LatamList – The Not Company, a Chilean plant-based meat and dairy substitute food tech company, is about to close on an $85M financing round that would value it at $250M.
According to sources, the private equity firm L Catterton Partners and the Biz Stone-backed Future Positive were likely investors in the new financing round. Previous investors include Bezos Expeditions, The Craftory, IndieBio, and SOS Ventures.
In the two years since NotCo launched on the global stage, the company has expanded beyond its mayonnaise product into milk, ice cream, and hamburgers.
NotCo is already selling several products in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. It has signed a blockbuster deal with Burger King to be the chain’s supplier of plant-based burgers.
Meanwhile, large food chains continue to experiment with plant-based menu items and push even further afield into cell-based meat using cultures from animals. Consumer tastes are changing, interest in plant-based diets are growing, and animal agriculture is having profound effects on the world’s climate.
Despite the pandemic, NotCo opened a restaurant, named “Why Not”, serving animal-free NotBurgers in the São Paulo neighborhood of Perdizes.
“Before the pandemic, we thought of just operating as a supplier for restaurants. But that plan became unviable when these places closed. We started to think about how to proceed and that’s when the ‘Why Not’ idea came up,” said Luiz Augusto Silva, the Country Manager of NotCo in Brazil.
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