Brett Thompson of Mzansi Meat Co. (Newform Foods)
AI Generated Transcript
Alex Shirazi:
Thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show. We’re excited to have Brett Thompson of Bozi Meats. On this episode, we chat with Brett about his history in the plant-based food space, and getting started as a cultivated meat startup in South Africa. We hear about the exciting journey of getting your first angel check and really kick-starting your company and looking into moving into a new space. I learned a lot on this episode, and Brett is a wealth of knowledge. Let’s jump right in. Thanks for joining us on The Future Food Show. I’m super excited to have Brett Thompson of Mizzi Meats here. Brett, welcome to the show,
Brett Thompson:
Alex. Thanks very much for having me.
Alex Shirazi:
Tell us about your background and your journey to really creating Mizzi Meats.
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, thanks. I have always been involved in food since my career started. I graduated with economics as my course or chosen course, and, and I wrote my thesis on the economic case for vegetarianism, and that led me to getting a job at South African’s largest meat Alternative producer. And it’s about 10 years ago now, so I’ve been working in more the sort of sales and marketing side of food and alternative protein. But throughout that time I was doing a lot of work in animal advocacy meat free Mondays as you call it here, meatless Mondays as you would note, and working on sort of nationwide campaigns to encourage people to eat more plant-based and less meat or conventional meat products. So that kind of was the, where I started, sort of where I cut my teeth and in retail trying to understand a consumer, particularly a South African consumer who was, is very, very close to meat and I really wanted to understand them and, and that got me working a lot more food awareness type organizations ultimately brought me to Berlin and that’s where I got firsthand of experience with cultivated meat.
Brett Thompson:
And maybe I’ll pause there, but that’s sort of the, the starting point of this journey.
Alex Shirazi:
That’s fascinating. And you know, before we do go into the, the, you know, Berlin, I’d love to ask you, you know, what, what is that largest producer of alternative protein in South Africa
Brett Thompson:
That company’s called Fries, family Foods. They, some of your listeners might know live kindly and they’re part of the live kindly now banner and they produce a wide range of products from EO sausages, schnitzels just all, all the sort of products that you are used to but from a plant-based space. And and manufactured from here, here based in, or manufactured based in South Africa.
Alex Shirazi:
Wow, okay. So I’m a huge fan of Fries especially there Plant-based like fish. I don’t know, there’s, this stuff is really good. So you mentioned they’re part of Lift kindly, they were not always part of Lift kindly, is that correct?
Brett Thompson:
That’s a good point. I, I mean look, yeah, so just also it’s quite interesting the context there. I mean, when I started at Fry’s 2011, there was Tammy Fry who was my boss. You know, there’s a manufacturing team and, and, and, and a admin team. But the Tammy Fry, she was the only person in the marketing department and then I joined. So I was very lucky to kind of get an experience over the really 10 years from 2011 onwards to experience the growth firsthand of Plant-based. And the team now is international. I think there’s been like 50, 60 people all over the world. And that’s because roughly about two or three years ago they were bought Arts, I think is the correct way of describing it, by live kindly backed by Blue Horizon. And the more interesting thing that was was that they did a joint venture to create live kindly Africa with South Africa’s largest food company, which also ha so happens to be Rainbow RCL or Rainbow Chickens. So they were actually one of South Africa’s largest chicken and meat producers. So I think a fantastic showcase of the direction that the market is moving here, here in South Africa.
Alex Shirazi:
That’s interesting. And you know, I think we can dive deep on all those kinds of topics and, and different brands and, and companies, but that might be for a different show. <Laugh>, I wanted to ask you, are you plant-based and how long if so?
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, I, I, I I describe myself, well my diet as mostly plant-based. I stopped eating meat 15 years ago after listening to or doing a applied ethics course at university. That kind of changed, literally changed my life because that led me to writing a thesis. And then, you know, I think around about 2013 I stopped I moved in with a guy who was vegan and, and he just made pretty decent food. And so it made it very easy for me just to eat pretty much a vegan diet. And I’ve sort of been like, like that way ever since.
