Robin Simsa of Revo Foods
This episode is part of the Transforming The Future of Proteins series.
XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion is a multi-year, $15M competition that incentivizes teams to produce chicken breast or fish filet alternatives that replicate or outperform these conventional proteins in the following ways: access, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, nutrition, as well as taste and texture.
Robin is the Founder and CEO of Revo Foods. Robin has a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Gothenburg and Tufts University and is recognized as one of FORBES “30 under 30” for the DACH region.
With a background in biotechnology and a passion for ocean sustainability, Robin has extensive experience in the field of 3D food printing, which he used when building his first start up.
Revo Foods has revolutionized the production of plant-based fish alternatives and is currently the largest supplier of salmon alternatives in Europe.
We have a great conversation with Robin as we discuss 3d Bioprinting technologies for food, what is like creating a startup, and the opportunities competitions can bring to the table.
Learn more about the XPRIZE Feed The Next Billion Challenge at www.xprize.org/feed
Learn more about Revo Foods at www.revo-foods.com
Alex Shirazi (00:03):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Food Show. This episode is part of the Transforming the Future of Proteins series where we explore the work of XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion, a global incentivized competition that challenges innovators to reinvent alternative proteins. On this episode, we’re excited to have Robin Simsa of Revo Foods drawing as our guest. Robin has a PhD in biotechnology from the University of Guttenberg and Tufts University. He’s recognized as one of Forbes 30 under 30 for the DHA region with a background in biotechnology and a passion for ocean sustainability. Robin has extensive experience in the field of 3D food printing, which he used when building his first startup. Revo Foods has revolutionized the production of plant-based fish alternatives and is currently the largest supplier of salmon alternatives in Europe. We have a great conversation with Robin as we discuss 3D bioprinting technologies for food, what it’s like creating a startup and the opportunities competitions can bring to the table. Robin, I’d like to welcome you to the Future Food Show.
Robin Simsa (01:09):
Hey Alex. Thanks so much for having me.
Alex Shirazi (01:11):
Robin, tell us a little bit about your background.
Robin Simsa (01:14):
Sure. So I actually studied biotechnology as a bachelor and during this time I got interested in cultured meat. I remember reading about the career opportunities for biotechnology, and it was mainly big pharma companies and very conventional career paths, let’s say. And it didn’t interest me that much, but then I was actually reading about the first culture at Meat hamburger that Mark Post was producing in his laboratory. And that got me hooked and I thought like, this is exactly the way where I want to develop my career to. And then luckily I found a PhD position where was able to work together with professor David Kaplan from Tufts University as part of my PhD. And yeah, ever since I’ve been on the track of trying to create better meat alternatives.
Alex Shirazi (02:06):
Excellent. And so what is Reva Foods and and how did you start it? Well,
Robin Simsa (02:11):
Right after doing my PhD I was thinking, okay, how can I contribute to this this area? And, and I had a colleague who was actually working in, in bioprinting and we were discussing for a long time about whole cut products, so things like the steak or the fish filet. And we were thinking that there are not really technologies right now available to us to produce these types of products. And my colleague was saying, well, actually with this 3D bioprinting approach, this was made to recreate complex tissue structures or organ structures in this case, why wouldn’t it work for something like a piece of muscle? So just for fun, basically in the beginning we said, okay, let’s try to print something that looks like a sushi. We tried this for some, some days like on the side, and within really short time we got really, really good results. And this was the time when we said, okay, additive food manufacturing or 3D footprinting can have a real benefit for these meat to, for creating the next generation of these meat alternatives. And this was the starting point of Rev Foods a bit more than three years ago.
Alex Shirazi (03:27):
Tracking back a little bit. You mentioned hold cut, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And, and we know that the XPRIZE challenge the feed, the next billion challenge, which you know, maybe we’ll get into a little bit more later, focuses on whole cut chicken or, or fish products. I wanted to ask you why you think whole cut is important?
