The Brave New Food Startup Challenge is a unique opportunity to accelerate your business!
BNF Startup Award
A chance to pitch live for an audience of 100+ food professionals and impact investors
Startup & Expert Event
Access to the Brave New Food Startup & Expert Event to meet other startups and experts
Access to markets
With your pitch deck you will instantly reach 35+ food corporates, retailers and distributors
Access to capital
Get in touch with (Dutch) impact investors for subsidies, soft loans or investments
Media exposure
The most promising startup brands will get free publicity and media exposure
CEO at Clear.bio
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"Our participation has led to an investment of Horizon Flevoland!"
Co-founder at Gro together
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"Wow! One pitch led to multiple partnerships with a retailer in food services, and with impact investors"
Founder at SUNT
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"The Brave New Food network has led to a valuable collaboration with Coroos!"
Brave New Food is looking for food startups, with innovative solutions that help accelerate the transition to a healthier and more sustainable food system. This Startup Challenge focuses on next generation solutions in the domains of Healthier food solutions, Alternative proteins, Zero food waste and Sustainable packaging. If your product is brave and new, but doesn’t fit in any of these domains, we invite you to use the Wildcard!
New healthier products or ingredients
New technologies that enable healthier (personalized) diets and behavior
New products, ingredients or technologies that can reduce animal proteins
Plant-based, algae, seaweed, cultured meat, cell based agriculture, insects, or any other alternatives
New technologies that improve texture and taste of alternatives
New sustainable materials or techniques for packaging
New recycled, plant-based, edible, biodegradable alternatives
New ways to avoid over-packaging, efficient recycling methods or solutions that reduce packaging waste
New products, ingredients based on food waste or side streams
New sources of side streams with potential for adding value
New valorization and extraction technologies that enable the recovery of valuable substances from residual flows
Does your company have an innovative food solution, but does it somehow not fit within one of our themes?
Do you still want to share your solution with leading food companies for your chance to access new markets, networks, and expertise? Pitch your product in this Wildcard challenge!
Can't you join the Q&A? Feel free to contact us directly! Our startup scout Sandra wil gladly answer your questions via: sandra.einvall@bravenewfood.com.
This challenge is open for startups and scale-ups with sustainable and healthy food solutions. As a startup you already have a proof of concept and traction. However, your concept may also be pre-revenue.
No, it’s completely free to join the Startup Challenge.
The Startup Challenge is one big general challenge on behalf of our partners. With one pitch you will reach 30+ food corporates, retailers and distributors at the same time!
Company Challenges are specific innovation needs of an individual company. Your pitch will only be visible to the company you pitch for.
If your solution fits in multiple challenges (for example both the Brave New Food Startup Challenge and a company challenge), we recommend you participate in multiple challenges.
As soon as you have uploaded your pitch, you will receive a confirmation so that you know that we have received your pitch. After the deadline, our partners will assess all pitches individually and invite the startups with the most interesting solutions for a 1-on-1 meeting. If you both see potential in a collaboration, you can make agreements about a follow-up!
All our partners have signed a contract with us stating that they are not allowed to share the startups pitches to anyone outside the company. However we advise startups not to share trade secrets or IP sensitive information in their pitch.
In the previous open call, about 60% of the participating companies were invited for one or more 1:1 conversations with one of the partners.