A chat with the founders of Kera, a startup reimagining food industry waste
By the time I board the bus, sodden from the driving rain and a forgotten umbrella, I’ve had time to digest how I feel about Kera. Over six courses in South London Louie, a supper-club locale nestled beneath the wing of South London Gallery, I’ve tried this novel protein in various guises – deep-fried, minced, and most memorably, constituted into a faux-chicken nugget. While meat substitutes are hardly novel fare, what piques the interest in Kera is its provenance: by-product chicken feathers.
Developed from Sorawut Kittibanthorn’s MA project, A Lighter Delicacy, Kera functions as the commercial evolution of Kittibanthorn’s exploration into feather-based protein. Founded with Tom Washington, Kera aims to develop a viable gastronomic use for feather by-product, positioning itself as a nose-to-tail foodstuff; crucially however, the vision of the future of Kera is as a high-quality meat substitute, as opposed to a generic by-product. Kittibanthorn and Washington view the supplement industry as oversaturated, and an experimental protein suitable for both commercial and residential applications as the future of new protein.
The South London Louie menu was set and executed by Laam, Northern Thai supper club extraordinaires; their attempt to showcase Kera in a range of dishes was, for the most part, a success. A high-ceilinged garden room, softly lit, held about twenty guests – food writers, experimentally-minded vegans, and even representatives of the Thai embassy. Looping video on a television screen against one wall showed the story of Kera so far, while feathers and leaves decorated each of the tables. The food was varied, and the sort of warming, cleansing, spices, carbohydrates, and fresh green herbs you’re looking for on an unseasonably cool spring evening.
I sat down with Kittibanthorn and Washington a couple of weeks after the event to discuss how they feel Kera’s public debut went, the provenance of the company, and how they’re hoping to break through to everyday dining tables.
Gus Wray: Well, to begin, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.
Tom Washington: And thank you.
GW: Thanks again for last week, I had a great time. I really enjoyed getting to try Kera and experiment with a new protein – a revolutionary protein. How did you feel the event went? Were you happy with it?
TW: Yeah, we were really happy. It’s been a big step for us. And it was a big stress thinking about it, how people are going to react, and are they gonna have a good time? Is everyone going to show up? So we’re really happy with the way it turned out. And the way it was all presented in the end. But um, yeah, we were also pleased to see everyone’s reactions to the food, everyone liked Laam’s cooking. Everyone seemed to enjoy the protein. And the biggest feedback that we got was that they couldn’t tell that it wasn’t meat, which is exactly what we wanted to hear. I mean, some people didn’t even know what the project was about, and they found out after finishing the meal – they thought it was just conventional meat. So yeah, from my perspective, it was a success. How about you Sorawut?
Sorawut Kittibanthorn: Yeah, I mean I’m happy to see, eventually, people eat it. Because, I’ve been experimenting with this for a few years, just waiting to launch it to the public for the first time. Luckily everyone is enjoying the product that we’ve been developing, and also, yeah, it’s quite nice to see everyone leave good feedback, positive feedback – to the product, and also to the event that we’ve hosted.
GW: From my perspective as a guest that seemed to go very well. Everyone seemed to be very interested in trying the protein. I was surprised, pleasantly so, that there were some vegans who were taking part; is that something you expected? Or did you know that they were going to be there?
TW: There was a funny story about that, actually. So a vegan [at the event], she bought the tickets and then was kind of half-requesting a refund, because she was like, “Oh, we’re vegans, we didn’t realise, we thought it was just a normal alternative protein.” But then we started talking to her about the ethics of it. And she decided that she did want to come. Even though it wasn’t necessarily plant based – in fact, it’s an animal based protein that she would consider consuming – because of the sustainability aspects of it, which is really interesting, because we do see the product as a bit of a compromise between being vegan but also being animal-based. So it’s kind of an ethical way that you can be animal-based. Yeah, so you can get into the vegan community a little bit and the plant-based community, especially through an ethics and sustainability argument.