Robin Simsa (03:45):
I believe it’ll need a bit more differentiated products on the market. Like right now I feel we have quite good hamburgers, quite good chicken nuggets or fish sticks like in our case now. But what we are really missing is a bit more differentiation on the product side. So people that say, I love the taste of a good steak, or I love the taste of a good fish filet. Those are not some grinded processed products, but those are really very difficult heterogeneous and complex products. And recreating this complexity, I think will lead a whole field forward because you need to think about new fiber solutions, you need to think about new fat solutions, about new solutions to bring the best flavor right into the products and in different compartments of the products. So there’s a whole array of challenges that I believe are unique to these types of products, but also can create really the next level where you reach more of the average consumers, let’s say.
Alex Shirazi (04:50):
Is the differentiation also why you chose to focus on fish?
Robin Simsa (04:55):
I think with fish we have massive challenges as well as with with meat products. I mean conventional meat products in terms of overfishing, et cetera. And not many people have been doing this in the past. Now there’s some more new companies coming up working on, on these types of products, but I believe this is really a young, young market where there can be a lot more, more solutions and the solutions that are available also need to get a lot better, including our own. Would
Alex Shirazi (05:26):
You say that the team might be interested in going to kind of you know, chicken or beef in the future? Yeah,
Robin Simsa (05:33):
Could be. I’m thinking a lot about mystery products, like half fish taste, half beef steak or something something like this. Or like creating something that is actually completely new because especially if it’s 3D printing technology, you can get very creative and you can create really new structures and textures that people are not, not used to that much. And I think that something like this might even be the future of of these types of products.
Alex Shirazi (05:59):
Yeah, I I think that is always so exciting. And I remember, you know, we were talking to one of the earlier episodes with was with Ali Buari and, and he was telling us about, you know, how these types of designer meets could be very interesting from a, a culinary perspective, but we haven’t seen it too much. Right. I think the only company who has announced that they’re doing something like that in the, I guess alternative protein space might be a vowel from Australia kind of mixing like quail and lobster or, or or something like that. I know that this is not officially what you know, your company is working on, but maybe what would be kind of a an interesting direction that you would like to take, like right off the top of your head. What, what would you like to see mixed together?
Robin Simsa (06:45):
I was thinking it today, like maybe it’s a stupid thing, but only playing with the form and making some kind of hipster mini salmon filets that are shaped in a triangle or this other typical, typical funny shapes that people like like these tiny foods, for example. Or, or creating something which looks like a salmon file but actually tastes like a tuna, which is a little bit confusing, but, but I like concepts like this, like changing the way people actually think about what food can do for them and how, like what new things we could create with technology like this. But we, we, it’s really a challenge creatively, I believe, to come up with something new because it’s easier to say, okay, salmon file exist in the world, we make a salmon filet. It’s harder to say, think of something that didn’t exist before. How could it look like? This requires a lot of like imaginative power, I guess.
Alex Shirazi (07:36):
Yeah. And I guess, you know, only so much market research or market research can only gets you so far right <laugh> for, for that type of thing.
Robin Simsa (07:43):
Very true. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Shirazi (07:45):
Well, but that, that’s really exciting and I, and I, I do feel like that is the, the, the future of, of things I wanted to ask you. And, and I want, I want to get into the technology a little bit as well, but tell us a little bit about, you know, where you are located, where the team is located, how big is the team, and what is your latest, I guess, public funding round?
Robin Simsa (08:05):
Sure. So we’re located in Austria in Vienna, the capital, which is a country that has no cxs and we are developing the fish of the futures we like to say, which is a bit ironic in its own. I think we could grow our team quite well. I believe we’re now about 40 team members here at our headquarter. Yeah, we’re about, we have now four products that we launched in the market. We’re in more than 1000 locations across Europe, including the German VE group, which is one of the biggest supermarket chains in Europe. And we’re present in 20 countries already with our first product. So I think we had quite a good success in a pretty short period of time.
Alex Shirazi (08:43):
Wow. And when you were kind of doing your PhD, were you thinking, Hey, I’m gonna start a company?
