S4 Ep38: Pea Protein Making its Mark in Plant-Based Alternative Space with Nicole Atchison
“Now it’s a premium on animal proteins. And at the end of the day, it shouldn’t be because it is more efficient to get protein from plants than it is to get it from animals.” — Nicole Atchison
Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins Series Part I
in partnership with Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins Summit, NYC June 21 - 22, 2022
The meat industry is an example of an industry that has a disproportionate and large impact on the environment. Knowing this, we can no longer close our eyes and continue depending on the old system.
We are in the era where the future of food is headed towards increased sustainability- better for the environment, and better for the people. Investors see this and that's why the alternative proteins space is growing rapidly with innovation playing a significant role.
PURIS Foods was named Most Innovative Food Company of 2021 by the Fast Company magazine. Known for its signature "PURISpea" protein, the company has been creating innovations for over three decades, including their latest additions, PURIS 2.0, BITE+, and P870 LS. But PURIS is more than just a pea protein manufacturer.
In this episode, Justine interviews PURIS' CEO, Nicole Atchison. Nicole expands on the factors that affect food production: ingredients, process, and technology. They also talk about why plant-based nutrition presents more benefits, how to move your diet in that direction, and how innovation is key to rapidly scaling the alternative protein space.
Connect with Nicole:
Nicole Atchison serves as the CEO of PURIS Holdings, leading the company towards new innovations in food and agriculture. Their mission is to provide healthier choices for people and encourage regenerative practices to protect the soil and animals while striving to contribute further to food security. Named Most Innovative Food Company of 2021, PURIS has been continuously expanding to affect the food system and reimagining what being an environmental steward really means.
Connect with PURIS Foods:
Episode Highlights:
01:07 PURIS- More Than a Pea Protein Manufacturer
04:10 Continuing the Legacy
08:21 Plant-Based Nutrition
12:55 What Goes Into What's Next?
16:06 What's Needed to Scale?
Tweets:
Pea protein is a plant-based alternative protein and a nutritional powerhouse! Tune in as @_NextGenChef and @purisfoods CEO, Nicole Atchison discuss how innovation plays a role in rapidly scaling the plant-based space. #futurefoodtech #podcast #entrepreneurship #EssentialIngredients #plantbasedfoods #plantbasedalternatives #altprotein #PURIS #peaprotein
Inspirational Quotes:
08:15 "With plant-based nutrition, we can help people make changes… if we can make that diet piece where people can actually eat healthier food, but it doesn't feel like a compromise." -Nicole Atchison
10:31 "There are a lot of challenges so you can never be bored- it’s fun!" -Nicole Atchison
14:00 "The outside perception has changed, however, the challenges remain. So when we think about what's next, it is a long, slow, and gritty journey." -Nicole Atchison
14:49 "It's more about how to use scale supply chains, so that they can work… if we're going to feed people sustainably as our population continues to grow." -Nicole Atchison
15:41 "Now it's a premium on animal proteins. And at the end of the day, it shouldn't be because it is more efficient to get protein from plants than it is to get it from animals." -Nicole Atchison
16:18 "If you have enough persistence and belief, you can make something out of it." -Nicole Atchison
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients and the special podcast series that we're doing for future food tech to introduce you to some of the key speakers that will be at the conference. And today, I'm so pleased to introduce you to Nicole Atchison of PURIS Foods who is the CEO.
Welcome Nicole.
Nicole Atchison: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Justine Reichman: Great to have you here. So welcome Nicole, I'm so pleased to have you here to learn a little bit about you and about PURIS Foods. So if you would just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about PURIS Foods.
