The eggless egg

Just
United States (San Francisco)

A vegan mayo CEO wants to change the world by making the right thing easy and sexy: “The thing that, if you’re an evil person you still eat it, if you’re a poor person you still eat it, if you’re too busy and you don’t give a damn you still eat it.” And who are we to argue with that?

Josh Tetrick always wanted to make a difference through bold business. In 2011, he founded Hampton Creek (now Just) to focus on a system that affects every human being on the planet every single day – food – with the goal of flipping the system on its head using technology. His company cooks up scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles, muffins, Caesar dressing and mayonnaise… and all without eggs.

‘Just Egg’ is a mung-bean-based, plug-and-play replacement for scrambled eggs. The company sourced hundreds of protein-rich plants from around the globe, separated the proteins, and tested them individually for things like foaming, gelation, taste, and texture.

Within a few years he generated $120+ million in capital investment from the who’s who of Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, Google, cofounders of Facebook and Yahoo and various multi-billionaires.

That’s because Just (which is not without haters and Dallas-like controversy, including coups) doesn’t ‘just’ develop plant-based products with the goal of eventually replacing eggs, as well as sugar and trans fats. It aims to use those products as a platform for change, to ensure every person on the planet can afford to eat sustainable, healthy, nutritious food, and to shift the eating habits of climate-conscious millennials in a more environmentally sustainable direction. That’s why it calls the products ‘Just‘. (Get it?)

We asked the former American football player which came first – the idea to scramble the future of food or the eggless egg – and why he wants to change the world: “Wake up and realise we shouldn’t throw our lives into soul-sucking jobs. You can drain from the world or make things a bit better.”

► Caution: food porn. Our pleasure.

Video produced by Atlas of the Future for Project Breakthrough (United Nations Global Compact/ Volans). Check out our other breakthrough videos here.

Written by

Lisa Goldapple, Editor, Atlas of the Future (29 March 2017)

Project leader

Josh Tetrick, Founder and CEO

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