Championing Chicken
As a mechanical engineer, Andre Menezes never imagined that he would be working in the food industry. Nonetheless after a career as the manager of Singapore’s largest distribution company, Andre joined the plant-based space through the co-founding of Next Gen Foods - parent company of plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE. In this week’s episode we chat with Andre about why Next Gen have decided to tackle chicken, as well as their unique business model to facilitate rapid expansion. We also discuss Andre’s personal thoughts about why there has been less innovation when it comes to chicken as a category, the challenges of launching in a pandemic plus more.
Andre’s journey into food began after university where he joined an investment company, a company that was a shareholder of one of the largest meat companies in the world. It was through that process that he learned everything from farm to fork when it came to meat, so how was it that he ended up co-founding a plant-based startup?
Andre: “I love meat as an ingredient … but I really hate the way it’s produced. Usually most of us de-couple those two things … but if you look at the way it’s produced it’s highly inefficient … and that to me was an eye-opening factor.”
Andre also asked himself why humanity was still using a technology that’s 2-3000 years old, when by this stage he believed we had the capability to produce meat in a way that doesn’t involve animal farming. Another dimension to his passion was his work at Singapore’s largest distribution company, Country Foods, where Andre was first introduced to big brand products such as Impossible Foods.
It was through his distribution network that Andre was also first introduced to his co-founder Timo Recker, founder of german plant-based startup LikeMeat.
Andre: "We started doing some business with LikeMeat at the time, and that’s how we got connected. As I decided to exit my track as the general manager of the previous company I was running and start something … Timo shared with me that he was selling his business and that he was envisioning to start one in Asia, and he invited me to join him as co-founder.”
Andre: “Back then it was just an idea, a vision … but I decided to join him.
That was back in April 2020. But why did the pair decide to tackle chicken? Andre essentially boiled it down to 2 key points:
Versatility of chicken: chicken is a highly universal animal protein that is well consumed across many cultures. It’s this versatility of chicken that makes it a more attractive alternative than beef and pork, whose consumption is concentrated into a few countries. Given Next Gen’s global vision, taking a macro-perspective revealed chicken was the best path forward.
Competition: Within the beef alternative space, big brands such as Beyond and Impossible have already established themselves as household names. This contrasts to the chicken space, where there still isn’t a clear winner. Andre believes they have the ability to become the leader in that space.
Andre: “We thought it was important for us to focus on building a really powerful product and household name … this is a unique chance to own a very large category.”
But even though there’s no clear winner of the chicken category as of yet, it doesn’t mean that company’s haven’t tried. In fact, Beyond’s first product was chicken. We asked Andre what he believed to be driving the lack of successful innovation.
Andre: “I see it as a combination of factors. Firstly chicken is a bit more complex technically to produce … than ground beef or ground pork; you want the fibrous aspect of it.”
The second challenge he named was the colour aspect. Unlike beef and pork it’s not about having a rich colour when cooking.
Andre: “It’s about not having the colour; having the right tone which is light, white meat, which means you cannot have any residual grey aspect.”
Lastly it came down to versatility and taste.
Andre: “Real chicken is very versatile, and for that it has to have a distinct chicken taste, but at the same time it’s very neutral, so there’s no space for off-taste … and that’s not so easy to achieve.”
That’s why most plant-based chicken products available are limited to tendons and nuggets; but Next Gen is trying to change that.
Andre: “You cannot have chicken without versatility, and that’s how we positioned TiNDLE at first with a product that chefs can really cook with.”
Andre elaborated as to why Next Gen decided to create a product by chefs for chefs.
Andre: “The hardest people for us to really crack on the market are actually chefs.”
With their culinary reputation on the line, chefs never take a product that they’re not really happy with, which provides an important filter for Next Gen when it comes to product development.
Andre: “Products that can crack chefs are arguably at the highest level of quality.”
In addition the team at Next Gen believe, as chefs do, that plant-based foods are not about compromising taste, texture and experience.
