From Waste to Taste

• Coffee is becoming unsustainable — for the planet and your wallet. Climate change is affecting supply, causing the prices of coffee beans to soar. Arabica beans hit a 47-year high last November, while robusta saw prices rise about 40% throughout 2024.
• 500-backed foodtech startup Prefer’s innovation is having a positive impact on their customers’ profits and the planet. By recreating the flavor of coffee using food byproducts and fermentation, the team provides a reliable, cost-efficient ingredient that hedges against supply shocks and pricing instability for F&B businesses.
• “We’re solving an actual business problem for our B2B partners, and for consumers, we’re solving a price problem, ” shared Co-founder & CTO DJ Tan.
• “What we’re making here are essentially coffee flavours,” says DJ. “We use microbes to break down these ingredients and reverse engineer them to recreate the same key aroma volatiles that you find in coffee.”
• Scaling up will set Prefer down the path of profitability. Co-founder & CEO Jake Berber revealed that revenues are in the hundreds of thousands annually.
• Read the full story on The Edge.