A chemical engineer who left a coveted MIT lab to ask a stranger question: what if your snack came in a peel instead of a plastic bag?
Pick up a peach. The skin holds the sweetness in, keeps the world out, and asks for no plastic to do it. Marty Kolewe looked at that arrangement and saw a business model.
Kolewe is the CEO, President, and CTO of Foodberry, a Boston company that reverse-engineers the chemistry of fruit and vegetable peels. The idea is deceptively plain: nature already solved food packaging, so copy nature. In practice it means building edible, non-permeable barriers out of plant fibers, phytonutrients, and minerals - membranes that wrap hummus, ice cream, coffee, yogurt, and peanut butter without a wrapper in sight.
He did not arrive here by the usual food-industry route. Kolewe holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from UMass Amherst. He then landed a postdoc at MIT's Langer Lab under Bob Langer, studying drug delivery and biomaterials - the kind of position that usually points straight into a pharmaceutical career. He pointed it at snacks instead.
“There's such potential in food to take a more tech and science-forward approach that delivers for both people and the planet.”
The origin is almost too tidy. Kolewe was taking a course at Harvard taught by professor David Edwards - an inventor with a habit of turning classroom provocations into companies. Edwards floated the notion of reverse-engineering fruit skin to make edible packaging. Kolewe heard it and didn't let it go. The two co-founded what became Foodberry.
The company has worn three names in its life. It began as WikiFoods, which Time magazine singled out in 2014 for creating an edible wrapper. It became Incredible Foods. Now it is Foodberry - a name that finally says what the thing does: it makes food into berries, little self-contained bites that carry their own skin.
Kolewe began raising seed capital around 2019, gathering roughly $13 million before turning to the Series A. In May 2023 he told Axios the company was raising $15 million to close by year's end.
What Foodberry sells isn't really the snack. It's the science underneath - a platform of controlled-release membranes, microencapsulation, and coatings tuned to keep the outside out and the flavor in. Kolewe made an early and important call: stop being a consumer brand, start being a technology partner.
The reasoning is human, not just commercial. Shoppers hesitate over a strange new bite. But put a trusted brand's name on it, and the hesitation drops. So Foodberry licenses its coatings to companies people already know. Kolewe describes it as “more a platform than just a product.”
“Change the product, not just the packaging.”
The catalog reads like a dare. Each item is a familiar food wrapped in a skin engineered to mimic a peel - no spoon, no wrapper, no fuss.
B.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering, the foundation for everything that follows.
Postdoc in drug delivery and biomaterials under Bob Langer - a launchpad he chose not to use for pharma.
Professor David Edwards pitches edible packaging from fruit skin. A company is born.
Roughly $13 million raised as Incredible Foods finds its footing.
Kolewe publishes his thesis in Boston Hospitality Review; NadaMoo! frozen snack bites roll out.
Kolewe tells Axios the round will close by year's end.
Babybel's owner signs on for a fruit-and-protein snack, first product due in select U.S. markets in 2026.
Twenty-plus patents on edible barrier membranes - the moat around the biomimicry.
About $13M seed plus a $15M Series A, funding the shift from brand to platform.
NadaMoo!, Keji, and Bel Group - the trusted brands that carry the strange new bite.
Reoriented Foodberry from selling to shoppers to licensing to food giants.
Runs R&D, quality, engineering, and operations - the scientist who never left the bench.
Traded a Langer Lab trajectory for a company that makes food wrap you can eat.
Kolewe's ambition isn't a better bag. It's a better bite - portable, personalized, and self-contained. Hummus berries. Cream-cheese berries. Foods that carry their own skin and leave nothing behind. The wrapper you don't throw away because you already ate it.
“The future of food is a berry.”