Andre: “We believe that the best food experience one can have is not eating nuggets alone while watching Netflix, that’s not memorable. What’s really memorable is when you go out with friends to a restaurant and have a delicious dish that’s well prepared and put together for you.”
Andre: “Wanted to ensure that consumers would have the experience to try TiNDLE in a great setup … and that they would then, we would hope, really change their minds about the possibility of plant based.”
To clarify, Andre never said that they wouldn’t ever sell a particular product, and chicken nuggets are an option for further down the line … but they’re also one chicken product.
Andre: “We wanted to make sure that we are a plant-based chicken brand, not a chicken product brand.”
Andre: “We really respect and admire that we have players trying different ways, different angles, for different consumers. We really believe that that’s all positive, and that ultimately everyone’s driving positive change.”
One thing that makes Next Gen stand out in the food space, is undoubtedly their approach to business. Since both Andre and Timo have extensive experience, they came together with a wide understanding of the challenges that come with certain models.
Andre: “What we’ve done is that we’ve decided to have a very ambitious plan of global expansion, but we have also decided to be extremely focus and narrow on two key elements which would really require a lot of attention.”
Narrow portfolio: Currently just the one product brand: TiNDLE.
Focused value chain: No attention spent on running and building factories, distribution or other logistical / operational tasks.
Andre: “What we do is focus on three things only: The R&D of the product, brand and brand development and business networks, meaning all of the operational network that makes our product flow.”
Being asset-light gives them the ability to be radical in their approach to geographical expansion.
Andre: “It’s a bit unconventional for the food industry, we have taken lessons from our past, but also from companies that have done well in other sectors, and we hope to achieve the same.”
Andre: “We really wanted to build a global player and for us being globally present right now is more relevant than being wide portfolio in one market.”
An example of one of those lessons is taken from working with Impossible Foods; to grow internationally when you have a product with a GMO ingredient is difficult.
Andre: “We have seen that governments take a little bit of time to be comfortable with authorising the sale of products that are considered novel.”
Andre: “In our case we decided from the get-go that because of those hurdles we would not have any novel ingredient, we would not have any GMO components, and the reason was exactly because our strategy is to prioritise geographic expansion.”
As in every episode, we also spoke about what Andre believed to have been some of the challenges in the journey so far.
Andre: “There’s nothing remotely comparable to the fact that we started a company in April 2020 and we were in the middle of lockdowns everywhere.”
Andre: “We knew that production wouldn’t be in Singapore, at least not in the beginning we needed to do an import-export business with production in different places, and to do that while in lockdown was particularly challenging.”
The second biggest challenge was how the pair do product launches without travelling?
Andre: “How can we launch in Hong Kong, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and later the US - how can we do that if we can’t even travel?”
But soon what began as a challenge soon turned into an advantage; Next Gen become a company that operated completely digitally and remotely, and the pair have managed to ensure that even if physically absent, the fundamentals are always taken care of.
Andre: “The good news is that we’ve been working well around it … we launched a product less than 11 months after our company really started in Singapore, and then we successfully expanded internationally 3 months after that, and are going further.”
The company’s plans of expansion come at a time when large, traditionally beef players such as Beyond and Impossible are joining the chicken game. We asked Andre about his thoughts on the competition, and how the startup plan to differentiate themselves in the future.
Andre: “The only competition that we are unhappy with as a plant-based category, is the competition that is releasing terrible products on to the market, because that’s deterring for the entire category. Right now there’s nothing that we see coming from the plant-based industry that we would call competition; to us we’re in the same boat, we’re all in the same team, we’re all growing against animal farming.”
Andre: “If Beyond and Impossible and any other brands are launching chicken products that are convincing consumers that they could consider plant-based chicken as well, we welcome that and we’re very happy with the traction and movement; we do believe that there is a place for everybody in the growth of the category.”
To learn more you can head to Next Gen’s website, or follow their plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE on Instagram.