GW: It seems to me that this sort of approach is very, very much a big reason why people are going to plant-based diets, especially to flexitarian diets. Do you see Kera as something to be used on a meat-free Monday for those following a more flexitarian diet? Are you trying to go after converts? Possibly even vegetarians? Or are you focusing mostly on, you know, people who eat meat, who want to eat meat in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly manner?
SK: From my perspective, I feel like at the moment people convert into vegan[ism] because of not just their religions, or beliefs, but it’s just that they care about it, the planet, they care about the environmental aspects. Mostly a new generation.We did some blind testing with people. And surprisingly, one of the audience that test[ed] our product, she was saying, okay, she’s vegan, but because she doesn’t want to produce waste – when she heard about this project, our idea, she didn’t mind our product. To go back to your question, I will say we are targeting both of them. And also people who still enjoy eating meat – we still like providing a new alternative for them, an alternative way of consuming meat. We still can use products from animals, but we mostly want to use by-products.
TW: So we’re not limited by it being purely plant-based, which means we can kind of make it a bit more delicious. You can add those fats and the gelatin, for example, that makes it extra juicy, that you can’t get in other alternative proteins. Lots of vegans do struggle to get all the nutrients when they switch to a purely vegan diet. And I think this is a kind of compromise where they can still feel ethical, but get those nutrients from animal-based products. To form alternative proteins, you’re using 100% new material, you’re still having to source material, whether it be from farms, etc. This protein [keratin] already exists, you know, it’s just going to waste at the moment. So that’s a major advantage – it’s just sitting there.
GW: I wanted to ask you about how you source your feathers, because obviously Kera is a feather-based protein, the main part of that is keratin. So firstly, wherever there can be the process used for Kera, can it be used for other keratin sources like wool or hair or hooves or nails? And where you’re sourcing your feathers from and how you’re expecting that to scale as Kera grows as a company, where do you see this moving in terms of where your base products come from?
SK: Yeah, so now we are sourcing the chicken feather powder from a slaughterhouse back in Asia. So when I was in Asia, I was working with a lab in university. I was working with the university and the labs [were] helping me do a small batch of the extraction, [which] I’m still using now. I reached out to some slaughterhouses in Thailand to source it now, and throughout that process, what I take from them is small. Each day they kill about 10,000 birds. One batch I take from them is about 10 kg, each time that I visit the slaughterhouse – I think in a day, they produce about 50 kg. So I just took one fifth of it. And then [I] give it to the lab, and the labs help me dry it out, clean it out and store it.
TW: In terms of scalability as well, we are in talks with a biotechnology company at the moment. They have the ability to scale the project, they already have the technology – what we need to do is work with them to get the patented process, to achieve the food certifications. There’s something called the novel food certification in the UK, and each country has their own certification, but these can be quite difficult to get. Once we get it, you know, we’ll be the first to the market with the product. It was quite a coincidence, it was actually unrelated to the event, but we got contacted by this technology firm that had the capability and they can do large scale manufacturing right now.
GW: I believe, Sorawut, that this came from your MA project, your dissertation project. I was wondering if you could tell me about how the idea behind it came around in the first place, and how you then met Tom, founded Kera, and then come to a point where you’re at now – where, like you say, you’re talking to larger scale companies about the future of the product.
SK: Sure. Okay. So the background of the project; I did my MA degree at Central Saint Martin’s. And the course that I joined was called Material Futures. So basically it’s interdisciplinary design; you take out a scientific paper, and study what scientists have done in the paper, and then the designer part is you finding [an] application to that research: like to speculate, or find out what, how, we can make use of the research. I came across keratin as a material I was interested in working with. So at first I just looked at the waste streams that are available, what’s happening in the world. I saw, okay, chicken feather protein. Chicken feather is a problem in every region, in every part of the world, because people like to consume chicken a lot and also there is no restriction; every religion can consume chicken. So I see this problem, and I go through all the research, what they have done with this waste before. I will say, most people when they looked at chicken feather waste, they were looking at the physical property of it and they try to make bioplastic, they try to make containers or make, like, a brick block, just compress the chicken feathers into a brick, and use it in construction. I was researching that and I made bioplastic out of keratin powder, which came out quite nice.
