Plant-based seafood maker New School Foods nabs $12m seed

• New School develops whole-cut, plant-based seafood that emulates the same texture, taste, nutritional benefits and cooking experience of conventional seafood
• The funds raised will be used to expand New School’s team of food scientists, scale up its scaffolding technology and build out a research and production facility

New School Foods, a Toronto-based developer of plant-based seafood, has raised $12 million in seed financing.

The investors in the round included Lever VC, Blue Horizon, Hatch, Good Startup, Alwyn Capital and Joyance Partners, as well as grants from multiple agencies, including Protein Industry Canada.

Founded in 2020, New School develops whole-cut, plant-based seafood that emulates the same texture, taste, nutritional benefits and cooking experience of conventional seafood.

The funds raised will be used to expand New School’s team of food scientists, scale up its scaffolding technology and build out a research and production facility.

“The next frontier of meat alternatives is whole cuts, and from day one we understood that New School Foods needed to solve two heavily connected issues: the quality of the meat alternatives in-market, and the limited toolkit our industry uses to produce them,” said Chris Bryson, CEO and founder of New School Foods, in a statement. “What’s generally available for consumers now are rubbery, ground, pre-cooked products that will not convince the average customer to change their lifelong habits.”