Nicole Atchison: Absolutely. So I'm the CEO of PURIS Holdings, which PURIS, as many in the protein and food industry know us as a P protein manufacturer. But really, we're more of a, we think of ourselves as a plant based food supply chain, messy middle partner who works from soup to nuts. So all the way from seeds, genetics, farmer relations, contract farming, to food grain handling, grain processing, ingredient processing. And then ultimately, plant based food development and commercialization. So the business that I run are the two ends of that. So all of our work on the agriculture side, the development of new and novel seeds to contracting with farmers to grain handling and grain processing. And then the downstream side where we do plant based food product development. We're actually commercializing our own products. We have a plant based egg through one of our subsidiaries that we're thrilled to be launching here in Q3. And all of this works together with our sister company, Peers Proteins, which is our P protein manufacturing arm of PURIS. My brother actually runs that business, Tyler. And so we're both second generation.
Our parents founded PURIS in the mid 80's, and we've been on a journey ever since to really develop plant proteins that are the foundation of great tasting food. And so today, that's the business that we run. We always give our father a ton of credit, because he said in the mid 90's, that's the business that we were building. And everyone thought he was pretty crazy and didn't understand what the heck he was talking about. And so fast forward 30 years, and that's what we're doing. And so he believed in that vision and stuck to it. Well, he was ahead of his time. Super ahead of his time. It's kind of an interesting story. He was an animal feed salesman, and so he was selling grains to farmers or larger large operations that were using animal feed, and he just saw the inefficiencies of the system. How much grain was being used for the animals to eat so that humans could eat the animals? And he just kind of had this revelation that someday, people will need to eat these grains themselves, so we should make them taste good. And he started really at the foundational level, how do we design seeds using natural selection and breeding methods to create genetics and varieties that have better taste, better color, higher protein, and so that they could be used as a source for human food? And that was how our journey started as a genetics company. And then over the years, we kind of moved up the value chain and the supply chain.
And so today, we operate along the entire supply chain, and we call it the messy middle because all of the hard logistical and supply chain challenges that go into bringing food from farm to table every day, there's a lot of messy middle in between.
Justine Reichman: Wow, that's so amazing. Have you always been involved in the family business? Like, did you grow up in it?
Nicole Atchison: Definitely grew up in it. So my parents founded the business when I was 2. And so I like to say that myself and my brother were key employees, number three and four. Because for a long period of time, our business was just our family. Some of our aunts and uncles helped along the way in the early days, but from the time that we could really participate in a meaningful way, I mean, we were pretty young. We have pictures from a local newspaper when we're 8 and 6 out in the field and we were helping my dad. He was doing some soybean crossing. So that's where you take two varieties and you breed them together. So it's cross pollination. And so one of the steps is you have to go pick the flowers from one of the varieties, and that's what we were doing. And so a journalist was driving by and saw these two kids out in the middle of nowhere seemingly by themselves and took a picture. So I have that to kind of prove that I'm not making it up. Like as a young age, we were heavily involved in the business and continued to do so all the way through high school and even early in college. So my dad planted a test plot, which is where we have a lot of different varieties in the town. I went to (inaudible) so that I could do the crossing. Found a farmer and (inaudible) a few hours away so that I could keep doing it. But I played volleyball.
So after that first year, I said, I got to be a college kid. I I had volleyball commitments over the summer. So I didn't work in the business through those years. And actually, I have my degree in Engineering. And after school, I went into the medical device industry and so I spent a number of years working on some more early stage technology, and how do we bring that technology to market and medical devices. I had things when I was about 14 during science class, back in the day, we had those big TVs on carts and the teacher would roll it in and you'd be like, yes, movie day. One of those movie days, it really set the course for my life because we watched a video that inspired me to want to become an engineer. And I stayed on that path and had a wonderful time in the industry. I really loved it. Went through a number of acquisitions, got a product approved and to market. It's a class three medical device, so it's a combination of drugs and a device that goes in the body to treat the buildup of plaque in your arteries in your legs. And so it's a disease called peripheral arterial disease. This is an intervention that prolongs quality of life and helps people maintain blood flow to their extremities and continue to walk. And it was really exciting. A lot of work with the FDA and a number of acquisitions, and we got the product to market. Then we were acquired by Philips, I called the light bulb companies, a huge company. And so I had been tied to this project. I was like, I thought I felt like it was my baby because I had been on it from the early days, and I had the school of wanting to be there when it got to market. And then when that happened, we were bought by Philips and I was offered a role within Philips to be part of bringing these companies together.