The first application that I was looking at was keratin leather. So I incorporated chicken feather powder protein with bio-plastic binding agents. It came out quite well, it picked up the texture – similar to leather, you can see where the logos are, it kind of gives a similar effect to the real deal, real leather. When you engrave a letter, it creates the same texture, the same colours. When I use the keratin powder it increases the strength of the bioplastic, and also it’s increased the water resistance for the bioplastics, because, as chicken feathers, it’s not soluble in water – even though it’s been extracted into a powder. Somehow, when you put it in bioplastic, it keeps the bioplastic stronger.
GW: So the keratin is an integral part of this bioleather, it’s not just a filler additive? It actually creates better properties than the bioleather that’d be made with mycelium or seaweed or an alternative source?
SK: Yeah, I would say that. But a lot of people are doing that already. Bioplastics, there’s so many options, almost every waste stream they’ve found can turn into bioplastics. I want to find a new thing, a new application, because even if you turn it into bioplastic it’s not gonna solve the problem of chicken feather waste throughout the world. So I had an idea: rather than looking at the physical aspects of the chicken feather, I just looked at the chemical part of it. It just blew my mind that chicken feathers have a lot of protein, 91% by weight. Only 9% of the chicken feather is water. And when you look at the type of the protein that’s contained in chicken feathers, it’s amino acids that people need in everyday life. So what if we can access those amino acids? Then we can make it accessible for people, then we can get extra protein from each chicken. When I came across that I just thought, like, ok, I want to make chicken feathers edible. So then it was kind of my journey to research how to extract it.
[Sorawut shares his screen to show me a presentation from him and Tom]
Yeah, this is a picture of when I was visiting the slaughterhouse, you can see, that’s the amount of chicken feather waste that they produce every day. One chicken has a few thousand feathers each. And if we can access that we can get a free protein source. So then, okay, how can we break that down into a digestible form? We were interested in using an enzyme to break it down, because fewer harsh chemicals are involved, and also, it doesn’t require as much energy. The thing that you need is time. It’s a similar process to fermentation, you put the enzyme in the solution and then you put chicken feather in there. And we will start degrading the chicken into the amber solution, as you can see in the picture. And then, after it extracts, it’s going to become like the picture on the left hand side. But for easier storage, we can just suck out the water, and then it becomes a powder. Once we actually have the powder, we start applying it into food form, we bind it with the other food binding agents.
TW: So we use enzymes and the process is called hydrolysis, enzymes are used to break it down in a solution. So, full name, enzymatic hydrolysis.
GW: And then from that–
SK: From that, we kind of start our journey to Okay, how we can form the product? What kind of texture, what kind of product? Or, we’re gonna do a food application, but what kind of product is it that we need to design? When we talk to people about alternative protein, they think about something that replaces meat. When people talk about chicken feather protein, they say things like, “this is going to be like a cheap protein source, it’s going to be dirty, it’s not going to be that clean.” So I just want to review that – what if we came up with the outcome, or the product that shows that, okay, this product is equivalent to normal meat or normal vegan meat. That’s the initial idea, we want to market the texture and the taste of the chicken feather protein as normal meat.
GW: So I remember during the tasting last week, you told me about the cloud nuggets you’d designed – a sort of chicken nugget, coated in a cornflour batter, and how you’d used goose fat and gelatine to achieve a new texture and flavour dimension. Is that something you’re looking to continue doing? Kera as a flavour by itself had that very umami taste, almost fish-sauce like taste, are you looking to lean into that? Or to use Kera only as a protein source, and then get flavour and texture from other means?