Robin Simsa (08:49):
Not specifically. I knew I want to stay in this field and in the beginning I also wanted to stay in cell-based meat specifically, however than working with it, I have a lot of respect for everybody that is operating in this space because for me personally, I just was, was so overwhelmed with the complexity of it that I said to myself, okay, maybe I’m plant-based, I can have more midterm solutions ready. While I also believe in hope that that something like cultured meat in a bit more longer run probably can have potentially the bigger impact even.
Alex Shirazi (09:21):
Do you think that your team might transition to, to that in the future? Or are you just focused on plant-based from now on?
Robin Simsa (09:28):
It might be to, to be honest, I think adding certain proteins to the products or fat parts, something like this, I think has a lot of value. So if you think about mylo or hemoglobin, something that impossible foods has famously done very successfully, I think there can be more proteins like this are also flavor molecules. I’m wondering if it is necessary to add fat cells, for instance, to, to our products like cultured fat or if it might even be enough to identify certain surface molecules that are present on fat cells and attach to certain flavor receptors on your tongue. And if some, an addition like this would give you a very nice fatty feeling. And I think we’re just at the start of this these new developments that are basically incorporated in precision fermentation. And I think a lot new solutions can come from this actually.
Alex Shirazi (10:23):
I see. So for example adding different types of proteins that come through precision fermentation or, or maybe even adding different types of fats that come through cultured fat technology, is that right?
Robin Simsa (10:37):
I, I think so. And what I’ve been thinking about for a long time was like actin and myocin, like the, the proteins which lead to meat being sticky and being sticky when you bite on it and, and chew it and everything. This is a behavior that basically no plant-based pro that I have encountered so far has you get it a little bit with gluten, but in a very low extent. And if you could find a way to find some kind of a natural glue almost where you have the sticky behavior, I think this makes a lot of difference. And there’s many other examples like this, for example, that where little, a little effect can have a massive difference on the, the experience of the consumer. Well
Alex Shirazi (11:16):
We, we, we should talk more about that offline, but <laugh> I wanted, I wanted to tell you about or I wanted to ask you, do you know of anybody making like cell cell cultured fish fat? Do you know of anybody working on that?
Robin Simsa (11:30):
Fish fat, I’m not a hundred percent sure. I mean, in Europe there’s not too many companies working on cel based fish in general. I know blue bioscience from Germany, very nice guys, for example. And I mean, in the US there’re famously some like finless foods and others. But fat specifically, I’m not sure.
Alex Shirazi (11:47):
Okay. Yeah, that, that would be interesting. I mean, I fe I feel like we’re always talking about, you know, every single thing you could think, think of, but you know, that might be that that is, well I guess, you know, the companies that are focused on that, they’re, they’re not just doing fat, they’re, they’re doing a little bit of everything.
Robin Simsa (12:02):
I mean, an interesting question, I don’t know the answer to it, but like, how different are certain fat cells between species? No, because there’s certain molecules and proteins which are very conserved between species while others like the veri quite a bit. So there could be a question, okay, if you take fat cells from salmon and fat cells from tuna and you cultivate them, is there actually a perceivable difference or does it not matter? Or even if you take between salmon and let’s say beef or something, maybe a cell biologist would now call me stupid because the answer’s obvious, but I just don’t know it. And it might be that there’s not that much difference after all, but that the important properties that you want are quite conserved between species.
Alex Shirazi (12:41):
Yeah. Well on, on this, on this podcast, we never get too deep into the science. So if there is somebody listening that’s saying like, Hey, you guys are totally off, you know, you’re gonna have to drop something in the comments or send us a message because you know, it’ll be a good talking point. <Laugh>.
Robin Simsa (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, please hit me up if somebody knows to answer because I will be really interested in this <laugh>.
Alex Shirazi (13:02):
So, so Robin, you said that you have been listening to the the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast, and that’s a huge honor. Do you remember how you first heard about it?
