clean-label
(16)
Incredo
Incredo (formerly DouxMatok) is a foodtech company that makes real cane and beet sugar taste sweeter, letting food manufacturers cut sugar by 30-50% without artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols or a change in taste, mouthfeel or texture. Its patented Incredo Sugar binds sugar to a natural carrier so it dissolves and reaches taste receptors more efficiently, and because it is still sugar it can be labeled cleanly. Founded in Israel in 2014 and rebranded to Incredo in 2023 alongside a $30M Series C, the company works B2B with confectionery, bakery and spread makers to reformulate everyday sweet products.
Kelly Thompson
Kelly Thompson is a food industry executive with more than 30 years of experience who led Incredo (formerly DouxMatok), the sugar-reduction technology company behind Incredo Sugar. Trained as a food engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she built her career in research, development and quality at Kraft Foods, WhiteWave Foods and Continental Mills before joining Incredo in 2022 to head North America. She rose to Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Executive Officer, steering the commercialization of a real-cane-sugar ingredient that lets manufacturers cut sugar by up to half while keeping the taste.
Berri Organics
Berri Organics is a Santa Monica-based beverage company that makes organic, plant-based electrolyte and fitness drinks under its Berri Lyte and Berri Fit lines. Founded by cancer survivor Jerome Tse, the company positions its products as clean, low-sugar alternatives to conventional sports drinks and oral rehydration solutions, using ingredients like coconut water, sweet potato, ginseng root, sea salt and maqui berries. Berri products are sold in roughly 2,000 retail stores nationwide - including Whole Foods, CVS, Target, Sprouts, Wegmans and Stop & Shop - as well as on Amazon and its own D2C site, and the company donates a portion of every sale to pediatric cancer causes.
GEM
GEM is a Los Angeles-based wellness company that reimagines the daily multivitamin as a whole-food bite rather than a pill or gummy. Founded in 2018 by Sara Cullen, GEM packs 20+ vitamins, minerals, superfoods, prebiotics, probiotics and microalgae into a single real-food chew, sold mainly through a subscription model plus retail and Amazon. Its pitch is 'food is medicine' - transparent, plant-based, and traceable nutrition for people who distrust synthetic supplements.
Pique
Pique (piquelife.com) is a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer wellness brand best known for pioneering crystallized whole-leaf tea. Founded by Simon Cheng, the company turns organic teas and plant compounds into single-serve crystals that dissolve in cold or hot water, and it has expanded into skin, gut, hydration and energy supplements built around its Cold Extraction Technology and Triple Toxin Screening standards.
PlantBaby
PlantBaby is a Hawaii-born, San Francisco-linked plant-based nutrition company founded by husband-and-wife team Alex and Lauren Abelin. Its flagship brand, Kiki Milk, is billed as the first organic, clean-label plant milk designed specifically for children - built from whole-food ingredients like oats, sprouted pumpkin and hemp seeds, and Aquamin marine calcium, with no gums, seed oils, refined sugars, or synthetic additives. Formulated with a pediatrician and nutritionist and triple-toxin tested for mold, heavy metals, and pesticides, PlantBaby sells direct-to-consumer and through retailers including Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon, and Thrive Market. The company has raised roughly $7 million and reached a $20 million valuation on a mission to nourish, inform, and empower the next generation while backing regenerative agriculture.
Alex Abelin
Alex Abelin is the co-founder and CEO of PlantBaby, the Hawaii-based company behind Kiki Milk, a whole-food, organic plant-based milk built for kids. A three-time founder who spent seven years at Google and sold his smart-city startup LQD WiFi to Verizon in 2016, he traded payphone kiosks for pumpkin seeds after he and his wife Lauren couldn't find a clean plant milk for their son. PlantBaby has raised roughly $7M and hit $4.8M in revenue in 2024, selling through its own site plus Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon and Thrive Market.
Bonafide Provisions
Bonafide Provisions is a Carlsbad, California maker of organic, traditionally-prepared bone broth founded in 2011 by clinical nutritionist Sharon Brown and her chef husband Reb. Born after bone broth helped heal their young son's chronic infections, the company became the first USDA Organic frozen broth on the market and has since expanded into shelf-stable cooking broths, paleo soups and heat-and-go keto broth cups. Its products are sold nationwide through Whole Foods, Sprouts, Kroger, Target, Publix and Walmart.
