From brew to bar

• Prefer’s coffee has been “flying”, shared Co-founder & CEO Jake Berber. “We’ve been sold out since we launched [last year] and have closed over 50 foodservice and HORECA (hotel, restaurant, and café) customers.”
• He also revealed the 500-backed startup’s plans to launch a canned iced oat latte, and a new addition to their future-proof menu: cocoa-free chocolate.
• A prototype is in the works, with Prefer’s cocoa-free solution using the same technology as their coffee, converting food byproducts into key aroma volatiles through fermentation.
• Meanwhile, global cocoa stocks are at their lowest in a decade due to extreme weather, crop diseases, and deforestation.
• Climate change is destroying cocoa crops, with predictions that only two-thirds of cocoa trees will survive by 2050.
• The industry is itself a major contributor to the crisis – a bar of chocolate requires 1,700 liters of water, and the need for land has meant that 94% and 80% of deforestation in Ghana and Ivory Coast, respectively, is attributed to cocoa; the two largest producers.
• “That’s always been the goal: to create a platform flavours technology that creates food and beverages under threat,” Jake shared.
• He added that the cocoa-free chocolate will be launched as a B2B ingredient for food producers, with B2C pop-ups planned in Singapore this year.
• “We’re optimizing for taste and price. By leveraging our unique fermentation technology, the goal is to provide a product significantly below price parity while maintaining our partner chocolate company’s flavors.”
• Read the full story on Green Queen.

Other stories you may have missed:

• Lingokids teams up with NASA to turn screen time into space-themed learning for curious kids to explore at home or on the go
• being juice raises US$1M to bring 100% real fruit and vegetable beverages to fuel the health & wellness of customers across SEA
• Malaysia aims to become Asia’s Silicon Valley, and investors and founders see a winning plan
• Transcelestial delivers laser-powered Internet to remote areas faster and cheaper than ever before, and soon to deep space
• GrabAds and GroupM unlock the power of geo-based audience data in an industry-first partnership
• Easyship announced a partnership with Increff, a merchandising software leader, to provide seamless logistics solutions to 700+ global eCommerce clients
• KAF-Carsome consortium’s KAF Digital Bank receives license approval to commence operations