The Future Is Now: David Bucca Of Change Foods On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Cheese Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Cheese is second only to beef and lamb as the largest greenhouse gas emitter of all foods per kilogram! This is because milk production is polluting and largely inefficient as a process, and it requires up to 10 liters of milk just to make one kilogram of cheddar, for example. Because of this, if we displaced all of the liquid milk in the world today with alternatives, it wouldn’t move the needle with respect to reducing dairy agriculture’s impacts because cheese consumption is only increasing at a much higher conversion ratio of milk to finished product. Therefore, until you solve the cheese problem, you cannot tackle the dairy problem — it’s critically important to focus on if we are to reduce food production’s impact on our planet with increasing demand.
By comparison, our technology enables the production of the exact same components we need to make cheese and dairy products without the need to raise and farm animals — therefore dramatically lowering resource intensity, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, water consumption, and land use without requiring any animals to suffer in the process. It’s a win-win.
David Bucca is the Founder and CEO of Change Foods. a US-Australian startup working to recreate cheese without animals. As a former aerospace engineer, David worked in a variety of technical and senior management roles at Boeing for over 13 years.
Following a career change motivated by his passion for more sustainable, ethical, and innovative food systems, David was a founding director of Food Frontier in early 2017, a non-profit innovative think-tank and industry accelerator for alternative proteins, and is still currently a board member.
In early 2018 he also became the COO of an Australian hemp foods start-up, managing all aspects of the business. More recently and prior to Change Foods, David was the APAC Regional Manager for Hungry Planet, a U.S. premium plant-based meat company, helping localize manufacturing and lead expansion throughout Australia, New Zealand, and Asia.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
It all started when I drew the connection between industrialized animal agriculture and its large contribution to the major issues we’re contending with globally such as climate change, human health, food security, and the ethical treatment of animals.
Upon months of deep study and research into this, it hit me, and I changed my diet overnight — which was a huge surprise to everyone! This shift also led to an understanding of the increasing consumption of animal protein — particularly out of Asia and Africa — over the coming 20+ years, and the realisation that to supply this with our current food system and its inefficiencies, we would need two planets to feed the one. I knew that something had to change.
Enter alternative proteins and new food technologies. I truly believe in the power that technological revolutions can have to help solve problems quickly, so I could clearly see how accelerating the development of these food products to the mass market could have a dramatic impact in the short term whilst being such a noble cause.
Upon this realization at the time, my career in aerospace suddenly felt insignificant in comparison, and I knew I had to redirect my skill set and life’s purpose to help solve this problem. It sparked a whole new trajectory for me personally and professionally.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is ‘how do you go from aerospace engineering to food?’ Well, perhaps the most interesting thing I discovered along my journey was just how many parallels there actually are between my background and skill set in the aerospace industry, and what I’m accomplishing now in food tech!
Upon reflection and answering the question many times, it became apparent that the core pursuit in the aerospace sector is how to design and develop very advanced, high-tech materials and parts; scale manufacturing and product assembly; and then dramatically bring down cost through continuous optimization, lean manufacturing initiatives, and process improvement. In many ways, these are exactly the same key objectives we are confronted with in the food tech industry, especially for advanced ingredients made via precision fermentation (like Change Foods) or other cell-based technologies — just swap carbon composite wings with cheese!
The skills, systems approach, advanced change management, and continuous improvement methodologies which have been bread-and-butter in the aerospace industry for decades are now perfectly relevant to scale-up, production design, and coming down the cost curves in food — who would have thought! The cross-pollination of knowledge between industries can certainly be a powerful asset to help come up with solutions outside of the incumbent industry paradigm.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
Change Foods is recreating cheese and dairy products that deliver the authentic taste, nutrition, melt, and texture that dairy consumers expect, and that current alternatives struggle to achieve. We do this using cutting-edge fermentation biotechnology — taking micro-organisms such as yeast and instructing them to create identical compounds, as found in traditional animal-derived dairy, when fermented.
These particular compounds are very unique and critical in making dairy what it is, which cannot be adequately substituted from other plant-based ingredients alone. Dairy therefore, is the perfect candidate for this type of precision fermentation technology.