Alex Shirazi:
So you are in South Africa, you’re working for fries and then you make this transition to Berlin. So why did you go to Berlin and what did you do once you got there?
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, I was living in a, in a city called Durban, which is on the east coast where, where Fris is headquartered or was headquartered at the time. And I had been doing a lot of work sort of the side, or Fry’s, obviously very much encouraging it when it comes to animal advocacy. They, you know, the family Wally and Debbie Fry vegetarians for their whole life, or, or Debbie, a vegetarian for most of her life. And Wally went that way as well. So the family is very much in favor of working in animal advocacy type work. So I was running the Meat Free Mondays campaign and through that connected with Melanie Joy from Beyond COism and, and Tobias Leonard from the Center for Effective Vegan Advocacy. And I, they, they came out to South Africa. We spent time together.
Brett Thompson:
And then after a while they said, well, what would you consider moving or applying for a job in Berlin? And so I did, I I I took the plunge, I applied for the job, I got the job and decided to, as much as I loved working at Friars, I thought I, I really wanted to go and find out and what’s happening internationally and, and, and I have a new experience. So made the plunge move to, to Berlin almost two months after I applied for the job, had no idea what to what I was doing, didn’t understand the language, and started working for Beyond Cism and then also working for Provi International, which might be familiar. And so I, I took quite a shift away from working in sort of the for-profit side of things and, and went straight into the, not, not-for-profit, but I think that the way that I like provi is approaches that they look at making plant-based more accessible by providing more alternatives, more options more availability at your local supermarket.
Brett Thompson:
And so I was working as the global coordinator eventually for Provi International and connected with a number of people and, and, and a number of them being scientists and entrepreneurs working in very exciting sort of 2.0 of Plant-based and cultivated meat. I’d come from the traditional fries started in 19 9 1. So I’m from the plant-based space that is kind of the, the OG let’s say. And then after spending a couple of years in Berlin, I i’s just like, there’s such an exciting new school of thinking that’s adding to this creating new solves for a massive challenge. And then I just wanted to get involved with that and, and that’s the driving force that got me towards cultivated meat and, and and, and doing it on my own.
Alex Shirazi:
So we see a lot of exciting companies come out of, not only come out of Berlin, but specifically outta Pro Veg and not actually just from their incubator, but also from some of the folks that have worked at Pro Veg, you know, may maybe were not part of the incubator. And so when was your kind of light bulb moment when you thought, okay, it’s time to start a company?
Brett Thompson:
I mean, one of those folks, he, he, he was working for the incubator, not directly in, it was JSC his, his company was called Kuleana and I think it’s not called Current, it’s Plant-based seafood. I remember having just a number, number of conversations with him over table tennis and others about them all looking at starting their own companies and, and, and, and I just started getting super excited about entrepreneurship and its potential. And you know, I actually had went through a bit of a, a patch and I was just feeling a bit burnt out and working for a company or working for an organization as, as fun as it was. And as good as it was at Privilege, I really just felt I needed to take some time off and was one part. And then the other part is I wanted to do something on my own.
Brett Thompson:
And I kind of remember the, you said the light bulb moment. I almost remember it exactly. I was in a coffee shop in Vetting, which is a suburb of Berlin that I lived in, sitting there and just thinking, what am I gonna do? And I was like, well, I’m gonna quit my job, gonna take some time off and then I’m gonna just go on my own. And I ended up doing that. I spent a couple of months in, well in Europe and then I went into Australia and everything and I, and I had then also connected with a few folks from the Bay Area working in cultivated meat and came back to South Africa roughly 20 18, 20 19 and didn’t start directly into a cultivated meat company. But I started a nonprofit called the Credence Institute. Credence is a animal advocacy organization working century as a think tank.
