Back in 2015, I was able to back and invest in several incredible entrepreneurs who had a vision for transforming the future of food, including the founders of Clara Foods (animal free egg whites), Memphis Meats (slaughter free meat) and Geltor (Collagen without the animals) just to name a few and one of my favorites was New Wave Foods.
Michelle Wolf and her fellow co-founders had a vision of delicious and more sustainable plant based alternatives to Seafood which would spare our oceans and my team and I at Indiebio were all in!
Tell us about your founding story with New Wave Foods and what you're doing now?
We founded New Wave with the mission to create delicious, sustainable products as an alternative to seafoods fraught with issues. Ocean shrimp is the #1 consumed seafood in the U.S., but the supply chain is a poster child for many of the problems affecting our oceans.
Personally, I wanted to be a force for change toward more sustainable food systems. I co-founded New Wave because I saw an opportunity to do that in our oceans.
When this started, the Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers were starting to gain traction with mainstream markets. Plant-based was no longer considered niche, but seafood was overlooked. Once we better understood the market size of shrimp and the issues impacting it, there was no turning back. We’ve been focused on bringing disruptive plant-based shrimp to the marketplace ever since.
These days I’m busy getting the New Wave Shrimps ready for their debut later this year into the food service channel. We’ve already received extraordinary customer interest from leading national restaurant chains, B&I locations, and colleges and universities. So, keep a look out for something tasty near you later this year.
Tell us about New Wave the journey to bring better products to market?
I’ve worked on New Wave since 2015, and it’s been a rollercoaster. For the first two years, we were a small team. I was the only full-time engineer and product developer, trying to manage a small co-packer for the first time. The press reception on the concept was incredible, but we struggled with repeat sales.
By mid 2018 we decided to reboot because we weren’t on track to achieve our vision with our existing operations. Deciding to bring things to a full stop and relaunch much of the business is still one of the scariest decisions I’ve made. We stopped production, threw out all of our inventory, and started working virtually to save on overhead. Through our advisors we were introduced to Mary McGovern, who we brought on as COO and then CEO. She has a rich background in consumer goods with over 30 years of experience – and lots of experience turning around brands. It’s been great to partner with her over the last 18 months. She helped redo the brand, focus the go-to-market strategy, and get an R&D team around me who could build off of my foundational work on New Wave Shrimp. It’s taken a lot of hard work and emotional decisions to get here, but I am beyond thrilled to be on the cusp of a major launch.
What are the biggest lessons you've learnt as an entrepreneur?
One of my biggest lessons has been understanding the importance of strategy and revisiting it often. We’ve always had a vision for New Wave, but the work has been to extrapolate it to every aspect of the business. Everything from the innovation, culture, and beyond needs to be purposeful. The challenge becomes building enough flexibility into those plans to accommodate a fast-changing start-up environment. I’ve seen us flounder in projects when plans were unclear, and I’ve celebrated the successes when we executed on a well-defined goal.
I’m originally from Pittsburgh, PA, “The City of Steel.” Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve watched Pittsburgh recover from the fall of the steel industry and transform itself into a leader in advancing sustainable development. It took focused planning and strategy to pull this off. I think about what my hometown has done often in the context of what we’re trying to accomplish, because it’s the type and magnitude of change I want to inspire in the way we eat.
Tell us about the most important aspects of making Great plant based products?
Food technology requires work at the intersection of science and culinary creativity. Keeping culinary leadership involved early and often is paramount to creating versatile, great-tasting products. I really enjoy working with Chef Brad Barnes at the Culinary Institute of America to help keep our focus on deliciousness as we refine our core technology.
Why does the seafood industry have to be changed?
In the shrimp industry alone, there are significant environmental, human rights, and fraud issues. 90% of shrimp are imported and more than half of those US imports come from shrimp farms. It’s all poorly regulated. Often, mangroves are destroyed to make way for a shrimp farm that releases a ton of carbon. Each farm has a short shelf-life before it’s unusable and they have to build the next one. Then, like many other of our favorite seafoods, catching wild shrimp results in wasteful bycatch and destruction of our ocean ecosystems. All this results in ocean shrimp being a top contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the food industry.
There are folks out there tackling the issues from different angles, but with something this systemic, we need many solutions.
Tell us about the future of sustainable Seafood and New Wave Foods in 2030
Consumer expectations for plant-based products are increasing just as quickly as demand, and I’m witnessing the entire food industry mobilize to keep up. At New Wave, we are focused on continuous improvement as we expand our portfolio in the next few years. I’m particularly excited for the sustainable, ocean-derived ingredients emerging, like proteins from seaweed and other algal-based ingredients that pack in a ton of nutrition. Cellular agriculture is another area I’m watching; it’s interesting to think about how those technologies could join forces with plant-based offerings in the next 10 years.
For now though, my sights are set on the day when I can order a New Wave Shrimp taco for lunch.