February 15, 2017

The food and beverage space is seeing tremendous innovation.  Venture capitalists are now making investments into innovative food and beverage companies.   Target investments must bring innovation and offer a scalable business model.  Their food & beverage investments nearly all focus on replacing common food items.  Investments typically target technologies around plant-based protein.  Often, startups raising funding are developing new processes that could change what we eat.  Several trends top the list for venture capitalists.   Here are four food and beverage trends with Texas companies leading the way: Fermented flavors – fermentation brings health benefits and for soda lovers fermentation also provides a natural fizziness to the drink.  Salt and Time and Buddha’ Brew are two Texas-based companies leading the way Food safety testing—new testing tools such as in the field mass spectrometry, and food processors are gaining attention. Evaptainers uses evaporation cooling technology to provide refrigeration for foods  and Green Ocean Sciences has developed a field mass spectrometer for food testing. Next generation foods which include cold brew coffee such as High Brew Coffee and Chameleon Cold Brew.   New fruit and vegetable offerings include novel ways of packaging and distributing fruit and vegetables.  Rhthym Superfoods offers a new way of consuming Kale.   Veggie Noodles delivers vegetables in the form of pasta, and Beanitos offers beans in the form of chips. Floral flavors – adding herbal and plant flavors to foods and beverages such as Sway Water and Daily Greens. Here’s a list of the top 24 VCs in food and beverage investing: Sequoia Capital Benchmark Capital Accel Partners Greylock Partners Andreessen Horowitz Union Square Ventures First Round Capital Bessemer Venture Partners Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers New Enterprise Associates Founders Fund Lightspeed Venture Partners Foundry Group Index Ventures Khosla Ventures Social Capital Emergence Capital Partners True Ventures Floodgate Fund General Catalyst Partners CRV Spark Capital Battery Ventures Redpoint Ventures