Cultivated meat startup Upside Foods initiates a fresh round of layoffs

Dive Brief:

• Upside Foods has initiated a fresh round of layoffs, according to a statement sent to Food Dive. The company is focused on its “next chapter” of scale and commercialization, a spokesperson said in the statement. 
• As a result, to “stay agile in the face of an uncertain macroenvironment, we made adjustments to certain programs and reduced some positions. We’re deeply grateful for the hard work and commitment of our departing team members and remain focused on bringing cultivated meat at scale to the world,” said the spokesperson. The company went through a previous round of layoffs earlier this year after it decided to pause operations of its new production plant in Chicago.
• The cultivated meat industry, which was officially able to enter the U.S. market in June 2023, has gone through a plethora of challenges lately, including pushback from state lawmakers and a lack of access to capital.

Dive Insight:

In an email sent to employees, Upside CEO Uma Valeti wrote that 26 employees would be let go from the company and that executive and leadership teams would be restructured to “reduce top-heavy structures,” according to a report from Wired.

“Our focus must now narrow to a tighter set of priorities that pave the way for our product launches in the next two years,” Valeti wrote in the email. “We need to deliver on the work that remains, especially on critical milestones that are yet to be hit or are delayed.”

The company confimed to Food Dive that is working to expand production at its California plant, known as “Epic.” 

“As part of this expansion, we will be adding larger cultivators that will demonstrate our ability to transfer our process into successively larger and more efficient scales while maintaining the taste, quality, and safety that we have been able to consistently achieve at the 2KL scale,” the spokesperson wrote.

Since being granted clearance to enter the U.S. market, Upside Foods has sold its products in Dominique Crenn’s restaurant Bar Crenn in San Francisco. However, the establishment has taken Upside products off its menu.

In February after laying off employees and pausing operations on its “Rubicon” plant in Chicago, the company indicated that instead of whole-textured tissue, it is focusing its scaling efforts on hybrid products, made with some cultivated cells and other alternative protein sources, which are more suited to producing chicken nuggets, patés, and other ground-meat products.

In the email reported by Wired, Valeti also called out the difficulties currently facing the industry. “Uncertainty related to political, regulatory and macroeconomic headwinds requires us to be even more deliberate and conscious with our focus and resources,” he wrote. In May, Florida and Alabama passed laws that banned the sale of cultivated meat.

Several of the affected employees took to LinkedIn after the news expressing they were open to other job opportunities. 

Dr. Elliot Scwartz, head scientist of the cultivated meat division for the Good Food Institute said to Food Dive in a previous interview that “access to capital has definitely tightened,” and “there is now a big role for governments in particular to take that opportunity to invest in research and development and an infrastructure for cultivated meat.”

Florida’s ban on cultivated meat officially went into effect on July 1. The night before, Upside Foods hosted a “Freedom of Food” pop-up event in Miami, Florida, where 100 people were able to try the cultivated chicken product prepared by Chef Mika Leon.