This will help provide cheese-lovers an authentic version of the products they love, without compromise. Further, by rebuilding cheese from the ground up, we can improve it — hold the lactose, hormones, and cholesterol — but add better nutrition, reduce the bad fats, and create new combinations of flavours and ingredients that people have never even tried before. It’s a whole new era for cheese and dairy, and essentially creating a whole new category of foods.
How do you think this might change the world?
Cheese is second only to beef and lamb as the largest greenhouse gas emitter of all foods per kilogram! This is because milk production is polluting and largely inefficient as a process, and it requires up to 10 liters of milk just to make one kilogram of cheddar, for example. Because of this, if we displaced all of the liquid milk in the world today with alternatives, it wouldn’t move the needle with respect to reducing dairy agriculture’s impacts because cheese consumption is only increasing at a much higher conversion ratio of milk to finished product. Therefore, until you solve the cheese problem, you cannot tackle the dairy problem — it’s critically important to focus on if we are to reduce food production’s impact on our planet with increasing demand.
By comparison, our technology enables the production of the exact same components we need to make cheese and dairy products without the need to raise and farm animals — therefore dramatically lowering resource intensity, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, water consumption, and land use without requiring any animals to suffer in the process. It’s a win-win.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Broadly speaking, biotechnology, like any powerful tool, can be used for both positive and negative purposes, it all depends on the motivation of the user. For example, genetic engineering is immeasurably powerful as a technology and has done wonders for increasing crop yields and reducing pesticide use worldwide, however it can also be manipulated to enable private companies to engineer and control food production and can allow for reducing crop biodiversity and having single source supply chains. These are all pros and cons that should be considered carefully and weighed up when implementing technologies into mainstream practice and to ensure a thriving, diverse food economy in future.
Further, every process or product will always have a footprint or impact, and both positive and negative implications on people and the planet — it’s a matter of looking holistically and prioritizing things systematically over time depending on what’s important. It’s all in the ethos of continuous improvement. We should constantly be asking ourselves — is there a better way to do this? What impact are we having? Is the current process still relevant for the problems we are facing today? With this mindset, we can always adapt and ‘change’ — this is what Change Foods is all about — questioning the status quo and finding smarter and more efficient ways to recreate the products we love using cutting-edge technology to our advantage.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
The pain is real! I felt it every single time I tried to melt an alternative cheese on my pizza or when I continually failed in satisfying the ultimate food critics — my kids. Time and time again, I heard the same complaints — ‘these nachos taste weird,’ ‘this cheese toastie is rubbery,’ ‘why is this pizza sour and not stretchy?’. Enough was enough, and the tipping point was when I connected the dots that this technology is the right solution to a very specific problem — and I couldn’t see enough people aiming to use it, or they were doing it the wrong way which frustrated me. It was blindingly obvious, and I knew this is what I had to do and throw the kitchen sink at it!
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
Ultimately, it comes down to creating an experience for the consumer — food is almost religious in nature, and cheese a demigod. Forget the science, drop the tech — it’s ultimately about taste and quality, closely followed by price and widespread availability.
We aim to be a food-first company — built on a foundation of purpose and intentionality behind everything we do. We believe consumers are looking for better options with little to no compromise, and that is what we can deliver with this technology — it’s a matter of time and scale to drive down cost and allow widespread market penetration and acceptance. Like anything, there are a lot of things to consider and work on in parallel, no stone can be left unturned — the importance of naming, language, brand, messaging, trust, transparency, and vision are all paramount to garner mainstream appeal and adoption over time.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
So far we have mainly focused internally on R&D and product development, although at the same time setting the foundations for building a brand, and more so a new category of food. External facing publicity and messaging has been mainly geared towards investors and industry people thus far, although over time we will tend to shift towards consumer facing publicity closer to market testing and commercialization. There are a lot of great ideas and concepts we can leverage when aiming towards the consumer — and we can’t wait to get creative with ads, events, and messaging in the future!
