and introduce some innovation into an industry that hasn’t seen innovation for centuries,” Valeti says. From Memphis to San Francisco Memphis Meats may have “Memphis” in the name, but the actual work is being done in San Francisco. They chose the name Memphis Meats as a way to pay homage to Memphis’ barbecue culture. “We wanted to bring the strength of innovation from Silicon Valley and the meatloving culture of Memphis together,” says Valeti, a former cardiologist. Clem, one of the company’s cofounders and tissue engineers, is the local tie. He grew up in Alabama, surrounded by barbecue. His grandparents founded the Whitt’s Barbecue chain, which grew to more than 40 locations around the South. But the young Clem was drawn to the science world and went off to the University of Michigan to earn his master’s degree and then the University of Alabama at Birmingham for a PhD in tissue engineering. He wound up in Memphis with a career The Memphis Meats as a human tissue engineer for Wright team prefers to call Medical. But Clem couldn’t resist the siren song of barbecue, and he soon found their product “cultured himself back in the restaurant industry. meat” rather than “lab He opened Baby Jack’s (named after his younger son) in 2012 as a side project, meat,” and it’s grown in but business picked up so much that he incubator tanks over a eventually left Wright Medical to operate period of weeks. the restaurant full-time. He was drawn back into the science world, though. Last fall, he got a phone call from an old college friend, Nick Genovese, another of Memphis Meats’ cofounders. “I met Nick when we were in business school in Birmingham in 2007 or 2008. He was already talking about this cultured meat idea back then,” Clem says. “Fast forward about 10 years, and I’m carrying boxes into the restaurant. We’d just signed a lease on a second store in Arlington, and we were two to three weeks from opening it. And Nick calls and says, ‘Well, I’m ready. Let’s start that cultured meat company.’” Clem dropped everything and was on his way to Minneapolis, where Genovese and Valeti were, the next day. The Memphis Meats project was so important to Clem that he had to put the Arlington Baby Jack’s opening on hold, and he also left his son Nathan, who was 4 months old at the time, and wife behind in Memphis.
The team — Valeti, Genovese, and Clem — formed a business plan and proposal and applied to IndieBio, a business incubator in San Francisco. They were accepted into the four-month program, so they headed to California to get started on developing a cultured meat prototype. By “demo day” — when all the incubator participants pitch their businesses to investors — on February 4th, they’d already secured $2.75 million in funding, which exceeded their goal of $1.5 million. Much of that money is coming from New Crop Capital, which, according to its website, “invest[s] in talented, focused entrepreneurs whose products or services replace foods derived from conventional animal agriculture, which we view as an antiquated and inefficient food production system with serious vulnerabilities.” Bruce Friedrich is the managing trustee of that venture capital firm. Friedrich also serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Good Food Institute, which provides strategic support and promotion for companies working on cultured meat products and plant-based meat, milk, and egg products. “They are creating meat that tastes the same as the meat from farmed animals, but this is more sustainable,” Friedrich says about why his firm got behind Memphis Meats. Genovese knows a thing or two about conventional farming. The stem cell biologist grew up on a poultry farm, helping his family raise chickens, before going on to become a bioprocess technician with a doctoral thesis in cancer biology. The self-professed meatlover is now a vegetarian pioneering more sustainable ways to produce meat. Valeti is a former cardiologist, and he says growing cultured meat isn’t unlike the work he used to do in the medical field. “We use cells to regenerate heart muscle in patients who have had heart attacks. If we’re injecting cells into the hearts of humans to grow new muscle, why couldn’t we apply the same technology to growing meat?” How It’s Made What Memphis Meats is doing with cultured meat isn’t unlike what Clem was doing with human tissue in his Wright Medical days or what Valeti was doing with his heart patients. “You start with a small number of cells, even just a single cell taken from the muscle. That can be pork, beef, chicken, or you can be really fancy and have some type of exotic meat, like lion or something. Who knows?” Clem explains. “We multiply those cells in incubators, and you can turn a few cells into many. It takes about one to three weeks.” The meat is grown in tanks that Clem says are similar to something you’d see in a craft beer brewery. “A lot of restaurants have a beer tank in the corner, and they’re brewing an IPA. Well, continued on page 16
COVER STORY m e m p h i s f l y e r. c o m
JUSTIN FOX BURKS
Will Clem points to the new blank menu at Baby Jack’s, where prototype products may be featured; Clem opened Baby Jack’s BBQ in 2012.
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