TiNDLE Foods: “The Desire for Clean-Label, Better-For-You Products Is No Longer a Trend, but an Essential in the Plant-Based Sector”

With his extensive background in plant-based food innovation, Timo has been a driving force behind TiNDLE’s rapid expansion and success in the global marketplace. In this interview, Timo shares insights into TiNDLE’s evolution, the plant-based industry’s future, and the challenges and opportunities ahead. We began TiNDLE Foods (formerly Next Gen Foods) in early 2020, right at the start of the pandemic.

The majority of that year was spent perfecting our formulation for our first TiNDLE Chicken product, which we then introduced in March 2021 with select culinary establishments and some of the best chefs in Singapore. This allowed us to make sure TiNDLE Chicken delivered the best possible experience for shoppers. Get back detailed diner and chef feedback on what people liked about our chicken, from the taste to texture to how it smelled, cooked, etc. From the start, we’ve set a high standard for our entire product range – whether it was a foodservice application or one of the retail products we offer today – so we’re delivering the best in terms of components, taste, and texture.

Our initial products had less than 9 base components, all of which were common and familiar non-GMO plant-based sources, such as soy, oat fiber, and sunflower oil. TiNDLE was our consumer label and is now the name we use behind all of our products, which offer delicious and enjoyable solutions for dining more sustainably. Today, our chicken is sold in restaurants and grocery stores all over the world, including in Singapore, as well as in the US and parts of Europe.

Since launching, we have had to adapt to a number of shifts in our category and the global marketplace at large. We began our business in the middle of the global pandemic and at a time when there were large concerns about meat quality and supply.

We’ve always sought to bring good quality foods to marketplace, which are 100% plant-derived and contain no animal products. Today, we may lean more into health messaging to adapt to our buyers’ desires, but we have always sought to bring delicious, nutritious, and sustainable plant-based foods to our customers. © TiNDLE You’ve just expanded into over 1,300 US stores.

Retail is an important channel for us, partly because we have the chance to directly engage with the shopper in the grocery store aisle, but in addition because it’s where we have the opportunity to see went up volume and repeat purchases from shoppers interested in plant-based foods. Today, we’ve grown to offer our products at nearly 1400 grocery stores nationwide, which includes new partners like the Kroger Family of Stores, as well as popular retailers Wegmans and Meijer. In EDEKA stores too, this Spring, we rolled out TiNDLE products in Aldi stores across Germany, which is the fourth largest retailer in the world, and have of late introduced our newest premium product line, TiNDLE Gourmet Chicken.

The Gourmet Chicken products are our latest premium offering for retail buyers, and our aim is to bring the Gourmet products to more partners globally, particularly in the U.S. In our category, we’ve seen that shelf space in retail stores is shrinking (when compared to what it looked like 3 or 4 years ago), and that’s partly why we as well see takings figures dropping. This is not just a challenge exclusive to us in the plant-based meat category, as we’re experiencing record-high prices on the costs of goods, thanks to inflation and other production concerns like the recent bird flu epidemic.

At the end of the day, it’s clear to us that we still need to diversify our sources for healthy. Sustainable foods that can keep feeding our growing planet. © TiNDLE What leadership lessons have you learned as the company has scaled globally? We remain focused on bringing the best-tasting products to trade and utilizing our strong R&D capabilities to deliver even better and improved foods to our shoppers.