MeliBio Raises $2M, Plans for US Launch

Plant-based, bee-free honey brand MeliBio announced the close of a $2.2 million capital raise last week, bringing the company’s total funding to over $9 million to-date. The round was led by existing investors including Collaborative Fund and Siddhi Capital, in addition to new investor The Greenbaum Foundation, led by Jim Greenbaum, executive producer of The Game Changers and Seaspiracy.

According to MeliBio co-founder and CEO, Darko Mandich, the new capital will be used to scale the company’s R&D and manufacturing processes as well as support its entry into new markets. In March, San Francisco-based MeliBio announced the close of a $5.7 million seed round, stating the capital would support a future commercial launch.

Madiach, a former honey industry executive, co-founded the company with scientist and amateur chef Aaron Schaller in 2020. Rather than launching its own branded products, the company is instead focused on growing through B2B and ingredient partnerships by licensing the technology to brand and manufacturing partners. By scaling through partnerships, MeliBio believes it will be able to leverage the expertise of other businesses to support its goal of scaling globally.

To that effect, alongside the most recent funding news, the company announced its expansion into the European market through a partnership with sustainability-focused food brand Narayan Foods. The partnership will bring MeliBio’s bee-free honey to over 75,000 stores across the continent under Narayan Foods’ Better Foodie brand by early next year. In the near future, Narayan will also produce the honey for private label production.

“We are partnerships-first company and our EU partner Narayan Foods will take charge of the operational and distributional piece of the launch in EU, backed by our scientific approach to make plant-based honey without bees,” said Mandich. “We are an American company with ambition to shape the future of honey on a global level.”

Over the past year, the company worked with a range of “test customers” in the U.S. including New York City restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, Little Choc and Butcher’s Daughter as well as BAIA in San Francisco. According to Madiach, the pilot runs helped garner a significant amount of feedback from chefs who used the honey in place of the bee-made format. The bee-free honey is set to roll out on a commercial scale in the U.S. by early 2023, he added, but the company has yet to announce its U.S. partner for this debut.

MeliBio’s honey is created through precision fermentation technology which uses plant-based ingredients found in traditional honey to create a product that can be used as a one to one substitute.

However, MeliBio faces some early market competition including Netherlands-based Foodititve, which aims to scale its precision fermentation bee-free honey globally as well as Bee-io, which secured $30 million from an unnamed investor in August with similar aims.

There’s also more traditional plant-based alternatives. Earlier this year at Natural Products Expo East, plant-based creamery Forager unveiled a new SKU of its vegan-friendly, cashew-based yogurt sweetened with “Bee Free” honey. While others have attempted to create vegan-friendly honey, those products have typically been made with base ingredients like fruit juice, agave nectar and cane sugar. MeliBio claims all of the ingredients and nutrients found in its product naturally occur in a bee’s stomach during honey production.

“As a food innovation platform, Narayan Foods is constantly on the lookout for novel sustainable products that would revolutionize the market,” said Mario Brumat, founder and CEO of Narayan Foods, in a press release. “Just by tasting MeliBio’s incredible plant-based honey, we knew we had discovered an innovation that would leave a distinctive mark in the industry. We’re thrilled to bring the world’s first plant-based honey to every European household and establish it as the new favorite sweetener.”