TW: Yes, I mean, we need to add the flavour to get that meaty flavour and texture. The powder on its own gives more of a bitter taste, and it’s not going to replicate meat exactly. So there’s various seasonings [to use], and then for the nuggets, we wanted to create a really juicy product where we sealed in the fat and gelatin. But for example, the sliced product, which can also be fried and it can almost resemble, depending on how much you cook it, crispy bacon, or even a bit of chicken breast – that actually doesn’t have any other additives than the plant-based food binding agent and the protein powder, there’s no fats, there’s no gelatin. That’s just the raw product. We kind of see it as more of a blank slate protein, a bit like a chicken breast; chicken breast doesn’t have too much flavour to it. it’s just a good source of protein that could replicate meat in a meal, and you add it into any sort of recipe. And the point of the event was also to show the versatility, the chefs managed to integrate it in all these different ways.
GW: You’re talking just then about the use of protein powder in forming this, and it is, once you’ve broken it down, a keratin powder. Protein powders are used throughout a lot of life, but I think especially whey powders. I was wondering if there’s any sort of use for a keratin powder by itself? Does it improve your nails and your hair, as you’d expect from keratin, or does it have muscle-building properties, like whey proteins? Or is it more of a sort of general protein source? Is there any specific advantage to keratin as a protein over other forms of animal protein or plant based protein?
TW: Yeah, so keratin focuses primarily on hair, skin, and nails. So it’s associated with the repair and regrowth of hair, skin and nails, it’s taken as a supplement, and is added into things like shampoos and creams already. It hasn’t been used in foods yet. And it’s sourced by other means, through animal hides, for example. But none of which really embody the kind of zero waste ethos that we have. I mean, animal hides are still a waste product, but they’re not as heavily wasted globally as chicken feathers. And there are also other applications for those. But another advantage of it being keratin specifically is the high levels of antioxidants. So, yeah, combined with the hair, skin and nails, positive attributes, we see it as almost more of a kind of general health protein, almost a beauty protein, rather than a muscle growth protein, although it does have some muscle growth capabilities. It’s mainly associated with those more cosmetic perks.
GW: So in terms of filling out a meal, would you use Kera as the main protein source, would you use it as supplementary powder or dressing, or some other element of a dish alongside another protein source, in terms of getting your daily protein requirement? Can it fulfil that, or is it better suited as a condiment, for example?
TW: I would say it could be either. I wouldn’t necessarily say you’d have a huge steak of it, although you could have quite a lot of it. I would say it integrates best as a kind of chicken substitute, in my opinion; you could mix it into a stir fry, for example. I think it works very well like that.
SK: We did experiment a lot – it could turn into a lot of forms. We tested it out: making it as a caviar, making feather crisps, making it as zero carb pasta, where we extrude the pasta by using food binding agents. We put keratin powder in it. So when they consume this pasta, it’s gonna be high protein, and also there’s the antioxidants. This is kind of the initial idea, I was thinking, okay, a lot of people struggle to eat meat, especially the elderly, and also kids, they don’t have the ability to chew tough meat. So that’s why I came to this prototype as, what if, in terms of the nutrition aspect it’s equivalent to animal protein, but they don’t need to chew it? Basically, this kind of meat could melt in their mouth, and the protein that they get is from keratin. So we experimented, we made feather crackers, we made a burger, with a spongy-like form. We did it as a crouton. I got excited to do a protein bar, but when I do I don’t want to do a square protein bar – what if we can make a delicate protein bar out of chicken feather powder?
GW: And obviously here you’re using professional chefs and kitchens, how have you found it in terms of cooking at home? Is it easy to cook with, to store it? Obviously it has benefits in terms of storage, in terms of pathogen transmission compared to raw meat for example. How easy is it to overcook or to burn or to really screw up – are you finding that in the protein form you provide it as, as slabs, it’s an easy protein to work with in a home kitchen?
SK: I would say at first when I cooked with it it took some time to understand it a bit, but after say two times cooking with it it’s similar to vegan protein already available on the market.
TW: I would say yeah, in terms of storing it and eating it and cooking with it, it cooks very quickly, and as a matter of fact it’s precooked – part of the process is that we steam it before, so it’s kind of safe to eat “raw”, but we suggest at least giving it a light fry, I suggest it’s best when it’s been lightly fried, particularly the slices. We literally chuck it in the pan for a couple of minutes and it’s done.
