipulate ingredients to make them perform better, especially in processed foods." Johan Boot, the former R&D director at Unilever, was subsequently hired. Later that summer the company initiated initial plans and meetings with Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. Some early research for the pea protein formula was outsourced and Hampton Creek soon moved R&D in house, and the patent for a "plant-based egg substitute and method of manufacture" was filed on November 2, 2011. Tetrick stated to The New York Times in October 2013, that "while a chicken egg will never change, our idea is that we can have a product where we push updates into the system, just like Apple updates its iOS operating system. So our mayo is version 1.0, and the next version will be 2.0, which will be less expensive and last twice as long."
Relocation and new products (2012-2013)
The organization received $500,000 in seed funding in December 2011 from Khosla Ventures, its first round of investments. In June 2012, Hampton Creek relocated from Southern California to a facility in Northern California, specifically the SOMA district of San Francisco. Also in June after the relocation, the company received a $1.5 million Series A round of funding from Khosla Ventures. The funds were used to expand the company's headquarters and add additional employees. One of the first new hires was chef Chris Jones, former Chef de Cuisine of Moto restaurant in Chicago, and a former Top Chef contestant. In February 2013, Hampton Creek launched its first product, Beyond Eggs, an eggs-free egg replacement using plant-based ingredients such as peas. Their second product Just Mayo was released around seven months later.
Hampton Creek continued to hire staff as it released new products. By April 2013 Hampton Creek had hired a protein chemist, food scientist, and a sales executive from Heinz. By later that summer the company had 25 employees. By July 2013, Hampton Creek had raised a total of $4.5m in funds. By September 2013, the company continued to market its Just Mayo and Beyond Eggs for Cookies brands, and was also in production on "cookie dough called Eat the Dough and a product that scrambles like a real egg." Just Mayo was introduced to several Whole Foods stores in Northern California in the middle of September 2013, spreading to Whole Foods stores in other states in October.
Growth of distribution (2014)
On February 17, 2014, Hampton Creek announced it had raised $23 million in Series B round led by multi-billionaire Li Ka-shing and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang. CEO Joshua Tetrick announced that Hampton Creek would use the funds to continue its growth in North America, establish a presence in Asia, build strategic partnerships, and grow its team. Throughout the summer of 2014, Hampton Creek expanded its operations into a new 90,000 square-foot facility in San Francisco. Hampton Creek hired Dan Zigmond, described by TechCrunch as "Google's main data guy," in June 2014 to build a database for the company's research into plants. Zigmond, who had been working for eight years on YouTube and Google maps, stated his plan was to "build the world's largest plant database." Hampton Creek signed chef Ben Roche in July 2014.
Hampton Creek launched its products into the Dollar Store in late June 2014, and in Walmart on September 24, 2014. By that point their products were also available in Whole Foods, Safeway, Costco, as well as through the catering company Compass Group, which serves meals in educational and industrial settings in around fifty countries. With around 62 employees by August, by December 2014 Hampton Creek sold its products in 15,000 locations, including Kroger. Also in December 2014 Hampton Creek raised $90 million, bringing total funding raised since the company's founding to $120 million.
Recent developments (2015-2016)
On August 5, 2015, the World Economic Forum named Hampton Creek a "Technology Pioneer," shortlisting it with 48 other companies. Through Compass Group, Hampton Creek products are served in 2,300 public schools, around 400 universities, stadiums, and the U.S. Senate. Revenues increased 350% in 2015, and that year the number of employees grew from 60 to the current number of 127. The company has projected that around 10% of their sales in 2016 will be international, primarily in Asia.
On February 2016, the Unilever brand Hellmann's launched a new mayo product without eggs. Despite the new market competition, Tetrick described the development as "an extraordinarily positive thing," explaining to the press that he and Balk "didn't start Hampton Creek to do anything but try and make the food system much closer to our values and there is no way just one company can do it." He stated further, "as other companies begin to embrace the things we are doing, I'd encourage them to focus on everyday people [as compared to the health-food demographic], as that is what is really going to change things."
Maps Hampton Creek
Products
Hampton Creek's primary product is a mayonnaise substitute called Just Mayo. It utilizes plant substances, with the original formula using Hampton Creek's egg replacement powder, which is primarily made out of a varietal of Canadian Yellow Pea. As of 2016, Hampton Creek advertised several varieties of Just Mayo beyond original, including sriracha, garlic, and chipotle. In early February 2016, Hampton Creek announced it was working on Just Mayo Light.
Just Mayo was introduced to several Whole Foods in Northern California in the middle of September 2013, spreading to Whole Foods stores in other states soon after. By 2015, the Just Mayo product was available in American stores such as Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, ShopRite, Kroger, Publix, H-E-B, and several Costco warehouses. As of November 2015, Walmart was selling more Just Mayo than Whole Foods, with both franchises selling the brand at most of their stores.
The Just Cookies product line was launched in 2014, and was marketed as a more sustainable and healthy cookie because of its ingredients. Flavors as of 2016 included chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal raisin, double chocolate espresso and peanut butter. The cookie is made without butter or eggs, which makes it cholesterol free. Both Oprah Winfrey and Chef Andrew Zimmern publicly commented they were fans of the brand, and by late 2014, the large catering company Compass Group had replaced its conventional chocolate chip cookies with Just Cookies. Unlike other Hampton creek products, the macadamia cookies contain milk
In 2014 Hampton Creek introduced Just Cookie Dough, an eggless chocolate chip cookie dough that can be baked or eaten out of the jar. The cookies use sorghum as a primary ingredient, making them safe for consumption before cooking. Initially marketed as Eat The Dough, the product was first featured by Katie Couric's talk show, Katie, on February 4, 2014. Just Cookie Dough was being nationally distributed by 2015, and was introduced to Target in February 2016.