Brett Thompson:
And the initial research that we did, which is two sort of major things that we got involved with, one was with called Animal Advocacy Africa, which is a program that’s running to this day which is looking to bring additional funding into Africa. ’cause It’s just a massive bottleneck with organizations being able to get funding. And that’s what their project that they’re working on. And then the other thing is that we just did a bunch of research on consumer understanding, ’cause that’s my kind of background of, of cultivated meat in South Africa and with the, with the view for the rest of the continent and connected up with some folks and just realized that, well there’s no one on the continent at this stage 2019 who had started doing Cultivated Meat. And, you know, that was, I felt the, the opportunity that that in Internal Entrepreneur Flame was looking for and decided to jump everything into it and, and, and start in Zzi technically at the end of 2019. But officially at the, at March, 2020, which you will recall was when the whole world decided to stop working, which was a great time to start a company. Yeah.
Alex Shirazi:
May maybe the perfect time to start a company <laugh>. So. Wow. Okay. So you go back to South Africa, you know, start the nonprofit and then make this transition. Maybe just tell the audience what Mizzi is and and what you guys do.
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, sure. It’s in terms of that time of starting a company quickly March, 2020 when we were all stuck at home, I just call it pitches and PJs ’cause you were just sitting around at home sending off pitch deck after pitch deck, trying to get people excited about your company. So it was very interesting time, but I think as you said, it was actually quite a good time to start a company. Food was on the table, it was a discussion stenotic diseases which were not known to most people were now being spoken about. And we got some kind of initial interest because we were looking and talking about food and food systems and, and what it meant for global health In terms of zzi, the simple word to describe it is we are Africa’s first cultivated meat company, started in 2020 as I mentioned.
Brett Thompson:
And what we are doing is cultivating cells from cows in a way that we obviously do not require those animals to be slaughtered. And we are making beef burgers, that’s our first has been our first product that we made and we were the first ones on the continent to bring beef burgers and get people to eat them. That’s <laugh> a key component, getting people to eat our meat. And we did that in April of 2022. And we are aiming to be the first ones to be bringing our beef burgers to a nationwide restaurant chain in the first quarter of next year. Probably on a limited scale, but an exciting scale nonetheless.
Alex Shirazi:
I wanna ask about consumer perception in South Africa. Is it pretty consistent with what we’ve seen on the research in the uk, maybe in the US or is South Africa and the perception to, you know, cultured meat, cultivated meat a little bit different?
Brett Thompson:
Let me just step back and when, when, when we started that research in 2019 under my previous organization, I was I was running, there was no information available. There was limited research. The only research that was in any type of emerging market was coming out of India and China, but there was nothing available for the South African and African palate and, and and preference. So I thought, you know, that was like a key moment for me to try and understand what is the landscape at the moment. So we did research on plant-based and cultivated meat at that stage to try and find out what the consumer adoption rate would be, the, the perception and, and the understanding. And it was actually based on a study that was, had been done in China. I think in the uk it might be the one that you’re referencing.
Brett Thompson:
It’s a consumer perception study that’s been done in a few countries, including the US and we just wanted to replicate that, localize it English and Zulu and make it available to as many South Africans from a representative sample size, which was key in South Africa. Just a quick note, we’ve got 11 official languages, very different people from different races, different religions, et cetera. So it was kind of key to get that right in terms of the data. The interesting thing was that, well it was very limited. The understanding of cultivated meat awareness was very, very low, which in on initial you’re like, okay, this is not good. And and this is compared to other emerging markets and, and, and other studies that had been done abroad. And once that process had been done and we asked the similar questions, again, we are, we were trying to find out what the likelihood of that purchase would be once it became wildly available.
