The price of cocoa has soared as deforestation and climate change make it harder for chocolate producers to obtain the precious beans.
Sacramento-based startup California Cultured hopes to find a solution to the industry’s supply issues.
“We basically start with a little live bean. So, instead of growing it, we put it in a liquid environment, and we pass the bean through thousands of generations to make it grow the way we want it to grow,” Alan Perlstein, California-based founder and CEO of Cultured, spoke to CNBC Tech: The Edge.
“We are directly growing tissue that can be turned into chocolate,” he added.
It takes at least six months and up to three years to develop a cultured cell line. Once the cell lines are ready, finished cocoa and coffee can be made in about a week.
“If a company wanted to have hundreds of thousands of tons, they would tell us, ‘We want it to taste like this and smell like that,'” Pearlstein said.
“We put in the right cell lines and within a few days, we’re able to provide a large amount of cocoa,” he explains.
California Cultured claims that 80% of people who taste its products cannot tell that they were grown in a lab.
We tasted the chocolate ourselves during CNBC’s tour of the company’s labs, and the results were satisfying.
California Cultured aims to co-brand its chocolate products with chocolate companies. One of the first collaborations will be with the Japanese group Meijiis the owner of the popular Hello Panda snacks and an investor in California Cultured.
The target market launch date is 2025 or 2026.
Watch the video above to learn about California Cultured’s labs and a tasting of their lab-grown chocolate.
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