The Mayo marketing frenzy in Silicon Valley

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In 2013, the San Francisco-based startup Hampton Creek, today known as Eat Just, launched its first product-an egg-free vegetable mayonnaise. The press release stated that this is “the world’s first food that uses plant protein, and its performance is always better than animal protein.” In this regard, although as early as 1940, soybeans were mined for their functional ability in food—— Used in animal feed and human nutrition.In any case, the reporter Crazy.

It’s as if people have never seen condiments before. protector Wrote that the founder Josh Tetrick (Josh Tetrick) wanted to “disrupt the world food industry by replacing eggs with plants.” CBS News pointed out that the startup “tried 300 different plants” before finalizing the recipe for this egg-free mayonnaise.

Tetrick first introduced the company to investors. He admitted that it was a short platform and promised to build the world’s largest plant database in order to bring plant-based foods to the market. In order to achieve this goal, Tetrick finally attracted big data employees from Google and Stanford. TechCrunch announced that the company has analyzed More than 4,000 plants In order to find the ideal characteristics that have “better consistency, taste and lower cost”13. This plant database was initially touted as having the potential for licensing transactions, but it has not yet been realized, and those big data people have since left to start other companies.

This is a typical example of the new era of good food missionaries. They promised to reverse climate change, end our dependence on eating animal protein-and then race to raise funds, hire employees, and sell their promises to consumers in order to achieve these goals faster.

The problem is that in this case, eggless mayonnaise already exists. Vegenaise-a mashup of words vegetarian with mayonnaise-It was first developed by Follow Your Heart in San Fernando Valley, California in the mid-1970s.

Before becoming a vegetarian product giant, it is today—it sells salad dressings, cheese, and yogurt (among other things) made from coconut, potato starch, rapeseed, etc.—Follow Your Heart is a natural food market with A cozy vegetarian cafe. This cafe sells freshly made juices, vegetable soups and avocado, tomato and brussels sprout sandwiches with a thick, rich mayonnaise. However, the cafe uses an artificial mayonnaise called Lecinaise instead of the egg-flavored Hellman’s, which was made by a man named Jack Patton. It is made from soy lecithin, which is basically a fat emulsifier, and Bob Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Follow Your Heart, uses it for everything. He called it his “secret ingredient”. The milky white spread is so crucial to the success of the cafe that Goldberg estimates that the cafe had bought about 40,000 pounds.

But Goldberg began to hear rumors that there were eggs in this so-called eggless mayonnaise. He contacted Barton, the owner of Lecinaise, and he assured him that it was free of eggs, preservatives and sugar. Button even sent a letter to Goldberg to verify the accuracy of his label.

Goldberg was relieved. The California Department of Food and Agriculture does not. In the dead of night, the agency raided the Lecinaise facility in Barton and found that workers had soaked the label on ordinary mayonnaise, which was used and sold under the Lecinaise brand name. (Barton was tried and convicted Fraud, Received a 30-day imprisonment and a fine of $18,500. )

Goldberg was knocked down. His secret recipe not only contains eggs, but is also full of sugar and preservatives. His popular whole-wheat sandwiches will turn into dry crusts. Therefore, Goldberg turned to other manufacturers for help. “They all insist that you can’t make mayonnaise without eggs,” he said.

Goldberg reluctantly tried the imitation Hain mayonnaise, but it was a poor product and lacked emulsification-the key to taste. “We tried various methods to make it more delicious, adding sweeteners, vinegar or lemon juice, but the results are always very disappointing,” he said.

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