"With plant-based nutrition, we can help people make changes… if we can make that diet piece where people can actually eat healthier food, but it doesn't feel like a compromise." -Nicole Atchison
I had kind of a moment where I decided that there's a couple things I know about myself. One, I'm super committed. So if I commit to something, I do it. My 9th grade self said, I'm going to be an engineer. And two degrees later, that's what I was doing. 10 years of college later, I was in it. And so I did that. And this product, I was like, I'm going to stick with it till we get commercialized. And we did. So I knew that if I took that role, I would be in it, and that would be what I'd be doing for the next decade or more. And then at that, I saw what my brother was doing and my family was doing with PURIS. I was like, if I'm gonna work this hard for something, I should do that for something that my family is building together. And also something that I fundamentally believe is a way to help people live longer, healthier lives. But intervene earlier, what we were doing and medical devices was intervening so late in their life. We're just trying to make it a little bit better at the end. I feel like with plant based nutrition, we can help people make those changes that their doctors are recommending. Diet and exercise, that's always the recommendations. And if we can make that diet piece where people can actually eat healthier food but it doesn't feel like a compromise, maybe we can prevent them from being customers from my former employers. And that's what I tell my former colleagues is that our job is to put them out of business so that people don't have those kinds of diseases and help them live better lives in that way. And so for me, it all kind of came full circle. I'm still doing what I wanted to do and what I liked in my 9th grade self. I want to help people, like we are helping people just in a different way. And so I feel that it all has come together in a really wonderful way.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for sharing that. I was engrossed from the minute you started, so I really appreciate you sharing that you really did have a passion, and it comes full circle, and then you go back to your roots. Truly back to your roots. Did you always think that you come back to your roots? Or did you never think you'd go back to your roots?
"There are a lot of challenges so you can never be bored- it’s fun!" -Nicole Atchison
Nicole Atchison: I'll give my parents a lot of credit. They never forced us into thinking that we would have to do anything within the business. So it was truly something that I wanted to do, not that I felt that I had to do. So I would say that I didn't necessarily think that it worked in the business. Also, our business has transformed over the past 15 years in a way that it's a lot different from the business that I worked on as a kid. At that period of time, we were very focused and are still very focused on the very upstream part, the genetics, the bridle development, the farmer relation, and that's still the foundation of everything we do, but we do more than that now. So we're also more customer facing processing, B2B type business. So there's a lot of variety in the work that we do today, you know, where there's corporate business development. There's one on one farmer connections, there's deep research that's going to be 10 years before it comes together, but there's also that immediate ecommerce transaction. And so we really do the full spectrum. So it's very interesting, and there's a lot of challenges. And so you can never be bored. And that's for me, I like solving problems. I've found that I'm somewhat agnostic to what kind of problems they are as long as they're hard and complicated. And you know what? We have a lot of those, so it is fun.
Justine Reichman: So I'm curious, your father was quite an innovator, right? He got into this before his time, reminds me of my mother, really, 80's, feeding me tofu and all these things that people were talking about organic, and all these things that were really premature back in the 70's and 80's. And so now I'm curious, are your parents still involved in the company?
Nicole Atchison: Yep, they both are. To varying degrees, my dad is chairman of the board, and then he's still very heavily involved in the genetics part of our business. So that's where he started. And as he built the business, he's been able to focus more on the area where he's got a differentiated approach and skill set. But also, that visionary, where are we going? What are we thinking about? Because he thinks so far forward.
Justine Reichman: So that was my next question. And my next question was, so within the space that you are, which is so exciting, all protein and all those things, what is your data? What are you guys seeing what's next in this innovative space?
Nicole Atchison: Yeah. Well, in the 90's, we actually launched a blended tofu and natural pork, like bratwurst concept. And I remember that I used to have to go to food shows and try to pass out samples as a pre-teen.
