Afineur

Afineur is a food biotechnology company that designs controlled fermentations, describing itself as a "fermentation designer" that teams up with microbes for food production. Its platform selects and combines microbial strains into designed microbiomes chosen for their ability to improve the nutritional value, taste and texture of foods, applying biotechnology and food science to make fermentation a controllable, tailorable process rather than a spontaneous one. The company applies this to plant-based foods, ingredients and agricultural or food-processing by-products.

Its first consumer product is Cultured Coffee, sold through the consumer brand eatCultured. The process starts with dry green Arabica beans from organic micro lots, which are hydrated and flash-pasteurized to remove residual strains, then inoculated with three to four selected microbial strains in a 36-hour solid-state fermentation before conventional roasting, where Maillard reactions amplify the targeted flavors. The company states the approach is scalable and produces consistent results. A second product line, Afineur Cultured Protein, uses the same platform to unlock and recover residual proteins from a by-product of a common food process; the company describes it as a complete vegan protein with a neutral aroma and clean flavor, low in calories, fat and sugars, with no cholesterol and high digestibility.

Afineur frames its impact around two theses: shifting diets toward plant-rich eating, citing projections of 70 percent more food needed by 2050 and meat-centric diets accounting for one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing food waste by giving a second life to by-products. It emphasizes open innovation, using its consumer brand and crowdfunding community to discuss the role of microbes in food and to crowdsource steps of new product development.

Founding story

Afineur was co-founded by Camille Delebecque, CEO, and Sophie Deterre, CTO, who met more than 15 years earlier and combined their expertise to build the company's fermentation platform. Delebecque holds a PhD in synthetic biology completed between Harvard and Paris universities, is an agronomical engineer by training, previously founded Synbio Consulting, and serves as a biotechnology advisor for the European Commission. Deterre is a food process engineer and flavor scientist whose PhD at AgroParisTech translated Grand Marnier's craft processes into reproducible science, and who has worked with USDA, Mars and the Parmesan cheese alliance. The founders chose New York for its business connections and food startup scene, and Delebecque, a vegetarian and animal rights advocate, cites a trip to Indonesia and exposure to caged-civet Kopi Luwak production as motivation for the coffee application.

Business model

Afineur operates a fermentation technology platform applied along two paths: business-to-business collaborations in which it ferments partners' commodities or food-processing and agricultural by-products to raise their value, and direct-to-consumer sales of its own fermented products under the eatCultured brand.

Revenue is described as coming from sales of consumer products such as Cultured Coffee and from working with partners on their commodities and by-products; specific pricing and contract terms are not disclosed.

Traction

The debut Kickstarter campaign for Cultured Coffee was fully funded within six hours, and the company reports an engaged consumer community that participates in product development. A second product, Afineur Cultured Protein, has been announced. A company research listing records two employees as of February 2024.