Brett Thompson:
And plant-based meats, which has been around in South Africa for 30 years, was about 57% of South African consumers said that at a point where it was widely available that they would choose it. And, and then when it came to cultivated meat, it wasn’t that far off. It was about 53% of South African consumers said that when cultivated meat became widely available, they would purchase it. And I think the other interesting points to add is that, and I’m sure a number of your listeners will note that South Africa’s got quite a different, our past has meant that there’s a lot of people that live within poverty and, and, and, and even and our, obviously our current system doesn’t help. We, we were trying to find out whether or not there will be some sort of breakdown on on, on economic and, and racial lines. And the interesting research that we got out was that a early adopter of cultivated meat was Zulu speaking, was living in an urban area that was probably just, just lower middle, lower middle class, maybe a little bit higher, but interesting.
Brett Thompson:
We’re driven from an environmental reason to make a purchase such as cultivated or plant-based meat. And also we’re willing to spend slightly higher for meat or protein that they viewed would probably be more, it would be better for them opposed to maybe the conventional meats that they’re eating already. So quite interesting research, quite a, an opportunity I think for, for plant-based and cultivated meat companies. And, and I think what I’ve seen now being on the other side as sort of a company zzi, is that we were able to make sure that the narrative within media was positive. Not media in terms of where we grow ourselves, but in terms of the, the media from, from journalists that we were engaging with. And when we did this launch, we reached millions of people. South Africa’s got a group a size of about 60 million population.
Brett Thompson:
Our PR reached about f 42 50 million in circulation of people. And it was overwhelmingly positive and you weren’t seeing things such as Frankenstein burgers or lab sausages as much. It was really positive. And I think it was because we, the heavy lifting had been done by the other cultivated meat companies so that in South Africa we could just approach and showcase. Look, it’s a very already a product. It’s already a product, but now we’ve just doing it in a different way here in South Africa and it was, it was predominantly positive, the response. So yeah,
Alex Shirazi:
That’s a lot of great and very specific detail. Is that information that you collected through Credence Institute? Correct.
Brett Thompson:
So that was a, that was a, the Credence Institute did that research 20 19, 20 20. It’s available online at Sort in Science and then also on Frontiers I can provide you so that your listeners can can check it out. And we did it with Effective Altruist Community Center for the Effective Altruism and and together with a consulting group out in the States. So we, we really got an ability to showcase local understanding from working with an international organization that gave us that perspective.
Alex Shirazi:
Great. And yeah, we can put those links into the show notes after ZI meets its created. You mentioned that you were kind of sharing pitch decks. Was this to raise a pre-seed or some initial funding?
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, look, in the beginning it was very difficult but still very difficult. Starting a company is, is, is is definitely the most challenging thing that I’ve, I’ve ever tried to do. In the beginning. We’re trying to convince South African investors about cultivated meat, get them to understand cultivated meat, having no precedent to show from the continent. And then we were trying to show international investors that South Africa was a place that you wanted to put your dollar or your euro or whatever in, in an industry that was brand new overseas and had never been done locally. And I think the other thing is cultivated meat that hasn’t really showcased besides in, in Singapore a proof of concept all the way to a consumer consuming your product. And that was incredibly difficult. So we were sitting there by that stage, I think there was three of us on the team.
Brett Thompson:
We would, we were just on an idea. We, we were like, here’s our plans. We didn’t even have a lab because we couldn’t go into a lab. And that initial phase was just about getting an angel check to start the process. And what happened is after working with the folks from GFI and the network that we had created of the founders sort of start careers, we got in touch with Ryan Beko and I think his name is probably not probably pretty familiar to to you. And, and he gave us our first check and the rest is not history, but it, it is what got us going, got us scientists, got us into a lab and, and then attracted more angel investment and then that led to a pre-seed and, and the ability to get a proof of concept that at a, at a pretty speedy rate, at a pretty low cost that has resulted to where we are today.
Alex Shirazi:
Wow, that’s amazing. And it’s really cool to see Ryan and now also Meise supporting so many different companies in the space. So that’s super exciting.
Brett Thompson:
I think, you know, meise obviously she played an incredible role sort of as we’ve started to grow as a company. But then Sustainable Food Ventures, they came on in the pre-seed and that really helped us solidify things and get folks from the glassful syndicates and get folks from other parts of the world and, and and also then into a, an accelerator from one of our one of our big supporters canal. So yeah, so it’s been, it’s been great.
