Randi Wahlsten and the MATR team are working on longterm change. To create real change the visionary states, there is more needed than punctual transformation within big companies. Radical change can only evolve where there is no mandate for other things.
NEWMEAT: How did you get in touch with alternative protein?
Randi Wahlsten: I've been working with Arla Foods for the last 10 years. First I was responsible for strategy and then took over marketing for the German market and later for Denmark. I was given an opportunity to work a lot with sustainability aspects and gave myself that mandate to convince this big dairy company that they had to enter the plant-based area if they wanted to be a reasonable part of the future of dairy. I had a pretty privileged insight into what the big industry looks like in the food space. The further I dove into it the clearer it was to me that the way we have set up food production today is fundamentally troublesome. It is not necessarily the fault of an individual company but we have a whole chain of events that have made it profitable and reasonable to ship things all across the world, to waste enormous amounts of food in every step of the food chain.
How did this lead you to found MATR?
I got to a point where I did not want to do that anymore. I wanted to see more change than the change I could establish within this big company and went looking for someone, who would join my mission. The founder team of MATR was super aligned on this mission. We brought together different angles into the same problem. Half of the other founders come from a microbiology perspective. They have an understanding that with the world of microbes we can actually do a lot of things in food processing much more natural and efficient than it is often done traditionally. The other half of the founder team comes from gastronomy. They understand every day food as well as high standards and values on food quality. What we all agreed on is the necessity that the food system needs to change. And none of us was attracted to what was out there already regarding alternatives.
But we still need the big companies for great impact, right?
If we did annual accounts on impact, then it was greater with what I was able to do at Arla Foods. When you change something in a big system, you have a lot of impact with it, even though it is small things you change. To this date, we do not have a great impact with MATR because right now we are replacing a couple of tons of meat. Who cares, right? But in the bigger scheme of the transition it became obvious to me, that the big players can definitely do a lot on reducing maybe even 20 per cent of their footprint. But they still help make something that fundamentally troubles the transition. Many big ones want to be sustainable, they want to „do good". But their fundamental mandate is to sell animal protein at the highest possible price. Even if there were incredibly visionary people who wanted to change the entire production to plants, they do not have a mandate to do that. They can only take it to a certain level of incremental change. They can't make the business case for radical change.
Are we too impatient with our wish for radical change?
We are probably collectively too impatient. But we have a very good scientifically backed reason to be. It's an imperative, more than anything else. But the system we have is not going to magically change overnight. Our meat consumption has evolved over the past 60 years. To turn that curve around, it requires pretty radical action. Because we are never going to all become vegans. If you go back 60 years, our average meat consumption per capita in Europe was around 30 to 40 kilos per year – now it is in the 60ies and 70ies. We have increased our consumption a lot in a relatively short period, and we need to decrease back to some more reasonable levels. We do not need to and cannot eradicate meat from our diets and traditions. And I just don't think that the appetite or the ability to make the nessecary changes can always come from within. It sometimes needs to come from somewhere else and then be adapted into the established system as a way to change where they are going.
How can we get there?
With radical new solutions. Very often those solutions have been technological. Something has suddenly become cheap enough, that's the point when everybody wants to adapt it – even the big guys. We need to take our product to a point where we have made a clear proof, that we can create a product, that is based on different nutritional values and a different impact on the world than meat. And that there is a clear demand for it. That point is not when we're at the size of unilever. It is much closer. And I hope we will either inspire someone else enough to adapt, or we will become part of their infrastructure. I have the greatest respect for the fact that there is a lot of infrastructure build up. It would be super expensive to rebuild that. But we need to see some of the meat free solutions become more normalized. Another important fact to this is that they will only become more normalized when they are attractive enough and live up to people's general values for food.
How do you want to get there?