Robin Simsa (13:12):
I mean, I think you were one of the first to start a podcast in this spectrum. And I remember when I got interested in this whole cultured meat thing, there was a thing in 2015, and I’m not even sure if Beyond Meat was already a thing back then, or, or Impossible Foods or company like this. And I think there were like three or four cultured meat companies in the world. And I remember applying to all of them for like internship positions, <laugh>, and all of them rejected me, unfortunately, <laugh>, and then I was out of like out of options. Now that will be quite different in these times, but because there’s so many more companies. But yeah, I think you reached really right timing and I think it’s very important to build a community around these, these kind of things. And I think that that podcasts such as yours also have a, a big influence on let’s say young students or young people who think, okay, where can I take my career? What should I do? And maybe founding new companies or choosing a academic career in this kind of field and something like this is very important to get the word out and, and show people look, this is, this is exciting new technology and something that you can do with your life.
Alex Shirazi (14:16):
Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, and, and there there were only a, a handful of companies and I think that’s when we spread two different types of like, you know, plant-based proteins or, or even insect based proteins. I’m glad we did because, because now we’re starting to see so many different types of technologies and, and companies blend together. That that is definitely very interesting. There’s
Robin Simsa (14:38):
A lot more to report on for sure. Yes. Oh yeah. But also a lot more to see, okay, what is real and what is really new and what is maybe has been done before.
Alex Shirazi (14:47):
So, so a lot of people that are in academia right now, either in an undergraduate program or, or you know, g gearing towards a PhD program, they’re oftentimes thinking in this type of work climate, you know, do I, do I go the route of working for industry or should I try to start a company or join a, a company, specifically a startup? I wanted to ask you, you know, what advice do you have for them? What made you kind of really excited to go that route? And I’ll follow up about kind of the entrepreneurial mindset, but first I kind of wanted to ask you, you know, what advice do you have for those that are in academia and, and deciding to go industry or or startup?
Robin Simsa (15:28):
First of all, I think there’s a huge benefit also in academia and it’s very valuable and it can be very, a nice thing to do also, like I enjoyed very much doing a PhD in this field, and I think we actually need more of this basic research also because many of the companies operating in this field, like they don’t have interest to share information. And if some of these companies, God forbid, but if some of them maybe go under, then this knowledge might be lost and there will be a bit of a shame. However, if people choose to go into the industry or make their own startup, I think it only makes sense to start your own startup if you really have a good idea that is differentiated and not there yet. If you just do it because you say, I wanna start a company, like that’s my main goal. You, you can still achieve something and you can learn a lot. But for us it was really seeing like a unique new technological approach to a problem that in our opinion back then people had not considered before. That was really the starting point.
Alex Shirazi (16:28):
Do you think that maybe back when you were applying to those jobs, if one of them had said, you know, yes, then you might have never started Revo Foods?
Robin Simsa (16:37):
Yeah, 100%. I think then I might be now at, I don’t know, over these companies like Upset Foods or or Moosa Meats and people like that, who knows, maybe <laugh>.
Alex Shirazi (16:48):
Yeah. And so, and and you mentioned that you have a product line currently in Reva, right?
Robin Simsa (16:53):
Yeah, that’s correct.
Alex Shirazi (16:55):
How is that experience like getting into retail grocery and, and for those who are listening in, in the us Veva is, is is pretty much a, a very big chain. They have smaller stores and, and bigger stores all throughout I guess you know, Europe, but specifically Germany and I believe Austria as well. And, and so, and, and fill in for anything I might have missed, but you know, how, how was that experience?
Robin Simsa (17:18):
Sure. So Reva’s actually, I think the second was the third biggest retailer in Europe. So they have quite some presence across different countries, which is nice for us. And we actually got into it by participating in the Austrian version of Shark Tank, so like a TV show where we pitched our products and our idea and Reva was one of the sponsors of the shows. So this was quite a, yeah, success. So we were lucky, I don’t know how to call it. And then next year actually we were in the German kind of version of Shark Tank and then also got into the German Craver stores. So I think participating in TV shows has been very successful for us because people say, okay, you’ll do what you’ll do. 3D printing of vegan fish, like both of these individually sound already a bit strange, but combining them somehow for people are, are really, really bizarre. And this makes for some good media attention, I guess. Yeah.
