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Mike Murray Has Spent a Career Changing What Belongs in the Dairy Aisle
From LÄRABAR to almond-milk ricotta, the Kite Hill CEO has made a specialty of turning dietary alternatives into ordinary groceries. His career is a study in how mission, taste and supermarket scale negotiate with one another.
Sandeep Patel
Sandeep Patel is the chairman and CEO of Bettani Farms, the Berkeley plant-based cheese company that rebranded from Climax Foods in October 2025 alongside a $6.5 million Series A round led by S2G Investments. A former CFO at Califia Farms, president and CFO at PopSockets, and managing director at Goldman Sachs and Barclays, Patel was a Bettani advisor since 2021 before taking the top job. He is betting the company's proprietary Caseed ingredient - a casein-mimicking protein pulled from regenerative seed crops, free of dairy, soy and nuts - can finally give vegan mozzarella the stretch and melt that pizza demands. His pitch: do for pizza what oat milk did for coffee.