vegan-ice-cream
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Ben & Jerry's
How two friends from a $5 ice cream course turned a renovated Vermont gas station into a global brand - and why its founders are now at war with the company that owns it.
Thomas Bowman
Thomas Bowman is a James Beard-nominated chef turned food scientist and the co-founder of Eclipse Foods, an Alameda, California company building molecule-for-molecule plant-based replacements for dairy. After cooking and staging at restaurants that together held 16 Michelin stars and leading product development at JUST (formerly Hampton Creek), Bowman set out to recreate the taste and texture of dairy from non-GMO plants like oats, corn, and potatoes. Eclipse launched in 2019 out of Y Combinator, chose ice cream as its flagship, and has raised roughly $96 million to date, reaching retailers, foodservice, and direct-to-consumer channels.
Eclipse Foods
Eclipse Foods is an Alameda, California food-technology company making plant-based dairy products - ice cream and, since 2025, a non-dairy whole milk - engineered to be molecule-for-molecule indistinguishable from conventional dairy. Founded in 2019 by chef Thomas Bowman and food-systems entrepreneur Aylon Steinhart, Eclipse uses a proprietary blend of non-GMO plants like cassava, corn, potato and fava rather than nuts, soy, coconut or oats to recreate dairy's taste, texture and functionality. It sells through retail (Amazon, Whole Foods and regional grocers) and to foodservice partners including scoop shops, diners and burger chains.