Justine Reichman: I'm curious, was it well received?
"The outside perception has changed, however, the challenges remain. So when we think about what's next, it is a long, slow, and gritty journey." -Nicole Atchison
Nicole Atchison: People are like, tofu? What is tofu? And there was this huge, just kind of like revulsion because they didn't know what it was. They were so confused by what it was. But then once they would try it, it was a fantastic product. So people who would try it loved it. And so it had a little bit of a cult following, but this huge barrier to getting people excited. And that to me, epitomizes what the first 25 to 30 years of our business was like. People were like, What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You're weird. And the last 10 years have been different. The market has started to turn, there's a lot more discussion, there's a lot more engagement, there's a ton more investment into the space. And so the outside perception has changed. However, the challenges remain. So when we think about what's next, it is a long, slow and gritty journey. And so it's a lot of what's next is just doing more of the same and getting better at it, and more efficient at it so that we can compete with animal proteins because they've had centuries to establish their efficiencies, their scale, their whole supply chain networks and we're just like little infants as an industry trying to stumble along in the dark and compete against that. So I think we have to make the industry more robust so that it can compete at the same scale as animal proteins.
"It's more about how to use scale supply chains, so that they can work… if we're going to feed people sustainably as our population continues to grow." -Nicole Atchison
And then, well, we always have to talk about as a concept of my dad calls it protein independence, but it's more about how to use scale supply chains so that they can work. That's growing crops in areas and adapting them to the local environment so that you can have a regional supply of protein, and then infrastructure that can transform those proteins and those crops into food that people will eat or ingredients, one of the two. But all of those things must be true. If we're going to feed people sustainably as our population continues to grow. Between now and 2050, we're going to add a lot more people onto the planet, and then it'll start to decline. But between now and then, we need more protein, we need more food, and we need to use what we do have more efficiently. And so all of those things point to a shift to more plant based nutrition feeding people, as that means more infrastructure and more supply chains that are set up to make that kind of nutrition cost effective. Because right now, it's a premium to animal proteins. And at the end of the day, it shouldn't be because it is more efficient to get protein from plants than it is to get it from animals.
"Now it's a premium on animal proteins. And at the end of the day, it shouldn't be because it is more efficient to get protein from plants than it is to get it from animals." -Nicole Atchison
Justine Reichman: I think that sounds very optimistic with a lot of good opportunities for the future. And so with the future food tech conference coming up, what are you excited about seeing there?
Nicole Atchison: I always get excited to see what new entrepreneurs are bringing to the table, and really work hard not to discount it. Because we were discounted a lot when we first started. And if you have enough persistence and belief, you can make something out of it. And so I'm always curious on the next ingredients or products that are going to reach that critical scale where they can be a mainstream kind of food product, but also just how the conversations are changing. Since the future of food tech in San Francisco which was a couple months ago, I can't remember the date, the markets have changed dramatically. When we look at what's happening on the macro lens, the Ukraine/Russia conflict, the stock market, and just the investment landscape, everything has changed a lot over the last six months. And so seeing how conversations around protein are an alternative foods are changing is always interesting, because we've seen such a huge influx of investment over the past couple of years and how is that being viewed in light of the downturn on the markets, I think that it's interesting because that will go into what's the investment going to look like over the next couple of years in infrastructure because infrastructure is what we need to really scale the industry. And if the tailwinds aren't necessarily there like they have been over the past two years, but we see what kind of a holding pattern where there's a positive investment, which will then impact us over the next decades.
"If you have enough persistence and belief, you can make something out of it." -Nicole Atchison
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Thank you all so much for joining us here. I know that this is just a little insight into what you're going to share at the conference, so we're going to share this with our members and our viewers. I know that they're going to look forward to learning more from you at the conference, so thanks again for joining us on the Essential Ingredients Podcast, and we look forward to continuing this conversation after the conference to hear more from you on what you learned there.
Nicole Atchison: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to seeing you and everyone else at the conference.
Justine Reichman: Thanks again.
