FÆRM

At FÆRM, our workday starts at 9:30 a.m. and ends at 4:30 p.m. every day. No weekend emails, no late-night data crunching. “We’re not just focused on sustainability in our products but in how we treat our team every day,” said Andrea and Mikkel in a recent interview with IDA. “It’s about creating a space where we can all bring our best selves to work without burning out.” Thank you, IDA, for featuring our approach to well-being and work-life balance! You can read the article here: https://lnkd.in/dY337TM5

A new era in our product analysis has kicked off! Thanks to our partnership with BioInnovation Institute, we have used GC/MS technology since June this year. The GC/MS machine (the one you see in the pictures below) allows us to analyze our cheese prototypes and compare them to dairy cheese in terms of composition, taste, and flavor. Basically, it's like an automated taste test — the technology investigates the taste notes and tells us how close we are to the dairy version of the cheese. This means we can compare our prototypes to dairy cheese in a data-driven way and get even closer to achieving the ‘real’ taste. It takes about 45 minutes to assess one sample - but with the number of prototypes we're cranking out, we’re already impatient! 😉

Who should we speak to about plant-based cheese in the Netherlands? 🇳🇱 The Dutch people love plant-based meat alternatives — the country is a real pioneer in the area. However, the consumption of vegan cheese alternatives is falling behind other vegan food categories. We want to help change that. Andrea and Mikkel recently spoke to FoodAgribusiness about our technology and our search for new partners to introduce new plant-based cheese alternatives — products that are made the exact same way as conventional cheese 🧀 No coconut oil. No modified starch. We’re not gonna hold it back — developing a Gouda substitute would be fantastic 😍 Let us know who you think we should speak to, to make it happen! You can read the Food&Agribusiness interview here: https://lnkd.in/dFQPye3U

Louise Almer is our Product Developer and Microbiologist Expert, and we have been lucky to work alongside her since April 2023. With a background as an engineer in biotechnology, Louise is in charge of ensuring our cheeses taste 'grate' as well as improving shelf life. Moreover, she continuously researches and tests ingredients and their interactions with each other in order to achieve the best products possible. Did we mention she's responsible for food safety too? She identifies bacteria using phenotypic and genotypic methods such as culturing and sequencing, finding the best conditions to create cheesy flavor and texture. In simpler words, Louise looks after the quality of our products and how we can prevent bad bacteria from growing on them. When we first met Louise in 2022, she was already making mozzarella in her own kitchen 🧀 But, even though we REALLY wanted to, we weren’t able to hire her. She was the first person we called when we received support from @Bioinnovation Institute and, as it turns out, she had been thinking about us as much as we had been thinking about her 🥰 #FÆRM #ProductDevelopment #Microbiology #FoodSafety #Innovatio

If you have good hearing…. …listen to our CEO Andrea explaining why we make our cheese the way we do. If you don't speak Danish, we’ve made sure to write — in very simple subtitles — why we think it makes so much sense to treat plant proteins the same as milk when making non-dairy products. The simple steps for our products are: 🥛 Curdle the plant based protein with enzymes 💧 Press out excess whey 🦠 Add bacteria 🧀 Wait for it to mature and develop a nice cheesy taste

Now that you’re just sitting there, enjoying the summer… Why not spend 30 seconds revisiting the time we cooked up a delicious plant-based brie in our lab? 💖 What’s the next “cheese” we should make in our lab? Let us know in the comments!

Gloves are off and hugs are hugged. It’s time to rest and recharge our batteries. The first half of 2024 has been eventful with fresh funding, new hires, exciting interviews, and new partnerships. We can’t wait to share all kinds of good news with you in the second half of the year. Have a happy summer ☀️

It’s time to treat plant-based cheese like real cheese. We’ve learned that the best way to create tasty plant-based cheese is to treat plant proteins like cow’s milk. Read our most recent interview with Vegconomist to learn more about our plans and dreams for plant-based cheese 🧀💚 https://lnkd.in/dQK3YmSe

A cheese alternative isn’t a real alternative unless it creates the same mouth-watering sensation as the cheese we know 🧀 That’s why we wanted to improve the taste and texture of plant-based cheese: to help our partners make better non-dairy cheese alternatives for the end consumers, as well as make good dairy alternatives available to more people. We’re developing even more prototypes as we speak. Want to learn more about it? Visit www.faerm.dk

Last week, we met with the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen Sophie Hæstorp Andersen to tell her about our plant-based cheese. It’s no secret that we want more and better plant-based cheeses available in canteens and supermarkets. It’s not that we want to challenge dairies and conventional farming. But the Danish government plans for a green transformation of agriculture, containing initiatives that can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.3 million tonnes of CO2e. And this challenge shouldn't fall solely on farmers and politicians; consumers, dairies, and experts also share the responsibility. We want to take part in the dialogue and offer our help in making the farming transition happen. In a report published today by Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, a coalition of Danish organizations even play around with the idea that low-emission cheese production can become a strategic advantage for Denmark — and even make Danish agriculture more resilient once global dairy consumption starts to decrease. Now, wouldn’t that be something? 💖 Read more about the report here: https://lnkd.in/djj5DaGj Thank you to BioInnovation Institute for setting us up with the opportunity to meet Sophie Hæstorp Andersen.