From fashion to fungi: Lessons learned by Fable’s Michael Fox

There is no shortage of plant-based meat alternatives, but Fable Foods has long paved the way for what a mushroom-based meat business can look like and succeed. Here, we speak with co-founder Michael Fox about how the business started, how similar mushrooms are to animals, how his time in the fashion industry helps Fable stand out, and what being featured on Netflix’s Down to Earth program did for the brand.Inside FMCG: To start with, can you tell us a bit about what Fable is, and how it started?Michael Fox: I went vegetarian about seven years ago and vegan a couple of years ago, and for me it was a mix of health, environment and ethical reasons. I was doing a fashion-tech startup (Shoes of Prey) when I first went vegetarian, but when we finished up that business I took around six months off to think about what I wanted to do next. I was very passionate about wanting to end industrial animal agriculture, for all the same reasons I\’m vegan, and I was thinking about how I could go about doing that and be one of those annoying vegans that tries to convince everyone around them to turn vegan. I think in the last seven years I\’ve managed to convince three people – two of them work for Fable, so it probably doesn\’t really count, and the third is back eating meat, so I\’m a pretty terrible activist. But I could see through all the conversations I\’ve had that people understand the reasons why [you go vegan], and they want to reduce their meat consumption, but meat tastes great. And I get that – I didn\’t give up meat because I don\’t like the taste, and it was really hard to give up. It took me around 10 years, really, from when I realised I should probably start cutting back to when I finally went vegan. I realised that if you could give people the taste and texture of meat, maybe they\’ll stop eating animals, and that\’s probably a better route than trying to convince people to go vegan through activism. My wife and I live on about 41 acres on the sunshine coast, we grow a lot of our own food, shop at the local farmers markets, and maintain a very wholefood-based diet, and so I wanted to develop a meat alternative that aligned with that diet. I didn\’t want to use any artificial ingredients, so I started exploring the different ingredients I could use, and through that came the idea of using mushrooms as a base ingredient. They\’re super healthy and already have a lot of umami flavours in them. Once I started investigating that, I got introduced to my co-founder, Jim Fuller, who grew up in Texas and worked as a fine-dining chef for 12 years. He wanted to understand the science behind what he was cooking so he studied chemical engineering while he was working as a chef, and fell in love with mushrooms as an ingredient. He moved to California and started working on a mushroom farm, and fell down the rabbit hole. He also fell in love with an Australian woman and moved to Melbourne, where he studied agricultural science, majoring in mycology, which is fungi science, and then spent a decade in Australia working as a mushroom scientist. He\’d gone vegan a few years before I\’d met him, for his own environmental reasons, and he\’s always said that when he stopped eating meat he had an emotional void in his life that he needed to fill. So he started making meat alternatives out of mushrooms for himself.We met up and got on really well, and had really complementary skillsets, and ended up starting Fable together. That was about four years ago.IFMCG: I think the plant-based food industry has changed quite a bit since then. Can you tell us a bit about what that journey has been like?MF: There are the big US players, like Impossible Foods, and then there are some big companies in Australia, too, that are doing good things, like v2food and All G Foods.I think there was a big boom, and there is still a lot of interest from consumers: a lot of people do want to reduce their meat consumption. The data says about 30 per cent of meat eaters want to reduce their consumption, primarily for health reasons, so there\’s been a lot of interest.I think that interest has driven a lot of people to try meat alternatives over the years, but that\’s started to plateau, and the research indicates that\’s because the taste isn\’t quite there, the products are still too expensive, and people aren\’t sure about the level of processing required to turn something like a soybean into \’meat\’. There\’s a bit of a perception that plant-based meat isn\’t healthy. And those are the three reasons people would buy food – taste, price and health – so that\’s driving that plateau. But that\’s all playing into Fable\’s thesis. That\’s why we\’ve been able to close our [recent funding round]. We\’re all about minimally processed wholefood-based meat alternatives made out of mushrooms, which we think are a much better base ingredient then something like peas or soybeans. You\’ve got to do a lot to make a pea or a soybean taste like meat, whereas mushrooms are already much closer on the evolutionary tree. Fungi are more closely related to humans and animals than they are to plants. They share a lot of similarities. If they\’re out in the sun, they\’ll tan, for example, and parts of their cellular structure mimic what\’s found in animals.So it\’s much easier to take a mushroom and turn it into something that tastes