From Lab to Consumer Goods: How Food Tech Companies Build the Right Team

Lisa Dyson has long been an advocate for the power of science. In 2016, she gave aTED Talkabout how NASA research from the 1960s could transform food production, sparking discussion among consumers. Based on this research, a common microorganism could be used to convert carbon dioxide into protein. Dyson subsequently founded AirProtein to produce meat alternatives using this technology. Currently, AirProtein is scaling up and refining its prototype products, and Dyson is witnessing the company's growth.

"Initially, the founding team's vision and energy drove the company into the next phase," she said at the Future Food-Tech conference in New York this summer. "With initial success and team expansion, you need to handle multiple things at once, leveraging successes to continue building. Then you bring in processes and industry experts. This process is crucial for startups, helping them mature as they grow."

AirProtein's growth path is similar to that of many companies in the food tech sector. In the cultivated meat field, Upside Foods is undergoing a transformation from a research-focused company to a food manufacturer.

Chief Operating Officer Amy Chen is a participant in this transformation. She is passionate about Upside's mission and the company's use of science and technology to create the future of food, but she is not a scientist herself. Chen joined Upside Foods last summer from PepsiCo, where she worked for over a decade, most recently as Senior Vice President of the North American beverages division, and previously oversaw the Greater China business. One of her focuses at PepsiCo was driving a positive corporate culture, which is also what she hopes to achieve at Upside. Chen says Upside's culture is already deeply ingrained—employees generally want to improve the food system, planetary health, and animal welfare through science—but she is formally working to spread that culture within the company and to the food industry and potential consumers. She also brings extensive experience in managing complex organizations, ensuring smooth operations from supply chain to regulatory, marketing to distribution.

"My experience working in different environments, managing a lot of complexity, and dealing with customers, partners, and regulatory environments has been really useful in the scaling process," Chen says. "Because I've seen complex organizations operate and have been part of leading them, it gives me the ability to ensure from the start that we build the organization the right way."

Several food tech companies are bringing in talent like Chen with brand and company-building skills, rather than just scientists skilled in fermentation and cell line cultivation. Chen often uses an analogy: cultivated meat is like a relay race, starting with the initial cells and ending with the meat on consumers' plates, with several critical handoffs in between. She says the communication work, while "unremarkable," is crucial.

"We have the opportunity to build while the paint is still wet, which is fantastic," Chen says. "It's like wet clay; we can shape it. I can blend the best of what I learned at PepsiCo with Upside's unique and special culture to create something that will sustain us in the long term."

A 'deeply committed' team

Mark Warner, former consultant and founder and CEO of scaling company Liberation Labs, says a diverse team is key to the success of food tech startups. This diversity is not only in culture, ethnicity, and gender, but also in knowledge and experience. Warner believes the team should include experts in food science, biotechnology, cell and plant biology, engineering, as well as business, sales, communications, marketing, and commercialization. He suggests that the best way to drive a company's success is through a blend of knowledge and perspectives.

Upside Foods' Chen brings a wealth of experience quite different from the company's core research team. One of the capabilities she brings is building connections—both within the company and with consumers. As more talent from diverse backgrounds joins, Chen says everyone must be aligned on what they are doing and discussing; vocabulary needs to match, and cross-functional communication must be efficient. The biggest challenge she faces is not scientific problems or infrastructure building, but how culture scales.

But the team's diverse backgrounds bring new perspectives to problem-solving, which Chen believes unlocks higher levels of creativity and transformative thinking. Because the industry is entirely new, it also means designing a whole new set of processes.

"Although the challenges are daunting and the problems are unprecedented, people are deeply committed to what they are doing and urgently believe that solving these problems is critical, which allows us to move quickly in creative ways that might not be possible without that belief," Chen says.

Building the right team for the moment

Shannon Cosentino-Roush, Director of Strategy at cell-based seafood company Finless Foods, also plays a similar role. She is not involved in research but focuses on advancing the company's mission. She joined the company in 2020, having previously worked in sustainable fisheries organizations, including the Sustainable Oceans Alliance and Ocean Outcomes. Her work focuses on coordinating with the seafood industry, marine conservation, the federal government, and other entities in the cultivated meat space to pave the way for the company's future.

Cosentino-Roush says the company has made a series of strategic executive hires to fill functions that were not previously needed. Finless Foods now has its own communications director, marketing director, and copywriter. People responsible for sustainability, policy, and impact are also in place. She mentions that to launch plant-based seafood, the company has built an 11-person sales team, and manufacturing-related hires in the plant-based side will help establish best practices for future cell-based seafood manufacturing.

"Every hire is carefully selected," she says. "Truly thinking strategically: for the breakthrough we need, what is the next most urgent hire?"

Karuna Rawal, Chief Marketing Officer of fermentation-based protein manufacturer Nature's Fynd, said at the Future Food-Tech conference in June that the company has been slowly building its culture and messaging. Rawal joined the company in 2019 (then named Sustainable Bioproducts) as its first CMO. She previously worked at advertising agencies Leo Burnett/Publicis, where she served as chief strategist on the award-winning Always campaign "#LikeAGirl." At the conference, Rawal said Nature's Fynd has a great story to tell, but it cannot spread the message too early.

"The key is knowing at what stage to bring in the needed functions," she says. "After I joined, it took us some time to be ready to bring in sales, because that's when we were ready to engage with customers. So I think we've been very deliberate in bringing in different functions—making sure we're ready to take the next step."

A shift in excitement

As companies scale, the scope of work for the company and its leaders also changes. In a panel discussion at the Future Food-Tech conference, Arturo Elizondo, CEO of The Every Company, talked about the company's journey. He founded The Every Company (formerly Clara Foods) in 2014 to produce animal-free egg-white proteins using precision fermentation. Over the past year, Every launched its first products—a protein found in trace amounts in egg whites but highly nutritious and soluble, calledEvery Protein(initially launched as Every ClearEgg), as well as a functional traditional egg-white proteinEvery EggWhite。

During his years leading Every, Elizondo delved deeply into the science and technology needed to produce common egg proteins through fermentation and became accustomed to talking about the process. When Every launched Every EggWhite in March, the company partnered with California pastry chef Chantal Guillon to create a line of animal-free macarons, demonstrating the ingredient's performance in traditional egg functions. Elizondo mentioned in the panel discussion that the launch event at the San Francisco store attracted several influencers.

"I didn't get a single question about the technology," he says. "It was all 'Which macaron is your favorite?' 'Oh my god, these are so good, I can't taste the difference.' ... That was the moment it clicked for me."

Josh Tetrick, founder and CEO of Eat Just, admits he entered the food tech space to change the way food is produced, making products that are both nutritious and popular accessible to consumers globally. Eleven years on, Tetrick's work is no longer just about breakthroughs and excitement. Before his interview with Food Dive, he had just gotten off the phone with Eat Just's Chief Revenue Officer, discussing how to most efficiently schedule appointments with carriers to deliver products.

"Honestly, it's not the most glamorous thing," he says with a laugh. "But it's part of the job."