Alex Shirazi (18:12):
<Laugh>, what, what is the name of the Austrian sh shark Tank
Robin Simsa (18:16):
Here? It’s called, like the translation will be ‘Two Minutes, Two Million’, but you don’t get 2 million. Nobody does. It’s just
Alex Shirazi (18:21):
<Laugh>. Okay. Yeah,
Robin Simsa (18:22):
It’s a good name for them, I guess.
Alex Shirazi (18:24):
And, and, and the, the German one has something to do with lions, right? What is that one called? Yeah,
Robin Simsa (18:28):
Yeah. Or there it was like, the translation would be the tastiest idea of Germany. So it’s more like a, you you’re in like competition with other startups for who is the tastiest breakfast idea or lunch idea or something like this.
Alex Shirazi (18:40):
I see. Okay, cool. And so the, the products that are in those right now, they’re completely made with, with 3D printing technology.
Robin Simsa (18:50):
So the products that we have in store right now, those are like our early products, let’s say. So we developed them with the 3D printer, that is true. However, for them, those are more, let’s say 2D products. So we have salmon slices, which is like a single layer of product, and there we found another, like a bit more easy solution, let’s say, to produce it. And we saw that we don’t necessarily need this complex 3D printing approach to it. And we have some cream cheese spreadable products like a tuna spread and the salmon spread. So those are not yet the products produced with a final technology. However, with this we will release the, the salmon filet, which we have been now working on for three years. Yeah, quite soon, actually still this year.
Alex Shirazi (19:35):
Okay, great. And, and I guess I wanted to ask you about what scale up looks like when it comes to developing products with 3D technologies, right? Is it, you know, a a a warehouse or a facility full of 3D printers or, and, and, and maybe we have some examples of existing technologies today that, that we can reference, but what does it look like to scale 3D printing technology?
Robin Simsa (19:58):
Sure. And I need to be a bit careful on how I, how I explain this, but basically what you need to think about is that basic, many 3D printing operations, they wear batch processes in the past. They’re used for prototyping and they need to be refilled quite a lot. So this was one of the challenges. And what we target is an upscaled industrial version of this additive food manufacturing. So what this requires is basically a continuous flow of material to the print headss to the extruders and automatic transport of final products forward, which is something that in normally you don’t have in the additive manufacturing industry, normally what you have is things called print farms, for example, where you have indeed many printers in parallel, which is especially used for plastics. And then another thing is that 3D F printing has been mainly used as a gimmick so far.
Robin Simsa (20:56):
What I mean by this is that people can buy, for instance, some desktop machines. There’s some companies that offer them, and then chefs can use them in a restaurant, for example, you can make cool and funky structures or bring on a cake like the picture of a, I dunno, for a wedding or something like this. However, we strongly believe that even apart from meat alternatives, that additive food manufacturing can have massive implications for the wider food industry. For the first time, you can allow people to have a flexible and personalized production. What I mean by this is that current food production is based on massive volumes and massive beva numbers. Let’s say a pasta company, they have a certain pasta form and they produce it tons and tons every day. It doesn’t allow personalization, but there’s a big market for people who actually want something that is personalized to their needs or for a special event or in a flexible way that you can produce things where every single piece is a little bit different than the other one, for instance, to make something appeal or look more natural. For example, things like this are a bit niche applications, but I still believe that in all areas of industrial manufacturing, we see this trend towards personalized and flexible production, but in food hardly yet. And this is one of the few technologies where we can finally achieve something like this also in food operations.
Alex Shirazi (22:18):
So perhaps you could actually shift a lot of the current food manufacturing process by not just creating your own products, but developing new technologies with 3D printing this kind of large scale 3D printing technology.
