This month, our start-up spotlight is on Lasso, a food-tech company from the team behind plant-based meat producer Tender Food (now just one brand under the broader Lasso portfolio). Lasso uses its technology, Lasso SpinTech, to produce protein- and fibre-rich ingredients for a range of food and beverage applications. Mike Messersmith, Lasso's CEO, tells us more.

What led to Lasso’s establishment and what is the company’s long-term goal?

Lasso’s technology (Lasso SpinTech) was first developed in a multi-disciplinary lab at Harvard, where the team worked on applications ranging from textiles to pharma to food. Flexibility has always been built into the core of the platform, giving it the ability to create solutions across a range of food categories. 

We started with plant-based meat and introduced it under the Tender Food brand to support funding and scale-up. As the food industry has evolved, with consumers demanding protein and fibre-rich foods across categories, it made sense to expand the range of Lasso SpinTech applications and realise the company’s full potential.

Lasso is now a food-tech company focused on the technology and its many applications beyond plant-based meat. Tender will remain a brand under Lasso’s broader portfolio, soon to be joined by several to-be-announced new brands, all built on Lasso SpinTech. 

Lasso’s long-term goal is to improve food processing and set a new standard by creating better packaged foods in a way that no one has before.

How does your technology, Lasso SpinTech, work?

Lasso SpinTech is a patented fibre-spinning technology, resembling a high-tech cotton candy machine, that uses centrifugal force to create texture with protein and fibre.

It can replace outdated methods that rely on gums, artificial binders and additives, excess sugars and high-heat processing that strips nutrients. The system uses physics to weave together ingredients into nutritious fibre structures.

How can this technology enable Lasso to provide a differentiated solution and respond to untapped opportunities within the plant-based food and beverage industry?

Our mission is for Lasso SpinTech to have as large an impact as possible on the food industry. Our breakthrough system upends the outdated standards of ultra-processed foods and makes previously unattainable new consumer products – providing an entirely new approach to what consumer packaged goods can look like. 

Long-term, we want to partner with food brands and manufacturers to use our technology to unlock better products for consumers. Short-term, we’re launching our own branded products to prove our differentiation and use that traction to accelerate licensing relationships. 

We’ve already proven this model; early success with the Tender Food brand at small scale has led to many inbound licensing relationships from blue-chip CPG companies across the globe. As we continue to expand our capabilities and educate partners on what it can do for them, we’ll have the opportunity to revolutionise the industry and meet the needs of modern consumers.  

The first applications explored by the team were in plant-based meat alternatives, under the Tender Food brand. Where else have you recently been innovating? What product categories are next for Lasso?

We have developed over 15 concepts for new product prototypes in categories like protein bars, snacks and pet foods. There are so many categories across food right now that are experiencing significant transformation.

Our focus for the technology has been on what types of high-demand, beloved food categories would benefit from superior nutrition, clean labels and amazing texture. As it turns out, there are many! We are very excited about the snacking category in particular, looking at spaces like salty snacks, fruit snacks and other categories that are seeking protein and fibre solutions.

Are there any notable industry trends right now that you foresee having a big impact on the future of the plant-based, and broader food and beverage, industry? How can Lasso respond to these?

Two of the biggest trends we’re paying attention to are the growing rejection of ultra-processed foods, and GLP-1 medications fundamentally changing how people eat — both of which are converging to reshape demand for satiety, protein and simpler foods that align with long-term health goals.

Lasso is directly responding to both of these trends by creating better, cleaner and simpler foods. Consumers are rapidly changing how they eat and snack, demanding more nutritious options and greater transparency about ingredients and how their food is made. Our advanced technology is the answer: ingredient-flexible (giving us the ability to accommodate less processed ingredients as they come to market) and simple processing that invents entirely new types of bars, snacks and foods across the store. 

How do you approach collaboration with other businesses in the food industry? 

Our goal is not to gatekeep, but to partner with manufacturers, businesses and food innovators to bring the next generation of clean label, nutrient-dense foods to the world –without compromising on price, taste or nutrition. 

This means licensing our technology to major food companies to scale clean label products to millions, and working alongside sustainable ingredient companies to codevelop innovative ingredients into economically viable products.

Have you encountered any big challenges on your journey so far? How have you navigated these?

Tons. One example was winning our largest restaurant customer to date, which brought immediate demand that threatened to outpace what our local ghost kitchen could supply. Rather than decline, we pursued what we were told was impossible: accelerating the build for our first-of-its-kind pilot production line from nine months to just three. This type of turnaround is unheard of in food manufacturing, let alone for novel technology. 

This endeavour meant bringing pilot-scale technology into a commercial setting for the first time – rapidly integrating upstream and downstream processing, optimising throughput and training a workforce. It also required coordination across engineering, operations, materials science, product and supply chain. In just three months, we launched the line and scaled production from thousands to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

We learned a lot during this sprint – not just what our team is capable of, but what our technology is capable of. Everyone we consulted (including our board) told us this build was impossible: nine months minimum, external consultants, millions of dollars. But what we proved was that the simplicity and unprecedented power of our system made it radically faster and more cost-efficient to deploy than anyone expected. Fabrication, installation, and training – all completed in a fraction of the time and budget typical in food manufacturing.

It was a breakthrough moment that validated our tech’s scalability and deployability while revealing a deeper truth: the future of our company wasn’t just in the product, it was in the platform. That realisation catalysed our strategic expansion from Tender Food to Lasso.

What is Lasso’s biggest achievement to date?

At an early stage start-up,it feels like there are big milestones every month. Two in particular come to mind.

First, the core innovation itself is incredibly novel and extraordinary. If it was easy to create breakthrough new food equipment, everyone would do it. Our team of scientists and engineers have seen the journey from working all day to make a few ounces of food to now being able to have a machine that can run all day making thousands of pounds. That scaling journey has been a ton of hard work and technical thought, but is very rewarding.

Secondly, over the past year, the team has really embraced a growth mindset of thinking incredibly creatively about what other applications beyond plant-based meat we could impact. That has forced us to evaluate lots of closely held assumptions on ingredients, how we make food and what our potential could be. The journey has produced some spectacular failures and unexpected breakthroughs, which is all part of the journey of creating something truly unique and special in business.

Tender Food plant-based meat products

What’s next for Lasso? Any exciting plans for the future you can share?

We have three main focuses coming up:

• Launch a handful of new branded applications in new categories like snacking 

• Finalise key manufacturing and licensing partnerships that have been in development and get them up and running

• Continue deploying the technology with a focus on scale-up and supporting continued ingredient expansion

For aspiring start-ups in the plant-based food and beverage industry, what valuable advice or insights would you share to help them navigate the challenges and opportunities in this dynamic sector?

You really need to look at every step of your business value chain and think through how it would scale. If something is different when you are making ten units, how will it feel when you are making 10,000 units?

Sometimes companies start off to make the world’s best delicious fresh product and then find that after six months, they actually aren’t a food company, they are a fresh logistics and delivery company and that is very outside their core competencies. Trying to map those scaling implications early can help you make the necessary adjustments to be ready for success when it hits.