Following success after launching in the alternative food sector, Grater Goods is taking big steps towards expanding and in order to do so, raising $1.5 million through a Series A funding campaign. We chat to the Founder and brains behind the company, Flip Grater a musician turned business-woman, to find out about her journey.

Grater Goods, a play of Founder Flip Grater’s surname and an homage to her European heritage of family butchers from Germany and England, is a plant-based artisan and delicatessen goods company that was heavily inspired by the gap in the antipasti market. 

After a trip to France where she met her husband, Grater realised there is a large culture of wining and dining but a lack of goods that were vegetarian friendly on the charcuterie boards. 

And with the plant-based space growing exponentially, Grater found a gap in the market to tap into.

“People have been rushing to bring out SKU’s in the plant-based space over the last few years as the flexitarian market has grown and everyone has raced into that daily kai, right into the nuggets and mince and chicken, but no one really occupied the special occasion food space,” she says. 

“So that’s what we really want to do and that’s what we focused on doing right now is creating food that is for gathering around and for special occasions and for grazing tables and for Christmas Day and for platters, something that you can have with a glass of wine when you’re having apéro at the end of the day.” 

When it came to alternative artisan, places such as Europe were lacking behind and Australia is by far one of the fastest growing markets for plant-based food, which is where Grater wants to focus on after making the “most of the opportunity” in New Zealand. 

The products of Grater Goods were all created in Grater’s home kitchen as a proclaimed home food scientist and began “mucking around”. 

Read more: Disrupting the dairy industry with science

Grater stumbled across the ancient Chinese technique of Seitan, invented by Buddhist monks to create her products. 

“They wanted to create analogs for the meat dishes that were familiar to them so they experimented with washing wheat flour so that you would wash away the starch part and be left with the pure protein,” she explains. 

Inspired by the process, Grater used a similar process to create the alternative deli meats and charcuterie products. 

In order to come up with the process, Grater faced a lot of trial and errors, but she saw it more as a creative outlet coming up with the recipes. 

“I experimented with my first product, which was our Chorizo for about a year and I just tried different variations of spices and different textures and just kept trying it. I kept bringing it to every family event for about a year until my brothers were like, ‘Yeah, I’d eat that,’ and then I knew I was onto something,” she says. 

Grater first started selling her products on social media, and immediately she saw the demand. 

“I was kind of shocked by how many people were keen to try it,” she adds. 

“Obviously, other people wanted the same thing as me, which was to have something decadent, have something with lots of flavour and really good texture and umami and salt and all the good things so it was popular right from the start.”

The businesses first Christmas saw the team working overtime, recruiting every person in their bubble who could help. 

Acknowledging the demand and organic growth, Grater is excited to finally get some big cash behind them to support their dreams to go even further. 

“We’ve just got so many people asking for the product. We’re not in enough supermarkets, our production capacity isn’t as high as it needs to be, the market is asking for this kai and we need to up our production capacity and our team in order to supply it,” says Grater.

“The demand is definitely there. So the idea is to raise this capital so that we can make the most of the opportunity.”

Grater says the decision to undertake a funding campaign is the room to grow in New Zealand as the first-to-market product in the growing culture of deli foods. 

With the plant-based meat market expected to grow to $160 billion by 2030, Grater says it’s a shame that small businesses miss out because they fail to meet the demand, and she wants to change that. 

Previously, the likes of Icehouse Ventures and Hillfarrance have worked alongside Grater Goods. 

Now, the company is working alongside Equitise, a crowdfunding platform in Australia and New Zealand. 

Aiming to raise $1.5 million, Grater Goods hopes to grow production capabilities to meet demands but also support marketing as they grow. 

For more information about their funding campaign, check the link here.