VP of Investments Julianne Hummelberg Interviews Liron Nimrodi, CEO of Zero Egg on How the Product Will Disrupt the Egg Market

One my favorite aspects of my job lead­ing the invest­ment team at Pow­er­Plant is get­ting to invest in, col­lab­o­rate and work with female entre­pre­neurs trans­form­ing our glob­al food sys­tem. Their com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a health­i­er, more humane, and sus­tain­able food sys­tem for our peo­ple, plan­et, and ani­mals is an inspi­ra­tion to me and it is an hon­or to be able to sup­port them. I am a board observ­er to some phe­nom­e­nal female found­ed and oper­at­ed brands: Miyokos, Rae Well­ness, and Zero Egg and I want­ed to give you all a glimpse into some of the impres­sive work that they are doing. I recent­ly sat down with the co-founder and CEO of Zero Egg, Liron Nim­ro­di and want­ed to share our egg-cel­lent con­ver­sa­tion with the world 😊.

Julianne: Liron, I know Zero Egg has many strong dif­fer­en­tia­tors rel­a­tive to com­peti­tors… Your prod­ucts com­pete with tra­di­tion­al eggs on taste, func­tion­al­i­ty, and price, all while being made exclu­sive­ly with plants. Can you talk about why this tech­nol­o­gy real­ly has the poten­tial to be the “Beyond Meat of Eggs”, and why they’re so unique rel­a­tive to oth­er solu­tions cur­rent­ly in the mar­ket?

Liron: Zero Egg basi­cal­ly has three main dif­fer­en­tia­tors com­pared to all oth­er egg alter­na­tives. One, is that we bring clean taste and tex­ture. Sec­ond, is that the prod­uct is a lot more ver­sa­tile, which means that with Zero Egg you can make a scram­bled egg, omelet, use it for baked goods, and even make sauces or pas­ta. And the third dif­fer­en­tia­tor is our afford­abil­i­ty as we can com­pete with ani­mal egg prices. This has not exist­ed before and is a real game chang­er. We think [our prod­uct] is going to real­ly dis­rupt the egg cat­e­go­ry. The tech­nol­o­gy of Zero Egg is all about care­ful­ly choos­ing the right plant pro­teins in the right ratio, that cre­ates a liq­uid that mim­ics the behav­ior of a whole liq­uid egg. In the devel­op­ment process, we stud­ied the pro­teins, the type, con­tent, grade, puri­ty, func­tion­al­i­ty, and we aimed to achieve the right tex­ture, taste pro­file, and func­tion­al­i­ty. So, the IP is all around the for­mu­la, we are in the nation­al stage, which is the final stage of the patent, and it’s patent-pend­ing.

Julianne: You and I are both very famil­iar with the impact a glob­al tran­si­tion towards plant-based eggs could offer. There’s about a tril­lion eggs con­sumed glob­al­ly on an annu­al basis, and we’re real­ly in need of a solu­tion that’s bet­ter for our health, the envi­ron­ment, and ani­mals. I know Zero Egg’s prod­ucts use on aver­age 93% less water than tra­di­tion­al eggs. Can you expand upon this and the impact your prod­ucts have at large?

Liron: We always talk inter­nal­ly that we exist for one rea­son: to make a pos­i­tive impact on the world and to cre­ate a change. And if you think about eggs, you will see that they’re in almost every­thing that you eat from break­fast to lunch, din­ner, and desserts. So, we devel­oped a rev­o­lu­tion­ary solu­tion, that is high­ly scal­able glob­al­ly. In terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, even though we are a very ear­ly stage com­pa­ny, we con­duct­ed LCA research in order to under­stand the impact that Zero Egg can have on the world. We found that when you use Zero Egg instead of a reg­u­lar egg, you are reduc­ing the use of land, ener­gy, and water by over 90%. And the green­house gas emis­sions are reduced by 60%. On the eth­i­cal side, every year 7 bil­lion male chicks are killed right when they are born, because they can’t lay eggs. And that’s just the tip of the eth­i­cal issues plagu­ing the indus­try.

Julianne: Wow, this def­i­nite­ly sounds like an indus­try that needs to change. On that note, where do you see the egg cat­e­go­ry going in the next 10 years? And do you have any pre­dic­tions in terms of what type of mar­ket share cap­ture plant-based can gar­ner?

Liron: The glob­al egg mar­ket is about $200 bil­lion+ and there is a big white space here for plant-based eggs (see graph below). If we’re look­ing at plant-based milk alter­na­tives, which is a pret­ty mature cat­e­go­ry, it reached 15% of the ani­mal milk mar­ket. Plant-based meat alter­na­tives have been ris­ing the last cou­ple of years and are just under 2% of the meat mar­ket. Then, eggs are less than half a per­cent of the ani­mal egg mar­ket (see graph below). The rea­son for this is because the cur­rent egg alter­na­tive solu­tions in the mar­ket are not sat­is­fy­ing; they’re not “there” in terms of taste and tex­ture nor have the func­tion­al­i­ty, nutri­tion­al val­ues, and ver­sa­til­i­ty, and this is the oppor­tu­ni­ty that we are tap­ping into. At Zero Egg, we bring the taste and tex­ture and func­tion­al­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al eggs. We are using a blend of plant pro­teins to cre­ate a solu­tion that does not exist yet. Peo­ple want to have the real thing, the same taste, the same tex­ture. And this is some­thing that was miss­ing in the egg cat­e­go­ry up until now. And, giv­en demand, I think plant-based eggs have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach the mar­ket share cap­ture of plant-based milks with­in 10 years. You men­tioned the enor­mous num­bers of eggs sold, so just think about the impact that Zero Egg will have, if we switch 10% of the glob­al egg mar­ket to Zero Egg!

Source: SPINS U.S. Retail 2020

Julianne: Wow, a lot of val­ue that will be cre­at­ed and cap­tured here. Can you speak a lit­tle bit about your back­ground and why in par­tic­u­lar you felt called to lead this mis­sion?

Liron: I’m a food engi­neer, I stud­ied in the Tech­nion in Israel and I real­ly saw the indus­try from the inside. I par­tic­u­lar­ly remem­ber my vis­it as a devel­op­ment tech­nol­o­gist to an ani­mal slaugh­ter­house because after that vis­it I real­ized I want­ed my career to focus on chang­ing the food indus­try and chang­ing what peo­ple eat. So, when Strauss Group and The Kitchen Hub called me to co-found Zero Egg, and I saw the prod­uct and the huge impact it could make on the world, I just knew this was the oppor­tu­ni­ty I was look­ing for.

Thank you, Liron for shar­ing your sto­ry and the aspi­ra­tions you have for Zero Egg. We are hon­ored to sup­port your jour­ney in dis­rupt­ing an indus­try that needs to become health­i­er, more sus­tain­able and humane.

Click here to learn more about Zero Egg.

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