SK: It gets dry easier than animal meat, but I’d say when you put some sauce to cook with it it works quite well.
TW: It depends on the product, the slices get dry quite fast because they haven’t got any fat in them, so you need butter or something, or to incorporate it within a sauce, but the cubes can be quite juicy and the nuggets definitely, they seal everything in.
GW: We spoke earlier about how there were vegans at the supper club you hosted with Laam, and Kera as an alternative protein source for people who are vegan or vegetarian for sustainable reasons rather than necessarily ethical ones; I was wondering if you had a view on Kera in terms of its allergens, could you use it as a non-allergenic ingredient in comparison to other proteins or other sources of protein, is there anywhere you’ve expressly found or targeted where Kera is a viable alternative for everyone without any allergic reactions?
TW: I mean we still use the conventional binders which have soy and cereal products, but I mean it doesn’t have any whey protein, so I suppose there’s no lactose risk. I wouldn’t necessarily say being anti-allergenic is its strength. It’s very similar to other alternative proteins in terms of allergens because it’s just soy and cereal.
GW: Would you explore using other binders or other fillers that aren’t soy or cereal based, to create other protein sources?
TW: We haven’t experimented it with being an anti-allergen protein, but we wouldn’t rule it out.
GW: There’s lots of different ways that you used Kera, in your experiments, especially in different foodstuffs, lots of different presentations. That, I find quite interesting. I was just wondering, taking it from that point, are you looking to do more collaborations with restaurants and supper clubs again, are you looking to move more into marketing it at a consumer level as opposed to a professional level?
TW: Yeah. So I’d say the end goal is definitely consumer level, we do want this to become a viable product that eventually makes profit and can come to the market so everyone can access it. But in the meantime, we are focusing on doing these kinds of marketing events. We want to do more collaborations, like the one that you attended. But also we’ve got an event coming up in June with the Thai embassy, they’re putting on a showcase of Thailand, Thai innovation, Thai technology, Thai culture in London. So we’ll be participating in that. [this happened in early July]
The reason we conceive these events is to change the perceptions of consuming what is, essentially a waste product. So what we really wanted to do was associate the protein with high end cooking. So that’s why we partnered with the chefs from Laam, who are really good at putting on these food events. They do really interesting and innovative food, and we wanted to, rather than it being associated with being cheap, and being a waste product, we wanted it to be oh no, this is an innovation, rather than those negative connotations. It’s something new rather than something that’s thrown in the bin.
GW: I was going to ask, because it seems like a very similar analogue in the past 10, 15 years in terms of using under-extracted resources of protein that are more environmentally sustainable than your traditional animal proteins would be insects, and especially how Western audiences have reacted to insects as a protein source. Some have been very happy to be experimental, some have been a lot more squeamish and unwilling to experiment. I don’t know if you’ve had any of these experiences with Kera, obviously, so far it has been mostly an internal review. With the Louie event a couple of weeks ago, and then any other tastings you’ve done, has there been anyone taking issue with the idea of consuming feather protein at all? Or have people been more welcoming and receptive to the idea of it?
TW: People are definitely hesitant. They’re interested, but they’re often hesitant. And yeah, some people do reject it at first. But I think they need to taste it. Because I think as soon as you taste one of the nuggets, I think you just treat it as another alternative protein. And it’s about breaking down those perceptions. It’s still a very large barrier, but I think what’s interesting is that you mentioned that in the last 15 years or so that we’ve been moving to this idea of more sustainable proteins. I think the perception of sustainability has also changed in the last few years, where it’s not just going vegan or just the idea of sustainability, it’s this kind of zero waste concept. I mean, I’ve seen it a lot on social media, of people living this zero waste lifestyle, and this new idea of sustainability – of actually, rather than just putting solar panels on your roof or something like that, you can integrate it into your lifestyle, don’t throw anything away, upcycle. And I see that as more of a growing trend now. And we’ve had this new concept of sustainability, like restaurants like Silo, in London, literally being a zero waste restaurant, hardly anything going to waste, that’s really trendy. We see ourselves aligning with that culture.