like meat. Taste-wise you\’re already quite close, so we can create products that taste meaty. In terms of price, we don\’t have to do a lot of processing, and mushrooms are an incredibly efficient food to grow, which can keep costs down. And finally, mushrooms are incredibly healthy: Shiitake mushrooms, which are what we use predominantly, are among the most common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine, and modern science has caught up on all of their health benefits. Thanks to that, we\’ve been able to continue growing, even in this slower market.IFMCG: You mentioned the funding round you recently completed. It was $12.2 million. Can you tell us a bit about that funding round? Who were the main investors, and what is it going to allow Fable to do?MF: We\’ve done particularly well in the food service channel in Australia, and we\’ve also launched into that channel across the UK, Singapore, US, Canada and New Zealand. We\’ve had some really good early numbers with those launches.The [funding] round is to help us expand further into the US and the UK. We\’ve now got four sales people on the ground in the UK, one in the US, and we\’re hiring another three in the US, and they\’ll help us take the product and what\’s worked well in the Australian market into these international markets. Secondly, we\’ll be further investing into our R&D, doing more work with some interesting species of mushrooms to see what we can turn into delicious, meaty food, going in some different directions, and further improving the health benefits and taste of our products, as well as keeping the cost down. IFMCG: What channels are the focus for Fable\’s UK and US expansion?MF: It\’ll be mainly restaurants to start. The primary markets that we sell into are higher-end restaurants and food service. We\’re in Heston Blumenthal\’s restaurant, for example, but we\’re also in some premium quick-service restaurants: Guzman y Gomez, Grill\’d, and Fishbowl in Australia. That\’s the primary channel we do, but we also do meal kits and a bit in retail. Retail isn\’t a huge focus for us at the moment, but we\’re in some of the premium independents, like Harris Farm Markets.IFMCG: I want to ask a bit about the strategy for the business. It seems like you\’re mainly focusing on the food service side of things?MF: When we developed the product, we designed it for chefs, to enable them to use it and take it in lots of different directions. It\’s a really good base ingredient that can go in a lot of different directions, so chefs like it and find it really intuitive and easy to work with, so we\’ve done really well in the food service channel. Chefs talk about it and tell their culinary teams about it, so we\’ve found it relatively easy to sell into that channel. We will do more in retail, but we\’ll probably wait a few years [to do a big push]. It\’s just such a different channel, and we\’re working to really build the brand and introduce the product to consumers through our restaurant partners first, where the chefs have done an amazing job with the product.In a couple of years, when we circle back to retail, consumers will know the brand and have tried the product before, and it\’ll be a bit easier to enter that channel. IFMCG: The alt-meat space is getting bigger, and there are so many variations. How do you approach educating your customers about Fable’s products?MF: We mainly do that through the food-service space. We do things like mushroom foraging tours. Last year, we took about 650 chefs and culinary people out foraging for mushrooms in Australia, the US and the UK, and shared our passion and love for the ingredient with them. We get to showcase some interesting cooking techniques, and show them how to cook and work with mushrooms to get the best out of them.Those tours have been really good for educating chefs on what we do, and then some of that education translates into our social channels. We share a lot of interesting and fun things that come out of those tours across our social media. We\’ve also been lucky enough to take some other people out foraging. We took Zac Efron out when he was filming the Down to Earth show for Netflix, we took him out foraging and that featured in the show. It ended up being a 15-minute segment on the show, and was an amazing way to educate our customers on what we do.IFMCG: Can you tell me a bit about Fable\’s approach to product development? MF: Our mission is to help end industrial animal agriculture, and we do that by making delicious, meaty food out of mushrooms. So the products we\’ve developed so far replicate pulled meat, like a pulled beef or pulled pork or a brisket. We\’ve also got a burger patty and a meatball, and we\’ll be launching a breakfast sausage patty soon. Those are the kinds of meat that we\’ve replicated so far. But there are all sorts of other things we can do with mushrooms: we\’re currently doing some R&D on making up a chicken-like product, for example. We\’re not trying to replicate meat exactly – our products aren\’t going to turn from red to brown as you cook them, or bleed. We\’re just trying to make something that is delicious in its own right and is easy for consumers that are used to cooking with meat to swap in and work with.So we\’re working on things like alternatives to steaks, chicken and seafood, for example, as well as how we can continue to leverage the health benefits