Alex Shirazi:
Great. And what accelerator did you guys join?
Brett Thompson:
So we joined Brink based outta Hong Kong. I think they’ve also got other places that they work from, but yeah, we’re working from there.
Alex Shirazi:
Very cool. You know, one thing that the listeners will probably comment if I don’t ask <laugh> is there’s always a, this the special sauce, right? And from a technology standpoint, is there anything that you would say set Mizzi apart from other companies other than the unique aspect of being in South Africa?
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, I think there’s the question about what makes ZI magic and and unique and I think there’s a lot of factors that combine. I think what is setting us apart is, and, and has enabled us to get to prototype in such a quick and and cost effective manner is the, has firstly been the relative speed at which we achieved in a mortar cell line. And that cell line is a beef cell line, especially that it’s non-genetically modified and which is important for us in terms of a European potential market down the line. But the, the, the, the curious thing that we, we found out was that it was sort of pumping together without the need for scaffolding in our initial prototype runs. So that’s just nailed us to have a cell line that is just that much faster than what we’ve seen elsewhere.
Brett Thompson:
And, and again with complications on scaffolding and also just maybe taste profile. The, the, the lack of scaffolding that was required for our first prototypes meant that we, we got from, we got into the lab in November, 2020 and we got prototype less than 18 months later. That speed and the cost effective nature that we did it is what sets us apart about 25 to 50% when it comes to buy racks and manufacturing cheaper to do it here in South Africa when compared to the rest of the world. And so when you are able to do something a little bit quicker like we are with some of the tech that we’ve developed and then also at a price point that is just that much cheaper that those two big hurdles on CapEx and opex are a little bit smaller now than there were more definitely for us 18 months ago. But I think in terms of the industry as a whole,
Alex Shirazi:
Does the South African government support technologies like this in any way?
Brett Thompson:
Look, so in the beginning we were partially funded by the government. We work out of a shared working space here in Cape Town where we’re, our head of head office is based and we were, we got a lump sum and, and also some assistance with consumables and with rent and a whole bunch of stuff which was partly from for-profit but also from non-profit sources being directly from the government. So they’re definitely maybe not so directly, I don’t think they, they were just supporting small enterprise but we were definitely supported by the government in the beginning. I think there’s a lot of different factors to say what it’s gonna mean going forward, the regulations that we are gonna have to contend with and whether or not our government is seeing this as something that they want to encourage. I think we probably don’t have the same sort of sophisticated lobby groups that you, you would have in Europe and in and in America, but we do have them, there’s been some recent developments from the Department of Agriculture that are not in favor of alternative proteins, particularly plant-based.
Brett Thompson:
But I think what we are trying to showcase to government and to everybody is that we’re a meat company. We actually fit currently under our interpretation of the what defines meat in South Africa and what defines food that can be sold. And we believe obviously, and this is the discussion that we’re trying to have and what you need to have in South Africa is that the work that we’re gonna be doing is pro propo because we can get more people eating healthy protein and it’s gonna create more jobs in South Africa if you, if you aren’t creating something that is perceived to create more jobs in the future, it’s a very big uphill to get support from government.
Alex Shirazi:
Cool. And, and I think I saw photos of the space that you guys are in on your website, I think it’s called BioCity,
Brett Thompson:
Correct? Yeah, yeah,
Alex Shirazi:
It looked super cool. Yeah.