SK: Yeah. I think our project falls into the circular economy in a way, it’s not just being sustainable, but you create more value in the raw material that’s available.
TW: We’re solving a problem, and we think that’s what the best businesses do, is they solve a problem, and we’re trying to quite literally intervene and create from what is currently an expense that farmers have to pay to get rid of. We’re turning that into an asset.
GW: Are you looking for Kera to exist as a way to reduce carbon emission by that way? Or is it more of a method of increasing the efficiency per slaughter? If that makes sense to you, looking to do both, to have Kera as a product which means there needs to be less of a demand for animal protein, and therefore fewer animals slaughtered, and so on and so forth?
TW: I’d say both, because currently, it goes into landfill or is incinerated. So yeah, it would take the burden off just the raw animal protein itself. So for every 10 chickens, you can get an extra chicken’s worth of protein, essentially. So it means less animal deaths, and optimising an animal-based diet, and rethinking old ideas of the nose-to-tail diet, which is also a growing trend now. Through new technology, we’re able to now apply that to feathers, we see it like that. But then also, literally just not wasting the feathers, not chucking them away, or burning them. So in two dimensions, it’s more sustainable.
GW: Obviously with feathers as a byproduct – or resource, depending on how you look at it – it’s one that is only accessible to you after the slaughter, you can’t really harvest it from a living chicken. Are there other keratin sources that you’d be looking at that could be used to make a vegetarian Kera, where you’re using animal resources, but ones that don’t require slaughter in order to be created? Because I know that the feathers you use, there’s such a massive amount of them as a byproduct. Are there any other byproducts that you might use, that don’t require the death of an animal in order to produce?
TW: So in terms of implementing it into the protein, we can implement any kind of protein powder into our food form. So we actually have some pea protein in our product as well, just to enhance the protein content. I know being an animal product can be limiting for some people because yes, the chicken does still have to die. But I mean, we see this [feather waste] as the biggest existing problem. However, there’s no reason why wool, for example, couldn’t be converted in this way. The trouble with wool is that there’s other applications that are perhaps more efficient. And yeah, it’s –
GW: – itself a resource rather than a byproduct.
TW: Exactly.
SK: I researched the sources of keratin, which is mostly derived from animals, or humans. I don’t think plants can produce keratin, unless there’s synthetic keratin that they can do in a lab. But that’s not the main purpose of us doing that. I mean, if there is a new resource or byproduct that could deliver keratin from plants, or so it doesn’t harm animals, I think we can incorporate that into our product. Definitely.
TW: I think the trouble is, though, that the chicken is always going to be a relevant food source around the world, because, as Sorawut mentioned earlier, particularly in developing countries, chickens are highly relied upon, and actually, they have a very small carbon footprint anyway, relative to things like beef. So there’s always going to be feathers being disposed of, so why not use them? That’s kind of our philosophy. If you are plant-based, it’s a nice idea to not consume anything and not prop up any industry. But the reality is, the feathers are going to be generated one way or another. And I think, particularly in developing countries, where chicken is such a big part of the culture, it’s not going to change for a long time.
SK: Interestingly, when the project was exposed to the public, it wasn’t just chicken slaughterhouses that contacted me. We have one of the factory owners, he owns a tannery factory. When people talk about cows, they don’t think about the hairs of the cow that much. But he’s dealing with a lot of cow hairs in the tannery factory. So he was reaching out, “Okay, do you think, the extraction process turning chicken feather to a powder, could it be applied to the cow hairs?” Which, when I researched it, yes. I mean, it’s the same thing as it contains keratin. But there’s not as many amino acids as are available in the chicken feather.
GW: And those amino acids and other mineral and vitamin sources, are they ones that you wouldn’t be able to find in a plant-based diet without supplements? Or are they more available in other plant-based proteins, but this is sort of a meat based protein alternative to those?
