Editor’s note: SavorEat’s technology was invented by HU’s Oded Shoseyov, a serial inventor and entrepreneur. We recently featured SavorEat for its partnership with Israeli restaurant chain BBB. In addition, we highlighted Prof. Shoseyov in our Hebrew University Speaks video series.
One of my favorite scenes from the new Amazon Video science fiction comedy Upload – a TV show set ten years in the future – is one where a character prints out a fully cooked steak in his kitchen.
“I hope you’re hungry,” says Dave as he stands next to a home food printer that quickly prints out a fully printed – and cooked – piece of meat. “I’m printing a Jamie Oliver steak design he tweeted this morning. Oliver’s only on Google-Samsung, so I know you didn’t have this for lunch.”
“That’s our goal,” said Racheli Vizman, cofounder and CEO of SavorEat, when I caught up with her via a zoom call. “Where we can also have, next to a microwave, we can have machines that you know can create variety of products.”
But to get there, first her company is working on building a product that can print and cook food instantly for a large quick service food chains, starting with one of the biggest in Israel, BBB (Burgus Burger Bar).
“We are about to start this testing it in their facility within a year, while we believe that we will be commercialize it in a larger scale two years from closing the financial round that we are now running.”
That financial round Vizman is looking to close is a $3.5 million seed round led by a company called Next Food, an Israel based food tech investment fund. Next Food led SavorEat’s pre-seed round of $1.75 million.
3D printed meat has gained momentum over the past couple years, especially, it seems, in Israel. SavorEat joins two other venture funded Israel based 3D meat printing startups in Redefine Meat (formerly Jet Eat) and Meatech, a company which prints cultured meat cells into steak.
Two things set SavorEat’s technology apart from those and other 3D meat printing startups. The first is the company’s binder, which is a proprietary plant-based cellulose. The cellulose is combined with other ingredients such as plant-based fats and protein to make the final product.
“We’re using the cellulose to bind a variety of fats and proteins and other tastes and flavors and combine a very stable emulsion,” said Vizman.
The other big differentiator for SavorEat’s technology is that it prints and cooks simultaneously, which allows the company’s printers to make a fully cooked piece of 3D printed meat like you might see produced by a futuristic appliance like that in the TV show Upload.
The food comes out “ready to be eaten,” said Vizman. “We’re printing one layer, then we cook one layer, print one layer, cook one layer. So at the end, you get something that’s ready to be consumed.”
This print and cook technology, according to Vizman, will give the cook a high degree of precision of over the final print.
“The nice thing about that is that you can also control the way you cook it. You can decide whether you want it medium, you want in rare, well done. How you want to cook it in the you want to grill it from the inside and rare from the outside.”
The company’s technology was invented by Oded Shoseyov, a serial inventor and entrepreneur who spends much of his time spinning out new ideas from his research lab at Hebrew University. Shoseyov is SavorEat’s chief science officer. Shoseyov and Vizman are joined by other executives from companies like Stratasys (3D printing) and IFF/Frutarom (flavors).