Meet the Startups | Impact the Food Chain Accelerator 2020

The Impact the Food Chain Accelerator, part of our Food Ecosystem, is a 5-month growth programme for impact entrepreneurs who work on the transition towards a more sustainable food system. For the 2020 edition, we selected 10 startups that focus on shorter and fairer value chains or sustainable (alternative) food products. We helped them strengthen their strategies and financial models to get ready for growth, impact, and investment! By the end of the programme, the entrepreneurs developed validated business plans that helped them take their business to the next level. Read on to meet the startups!

Boon Bonen makes it easy to go vegan. Together with their local farmers, they grow the best beans to make ‘easy to use’ products such as burgers, balls and sausages. Free of nonsense, full of nutrients, and of course 100% plant-based. They make an impact by offering people attractive and tasty plant-based food products as an alternative to conventional meat.

Karma Shoarma makes 100% plant-based shawarma from Dutch vegetables and grains in their own factory in Haarlem. With Karma Shoarma you simply let the young lambs play in the meadow while you enjoy your delicious shawarma sandwich. In this way we all reduce meat consumption, from fiery vegan to purebred meat eater.

Rosie & Riffy produce and are continually developing high quality organic plant-based cheeses with cashew nuts being the primary ingredient. They use traditional cheese-making techniques but replace all animal-based ingredients with plants. Instead of milking cows, they milk cashew nuts. Fermentation, drying, ripening, and ageing are all part of their processes.

Het Graanschap strives for a fair, sustainable, and scalable bread value chain in the Netherlands. They produce bread that enables the consumer to make a daily environmental impact. Using blockchain technology, they will provide consumers with fully transparent insights and information about their new way of making bread.

Zzinga creates honey-drinks that contribute to the preservation of bees and biodiversity. They use the right kind of honey; use 3 cents per bottle to support local bee and biodiversity projects with a measurable impact; and raise awareness and build a community of like-minded people who care about nature and want to help.

Willem-Pie Bakery offers high-quality, exclusive cakes with a focus on taste and a foundation of plant based baking. For them, the quality and flavour of the cakes are most important when aiming to provide unparalleled taste that all cake lovers can enjoy. They aim to please cake eaters of all kinds, as long as they exclude animal products from the ingredient list, and keep our focus on sustainable, low impact food chains.

ReNature promotes, designs, and implements regenerative agroforestry to bring back nature into agriculture, restore depleted land, secure the economic resilience of farmers and tackle climate change. They design and implement regenerative agroforestry practices, facilitate on-site capacity-building for farmers and host transition programs to facilitate the uptake of agroforestry.

Soup en Zo is an eat-in and takeaway shop for healthy, hearty, homemade soups and salads with three locations in the city centre of Amsterdam. They aim to use 100% organic and biodynamic ingredients, with a small carbon footprint. Theu use few animal products, and focus on regional and seasonal fresh ingredients. Ultimately, they aim for a future without waste by offering reusable packaging with a deposit fee.

Together with Kenyan smallholder farmers,The Ketchup Project dries otherwise-wasted tomatoes and mangoes, and produces artisanal, tasty and honest ketchups from them. The recipe is developed together with a Michelin-star chef. Next to a very pure tomato ketchup, they are currently producing smokey tomato ketchup and mango ketchup. Available in 250ml bottles for retail and larger packaging for food service parties.

Wakuli sources the best grade specialty coffee beans, which they ship directly to their Amsterdam offices to roast and grind, preserving their complex flavours. Wakuli believes in Direct Trade and cuts out all middlemen: from traders to retailers. They pay the farmers 2 - 4 times more than average, and their subscription model allows them to work together long-term with - and invest in - coffee farming communities to improve quality, and a sustainable income for everyone involved.