Foodtech in Europe: does it compare to the US and where is the money going?

September 04, 2018

An interview with Matthieu Vincent from DigitalFoodLab, where they explore FoodTech opportunities and help entrepreneurs, investors and food corporates to act on them. In November, he will be discussing European FoodTech at the 32nd EFFoST International Conference in Nantes.

What current and upcoming developments in your field are you most excited about? 
Right now, if we look at what is happening in the FoodTech ecosystem, we are really motivated by three trends :

  1. New proteins / new products that aim to provide a more accessible, sustainble and healthier food for everyone
  2. Robotics applied to foodservice and retail that could be a game changer, but also a threat for many unqualified jobs
  3. Genetics used to predict what is good for a specific individual diets

What challenges need to be tackled in your field?
European investments in the FoodTech startups are quite low compared to what can be seen in the US, China or Israël. The biggest food and retail corporates may have not yet understood what is happening and how threaten they are if they don’t move towards providing better products to their clients and also partnering with the most innovative startups.

How did you come to work in this field?
After graduating from a M.Eng in Telecomunication, I was really motivated by the idea of creating a startup. As many other wannabe entrepreneurs, I was more focused on the 'startup' than on any specific idea. With my co-founders, we created WeCook in 2010, a service dedicated to helping families plan their week of meals and groceries.

We sold this starutp in 2017 and then we wanted to do something more than create a new startup. From experience, we saw the difficulties that FoodTech entrepreneurs had and how hard it was for food corporates to understand startups in this specific field. That’s why we have created DigitalFoodLab.

In our report FoodTech: An opportunity for France (2017), you can read about all the investments made in French FoodTech startups since 2013.

For more information on the 32nd EFFoST International Conference please visit our conference website.

Cookie settings