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, I mean it’s been look Bioc City and we’re in the process of moving, so I’ll send you a couple of pictures of our space. Biocity is a non-profit and for-profit joint venture and it has the backings of Merck and Thermo Fisher on the one side but also the local small business unit here in South Africa as well as the financing for small businesses. So it was a combination that has enabled us to plug into a lab that it was plug and play essentially gave us the keys and said you guys can use the space. And it meant that CapEx in the beginning was, it was just a fraction, even the rental was a fraction of what we would pay if we went to a private lab in South Africa. And also the level of bureaucracy that you can imagine comes from public or university labs, it wasn’t there. So we plugged in straight away. We were able to to get up and running quickly and and put scientists to work. So it’s definitely enabled us to get to where we are and part of the reason why we’ve been able to do it in such a cost effective way.
Alex Shirazi:
So what’s next for zi? You guys have expanded, your team have raised initial funds and, and maybe more after that have some pretty big backers have been in Brink Accelerator moving into a new space. This is super exciting. What’s next?
Brett Thompson:
Yeah, it’s, I mean we’re currently in a fundraiser doing our seed round and the goal of that raise is to put together pilot production facility again, will be another first for Africa and help put us on the map in a larger way. The goal there is to be able to prove concept with our first customer. They’re called rock bombers. It’s a burger nationwide burger chain here in South Africa who are very interested in what we’re doing and we are trying to work with them to show that at a pilot scale we can service some restaurants and work with regulators to showcase that, that that’s done. So, you know, if I’m looking at the next 18 months, those are the key components that we need to do. Once we’ve kicked off that pilot and, and we’ve on the way with arrays the team, we need to grow, we’ve gotta bring team, I think of international folks to bolster the ranks to get some folks from experience locally and grow the team considerably so that we can put optimization on the top of the list.
Brett Thompson:
I think there’s efficiencies that everybody needs to achieve in terms of what the, the media can do, their product media can do and that’s when the unit economics start making more sense. So our second or third goal, well first is raise the seed, build a pilot production facility, get ’em to more restaurants and then optimize the whole process before going and saying how do we get this into retail? ’cause That’s our ultimate goal and underlying that whole is is we wanna start looking at different indigenous meat that is only found in South Africa so that we can really differentiate ourselves there again, differentiate and then proliferate ourselves from the rest of the world. And for us it’s about trying to do that and then approaching international market with the South African meats that we then start making here in cap.
Alex Shirazi:
Exciting. And are you guys currently hiring?
Brett Thompson:
I never say no to anything, but we’re definitely looking for folks in the r and d space. We’re probably looking to make hires in the next three to six months through technologists bioprocessing, anyone interested in in food is always also the door is always open, but definitely food technologists and bioprocessing is where we’re looking at in the next three, six months.
Alex Shirazi:
Brett, do you have any last insights for our listeners today?
Brett Thompson:
We’re at a pretty interesting time cultivated meat proof concept. It’s gone from the side plate to the main plate or should I say? I think I’m curious and interested to see what can be done by the larger companies that are really going from that pilot production into large retail potential producing meat companies. So your good meats adjust and and upside and I think it’s a very exciting space to be in, but there’s also this notion that I think we’ve spend a bit too much money as an industry and we’ve gotta try and work out how to get the economics rights. I think that’s where we are kicking in as much as we can because of the position that we are in, in terms of the geography and, and our exchange rate. We have to make sure the economics works from day one and I’m hoping that I’ll start seeing that as well from companies across the globe.
Alex Shirazi:
You can learn more about ziko@zi.co, that’s M-Z-A-N-S-I meet, do co and learn more about Brett on LinkedIn. But Brett, I want to ask you actually, you know, we talked about it a little bit before, but not on the show. What does ZI mean?
Brett Thompson:
It’s a very known word here in South Africa, but I realize that not many people overseas do notes or even outside of Southern Africa. Zi quite literally means south, south as the direction, but in m Zzi is a nickname or colloquial term for South Africa. So we wanted to choose something that could be understood by all 11 official languages in South Africa. And Zzi was the way that we could really sort of capture a lot of the culture that we find in South Africa.
Alex Shirazi:
I love it. Well Brett, thank you so much for being on the show,
Brett Thompson:
Alex, thanks so much for me. Cheers.
Alex Shirazi:
This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.