July 2023 was a landmark moment for the cultivated meat industry. For the first time, meat brewed directly from chicken cells went on sale in two US restaurants after a pair of California startups got a greenlight from the US Department of Agriculture. The US had joined Singapore as the only places where the public could buy it.
Now cultivated meat is no longer available in any restaurants in the US, Singapore, or anywhere else. The small handful of restaurants that sold cultivated meat have paused or stopped sales, while the two startups cleared to sell it in those two countries are considering their next moves.
On July 1, 2023, Upside Foods held the first public sale of its cultivated chicken. The event took place at Michelin-starred restaurant Bar Crenn in San Francisco. Soon afterwards, Bar Crenn—helmed by celebrity chef Dominique Crenn—started offering Upside’s chicken as part of a six-course, $150 tasting menu. The limited seatings for these meals took place on the first weekend of each month from August 4, 2023.
Bar Crenn had taken meat off its menu altogether in 2018, so the Upside partnership marked the first time that any meat other than seafood had been served at the restaurant for years. “We are thrilled to bring meat back to our menu with a partner that shares our values and ingredient standards,” read a section of Bar Crenn’s website announcing the partnership. But in mid-January 2024, the restaurant’s website was updated to remove the reference to its partnership with Upside.
WIRED approached Upside Foods for comment on January 31 about this change. Shortly afterwards the company published a LinkedIn post announcing that it had “wrapped up” its dinner series at Bar Crenn and planned to take its chicken “on the road.” Neither Dominique Crenn nor Bar Crenn responded to multiple requests for comment.
“We are proud to have partnered with Chef Dominique Crenn to make history, from the first-ever US sale of cultivated meat to a series of Upside dinners at Bar Crenn that delighted consumers with a delicious taste of the future,” wrote Upside in an emailed statement provided by its interim head of communications, Melissa Musiker.
In September 2023, a WIRED investigation revealed how Upside’s production of chicken for its Bar Crenn partnership required a large amount of single-use plastic. Bar Crenn’s website states that it is a “certified plastic-free” restaurant. “We work closely with all of our vendors to educate them on their use of plastics and their impact on the planet,” its website says.
In July 2023, another Californian startup started selling its cultivated chicken. This time it was Good Meat—a subsidiary of Eat Just. The company sold its chicken to a limited number of diners at chef José Andrés’ restaurant, China Chilcano, in Washington, DC. But in September 2023 the China Chilcano website was updated to say that reservations to try the Good Meat chicken “are currently paused.” José Andrés did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
“The restaurant dinners we held at China Chilcano in Washington, DC last summer went extremely well,” wrote Eat Just’s director of global communications, Carrie Kabat, in an emailed statement to WIRED. “We plan to resume these dinners this year.”
Good Meat/Eat Just’s chicken had also previously been on sale in Singapore, but sales there have also been paused. “In Singapore, we are ramping up production and plan to begin serving shortly,” Kabat wrote.
The goal of these early cultivated meat sales was likely to generate buzz, gauge public reaction, and raise awareness of the industry, says Steve Molino, an investor at Clear Current Capital, a plant-based and cultivated meat venture capital firm, who has not invested in either Eat Just or Upside Foods. “It accomplished what it needed to accomplish and now it’s time to refocus,” Molino says, noting that the companies probably made a loss on the sale of their meat given the high costs of production.
Eat Just is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with a former partner over alleged unpaid invoices. In a November 2023 WIRED investigation, former employees alleged that the company was struggling financially and failed to pay vendors on time. “The reality for us now is we need to figure out a way to build large-scale facilities without spending north of half a billion dollars, because it’s simply not viable long-term,” Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick told WIRED at the time. “There has to be a better way of doing it. And if we can’t figure out a different way of doing it, then what we’re doing won’t work.”
Although cultivated meat is no longer on sale in the US and Singapore, both Eat Just and Upside Foods told WIRED that they planned to relaunch sales in 2024. And last month, Israel-based Aleph Farms received regulatory approval from the Israeli Ministry of Health for its cultivated beef product: a mix of beef cells and plant protein. The company still requires an inspection of its pilot production facility in Rehovot and directions on labeling and marketing from Israeli regulators before it can sell its product in Israel.
“Post inspection of our production facility, Aleph Cuts will be introduced in targeted tasting experiences for consumers and relevant stakeholders,” says Aleph Farms CEO and cofounder Didier Toubia. “This phase of limited market activations allows us to gather feedback from consumers, refine our brand positioning collaboratively with them, and lay the foundation for a successful long-term launch.”
Sheila Voss, senior vice president of communications at the alternative protein nonprofit the Good Food Institute, says she expects the rollout of cultivated meat to continue in the US.
“As we saw in Singapore, the first country in the world to approve the sale of cultivated meat, the rollout to consumers migrated across fine dining restaurants, home delivery, and hawker stalls, highlighting the versatility of this product, and we expect similar introductory rollouts in the US,” she says. “We are still at the very early stages of cultivated meat’s entrance into the marketplace.”