For Tindle Foods CEO and co-founder Andre Menezes, meat is more than a food group, it is a “social fabric,” he said. “It’s more than just an ingredient, it’s the center of the plate. It’s what brings people together, but at the same time, it’s just not sustainable.”
Menezes and his business partner Timo Recker started NextGenFoods, now Tindle Foods, in 2020 around its flagship product TindleChicken. Now, the Singapore-based company is adding other plant-based meats, such as sausage, and plant-based dairy to its product offerings.
Along with the new product launches, the company announced a new “brand identity” — with the transition from NextGen to Tindle. The new focus is something that means “more than an aesthetic change,” Menezes said but is part of the company’s larger plan to appeal to a wider consumer base.
“The rebrand is a visual manifestation of our commitment to creating a sustainable and delicious future,” said Borna Bayat, vice president of brand and creative at Tindle. It was designed to resonate across the company’s entire portfolio of products and brand experiences.
“Believe it or not, we have found that most of our customers are neither vegans nor vegetarians, but people who want to try what the category has to offer; therefore, we want to offer as welcoming an experience as possible,” Menezes said.
At the time of its launch, Next Gen Foods had raised a record breaking $100 million in the largest Series A funding round ever for any plant-based meat company. To date, the company has raised $130 million in funding and has invested most of the raised capital into research and development.
One of the most “exciting” developments for the brand is the launch of its first product sourced with all U.S. ingredients, Menezes said. The breakfast sausage product is set to launch “sometime very soon,” he added.
The CEO said the new sausage products will include flavors, such as Bratwurst, Italian and savory breakfast while the company’s dairy expansion will feature plant-based milks, hopefully available in 2024.
Menezes was a part of the meat industry for seven years. As the general manager at Country Foods — one of Singapore’s largest food importers — he worked on imports and exports, everywhere from Singapore to Brazil. He realized that in the meat space eventually there would be two outcomes — “meat becomes so expensive that it cannot be produced to the extent we need it to and the price will readjust itself to constrict the demand, or we’re gonna have to find a different way to produce the things we really like.”
A better way to do it
Back in 2020, the team at Tindle decided to pick just one category as a starting point. For the Singaporean brand, the product was plant-based chicken.
“Chicken is the fastest growing and the biggest category in the meat sector, and yet no one has addressed that on a global level for the plant-based space,” Menezes said. But the burger has been addressed. “If I were to ask you the top plant-based burger products, a few players come to mind, that doesn’t really happen with chicken.”
Menezes explained that since Tindle eventually wants to sell globally, the company is not using any novel ingredients that would be unacceptable to a government entity.
“We hold ourselves to a very high standard,” he said. “We listen to consumers and their concerns, and we wanted to make sure that our products are up to par when it comes to nutrition. We wanted to make sure we had a short list of ingredients, and that we’re not using GMOs.”
Technology is also what Menezes believes sets the Tindle brand apart. The company’s “TrueCut” technology seeks to better mimic the true differences in cuts of meat with their plant-based counterpart products.
“The chicken is very versatile, and you have different applications of it — from the breast to nuggets to wings — and they are all different,” Menezes said. “We see a variety, a very wide range of applications for chicken. And our point of view was, how do we use the best technology available for each one of those applications.”