Eat Just facts for kids
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Formerly
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Beyond Eggs, Hampton Creek Foods, Inc. |
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| Private | |
| Industry | Food |
| Founded | 2011 |
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| Headquarters |
Alameda, California, United States
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Key people
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Josh Tetrick, CEO |
Eat Just, Inc. is a private company based in San Francisco, California, USA. It creates and sells food products made from plants, like egg substitutes. The company also works on cultivated meat, which is real meat grown in a lab. Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk started Eat Just in 2011. The company quickly grew, raising a lot of money from investors. By 2016, it was valued at over $1 billion, becoming a "unicorn" company. In 2020, Eat Just's cultivated chicken meat was the first lab-grown meat to be approved for sale in Singapore. Soon after, this meat was sold in a Singapore restaurant, making it the first time cultivated meat was sold to customers anywhere in the world.
Contents
History of Eat Just
Starting Out (2011–2014)
Eat Just Inc. began in 2011. It was first called Beyond Eggs, then Hampton Creek Foods. Friends Josh Balk and Josh Tetrick founded the company. They started in Los Angeles, California, then moved to San Francisco in 2012.
In its first two years, the company focused on research. Scientists tested many different plants in a lab. They wanted to find plant proteins that could act like chicken eggs. Eggs are used to make food stick together (gelling) or mix well (emulsifying). Eat Just created a special machine to test plants, and they even got a patent for it. They collected information about each plant, like how it tasted or if it caused allergies. This information was stored in a database called Orchard.
In September 2013, Whole Foods became the first big grocery store to sell Hampton Creek products. They used a product called JUST Mayo in some of their prepared foods. Later, deals were made with Costco and Safeway. By early 2014, the company had raised $30 million from investors. Later that year, they raised another $90 million.
Growing Pains (2014–2016)
In October 2014, a company called Unilever had a disagreement with Hampton Creek Foods. Unilever said the name "JUST Mayo" made people think it had real eggs. Many people supported Hampton Creek, and Unilever dropped its lawsuit. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also said the name was misleading. Hampton Creek then agreed to make it clearer on the packaging that JUST Mayo did not contain real eggs. This publicity, along with a chicken flu that caused an egg shortage, helped Hampton Creek grow.
Later, some former employees made claims about the company's science and sales. Then, emails showed that the American Egg Board had tried to hurt Hampton Creek's reputation. The United States Department of Agriculture investigated, and the Egg Board's CEO resigned.
In 2016, a news story suggested that Hampton Creek bought its own products from stores. The company said this was for quality control. Government agencies looked into it but found the claims were not important.
New Name, New Products (2016–Present)
By 2016, Eat Just had 142 employees. They also started using robots to test plant proteins even faster. In August 2016, the company raised more money from investors. This made the company a "unicorn," meaning it was valued at over $1 billion.
In June 2017, Target stopped selling Hampton Creek products for a short time. This was due to an anonymous letter claiming food safety issues. However, no customers reported getting sick, and an FDA investigation found no problems with the products.
Hampton Creek started changing its name to "Just" in 2017. The company's legal name was changed the next year to Eat Just, Inc.
In late 2019, Eat Just bought its first factory in Appleton, Minnesota. The company's sales more than doubled from February to July 2020, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, Eat Just created a new company in Asia with a partner. They plan to build a factory in Singapore. Eat Just raised $200 million in March 2021 to help it grow around the world. Also in 2021, Eat Just's GOOD Meat part of the company raised $267 million.
In May 2022, Eat Just made a deal to build 10 large machines called bioreactors. These machines will be used to grow meat. The company hopes to produce a lot of cultivated meat each year. However, in 2023, the company building the bioreactors had a disagreement with Eat Just about payments.
Eat Just also partnered with C2 Capital Partners in 2022. This partnership brought in $25 million to help Eat Just grow its business in China. In April 2023, Barnes & Noble started selling breakfast sandwiches made with Just Egg in many of its cafes.
Food Products
Eat Just makes and sells plant-based foods that replace chicken eggs. These include products like scrambled eggs and mayonnaise. The company is most famous for its plant-based JUST Egg, which is made from mung beans. By March 2021, Eat Just said it had made enough food to equal 100 million chicken eggs.
To create egg substitutes, the company looks for plant proteins that can do what eggs normally do. For example, they find proteins that can help food stick together or mix smoothly. They test plants to find ones with high protein content and specific types of proteins.
Eat Just's first product was Beyond Eggs, released in 2013. It was made to replace eggs in baked goods like muffins. Later, Eat Just made plant-based mayonnaise and cookie dough. In July 2017, they started selling a scrambled egg substitute called Just Egg, made from mung beans. A frozen version came out in January 2020.
In late 2017, Eat Just announced it was developing cultivated meat. This is real meat grown from animal cells in a bioreactor. The chicken nuggets they make are 70% cultivated meat. The rest is made from mung bean proteins and other ingredients. The company is also working on cultivated Japanese Wagyu beef. Cultivated meat can only be sold after governments approve it.
In December 2020, the Government of Singapore approved cultivated meat made by Eat Just, under the brand name GOOD Meat. A restaurant in Singapore was the first place to sell this meat. Eat Just later got more approvals for different types of chicken products. In 2023, the company received approval from the United States Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration to sell its cultivated meat in the United States.
