Johnathan Berger, CEO of The Kitchen Hub

The Plantbased Business Hour

CEO of Israel’s incubator, The Kitchen Hub, Jonathan Berger discusses Israel’s leadership in Plant-based Innovation, what we can expect to see in 2023 in the sector globally and the role government plays in fostering innovation. It’s another great episode of The Plantbased Business Hour.

Specifically, we discuss

  1. What is the Kitchen Hub and what is unique about it?

2.  Why is Israel leading the world in investments in plant-based innovation and alternative proteins?

3. What is the Kitchen Hub working on now and when will we see Plant-based 3.0?

4.  Why are governments around the world starting to invest in Plant-based Innovation?

5. Predictions for the sector in 2023-2030.

Below is short clip and transcription from our long-form conversation.

Elysabeth: Can you give us a timeframe for when you think we’ll see, I’ll call it version 3.0 of plant-based? So, if the 70s was version 1.0 and then this recent boom of let’s say 2016 to 2021 was 2.0, when will we see the next elevation for plant-based?

Jonathan Berger: Earlier than two years.

Elysabeth: Earlier than two years, so you’re thinking mid-2024?

Jonathan Berger: Correct. So there are companies that are Gen 3 right now. They have a clean label with only five ingredients on the label. These are ingredients that you have in your kitchen like tomatoes, rice, and lentils. These are the only ingredients in the plant-based meat that they are making. A good example is a company called ReBite and they’re already selling in Europe.

So, I’m super optimistic.  Price is an issue. You can charge a high price at the early stages for the first time trying, but if you want someone to buy it on a regular basis then there has to be a cost parity. I think there is a lot of effort for many startups to provide technologies, processes, ingredients, etc. for the plant-based producers in order to make sure that their product is at cost parity with the traditional protein.

On the nutrition side, the challenge is to be as tasty but more nutritious, and technology can definitely solve that.

And the climate aspect, which is a given. I think that the processes and that we will have to communicate it properly.  We’re not doing a good job communicating this yet but if we communicate properly and be transparent to the consumer, they will see that the products of the future are less processed, contain less antibiotics, and are healthier for you and that would be gen 3 as you say.

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