This is where bringing on board former Danone brand manager, Irina Gerry, as our Chief Marketing Officer, has been an important early decision for us and paramount to our phasing plan towards commercialization. We recognize the importance of marketing and messaging — there is a lot of consumer education to be done, including foundational work on naming conventions and ideation to clarify such questions as — what do we call this product/category/technology? Is it vegan? Is it plant-based? Is it even ‘dairy’?
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’m forever grateful to my children, Xavier and Autumn, who have always kept things real with the quality of cheeses they try and the honesty in their feedback — without that, none of this would have happened as it became obvious to me the clear limitations of plant-based cheese alternatives and therefore their limitations to break through to the mass market. We need something better.
Beyond that, one of my closest friends and VP of Change Foods, Sacha Baker, is second-to-none for his continual support, patience, and dedication to our journey and bearing with me as an unashamedly passionate and zealous founder and CEO. Having a dedicated and value-aligned support network is critical at the early stages of our growth and I’m forever grateful to the team around me.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I don’t like the idea of labelling us as successful at such an early stage — this is only the beginning of something exciting and hopefully impactful in the long term. To me, success looks like our ability to impart positive change on the world and drive consumers and businesses to question their choices and make a simple switch to something better. We can all make an impact — conscious consumerism is just so important given the age we live in today and the information we have at our fingertips. It’s our journey of human progress to continually strive to become better inhabitants of this amazing planet. If Change Foods can play a role in that paradigm, then ultimately we will be successful in our mission and a role model for conscious and responsible capitalism.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Run your fundraising like a sales process
It became apparent to me in our second round of fundraising that things can take their time and drag on unless you have a clearly structured approach to your process. Run it like a sales pipeline:
- Have a clear round target amount and do your homework on comparable market valuations.
- Have a clear timeframe in which you will open and close the round (allow roughly 4–6 weeks).
- Categorize your investors based on fit and work your way through the investor list by ranking.
- Actively let your selected investors know about your round and set up initial meetings.
- Practise your pitch religiously and continue updating and tweaking your deck and presentation based on performance and response. Take meeting minutes and develop an FAQ list and continue adding responses to it as they come up (you can share this with investors later as part of due diligence).
- Follow up after the first meeting for feedback and set a date for the next meeting, if deciding to proceed.
- Stay on top of communications, respond timely but not too quickly, provide thoughtful responses and answer any questions, being careful to specifically address what they’re looking for.
- If successful, and both sides feel good to proceed, drive discussion to round participation and terms. Send paperwork and drive closure prior to the end date.
- Throughout the entire round, keep an active spreadsheet showing each investor and where they’re at in the process, open actions, and discussion points.
- Drive for an answer as quickly as possible, regardless of whether it’s a yes or a no. Oftentimes investors prefer to be non-committal or intentionally vague. Aim to drive for a response and be courteous in messaging in the case they pass for the time being — you can always follow up on the next round if they seem to be a good fit.
2. Plan your fundraising strategy for the long-term
Give a lot of careful thought, and strategize as best as you can, about what it is your company is going to become, and therefore how and when it will be financially sustainable. This will provide scope of how much capital your company will need to raise in total which will greatly impact your fundraising strategy, and in particular your dilution and valuation targets for each round.
Fundraising for a total of $300M+ is vastly different than fundraising for $20M — it will also frame what milestones and targets are generally expected for each round. Once you have this total roadmap of fundraising targets, phases, and times, then plan your next round with this large context in mind. Know your firm boundaries and also know where you have flexibility to negotiate beforehand.
3. Shoot for 18 months runway each round
Learning this from experience, fundraising can be continuous and never stops — it can be relentless, time consuming, and draining for the founders. Therefore, I’ve learned to plan and structure your rounds carefully in accordance with the previous point mentioned above. Always aim to plan your round cadence for approximately 18 months operational runway, if possible. This will allow for a clear 12 month window to focus your energy on operational execution and meeting your company milestones, and then a six month window dedicated to closing your next round (three months of pitching, investor discussions, and legals, and three months of buffer).