Gainful
Gainful is a New York-based personalized sports nutrition company that builds custom protein powders, hydration, pre-workout and performance supplements tailored to each customer's body, goals and dietary needs. Customers take an online quiz, get a formula matched to them by Gainful's algorithm and registered dietitians, and can chat with a real RD about it. Founded by high-school soccer teammates Eric Wu and Jahaan Ansari and incubated at Y Combinator, the brand grew from a dorm-room experiment into a profitable, multi-channel business now sold direct-to-consumer and in Target stores nationwide.
Little Sesame
Little Sesame is a Washington, D.C.-born food company that makes freshly spun, organic hummus from regeneratively farmed American chickpeas. What began in a 500-square-foot basement beneath a deli has grown into a two-part business: a fast-casual hummus restaurant and a national consumer-packaged-goods brand sold in more than 1,000 retail doors, including Whole Foods, Sprouts and Wegmans. The company pairs chef-driven flavor with a direct, traceable supply chain that supports regenerative organic farmers and treats good agriculture as a climate tool.
Plant People
Plant People is a plant-based functional wellness brand making science-backed, zero-sugar supplements built around functional mushrooms, adaptogens, and vitamins. Founded by Hudson Gaines-Ross and chef Gabe Kennedy, the company sells a line of 'Wonder' gummies and chews - WonderDay, WonderSleep, WonderFocus, WonderCalm and more - direct-to-consumer and through major retailers including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, REI and Amazon. A Certified B Corporation, Plant People grew profitably for roughly seven years before raising a Series A led by Manna Tree Partners in November 2025.
Kerry Song
Kerry Song is the founder and CEO of Abbot's (formerly Abbot's Butcher), a Costa Mesa, California plant-based meat company she launched in 2017. A Princeton economics graduate who once worked in finance at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup and spent five years as a brand strategist for Tony Robbins, she built Abbot's around a strict clean-label promise: no gluten, no soy, no gums, no synthetic flavors, no preservatives. The brand became the only Whole30 Approved plant-based meat and grew from a Venice farmers-market table into a category leader stocked in thousands of retailers including Sprouts, Publix and Target.
Nick Wiseman
Nick Wiseman is the co-founder and CEO of Little Sesame, a Washington, D.C. born hummus company that grew from a 500-square-foot restaurant basement into a national consumer brand sold in nearly 3,000 stores. A third-generation Washingtonian who started cooking at 15 and trained on New York's fine-dining line, Wiseman built Little Sesame with chef Ronen Tenne and cousin David Wiseman, anchoring the brand to regeneratively grown organic chickpeas from Montana. In July 2025 the company closed an $8.5M Series A to fund a new 23,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and a push to convert 10,000 acres to regenerative farming by 2027.
Basic American Foods
Basic American Foods is a family-owned food production company founded in 1933 and headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. It is the world's largest producer of dehydrated potato products, best known for Potato Pearls premium mashed potatoes, Golden Grill hash browns, and Santiago refried beans. The company serves foodservice operators, retail consumer brands, and food manufacturers through its ingredients business, sourcing potatoes from prime growing regions in Idaho and Washington.
The EVERY Company
The EVERY Company is a San Francisco Bay Area biotech that uses precision fermentation to brew real egg proteins (ovalbumin, pepsin, and more) without chickens. Its ingredients - OvoPro, EVERY Egg White, and EVERY Protein - power baked goods, beverages, and protein bars sold by food brands ranging from startups to multinationals.
Arturo Elizondo
Arturo Elizondo is the co-founder and CEO of The EVERY Company (formerly Clara Foods), the precision fermentation biotech pioneering animal-free egg proteins used by food brands worldwide. Born in Laredo, Texas, educated at Harvard, and seasoned by stints at the White House, USDA, and Credit Suisse, he co-founded the company in 2014 after meeting a cell biologist at a food-tech conference. Under his leadership, EVERY has raised over $471M, launched the world's first animal-free egg protein into Walmart, attracted actress Anne Hathaway as an investor, and earned Elizondo the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2023 Bay Area Award. His mission: end factory farming by making fermentation-derived proteins cheaper, cleaner, and better than the real thing.