Robin Simsa (22:32):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> for, for this, I think for many products it doesn’t make sense. Let’s say you have the typical spaghetti pasta, it’ll never make sense to 3D print something like this, most likely. However, for certain applications, for instance, very interesting, but structurally complex products with crazy shapes, crazy structures. You want a Eiffel Tower out of chocolate, you want, I don’t know what you want, a Statue of Liberty out of some bakery, good things like this very complex to produce with conventional methods if you want to make it really complex looking. But for applications like this where people you would expect normally pay quite a bit of a premium 3D footprinting would actually be perfect. Or things like said this personalized nutrition. I was just recently talking actually with a elderly home here in Vienna where they experimented a little bit with 3D footprinting to dissolve basically the medication of the patients in the food. And now imagine you have a system where you just type 10 patients and they’re only different medication and you have a printer where you can adjust the concentration of different medications directly into the food. I mean, now we speak about five, 10, maybe even 15 years of development time for something like this. But I think in the, in the midterm future, something like this are real interesting applications
Alex Shirazi (23:50):
That is very interesting and much more I guess, you know, focused and meaningful than, you know, just being able to have like a, a bread maker equivalent in, in the everyday home where everyone can just, you know, 3D print what they want. So. Okay, that is very interesting. I wanted to talk to you about XPRIZE. How did you, your team first hear about the feed the next billion challenge?
Robin Simsa (24:16):
I think I read somewhere in a newsletter or something about it, and I thought it’s perfect for us, like we need to participate in this. And I didn’t even think we will be considered because we were still a very young startup. We didn’t have like our first prototype ready and we just applied opportunistically, let’s say, and then we are really happy to be selected for the next round. We even got a little bit of money, I think it was like 10 or 15,000 US dollar at this time. And it, the task was to develop a fish filet in our case, which shows a salmon filet. And we said, okay, now we have a year and we need to come up with a prototype. And at this time we were actually focused on some other types of product applications more or less. And then X price really accelerated our work towards this, this first seven filet prototype. And in hindsight, it was super useful for us because I think we wouldn’t have been that fast in developing it if it wasn’t for this specific per purpose. And for this specific deadline,
Alex Shirazi (25:14):
You know, you already mentioned that it accelerated your timeline. I wanted to ask you, when you first applied to XPRIZE, that was before the, you know, the Shark Tank style TV shows?
Robin Simsa (25:25):
Yeah, right.
Alex Shirazi (25:26):
It was. Okay. Yeah. And so, you know, in the past we’ve seen that teams that are part of XPRIZE challenges, even if they’re not the ultimate winners of the challenge, they still have huge opportunities that come to them. You’ve already mentioned that XPRIZE itself has accelerated your timelines and, and done a lot of great things for you. But as a semi-finalist and and beyond what do you think the XPRIZE challenge could do for you whether you are a winner? At the end of the day or not?
Robin Simsa (25:54):
I mean, first of all, obviously the the price is very attractive. Like they were very successful in fundraising for this price, I think. And it’s I think the total price money is 15 million US dollar that winners can gain, which is of course a big incentive for companies like us to dedicate even more resources towards r and d than we might have done otherwise. And apart from this, of course, like it’s a very prestigious event and people know about XPRIZE, I knew about X Express way before we joined this competition, and it’s it’s in the news, it is in the chose really companies leading in Disrespective field, I think. So all of this combined is yeah, it’s, it’s like gold for us. I cannot even say how much we can benefit from something like this and already have possibly.
Alex Shirazi (26:47):
I love that. Yeah. And, and that I guess is also very inspiring to, to hear as we wrap up. I, I wanted to ask you earlier, I, I had asked you about academia versus going to industry and, and you had some certain great answers. One thing that I wanted to chat about is the entrepreneurial mindset. You know, do you feel like you always had the entrepreneurial mindset or did you have to kind of learn it and grow with it?
