Future Food Quick Bites: Quorn x Tom Cruise, Impossible Chicken & Cultivated Meat at Indy 500

Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Impossible Foods’ new vegan chicken, Quorn’s Mission: Impossible collab, and a new kind of tempeh.

New products and launches

Mycoprotein pioneer Quorn has launched a summer marketing campaign with Paramount Pictures to align with the launch of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The brand hired a Tom Cruise lookalike to sign autographs in London’s West End while eating its Cocktail Sausages, and also has a Mission Snack Swap ad campaign featuring its farm animal puppets.

British oat milk brand Minor Figures has teamed up with Nigo‘s lifestyle label Human Made on a clothing and accessory collection, featuring a sweatshirt, apron, milk bottle, milk sleeve, an art toy, and more. It will be featured at a pop-up at StandBy in Harajuku, Tokyo this weekend (May 31 to June 1).

Also in the UK, vegan meal kit maker Grubby has launched an eight-recipe menu featuring Symplicity Foods‘s plant-based meat alternatives. It includes a BBQ Smash Burger with Carrot Slaw, Hoi Sin Garlic Chilli Noodles, and Symplicity Schnitzel with Curried Potato Salad.

Plant-based meat leader Impossible Foods teased its new Crispy Chicken Fillets at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. It has 17g of protein and half as much saturated fat compared to conventional fillets, and will roll out at restaurants soon.

US startup LiveComplete will soon launch a new protein powder made using its NutriMatch technology, which blends plant proteins in a way that mirrors human muscles.

To protest Indiana’s upcoming ban on cultivated meat (which comes into effect on July 1), Upside Foods served cultured chicken sandwiches at the Indianapolis 500 race on Memorial Day weekend.

Canadian vegan fast-food chain Odd Burger has earned an exclusive listing at 7-Eleven for four of its retail products. The Crispy ChickUn Fillet, Chickpea Burger, Smash Burger and Breakfast Sausage will be available at over 500 locations, with select stores stocking them from next month.

Fellow Canadian plant-based company Daiya has introduced a single-serve cream cheese featuring its fermented oat cream. The 1oz packs are aimed at foodservice operators. It will soon also launch a dairy-free cheese sauce.

Danish biosolutions giant Novonesis has rolled out Vertera Velvet, an ingredient aimed at tackling weak foam and curdling in plant-based barista milks, with a specific focus on oat, pea and blended milks.

And Singaporean food tech startup Umami Bioworks has partnered with Japanese seafood firm Maruha Nichiro to co-develop and commercialise cultivated tuna.

Company and finance updates

German retailer Rewe Group has joined Food Fermentation Europe, a trade association representing the fermentation-derived food sector.

Singaporean vegan ice cream maker Kind Kones has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from female-led firm Epic Angels. It will use the capital to expand its presence in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, specifically Dubai.

Australian precision fermentation firm All G has filed a patent application for an infant formula innovation that includes all five major human breast milk proteins.

Finnish gas protein firm Solar Foods has verified its pilot production parameters at an industrial scale at its first facility, confirming that the company’s upcoming Factory 02 will be profitable and enabling the production of its Solein protein in the US.

Fellow Nordic fermentation startup Norwegian Mycelium (or NoMy) has received €1.25M in a funding round led by Nippon Beet Sugar Manufacturing Co (Nitten), listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It comes months after the company set up a subsidiary in Japan.

In the three months since its appearance on Dragons’ Den, where it earned €75,000 from investors Deborah Madden and Steven Bartlett, UK vegan dog food maker Omni has added 20,000 new customers with a 130% growth in sales. It is now approaching £10M in annualised revenue.

Research, policy and events

Drive-thru coffee chain 7 Brew has scrapped the dairy-free milk surcharge at all its 360 locations across the US.

Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable will join the Alternative Proteins mission at the Dutch Pavilion at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, next month to outline its optimisations in cell feed, which have helped reduce its preparation time from several days to just 30 minutes.

Yet more research has come out proving the environmental superiority of plant-based eating. Focused on Iceland, the study found that vegan diets generate just half the emissions of an omnivore diet, and are overall more compliant with macronutrient recommendations.

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, one researcher is looking to develop a new kind of tempeh with peas and chickpeas. Backed by a four-year, $387,000 USDA Pulse Crop Health Initiative grant, the protein could help counteract health risks associated with the Western diet, like obesity, fatty liver, and diabetes.

Finally, biotech startups Agrobiomics and Vivici have won the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award 2025 for their work in climate-resilient farming and precision-fermented protein production at the F&A Next conference in Wageningen. Each received a $12,500 prize.

Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.