TW: As far as I’m aware, keratin isn’t available in plant-based protein. You can supplement with other forms of protein, but you’re never gonna get the raw keratin; the antioxidants can be met with things like blueberries. But again, the perk of an animal-based diet is that you get nutrients but in higher concentrations. So yeah, the exact protein that you’re getting isn’t replicable, unless some new technology comes out.
SK: I mean, when you talk to the scientists as well, because, when they heard for the first time how much protein is available in the chicken feather by weight, when I say, okay, 91 [percent] they’re just impressed with the level of the protein inside of that. Even pea protein, or whey protein that they extract from milk, when it’s compared that ratio is better.
GW: So you get more for your money?
TW: It’s a very high yield, essentially.
GW: And with those feathers, you’re saying that the farmers are paying for them to be taken away or to be incinerated or to be put into landfill. I know this is still at the small scale that we talked about earlier – are you expecting this to be a reciprocal agreement where feathers are given to you for free as a waste management solution, or are you going to be sourcing your feathers and paying for them? Basically, in terms of the pricing of a product, How much are you expecting to collect, and are you going to get these feathers, hopefully for free, as a waste solution?
TW: The plan is they will be at least for free. But in actual fact, if the deal works out with the technologies company we’re working with, they already have a partner that gives them the feathers. So they’ve dealt with that all by themselves, they have some form of agreement, I’m assuming it’s at least for free, but in fact, they might actually get paid to take them away.
GW: And so in light of that, how are you looking to market in terms of value? A lot of your marketing is about Kera as a high-end market, high value, high-quality protein source, are we looking for it to be comparable to other protein sources like that, like chicken breast or even steak, or are you going to be comparing it more to plant-based proteins? Or because of the nature of the initial product, the feathers, and like you say, either getting them for free or being paid to receive them, are you looking to use Kera as a way of undercutting protein competition in the marketplace?
TW: I think definitely at first, we’ll go for the high end approach, even if it is affordable, to scale it and to undercut. I think the biggest problem at first is to break down the associations [of feathers]. So I think when we’ve talked about this and done our initial marketing studies, we were thinking of playing on it being an innovation and more of a kind of exotic protein. So you see, you can get ostrich burgers, things like that. And it could be branded in such a way and priced in such a way that you’d see it as more of a novelty, and it being more exotic than just a cheaper meat.
GW: It seems to me that the difficulty with the novelty attitude is that the market can be very, very limited. And when we’re talking about 40 million tonnes of feathers annually, that’s a lot of market that you can capture – initially looking at it as a novelty, and an innovative product, are you then expecting to change your marketing strategy to try and catch more of a market or is that something that you’re not in the place of working out yet?
TW: I mean, it depends entirely on our scalability. And it’s something that we definitely need to work out. We know we can extract the actual protein at a large scale but then it’s also about the food-forming process and then how that works to deliver the final product but I think eventually, I see no reason why it couldn’t be more affordable. But the big trouble is, I think if we price it too low, people are just going to treat it as literal waste: they’ll think it’s a wasted protein source and then it won’t be valued very highly.
SK: We’re trying to follow the pattern of how they introduced insect protein into the market. There’s a lot of research saying the reason why they marketed insect eating in a fancy restaurant, or by having a celebrity test it first, is because it breaks down the social barrier. t’s aligned with the cost of production as well, because we are now doing it at the small lab scale, where the costs of producing the feather powder is still quite high. At first we want to break down social barriers, we want to make it look more beautiful or fancy, have well-known people try it, and start talking about that, and then it’s gonna break down the barrier to the broader audience. Eventually, yes, the purpose of doing this business is like, we’re doing a food application but at the same time we want to provide a new way of managing waste in the West, in the food industry – in a way, we propose a new way of managing chicken feather waste in the food industry.