In February 2013, Hampton Creek launched its first product, Beyond Eggs. The eggs-free egg replacement is made with plant-based ingredients such as peas, sunflower lecithin, canola, and natural gums, and was marketed as being free of animal products, gluten, and cholesterol. The egg substitute was primarily marketed for the making of cookies. Prior to the fall of 2014, the public distribution of Beyond Eggs was stopped, in order for Hampton Creek to work primarily with private companies such as the catering conglomerate Compass Group.
After an influx of funding in late 2014, Hampton Creek announced it was working on recipes for biscuits, crackers, and pasta all based on plant protein. The company also stated that it was "developing a plant product that is comparable to sugar," and by October 2014 the company was developing noodles, ice cream, and dips. Salad dressings such as Just Mustard, Just French, and Just Caesar were under development as of February 2016, at which point the company had recently made dessert mixes and breakfast mixes available such as Just Muffins, Just Pancakes, Just Brownies, and Just Cake. Just Scramble is to be released in late 2016 Generally, Hampton Creek has stated it hopes to replace "conventional food dye, sugar, trans fats, and MSG" with plant-based substitutes.
Allegations of purchasing own product
In August 2016, Fast Company and Bloomberg News reported that in the lead-up to a venture capital funding round in 2014, Hampton Creek engaged contractors to visit leading retailers and buy its eggless Just Mayo product. Bloomberg cited emails sent by Caroline Love, a vice-president at Hampton Creek, which instructed the contractors to visit retail outlets to buy the product. Hampton Creek also reportedly asked contractors to call retail outlets to make inquiries about Just Mayo in an effort to make it appear that there was interest in the product. Hampton Creek claims that the buyout program was for quality control purposes.
In the media
A Freedom of Information request in late 2015 revealed that the government-controlled American Egg Board (AEB) had engaged in a paid advocacy campaign targeting Hampton Creek through online media, with the board's CEO dubbing Hampton Creek a "major threat" to the egg industry. As the United States Department of Agriculture prohibits advertising by its marketing boards "deemed disparaging to another commodity," the revelation met with a fair degree of controversy in the press, resulting in AEB changing PR agencies and the resignation of the AEB president.
In 2016 Hampton Creek voluntarily recalled one batch of Just Mayo product due to salmonella contamination concerns. The American retail giant Target pulled Hampton Creek products in June 2017.
Technology
The design of the first product, Just Mayo, was outsourced to Mattson, a San Francisco food technology company. Hampton Creek has made a major investment in automating the process with a robotic, four-stage lab (named Blackbird) which it says will be up and running by the end of the year. The project is called BlackBird
Chefs & team
In June 2012, Hampton Creek hired former Top Chef contestant Chris Jones, with the chef leaving his work in the restaurant industry in 2012 to become the company's director of culinary innovation. Hampton Creek signed pastry chef Ben Roche in July 2014, with Roche taking part in a number of publicity events for the company over the next summer. Ben Roche currently serves as the company's research and development chef. As of January 2015, chefs beyond Jones and Roche included Trevor Niekowal, who along with Roche served as a research-and-development chef. All three chefs had previously worked with Moto, a Chicago molecular gastronomy restaurant often featured on the Discovery Channel show Future Food. Other chefs formerly with Moto but now with Hampton Creek include Nate Park and Thomas Bowman.
In the summer of 2016 Hampton Creek hired former Microsoft Creative Director Sean Wolcott to become the company's first Chief of Design Sean Wolcott resigned after Lee Chae (R&D VP), Jim Flatt (CTO), Axel (CFO), Stephanie (CHR) and others exited the company.
Food science
Hampton Creek press releases and news articles frequently feature details that the company has hired former Google employees.
Former employees told Business Insider that the CEO, Tetrick, told his food scientists to perform bogus experiments using liquid nitrogen when journalists or potential investors were visiting, in order to create the impression that the company is a Research and development-driven high technology business, rather than a food manufacturer.
Hampton Creek says that they are developing a "Plant Database" that would use machine learning to automate the discovery of new food applications for edible plants. By August 2014, the company announced it had indexed 4,000 plants. Mashable reports:
"Hampton Creek indexes the world's plants, categorizing data about each species and its varietal. By categorizing a plant's molecular properties and using its predictive models, Hampton Creek can predict what a given specimen could be used for in the kitchen. Out of the thousands of plants it has classified, the startup has identified 13 that can be used to make world-changing foods, two of which it currently uses on the market: A varietal of Canadian Yellow Pea used in its Just Mayo eggless mayonnaise and a varietal or sorghum used in its Just Cookies edible cookie dough."
In August 2015, Business Insider quoted anonymous ex-employees that the amount of plants in the database may have been exaggerated, though the article noted, "this may be a case of semantics, as Hampton Creek includes the results of third-party research in its database. But some employees felt uncomfortable with how Hampton Creek portrayed its role in the data analysis." Tetrick later defended the public numbers, stating to Inc. that "the Hampton Creek research databases contain botanical, molecular, and functional data across more than 100,000 plant species and varieties."
Funding
See also
- List of food companies
- List of companies based in San Francisco
- List of egg substitutes
- Food biotechnology
References
Further reading
- HamptonCreek.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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