Planted: The ETH Zurich Spinout Trying to Make Plant-Based Meat Taste Like the Real Thing

The plant-based meat category had a difficult few years after the initial hype of 2019 and 2020. Beyond Meat's share price collapsed. Impossible Foods pulled back from international expansion. Supermarket shelves that had been cleared for plant-based products began to contract as consumer trial failed to convert into repeat purchase. The core problem, identified by almost every post-mortem analysis of the category's struggles, was texture: plant-based products had improved enormously in flavour, but the mouthfeel of processed pea or soy protein remained detectably different from animal muscle fibre, and that difference was enough to drive most consumers back to the original.

Planted, the Zurich-based startup founded in 2019 by Pascal Bieri, Eric Stirnemann, Christoph Jenny, and Lukas Böni — all researchers from ETH Zurich's food science department — was built around a specific technical answer to that problem. The company uses a high-moisture extrusion process that aligns plant proteins into fibrous structures that more closely mimic the texture of whole-muscle meat. The process is not unique to Planted — it is used by several other companies in the space — but the team's academic background gave them a depth of understanding of the underlying food science that most food startup founders lack.

Science as Competitive Advantage

Planted's flagship product is a chicken alternative — planted.chicken — that has been adopted by a number of Swiss and German restaurant chains and food service operators. The company has also produced pork and pulled alternatives. Its distribution is primarily through food service rather than retail, a deliberate choice that reflects both the higher margins available in that channel and the fact that food service operators are more willing to commit to a product if it performs consistently, regardless of whether it is plant-based.

"We are not trying to convince vegans to eat our product. They are already convinced. We are trying to convince the person who eats meat every day that our product is good enough to choose sometimes."

— Pascal Bieri, co-founder of Planted, in a 2022 interview with Handelszeitung

Planted raised a seed round in 2019 and a Series A in 2021, with investors including Vorwerk Ventures and several Swiss and European food-focused funds. The amounts were in the low single-digit millions of euros — modest for a food tech company with manufacturing ambitions, but sufficient to build out the production capacity needed to supply its food service customers. The company has been deliberate about not over-capitalising, preferring to grow in line with demonstrated demand rather than building capacity ahead of it.

The broader plant-based meat market remains in a difficult period. Consumer enthusiasm has moderated, and the category's early promise of mainstream adoption has not materialised at the pace that investors and founders hoped. But within that challenging context, companies with genuine technical differentiation and a clear route to profitability are better positioned than those that relied on marketing and distribution alone. Planted's food science foundation, its focus on food service, and its Swiss base — which gives it access to a food industry ecosystem that is among the most sophisticated in the world — are genuine advantages in a market that is being rapidly consolidated.

Whether Planted can scale beyond its current position as a respected niche player into a genuinely significant food company depends on factors that are partly outside its control: the pace of consumer behaviour change, the regulatory environment for novel foods in Europe, and the degree to which the food service industry continues to see plant-based options as a permanent menu feature rather than a trend. What is not in doubt is the quality of the science. In a category that has often substituted marketing for substance, that is a meaningful distinction.