Robin Simsa (27:13):
I feel I had it more than the academic mindset because as an academic you go into depth everywhere. You you take your time, you look more for process and getting quick to a final result, maybe while, at least for me personally, I think it’s important to analyze very quickly what is important to get us to the next step, what we do we need now the most even can we take shortcuts here in there in terms of like that we developed something a bit quicker. And yeah, things like this, and I think this is something important because at the end, what you don’t have in startups is time, right? You don’t have endless time to develop something to bring something on the market because this is a big company’s game and this is star a startup. Like the big advantage that you have is speed, I believe. And then this must be used as as good as possible.
Alex Shirazi (28:05):
And how did you find your co-founder?
Robin Simsa (28:09):
Well actually we were working together on some well in the 3D printing area, like also 3D bioprinting and working on projects together already before, and then we yeah, said, Hey, I would really like to do something in this area. And then, yeah, we kind of joined forces.
Alex Shirazi (28:29):
I wanna ask you about kind of like the, the creative and visual design of, you know, Revo Foods. Can you speak to maybe the decisions to kind of go that creative route and, and I’ll say with somebody that has a background in design, I do like the approach that you guys have taken.
Robin Simsa (28:45):
So for people that don’t know our brand, like Revo Foods, you can look it up. We work a lot with creative artists and illustration and street artists actually, and this was my main approach from the beginning. I wanted to brand this colorful, happy, inspiring, and stands a bit out because if you go now to the supermarket shelves and look for smoke salmon for example, the packages are mainly either only blue or pictures of the Norwegian mountains, but it’s not really that inspiring. And we have some, we invited some really creative street artists, I think one actually American Street artist that lives here in Vienna that is amazing, that Fit Hero or also a Bosnian Street artist that was creating amazing art on, on Instagram that we saw. And we relocated Fitz perfectly with our brand also, and we invited them to make the cover design for our packages actually, and also for the, for the rest of our brand identity. And this is a route that we will continue because it’s at the end, it’s fun. And I think there’s often not a right or wrong decision in terms of branding. Like, okay, which color should we choose now? Which this and that. I mean, sometimes there is, but often it’s just like, okay, what do we like as a team the most? And in which direction do we want to go? And we chose this colorful, happy, creative approach.
Alex Shirazi (29:55):
That’s cool. And I also like how there’s, there’s merch that you can buy on the site, so yeah,
Robin Simsa (30:00):
Yeah, we sell t-shirts.
Alex Shirazi (30:01):
Hoodie a t-shirt. Yeah. <laugh>.
Robin Simsa (30:03):
So far we’ve sold three T-shirts, I think, since we started the, the shop two years ago. So it’s not the most successful endeavor for us, but <laugh>
Alex Shirazi (30:10):
Well,if you’re, if you’re listening and you’re in Europe you know, or if you ship to the US, please buy one t-shirt. I know, I will. So, you know, with our listeners and, and me, you’ll get at least one or two t-shirts. Very nice. I sold yeah, <laugh> and
Robin Simsa (30:25):
My mother is not the only customer anymore, but it’s also okay if it was just a try.
Alex Shirazi (30:28):
Right, right. Oh man, that’s cool. You could learn more about Revo foods@revofoods.com. You could learn more and connect with Robin on LinkedIn. Robin, I wanted to ask you if you have any last insights for our listeners today?
Robin Simsa (30:43):
Sure. Can I also promote something?
Alex Shirazi (30:45):
Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead.
Robin Simsa (30:47):
Nice. I mean, like everyone with fundraising, always fundraising. So if somebody’s interested in this new process, technology that we developed and where we now have two patterns on please reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email. And also we’re constantly hiring people. I mean, especially with background in plant-based meets ideally, or 3D footprinting or process technology, it is something very always on the lookout. So they are also, feel free to contact me, please. Awesome.
Alex Shirazi (31:12):
Well, Robin, thank you so much for being a guest on the Future Food Show.
Robin Simsa (31:16):
Thank you so much. It was great.
Alex Shirazi (31:19):
This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.