Startup makes milk out of plants
Kitchener-based entrepreneur aims to create a product that’s healthier and better for the environment
KITCHENER — Sara Bonham makes milk from plants.
She is the chief executive officer and co-founder of WillowCup, an award-winning startup based in the University of Waterloo accelerator at the Tannery in downtown Kitchener.
Her tiny startup, which she runs with co-founder Craig Deebank, is tackling one of the biggest challenges facing humanity — ensuring an adequate food supply for the planet’s rapidly increasing population.
“I want to create a food system that takes humanity through the next 100 years,” said Bonham.
“In the next 50 years we are going to have to
produce more food than we have in the past 10,000 years,” said Bonham.
“When I read that, I thought: ‘Holy crap, we gotta move fast.’ Technology has evolved in every area it seems but food tech.”
And she is starting with one of the most widely consumed food products around — milk. She has developed technology that makes milk out of plants. WillowCup’s milk has the same texture as cow’s milk, but with less fat and less sugar.
“It looks like milk, it tastes like milk, it functions like milk, and it is better for you, using all natural ingredients from plants,” said Bonham.
“And we are incorporating more fibre so it is really good for your digestive system, so you are not going to feel bloated and gross from drinking cow’s milk.”
And WillowCup’s method is much more sustainable — it takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce a single gallon of milk using conventional methods. And animal agriculture is responsible for 18 per cent of green house gas emissions that cause climate change.
Bonham started thinking about a new way to make milk while completing her undergrad degree in food science and agricultural chemistry at McGill.
She took an elective on animal science, and had to milk a cow. She was totally unimpressed with the dairy farm operated by McGill University.
The advances in technology focused on hormone injections to get cows making more milk, and automated pumps to remove the milk from swollen utters. Bonham wants to remove cows from the equation, entirely.
After finishing her undergrad at McGill, Bonham did a master’s in biological engineering at the University of Guelph. From her kitchen table she started working on how to make milk from plants. About a year ago she founded WillowCup, and was accepted into the University of Guelph incubator called CBaSE.
After a few weeks there, word arrived that WillowCup had been accepted into a San Francisco-based accelerator — IndieBio — that is focused on biotechnology startups. She received US$200,000 to complete the four-month program at IndieBio.
Another startup at IndieBio was based in Velocity, and Bonham heard so many good things about what was happening in the local startup scene, she headed for Kitchener after finishing the program in San Francisco. “This is the place to be,” said Bonham. After landing a place at Velocity last October, she heard about a Communitech program that supported startups founded by women — Fierce Founders. She was accepted into an intensive, six-day boot camp that included pitch coaching, mentoring, networking, lean business plans and talks by successful women entrepreneurs. At the end of it, she won the pitch competition and $60,000.
During the next six months Bonham wants to optimize her formula, and test the shelf life of WillowCup’s milk. If there is to be any hope of getting bought by a larger food company, WillowCup’s technology must blend easily with existing tech in the food production sector.
That’s where her co-founder’s background in architecture and design comes in.
“We combine scientific discovery with design thinking to solve problems,” said Bonham. “You can have the best product in the world, but if you can’t pitch it, or show how people imagine it, it doesn’t get anywhere.”