It has really damaged the market that a lot of products have been released too early in the frenzy wave. There was this enormous hype, so the companies took the products out there and positioned them as alternatives. What we are doing now is trying to tell a story about this actually being a different type of product and category – because it fundamentally is. More or less everything that is out there today is based on the same protein isolate based technology. It is understandable that when people have tried one or two of theese products that they expect the rest of the category to be similar. So we are trying to establish a new category, but we are in the trouble of language, which is a massive challenge. How do you talk about this whole category as such? As long as we keep a language that is meat mimicry language, we are stuck in that frame of mind. Either it tastes exactly alike, or it doesn't taste exactly alike. And a lot of people ask why they need a mimicry of meat at all. We're trying to avoid this vocabular. At the same time we are attaching it to format words that will enable people to connect to how they used to do meat. Take for example Fungi mince. You know it is a product, that you can use in mince dishes. We are not telling you that this is not meat.
What else can start-ups do to enter the market?
A more immediate thing that we are trying to do is to go to market on a restaurant first basis. If you want people to try alternatives again, you need to make sure that they are given a good experience in a safe environment. Safe for a lot of people would be to go into a restaurant, they already trust for good quality. It has worked well for us to collaborate with restaurants which have not had a million plant-based options before. Some of them are pretty clear on their food values and rejection of protein isolate based products. Consumers connect high quality standards with those restaurants, so they think our product must be good. Another way has been to work with canteens. We are very aware that there is a steep journey to reinterest a big group of people in trying something that they had bad experiences with earlier.
How important is it, that prices go down?
For the overall category price of course matters. We are not going to get a majority of people to switch if they have to pay a premium, unless that they can see a premium value in it. The category has the same price logic as others. If it is above average prices, only the dedicated will buy it. If it is on par, you get a bit more trial. If we can actually take it below, a lot of people will opt in. That means that the production needs to be able to accommodate to those prices. This has been a very important parameter for us from the beginning. But it is a stepwise process. Right now we cannot compete with anything. Maybe Kobe meat where someone has massaged the cow. But we have always known that at scale this product has a super healthy economy that it can very well compete with meat.
Is Denmark the place to be?
We are starting in Denmark because we are from here. But I do not see Denmark as the biggest, most important thing for us to conquer. I am much more interested in, playing in some of the bigger markets, once we have the scale to be able to do it. I hope we can use our network and advantages in the gastronomic scene to reinterest some people in Denmark and that Denmark could be a role model in terms of establishing the whole food chain. In the established industry the chain works and has been optimized for over hundreds and hundreds of years. The farmers more or less know, what they are going to get if they do X or Y. And it is very obvious, that there is no chain for the alternatives. A lot of people are scratching their heads in how to be part of this – within the big food companies and the big grower associations. They do not know, how to deal with this yet. A lot of farmers who would love to do this. They just need to know, which legumes to grow. Or they are growing a legume and do not know who to you sell it to.
Have there already been similar stories in Denmark?
One of the most interesting things that have been done in the food chain in Denmark are the actions around organic food. What really helped were clear committed ambitions on levels of organic food in public kitchens and canteens and that it was given a label. Just establishing that clarity and toolbox to work with it, has helped the whole chain of the organic movement a lot. They created a demand that goes all the way back the chain. In many ways it would be simple and obvious to do the same for plant-based food. But it feels like on that note the political will is not strong. I see private companies moving more progressive because they commit to scope agreements with science based targets or alike. But there is a chain that needs to happen and political willingness to try to push that chain.
„Even if there were incredibly visionary people in big companies, who wanted to change the entire production to plants, they do not have a mandate to do that."
„It has really damaged the market that a lot of products have been released too early in the frenzy wave."
„There is a steep journey to reinterest a big group of people in trying something that they had bad experiences with earlier."
„There is a chain that needs to happen."
Graph: Lower footprint than any meat or current alternative - CO2e /kg of finished product
Graph: Better land use than both meat and alternatives - Protein crops required to produce 1 kg of finished product protein
Graph: The MATR-Way - MATR Foods has developed a new generation of plant-based foods
PHOTO (COLOR): Randi Wahlsten is Co-Founder Chief Executive Officer at Matr Foods. From 2022 till 2021 she has worked for Arla within different positions with the last being Head of Marketing for Arla Denmark. With Matr she want to create new food for better human and planetary health. Foto: MATR
Founding date: 2021
Base: Copenhagen
Product: Fermented mince made of fungi and vegetables
Markets: Denmark
Investors: BioInnovation Institute
URL: matrfoods.com