MeliBio

Darko Mandich from MeliBio (who makes yummy honey without bees) talks about how food is the one climate issue we make several choices about every day

Where Protein Meets Deep Tech 🧬 Spanning new materials, biomanufacturing, AI discovery, food production and beyond We caught up with 15 frontrunners to uncover the opportunities and untapped potential Deep Tech for Novel Protein Technologies With thanks to: Jasmin Hume, at Shiru Cam Watson at Nuclera Maya and Ido at PoLoPo Darko Mandich at MeliBio Daphna Miller at NewMoo Paul Bevan at Magic Valley Alex Rosay at Cascade Bio Mitchell Duffy at Cambrium Julian Englert at Adaptyv Bio Dafna Gabbay at Finally Foods Elliot Hershberg at Not Boring Cecilia Chang at Mission Barns  Brittany Chibe at AQUA Cultured Foods Susanne Palsten Buchardt at ALGIECEL Check out the the article in the comments below.

“We're not gonna fix the food system by chasing people with a stick and yelling at them to turn vegan," says Darko Mandich, CEO of MeliBio. "We're gonna fix the food system by making products that people love—indistinguishable from the traditional source that people are used to." At MeliBio, Darko and his team are proving this vision possible by creating a bee-free honey that preserves the familiar taste of honey while championing sustainability. Their approach offers an inspiring model for food innovation—creating products that respect both consumers and the planet—and tastes incredible. It’s innovations like these that drive us at Topi and make founders like Darko Mandich and Aaron M. Schaller, PhD incredible partners. We’re proud to support MeliBio as they redefine honey production through the power of fermentation. Read more about MeliBio and other fermentation pioneers in the San Francisco Business Times: https://lnkd.in/gZxtyNaE #SustainableFood #FoodInnovation #BeeFreeHoney #TopiVentures

🌱🍯 US food-tech company MeliBio, a producer of bee-free honey using precision fermentation, has received a new strategic investment from Future Food Fund by Oisix, a venture capital fund based in Tokyo, Japan. 🐝 The investment will support MeliBio in its mission to transform the honey industry with its bee-free honey technology.

On Monday, I had the pleasure of being a panelist with Aaron M. Schaller, PhD of MeliBio for an Alt. Meat themed fireside chat + luncheon at the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub. This is part of the CITRIS Innovation Intensive on Climate Cohort hosted by Jill Finlayson, a weeklong invitational for entrepreneurial and research activities across 4 UC campus and the upcoming Berkeley Space Center. Aaron and I were able to share our insights on startup formation and investment, our experience within foodtech environments, and how these projects relate to climate, sustainability, and improving our overall food system. I was grateful to participate and reflect on my entrepreneurial experiences during and after undergrad, my various trials and tribulations, and compare it with another alum's startup journey. It was nice to be back at Bakar Labs, where I made some of my fondest food science memories working there. And it was an honor to meet an amazing group of global innovators, too! Thank you so much to Jill and all the rest at CITRIS and the Banatao Institute for setting up the programming. And thank you to Adriel Olmos for the lovely photos!

🍯🌱 MELIBIO BAGS PRE-SERIES A INVESTMENT TO EXPAND BEE-FREE MELLODY HONEY As it makes inroads on its precision-fermented honey, San Francisco-based MeliBio has obtained fresh capital to scale up the distribution of its plant-based sweetener, Mellody®. The “strategic investment” from Future Food Fund by Oisix ra daichi, a food tech investor from Japan, is part of MeliBio’s pre-Series A financing round. It means the company has raised around $10M in total funding since it was established in 2020, co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich tells Green Queen. MeliBio was initially planning a Series A round this year – as revealed by Green Queen – which was expected to bring in a further $10M. But the challenges of the food tech market, where investment dropped by 61% last year, made it difficult to do so. “We shifted to [the] pre-Series A round, and will reopen Series A next year,” says Mandich. The startup initially launched Mellody through foodservice partners, before debuting the product in the D2C channel via a partnership with famed New York eatery Eleven Madison Park’s online store. Since then, the product has been introduced across the US (alongside a new hot honey variety), available at independent retailers and a growing list of restaurants – recent partnerships include Palmetto Superfoods and Joyride Pizza in California and MOTO Pizza in Seattle. Moreover, MeliBio has also expanded its distribution through KeHE Distributors, UNFI, Greco and Sons, Inc., and Ace Natural. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eR6zPSeA #GreenQueen #foodtech #futurefoods #foodsystems #sustainability #vegan

We are thrilled to announce the new strategic investment in MeliBio from Future Food Fund by Oisix ra daichi, a Tokyo-based foodtech fund. I would like to thank Rusty Schwartz and the KITCHENTOWN team for introducing us to Hiro Hasegawa and his passionate team. This investment comes at perfect timing when we expand Mellody® customers in the US across foodservice, B2B and select retail. Mellody is now available in more than 300 points of sale nationwide! Read more: https://lnkd.in/gzFwDXxg and in vegconomist - the vegan business magazine: https://lnkd.in/gkhVWwGP

We increased the titer of our main enzyme target by 1,300% 📈!! No, that’s not a typo. Taking our strains from the bench to bioreactors sent our strain productivity through the roof across only two runs 👀🚀 With ample room to further optimize our bioprocess, future titer and yield improvement is imminent. Big thanks to the team at Pow.Bio for working with us at MeliBio to achieve this incredible milestone 🙌🏼

MeliBio has always been a precision fermentation-focused company 🙌🏼 Though an early pivot in product development led us to produce and successfully launch Mellody®, our core thesis centers around the production of novel and valuable protein/enzyme targets for honey and other industries 🎯 While some companies take many years to produce a single target, our incredibly talented scientific team have taken 3, and soon 4, targets from ideation —> proof-of-concept —> bioreactors, with already favorable titers and yields 🧬📈 This has happened in the time of only 4 years since building our lab in Oakland, CA. We’re ready for scale-up thanks to amazing work by Stephanie Brown, Francesca Manea, PhD, Siu Lung Ng, Ph.D., and previous team members Akemi Kunibe and Ben Mason 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 It’s an honor to work alongside such talented individuals, and we couldn’t be more proud of the team 🙏🏼

Proud to present MeliBio’s groundbreaking bee-free technology and our Mellody® products at the Food for Future Summit by Gulfood Green in Dubai 🇦🇪 Dubai is leading the way in food technology scale up, and we are just beginning to see the amazing developments coming from the UAE and GCC countries 👏 MeliBio is proud to be part of this journey toward a sustainable future, protecting pollinators and advancing bee-free ingredients solutions ❤️🐝 Thank you Swati Taneja and the team for the kind invite. It was great to catch up with many colleagues in the industry. #SustainableFood #FoodInnovation #GulfoodGreen #FutureOfFood #MeliBio