At the beginning of April this year, and in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, foodtech company Mycorena AB set out on an ambitious mission to launch its first consumer product – a meat-free alternative to traditional Swedish meatballs. The mission, self-titled – ‘Mission 60 Days’, found its completion with the company starting to sell its very first product, the Väldigt Swedish Vegoballs, both in stores across Sweden and on several online platforms. The product is made with Mycorena’s unique protein ingredient, Promyc®, made out of its proprietary fungi strains, and originating from the company’s research and development efforts over the past few years.
“The release of vegoballs was our way of showcasing the potential of Promyc to be a perfect ingredient for any vegan food product. We saw it as our first step on the road to bringing Promyc into a variety of different products that we hope to create together with other food companies in the near future. At the same time, it also helped us to develop our inhouse skills on finding new recipes and create more knowledge about Promyc as a perfect ingredient for product development – says Ebba Fröling COO at Mycorena.
Over 400 people signed up their interest for the limited-edition product launch, and the interest was huge. The Väldigt Swedish Vegoballs are available on the Promyc webpage, in a ICA store just outside of Gothenburg, and on an online vegan store. When released, it took no longer than two days until the product was sold out.
Finding the right recipe for the vegoballs was an exciting and challenging part of our 60 days mission. We did several test trials with ingredients that would bring the right texture and flavours, while keeping the focus on climate-friendly, “Swedish” ingredients. A lot of people participated and gave us honest and constructive feedback during tasting panel sessions, driving our product development to meet the demand of today’s consumers. – says Paulo Teixeira, Lead Product Manager at Mycorena.
“We all agreed that they tasted really good and were clearly better than the other vegan alternatives we tried. Fun!”, says Björn Persson, owner at KOKA, and Familjen restaurant, which has been awarded the star of Guide Michelin and named International Master Class by White Guide for several years.
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Read more on what we learned about our consumers with this launch.
Behind the 60 days mission was our strong desire to meet consumer demand for a completely new vegan product that is locally produced, has a climate impact lower than any other plant-based alternatives, and tastes really good at the same time. Vego balls are the very first consumer product made with our Promyc® protein and we are now in discussions with food companies who are interested to scale the product sales to the larger mass market – says Ramkumar Nair, Founder & CEO.
Contact: promyc@mycorena.com
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