What would it look like if we just started over? It was a question that Josh Tetrick threw to more than 200 HKUST students, faculty and guests at a talk called “The Future of Food” held at the Lee Shau Kee Business Building on February 19.
Josh is the CEO and Founder of Hampton Creek, a food technology company selected by Bill Gates as one of the three companies shaping the future of food. Headquartered in California, the startup focuses on finding new ways to utilize plants to replace eggs in a variety of different products.
Venturing into egg business
It started some two years ago when Josh kept wondering why there wasn’t a better, cheaper way to replace the chicken eggs we find at the supermarket. He said that hens would lay 1.8 trillion eggs for consumption every year, and those hens that were kept in cramped and unsanitary conditions could cause alarming disease outbreaks. What’s more, livestock consumed more food than it would take to feed the starving people in the world. The current systems for producing eggs were plagued with problems.
Josh and his partner Josh Balk put together a team of food scientists, biochemists and chefs to test a thousand types of plants to find species with the molecular properties that resemble eggs. Their aim is to offer products which not only taste as good as or better than the conventional chicken egg, but also are cheaper, better for the environment, and for health, especially when today’s convenience foods are so bad to the body.
His innovative and forward-thinking idea attracted well-known investors around the world, financing his food business that replaces eggs in foods. The company’s first product, a plant-based, zero-cholesterol mayonnaise is available in supermarkets in the US. The company also has its eyes on the exciting Chinese Mainland market, where 38% of the world's eggs are produced.
Think differently
Josh’s entrepreneurial spirit attracted many questions from the floor. He was asked about the challenges and his plan to make eggs obsolete, his business strategy, his vision of the future, etc. We are so addicted to what we are used to, he said. Josh encouraged students to think differently, as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford did before electric light bulb and car were invented. Josh also reminded students who are mulling over starting new business ventures in future that the key was to develop ideas to fill a need that had not been addressed.
The talk was co-organized by HKUST’s Schools of Business and Management, Science, and Engineering, as well as Entrepreneurship Center. The talk is now available online.