Genuine Taste

Genuine Taste is a Canadian cellular agriculture company founded in 2022 by CEO Emily Farrar and CTO Pooya Mamaghani, PhD. The company specializes in the production of cultivated beef fat, an ingredient designed to improve the taste, aroma, texture, and mouthfeel of alternative meat products. By focusing on fat, which is a key component of flavor in conventional meat, Genuine Taste aims to increase consumer adoption of plant-based and cultivated meat alternatives.

The company's proprietary technology involves taking stem cells from a cow, differentiating them into fat cells, and growing them in bioreactors. This process creates real animal fat without the need to slaughter animals, positioning the company as a sustainable and ethical food technology player. Genuine Taste's business model is business-to-business, supplying its cultivated fat as an ingredient to alternative protein manufacturers and cultivated meat companies that focus on muscle tissue. The firm has successfully produced grams of cultivated bovine fat per batch in a lab setting.

Co-founder Emily Farrar, a PhD student in Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto, brings a background in climate change mitigation and environmental engineering to the company. Her interest in the food-tech sector stems from its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Co-founder Pooya Mamaghani has a PhD and expertise in biotech. The idea for the company was born during the pandemic after Farrar attended workshops on women in STEM and entrepreneurship, where she met Mamaghani.

Genuine Taste has received funding from several accelerators and investors, including Big Idea Ventures, Antler, Cycle Momentum, and Startup Montreal. In 2024, the company won a $100,000 investment from the Invest Together in Climate Innovation program run by Spring, a Vancouver-based global incubator. The startup has also engaged in collaborations, signing a Letter of Intent with The Better Butchers to jointly develop a hybrid meat product using Genuine Taste's cultivated fat and The Better Butchers' mycelium-based proteins.

Keywords: cultivated fat, cellular agriculture, alternative protein, food technology, sustainable food, meat alternatives, B2B ingredients, cell-based fat, food-tech, cultivated meat, plant-based meat, flavor and texture, sustainable fat production, cruelty-free, food innovation, biotech, bioreactor, hybrid meat products, ethical food, climate tech