of mushrooms. There are a lot of types of mushrooms, and they have a lot of health benefits and characteristics, so we\’re working on how we can incorporate some of those into our products. IFMCG: How do you balance that new product development alongside refining the core product offering?MF: It\’s just the case of doing a bit of both and keeping them both top of mind. We probably spend about half of our time working on improving the overall recipes and health benefits, and then the other half developing new products. IFMCG: You mentioned earlier that you previously worked in the retail and tech space. Have you observed anything interesting or unique about working in the FMCG space since launching Fable? Do you think there\’s something other industry players could learn from those other industries?MF: I came out of the fashion space. And in the fashion space, brand is really important. So coming from that space and applying some of those branding principles to the FMCG space has been interesting. Creating a product that people can look up to and kind of aspire to have, and doing a lot of brand collaborations with people like Heston Blumenthal and Zac Efron – those things came up organically. We didn\’t pay for those partnerships or anything. But creating an aspirational product and story brings people in like that, so that we can do partnerships. Fashion does that really well, so bringing that into Fable has been interesting. I think one thing the FMCG space does better than fashion is market research. The fashion space is largely led by creative, which is fun and really suits fashion, but the FMCG space is driven a lot more by data and rigour around how products are selling and understanding what the consumer is thinking. So that\’s been an interesting area for me to dive into. I\’ve learned a lot around that.IFMCG: Can you tell us a bit about Fable\’s guest spot on Netflix\’s Down to Earth special, and what that has meant for the brand? MF: I think the first series of that show had around 60 million people watch it globally, which is enormous. I haven\’t seen any figures on series two, but anecdotally, we\’ve had a lot of people reach out and tell us they watched it and saw Fable. I wouldn\’t call being on the show a gamechanger, but it leans into all the things that a brand would want. We’re very passionate about mushrooms, and have a lot of knowledge and expertise around mushrooms, and it was great to be able to showcase that to a lot of people. It\’s definitely helped us get into some new restaurant chains. Sometimes a chef will have seen the show, or we mention it to them and they go and watch it and are introduced to the brand. The segment is amazing – I couldn\’t have scripted a better 15-minute segment as an introduction to our brand. They cook up our product and Zac eats it, and the crew jump in and start eating it because it smells so good, and it came up totally organically. The producers of the show had heard about our foraging tours and were in Australia shooting, and they reached out to us. So now, when we\’re talking to a new potential customer, and we might be talking over email and haven\’t met up or cooked the product for them, they can watch that segment and get a good idea of what Fable is like. It\’s become an easy, perfect introduction to the brand.Most people who watched that show are going to be end consumers, rather than chefs. We get 20-30 emails a day from people around the world telling us they just watched it, so people are still consuming it. IFMCG: Can you talk us through the mushroom foraging tours, and how they help shape what Fable does?MF: They let us share our passion for mushrooms with chefs and culinary teams in a unique and authentic way. Primarily, we meet up with those people in kitchens, and they\’re people who are working with food every day, so they\’re passionate about it.There\’s a lot of mystique around mushrooms, around knowing which ones are poisonous and will kill you, which ones are magic and will take you off on a hallucinogenic journey, and which ones you can eat. So people are excited to get out there and learn about them. They\’re in the zeitgeist at the moment, too. There are a lot of people taking mushroom powders and tinctures for health reasons, and there\’s a lot of research on psilocybin’s use for mental health, so there\’s a lot of interest from people to come out and experience it. We also just love doing it. Jim\’s been hosting mushroom tours for fun for over 10 years, and it\’s a fun day going out in the forest.It\’s kind of like how in the ’80s people would go golfing with people they might want to work with or get to know, but now we\’re taking them mushroom foraging instead. IFMCG: What are you looking forward to most in 2023?MF: Taking the product to consumers in the UK and US is what I\’m most excited about. We\’re just about to launch into a big steakhouse chain in the US called STK Steakhouse. They\’ve got about 20-30 high-end steakhouses across the US selling US$150 ($225) steaks, and they\’re launching our slider patty onto the menu. It\’ll be their first fully plant-based item on the menu. It\’s exciting to be working with a chain that doesn\’t primarily cater to vegans or vegetarians. It\’s all meat eaters, so if we can get some trying out our mushroom sliders, that\’ll be super exciting. This story originally appeared in Inside FMCG\’s April Issue.