Market analysis of consumers and food professionals’ perception of microalgae

We found business opportunities for microalgae in the Food Industry in France, Spain and Germany

For decades, people working in the food industry and early adopters of food as medicine concepts have been aware of the enormous potential of microalgae for human nutrition, especially looking into the challenges we will face in the coming years with a growing population, deforestation, and climate change, to name a few.

Yet, market adoption has been slow and still very niche. On the production side, we’re just scratching the surface, with 70% of the microalgae available in the market today, being only 2 of the hundreds of thousands of varieties with potential for human nutrition.

Along with a multistakeholder European project and a recognized educational gastronomic institution, Mycelium joined the quest to start to understand how gastronomy can help crack the case for the larger adoption of microalgae as an ingredient.

To do so, and applying user-centered methodologies, we immersed ourselves in three different realms of gastronomy’s value chain: the food processing industry, from startups to global leaders; the chefs and restaurateurs, from Michelin stars to up-and-coming chains; and finally, and at the center, the people.

We explored these spaces in Spain, France, and Germany; completing 50+ plus qualitative, in-depth interviews; that yielded some eye-opening insights that we believe are actionable for the project, for planning their stages to market for microalgae as an ingredient, from possible partnerships, channels, advocates & influencers to use cases that could unlock mass adoption.

The Challenge:

How might we viably use microalgae in the food processing industry, high-end and specialized restaurants as an ingredient to create high-acceptance products for the end consumer?

How we tackled it

Alignment

We first convened with the institution to define:

The specific challenge we want to explore
What is and what isn’t our focus
Key goals & obstacles
Context - what we know and what we know we don’t know about consumer needs, larger drivers of change and our competitors to name a few…
Segmentation hypothesis - which companies in the food industry? Which kinds of restaurants? And consumers?

Tool development

We then co-created the interview scripts for each segment, for a two-fold interview:

Frame: We understood who we were talking to and their main pain points or goals, whether as a business or as a consumer.
Explore: We assessed their baseline knowledge about microalgae
Contextualize: We introduced some key concepts about microalgae to gauge interest
Develop: We understood specific challenges different segments face, and tried to prompt them to think about possible solutions (viability/likability)

Research

We scouted, interviewed, and delivered transcripts with key insights from each interview

Heads of R&D or Marketing for global leading companies in industries like dairy, specialized nutrition, or chocolate
C-suite level executives of the most promising startups in industries like alternative protein, precision fermentation, breakfast solutions, or next-generation baby food.
Michelin star chefs
Large luxury hotel brand chefs
Up-and-coming rising star chefs
R&D for up-and-coming food chains with a global presence
People: from 25-45-year-olds, parents, singles, with shared-living arrangements, vegans, vegetarians, sports people, flexitarians…