SAN FRANCISCO  — Compound Foods, which was founded in 2020 by Maricel Saenz, is a food tech startup producing beanless coffee and cacao products using its “proprietary product platform.”

The company said it officially has launched its beanless coffee and cocoa ingredient platform aimed at “derisking global supply chains and providing companies with functional alternatives to coffee and cocoa without the bean.”

“Coffee has always been an important part of my life,” Saenz said. “When I learned how vulnerable the supply chain really was, I felt compelled to ask: could we recreate the experience of coffee using more resilient ingredients, lower emissions, and food science?”

Compound Foods’ beanless coffee is formulated with upcycled ingredients, including date seeds, chicory, sunflower seeds, carob and grape seeds.

In December 2022, Compound Foods launched Minus Coffee, a product containing no coffee beans.

“Instead of beans, we roast upcycled roots, seeds and legumes, which we then grind and brew in a gorgeous fermentation batch with caffeine,” Saenz said in an interview with Food Business News in 2022. “I am proud to say that we have successfully recreated the flavors, aromas and effects of coffee while eliminating the crop itself from the chain, a crop that is the sixth most pollutive agricultural process concentrated in regions around the equator.”

Minus Coffee was first introduced in a canned cold brew format formulated with date seeds, chicory, sunflower seeds, carob, lentils, grape seeds and millet malt.

The company’s cocoa-free cocoa also is formulated with upcycled ingredients, including carob, mesquite, spent grain, sunflower lecithin and cascara.

Due to cocoa supply chain issues the company, which focused on beanless coffee when it first launched, said it added the cocoa-free alternative to its product portfolio using its in-house R&D.

Compound Foods said its platform may fit into existing manufacturing pipelines, relieving the need for reformulation. The platform also features services like custom builds for companies.

When asked how much production capacity the company has, Saenz said the company has partnered with commercial ingredient suppliers and co-manufacturers from the start.

“(And) we’re currently in discussions with both existing and new partners to meet capacities of hundreds of metric tons for both coffee and coco,” she said. “Our goal isn’t to replace the specialty coffee or craft cacao we love. It’s to offer a sustainable, cost-effective alternative to the part of the industry that’s most vulnerable, commodity crops grown at scale, traded anonymously, and increasingly exposed to environmental and economic risk.”

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