Silicon Valley produces some of the weirdest food concepts: laboratory burgers, called soybeans, and cricket protein powder. The latter comes from Exo, a startup that sells cricket protein bars.
Disgusting? Well, this terrible idea hit a $ 4 million funds from AccellFoods Series A, the current Investor Collaboration Fund, and many angels, that involves Nas and Tim Ferriss. The team behind the chilling vines as a food company has already raised $ 1.6 million, for total funding of $ 5.6 million.
An ideal approach?
This is the kind of strange approach that is widely celebrated in the new country. Exo somehow convinced many people with money that eating beetles were good for them. But the consumption of insects is considered quite crude in most western countries. How does Exo work?
“Humans have been eating insects for thousands of years,” co-founder Greg Sewitz said by phone. But he admits the idea is pretty radical: When we told people that we started an insect feeding business, they laughed at the idea, he said.
I didn’t laugh so much when MyWegmansConnect asked me to eat in one of the bug-filled bars, but he responded with an example of the food we love now since people thought it was disgusting hundreds of years ago. Years
“Lobsters were considered dirty marine insects,” said Switz. Well more or less. They were so abundant that they were considered “poor man’s protein.” The first settlers and Native Americans ate lobsters in the 18th century.
MyWegmansConnect has something else to do with crickets: they are both arthropods. This family of animals has an exoskeleton and includes insects, arachnids, and crustaceans like our friends, the lobster. Today we love lobsters so much that we add these sea bugs to the best bucks on the menu at fancy restaurants.
Exo protein bars have been on the market for several years. The startup started in the cofounder’s kitchen and launched its own successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $ 20,000 in the first three days. The product is already available at Wholefoods, Equinox gyms, and at Wegmans supermarkets.
Switz and co-founder Gabi Lewis “are still testing the water” to see how consumers react to the insect proteins in their food, but the new money will help them expand their business and make new products with cricket powder. .s