A recent investigation conducted by Wired documented what might be regarded as the end game of the high-wire balancing act conducted by Josh Tetrick over the past 15 years. His most recently named enterprise Eat Just (after operating as Hampton Creek and variations of ‘Just’), is beset with claims from suppliers claiming multimillions for ordered equipment and services.  The ethics displayed by companies controlled by Tetrick have been questionable from the outset including the deceptive buybacks of his ersatz mayonnaise and alleged staged tours of his facilities according to ex-employees.

Based on limited sales of high-priced egg substitutes and a failure to achieve production volume of cell-cultured meat, Tetrick’s companies in their various iterations have always experienced problems of cash flow.

Essentially, Tetrick has survived by persuading cupid investors including the Qatar Investment Authority and VC companies in the U.S and Asia into funding his operations.  It is understood that over the years, Tetrick has raised over $850 million with little to show for it in the form of market penetration of viable food products derived from plant sources.

Among creditors of the Tetrick companies are ABEC, an engineering company that is claiming $61 million for bioreactors required to produce cell-cultured meat, an engineering consulting group claiming $4.2 million and an ingredients supplier claiming $0.5 million.  According to Wired financial problems at Eat Just were evident in 2019 with numerous lawsuits including unpaid rent amounting to $2.6 million, Fedex claiming $72,000 and even an inconsequential amount of $15,000 owed to ADM for ingredients.

Until the early 2000s, Tetrick was able to stay afloat through his ability to raise venture capital based on name-dropping, hype and contrived publicity.  In accordance with the Lincoln adage that it is possible to mislead all of the people for some of the time, Tetrick remained in business promising the ‘next big thing’.  His major error appears to have been a commitment to cell-cultivated production of meat, both popular and extremely fundable five years ago, but requiring high capital investment, with his speculative project estimated at $1 billion.

In common with other major aspirants to the field of commercial cell-cultured meat, technical problems in converting from a pilot plant to large-scale production has apparently stymied his efforts and he is evidently stuck with obligations to suppliers. With no product to sell and the absence of a demonstrable market, despite approval of cell-cultured meat in Singapore and now in the U.S., his expanded Companies operate with negative cash flow. There are probably no more willing investors to support his style of business, confirming Lincoln in that it is impossible to mislead all of the people all of the time.

The food industry will not miss Josh Tetrick with his self-aggrandizing rhetoric and his attacks on conventional livestock production.  In the late 1990s, he predicted that his plant-based mayonnaise and egg substitutes would make conventional production obsolete.  A quarter of a century later, there are now 325 million hens laying in the U.S. and Just Egg has a miniscule share of the total market for egg products.

Perhaps this commentator is premature and that Josh Tetrick, an accomplished fund-raiser, will be able to pull another rabbit out of a hat. Given his track record and the technical problems involved in production of commercial quantities of cell-cultured meat, this appears improbable.  Will we miss him?  Nah!