Alongside the industry heavyweights famed for pioneering the plant-based category, smaller businesses with big ambitions are also championing the future of sustainable, animal-free food. In this month’s Start-up spotlight, we speak with Johnny Drain, CTO and co-founder of WNWN Food Labs. WNWN produces plant-based and cocoa-free chocolate products, with an ambition to drive the chocolate industry toward a more sustainable and ethical future. Read on to find out more.
Could you explain WNWN Food Labs’ journey so far and what led to its establishment?
I was a fermentation wizard consulting for fine-dining restaurants around the world and creating sustainable products, often from by-products, for consumer brands. [Co-founder] Ahrum was an investment banker who was itching to start a food company. About three years ago, a mutual friend of ours put her on to my work and she approached me on Instagram. We clicked when we first chatted and the company was incorporated a few months later.
In the early stages of the company we discussed many foods that are produced unsustainably and unethically, and flavour profiles that need to be future-proofed. We dug into how we might best drive positive change in the production monopolies that perpetuate unfair wages and poor working conditions.
However, we decided to begin with chocolate. I had been sitting on the idea of cocoa-free chocolate for a few years already, and had produced a primitive prototype that made me confident it was possible to reproduce the 500-odd flavour compounds found in chocolate that result from the fermentation and roasting of cacao beans. I knew those compounds don’t come from cacao alone; many other plants can deliver them too. Since then, we’ve moved quickly and we were the first in the world to sell cocoa-free choc.
What are the key issues within the cocoa industry that WNWN is aiming to raise awareness of?
While many foods we know and love have problematic supply chains — coffee, tea and vanilla do too — mass-market cocoa production is particularly egregious. Only a handful of multinationals control the majority of the industry, so ‘Big Choc’ (which is akin to Big Pharma or Big Ag) has the power to entrench cocoa farmers in poverty with stagnant wages, soaring cost of living, and rising cost of production. The industry is held up by slave labour and child labour, deforestation and extraordinarily high carbon emissions — more than chicken, cheese and lamb. In fact, chocolate is rather a climate double whammy: massive carbon emissions in its production, and the destruction of carbon-absorbing forests to grow it.
What key technologies and ingredients are used to develop WNWN’s cocoa-free chocolate?
We’ve chosen to work with ingredients that are abundant, sustainable, and widely-grown — and hence are resilient to food system shocks and climate shocks. Our hero ingredients are barley and carob, even though we tease out radically different flavours from them compared to most people who buy them.
We developed some innovative fermentation processes inspired by natural cacao fermentation. This yields a highly sustainable, flavour-identical chocolate substitute. Our choc looks, smells, snaps, melts, bakes and tastes just like real chocolate, but contains no cacao. It can be used in bars, confections, ice cream, beverages, baked goods, any application where chocolate—milk to dark, from couverture to cocoa powder — is currently used.
We have created a range of dark choc and a vegan ‘milk’ choc. The latter’s creaminess derives from a blend of oats and tiger nuts, another interesting and sustainable ingredient with a very lower water footprint compared to almonds, soybeans or even oats, which are already quite low.
What has WNWN’s biggest achievement been so far?
As a mission-driven company, Ahrum and I frequently speak out about what’s wrong with Big Choc and what needs to change. Paradoxically the companies we’re alienating are the very ones we most need to partner with — we simply cannot change this industry without their help. And what we’ve found is that we’re not being shut out; quite the opposite. We’re being welcomed to the table, and we’re seen as potential collaborators instead of adversaries by some of the biggest candy and snack companies in the world.
Have there been any major challenges for the business along the way? How have you navigated them?
We raised our second funding round in a tricky environment. Geopolitical uncertainty, global financial instability and supply-chain issues from both the Ukraine conflict and Covid contributed to a sort of rebalancing of valuations and also of investors’ appetites. There’s more scrutiny on startups to prove their product and their potential. We navigated the round and pulled together an extremely strong consortium of investors that believe in us and in our mission.
Having said that, starting the company during the lockdowns was almost equally challenging. It was many months before Ahrum (living in Portugal) and I (opening a restaurant in Paraguay for much of the lockdown) even met each other face-to-face. By then we already had a product prototype and pre-seed funding. To get to that stage when we’d never been in the same room together was marvellous yet absurd in its own way.
What’s next for WNWN Food Labs? Any exciting plans in the pipeline?
We just recently announced wholesale packs in larger sizes for the food and beverage trade, so now restaurants, bakeries, confectioneries and others in foodservice can begin to use our choc in earnest. While we can’t sell to consumers globally, we can wholesale globally, and that means it shouldn’t be long before people outside the UK can lay hands on our choc.
People, I should say, as well as pets: since our choc contains no theobromine, nor caffeine, it’s safe for pets, and it would be fantastic to see a cocoa-free chocolate treat for dogs.
What kind of impact do you hope to have on the chocolate industry through your mission and products?
A big one. From the beginning, our mindset has been to scale fast and achieve price parity with comparable chocolate (on supermarket shelves and as B2B ingredients), because we want to drive meaningful change now, not five or ten years from now like a lot of our colleagues in food-tech. In our first year we increased our production capacity eightfold. Now we’re selling wholesale, ahead of schedule.
By creating a mass market-priced alternative, we change the status quo. We can reduce the industry’s environmental harm and relieve economic pressure on cocoa farmers who are forced to accept less than a living wage. That helps strengthen cooperatives of smallholder farmers, and helps undo habitat destruction caused by expanding plantations. We can help meet the rising demand for chocolate without correspondingly high damages. Once there are well-priced products available, the consumer wins too, which is important in light of the EU ban on cocoa and chocolate linked to deforestation.
We’re called “win-win” for a reason. We want the planet to win, we want farmers to win, and yes, we want chocolate companies to win too, by helping them operate more sustainably and ethically.
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