While this is good in theory, however, rest assured that investor discussions will never stop — but at least this is a way to control the prioritization in your company as a founder and not get too distracted with just raising funds all the time, and then failing on delivery — execution is king!
4. Prioritize carefully where you spend your time
Time is your most precious resource as a founder, and things will continually compete for your attention. Know what’s in scope and out of scope in that period and prioritize your time accordingly. Find useful tools and systems that can help keep administration and peripheral tasks at bay. I’ve found that software apps such as the email client Superhuman are fantastic at decluttering and organizing your inbox so you can clear it every single day and get to secondary things when you have capacity — it’s been a lifesaver!
5. It’s okay to cut ties early with investors that don’t fit
In the early days of fundraising, it felt as if every investor was crucially important to try and bring on board, especially if they have a strong reputation and name behind them. We often made accommodations or tried to only focus on the positive in every engagement with the aim to try and garner their approval and meet their needs. This was particularly apparent with some funds in Australia that were not as familiar with the technology or space back when we started. Because of this, we spent a lot of time educating them on the sector, technology, market, and gaps, and it took multiple rounds of questions and continual discussions to slowly move through the process, which was incredibly time consuming. By the end of the process, we sometimes questioned whether we ultimately even wanted them as an investor to begin with after the first discussion.
It is now very apparent that there are an innumerable amount of fantastic investors out there, many of which will be much easier to deal with and a natural fit for your company, business model, or sector. Ultimately, investors are partners, so it’s super important to read the room and bring on board people that you genuinely like, people that you can deal with every week (if you had to), and who are ultimately aligned and share your passion for your business. It’s okay to cut ties early should you feel it’s not a good fit from the start. Never forget — a good business plan that solves a really big problem at the right time with the right team will always get funding. Go find your tribe!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
We are all people of great influence, that is what I genuinely believe. We all have the intrinsic power to invoke change for the better, if we have the will to do so. The key is to really understand oneself deeply and connect with your values, acknowledge your strengths and your weaknesses, and then harness the will to improve and take action. This was my journey of change, and it all started with consciously choosing everything that I purchased and consumed, and realising that it is ultimately a reflection of what I believe in, and a vote for the world I want to live in. It has now ultimately led me to start a company that can reflect this sentiment so others can join in and feel empowered to make similar, aligned choices every single day. After all, we have the technology at our fingertips to create the same products we grew to love without the misaligned impacts on the environment, our health, and the animals.
The easier we can make it for people to live in accordance with their beliefs and values without even realizing it, the better the world will become — the ripple effect this can have on our lives and the planet is hyperbolic.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’ve been known to quote the late Herb Kelleher from time-to-time (co-founder, ex-CEO, and chairman of Southwest Airlines), who is one of my all-time favourite business role models. He rephrased the famous Milton Friedman quote to “the business of business is people.”
This struck a huge chord with me, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. It doesn’t matter what you do, what business you’re in, or who you are in this world — it all centers around people, and how you treat them.
This has never been more important to me than now — especially building the culture in a new team and business. If you just focus on being the best employer you can, everything else will sort itself out — and that doesn’t mean throwing parties or using superficial gimmicks to allure the sense of a good workplace. It means allowing people to flourish and be the best they can be — listening intently to what makes them tick, allowing them freedom to be empowered and make meaningful decisions, and ultimately to love life and enjoy what they do wholeheartedly — that’s my main job as a CEO.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say?
What legacy do you want to leave, and what problems are you looking to solve for? At Change Foods we’re on an exciting mission to help bend the curve on climate change and improve planetary health by using precision fermentation as our key enabler. We can recreate the products we love, starting with cheese and dairy, without the problems associated with farming animals — in other words, we are re-inventing the ‘cheese’ wheel 🙂 We’re a dedicated team of experienced professionals and die-hard changemakers, and believe in the power of people to drive positive change in the world. If you share our vision, we’d love to connect!
How can our readers follow you on social media?
People interesting in following our journey can add us via our social channels:
- LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/change-foods/
- Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/changefoods
- Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/changefoods/
- Twitter — https://twitter.com/change_foods
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: David Bucca Of Change Foods On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