GW: To me, what I’ve been reading about Kera, and from my experience of it, it seems like you have two products almost: you’ve got the finalised Kera protein, the one that you’ve turned into a meat substitute, the one you’re using for cooking and you’re using for producing these fantastic meals and dishes with, and then the other one is the Kera protein itself. I can’t help but feel like that is very similar to gelatine as a product, it’s a large scale industrial slaughter byproduct. The provenance isn’t really there in terms of where it’s sourced, because it doesn’t really matter as a byproduct; you’re not asking where the hooves in your gelatine are coming from, you know? I’m just wondering how you are finding marketing that gap between the large scale protein source that you’re producing, and then the high-end foodstuff that you are marketing as a final product, how is it bridging that divide between the two?
TW: So, I mean, the reason why we focused on the food product is because it’s the most appealing, it’s kind of the sexiest product that garnered the most attention. People have the most emotional reaction to it being food, they’re like, “wow, it’s meat from feathers”. And we’ve gone off from that. We think this is the best way for it to enter the market. But essentially, we see Kera as a waste management solution at the end of the day. So we want to be the middleman between the powder producers, and the actual market. Scientists and technology labs, they’re the experts, and they have the facilities to create the powder. They have the know-how and the capability to do that. But our background, as designers, we can think of ways of turning that into something of value. Okay, you can use the powder as a supplement or something if you’re not as creative, which is an oversaturated market, although it’s still a possibility. But we think we can add value by packaging it in a way that will make it more appealing to the consumer, whether that be the food form, or some kind of cream, or just different forms, and presenting it as a way for large companies to turn their expense into an asset and a revenue stream.
GW: Based on what you’ve said, the final foodstuff is what you say is most marketable. Would you consider using the protein and the processes that you’ve developed for these feathers, rather than in the final foodstuff, as you know, an ingredient or an additive in protein powders or in other foods elsewhere? There could be a requirement for keratin protein that can’t be addressed through consumption – are you dead set on it being a foodstuff, that’s a protein, that’s a meat substitute?
TW: Definitely, we would definitely want it to be used, particularly consumed. Because once we remove the barriers of the food certifications, all these things are possible. And we definitely want to do that. But it’s more about how we differentiate ourselves from the competition. The supplement industry is so competitive, and yeah, you can get pills for anything, and there’s 100 brands doing it. It’s very difficult to stand out because I mean, a pill is a pill, whereas alternative proteins vary so much in texture and taste. There’s also the narrative behind it.
SK: I would say that we are considering other applications of the keratin, but it’s just like, okay, the first kind of activity we need to do, is if people are open minded to eat meat from chicken feather, I think other applications of the keratin powder are going to be a lot easier to make people accept. So obviously, if we achieve this milestone, I will say yes, we can achieve the other applications. So we’re doing the most difficult part first.
GW: Well, thank you very much for explaining it to me. I just wanted to ask, where are you taking Kera next? At the Supperclub you showcased Kera in a whole variety of manners – deep fried, turned into nuggets, turned into something that resembles scrambled eggs, mixed into sauces. Are there any novel foodforms or systems you’re interested in pursuing in terms of creating Kera, creating that higher-end protein source that you are looking for? What’s the next step of that?
TW: Well, I think in terms of food forms, yes, we want to keep experimenting with those. For example, we want to launch a crisp, we think that’d be a really nice idea, like a protein crisp. But in the background, the big to-do on our list is the novel foods certification. This process can be quite lengthy and expensive. And we want to invest our time and money into achieving that to remove future barriers. And it has to be done now, in terms of our timeline. But in the meantime, we’re exploring other ideas, such as integrating the protein into a pet food or a dog food. What this would be able to do is get us some income, whilst we’re achieving the novel food certification: to get it into pet food is far easier. And it could be a way of establishing the business earlier on and supporting the novel foods application, etc. So everything that we’re doing now is in the context of achieving the larger goal of commercialising the product. So, yes, we want to keep doing these events, we want to keep creating new marketable products, but no-one’s going to be able to buy these in the supermarket unless we do these other things in the background. So everything’s in the context of that, everything we’re doing now.
