Silicone Valley startup sees yellow peas as milk's future

In recent years, alternate sources of milk have begun to disrupt the dairy industry, including soy, almond and rice. The latest contender for space in the refrigerator is milk made from yellow peas.

In 2015, sales of dairy milk decreased by 7 percent, and they are projected to fall an additional 11 percent through 2020, according to market intelligence agency Mintel. Meanwhile, Bloomberg has reported that almond milk sales rose 250 percent from 2011 to 2015.

But there are barriers to mainstream adoption: Soy milk can taste chalky, and soy beans are notorious for being genetically modified. Almond milk, despite its high-protein reputation, has only one-eighth the protein of dairy milk and requires huge amounts of water to produce. Rice milk has a pleasant enough flavor but is also low in protein.

Enter Ripple, a new line of products powered by $44 million from Google and Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Since it launched in April 2016, the company has sold 2.5 million bottles of product and generated $20 million in revenue, using milk made from simple yellow peas. The vegetable is inexpensive to grow and also produces a surprisingly clean taste.

The duo behind this plant-based milk is a formidable team. Adam Lowry is a co-founder of environmentally minded cleaning line Method, which generated revenue of more than $100 million when he sold it to Ecover, a Belgian company, in 2012. Neil Renninger helped build Amyris Biotechnologies, which uses technology to create renewable fuels, which started with a grant from the Gates Foundation; he has also been an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Menlo Park VC firm, Khosla Ventures.

In 2014, the two friends saw an opportunity to change the dairy industry. "The food system represents 20 percent of the world's carbon emissions, and dairy is one-quarter of that," Renninger said. "The impact is massive. More than beef, more than chicken, dairy is actually the largest contributor to emissions by volume. That challenge scratched my sustainability itch."

Lowry and Renninger began searching for a product that would simultaneously taste better and be more ecofriendly than existing alternate milks. They maintain that food businesses don't spend a lot of money on research and development to create better products. "Their idea of innovation is a brand extension," Renninger said. "We saw huge potential for impact -- a lot of white space in the world of food innovation through technology."

"What we did is use technology to create really good food," Lowry said. "The world has recognized that we need to go more plant-based. You see it in the burger world with products like the [meatless] Impossible Burger." He said most plant food is awful, "particularly in the alternate dairy space. It's low in protein, thin and chalky."

Using Renninger's technology, they began to experiment extracting protein from from different plants that had a notable amount of the biomolecules. "You name it, we screened it," Renninger said. "Most of them tasted terrible."

Then the pair tried yellow peas, which are inexpensive to grow and don't yield a strongly flavored product. The result was a drink that has a hint of concentrated powdered milk taste and a smooth, creamy texture.

The milk made from yellow peas also delivers the same amount of protein as those from cows -- 8 grams per serving, comparable to soy milk but much higher than almond milk. But what really sets Ripple apart from other alternate milks is its environmental footprint.

According to their research, each 48-ounce bottle of Ripple (made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled material) represents a savings of 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions and 925 gallons of water, compared with dairy milk. The 2.5 million bottles Ripple has sold adds up to nearly 7 million fewer pounds of CO2 emissions -- the equivalent of taking more than 600 cars off the road for a year. And getting the same amount of protein from almond milk would require 66 billion gallons of additional water.

SundayMonday Business on 09/17/2017

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