Upside Foods, a prominent player in the burgeoning cultivated meat industry, has garnered significant attention and investment, largely due to its claims of producing whole-cut chicken. However, recent revelations and insider accounts suggest that the company’s technological capabilities might not fully align with its public pronouncements, raising questions about the true state of cultivated meat innovation and the viability of whole-cut products, specifically from Upside Foods.
Since its inception, Upside Foods has positioned itself as a leader in cell-cultivated meat, particularly emphasizing its ability to create whole-cut products, moving beyond ground meat alternatives. In 2021, former senior VP of operations Steve Myrick stated to Meat+Poultry magazine that Upside was producing “whole tissues directly out of the cultivator,” not just cell slurries. CEO Uma Valeti echoed this sentiment at the opening of their Emeryville pilot facility, boasting the capacity to produce “both ground and whole cuts of meat, poultry, or seafood.” This narrative of technological advancement has been instrumental in Upside Foods attracting over $600 million in funding, representing a significant portion of the total investment in the cultivated meat sector. Investors, including SoftBank and Cargill, were seemingly drawn to the prospect of commercially viable whole-cut cultivated meat, a complex product to manufacture.
An image showcasing Upside Foods’ cultivated whole-cut chicken, highlighting the company’s ambition to produce structured meat products.
Despite these public claims, sources within Upside Foods paint a different picture. An AgFunderNews interview with COO Amy Chen in June revealed that Upside’s whole-cut chicken was still being produced using 2-liter roller bottles, a detail notably absent from the company’s website explaining their production process. Furthermore, former and current employees have reportedly joked about Upside Foods being “the next Theranos,” referencing the infamous blood-testing startup that was exposed for fraudulent claims about its technology. This internal skepticism suggests a discrepancy between the company’s external communications and the actual technological progress within Upside Foods.
A representative image of roller bottles in cell culture, a traditional method that contrasts with the advanced image Upside Foods projects for its whole-cut meat production.
Adding to the complexity, Upside Foods recently announced plans for a new 187,000-square-foot facility in Glenview, Illinois. However, the initial focus of this facility will be nugget-like ground-chicken products, not the whole-textured chicken previously showcased. While Upside Foods states that whole-cut production remains a future goal, this shift in immediate priorities indicates a potential scaling challenge or technical hurdle in producing whole-cut cultivated meat at a commercial level. This strategic pivot raises further questions about the near-term feasibility of whole-cut cultivated chicken from Upside Foods and the broader cultivated meat industry.
An artist’s rendering of Upside Foods’ future facility in Glenview, Illinois, signaling a significant investment in production capacity, albeit initially for ground meat products.
The initial buzz around cultivated meat, exemplified by Upside Foods’ public tasting events, suggested a rapid arrival of lab-grown meat into the market. However, the emerging narrative around Upside Foods highlights potential technical challenges and perhaps overstated claims within the industry. As the cultivated meat sector, including companies like Upside Foods, continues to evolve after significant investment, critical examination is necessary to understand the realistic timelines and technological hurdles in bringing products like whole-cut cultivated chicken to consumers and fulfilling the initial promises of this innovative food technology. Companies like Wildtype Foods focusing on sushi-grade salmon and SciFi Foods experimenting with hybrid beef burgers demonstrate the diverse approaches within the cultivated meat landscape, further emphasizing the unique challenges and complexities Upside Foods faces in its pursuit of commercially viable whole-cut chicken. David Kaplan, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture, points out the inherent difficulty in moving beyond suspension-based cell growth for ground meat to achieving the tissue engineering required for whole-cut textures. This technological gap underscores the ongoing innovation needed for Upside Foods and the cultivated meat industry to truly deliver on the promise of whole-cut meat alternatives.
