When you think of crickets as a source of protein we hope you don’t imagine a pile of whole crickets sitting on your plate. Although some people in the Eastern world enjoy the critter whole and crunchy, the people at SENS are making the bug more palatable. Cricket flour, the main ingredient in SENS bars, is the most sustainable protein source on the planet. To produce the same amount of protein as cattle, crickets need 12x less feed, 15x less land, 2000x less water and produce 100x fewer greenhouse gasses. Even more, cricket flour contains the same quality protein as beef, chicken, or fish and carries several times more iron, calcium, and B vitamins. And on top of that, cricket farming is much more ethical. No antibiotics are necessary — crickets get their natural feed and living conditions. They also painlessly hibernate when it’s time for harvesting, no suffering is involved. It’s the food of the future.
We sat with SENS Founder Radek Husek to talk about how they are trying to make insect eating the new normal. His team is trying to reintroduce these critters to the western world and help shift the food industry into a place that is less inefficient and more sustainable.
Vision Forward is a series whereby we meet with innovators who are working to create a better future. Forward-thinkers, visionaries, and people who are not afraid to carve a new path. This is Vision Forward with Radek Husek.
You are originally from the Czech Republic… is it a coincidence that the grocery store chain Penny in the Czech was the first to adopt SENS into their stores?
It’s actually not a huge coincidence! A large portion of the team resides in Prague, and a few of us are in Berlin. It’s quite complicated because we had to found the company in the UK. Back in 2017, there was no legal framework to sell something containing insects. The EU had no legislation, and it didn’t consider insects as animals. Actually, it wasn’t considered ‘Novel Food’ — which is a term that means any food that was not used for human consumption to a significant degree within the European Union before 15 May 1997. For example, chia seeds…for a long time, it was illegal to sell chia seeds and now it’s a hot-ticket trendy food item. With crickets its more complicated because the EU had a legal framework that animals are only vertebrates. Well, crickets are not so there was no legislative framework for our product. A few countries legalized it on their own- Netherlands, Belgium, UK. Because of this, we set up the company firstly in the UK. Things have progressed and we are now able to sell in Germany. We actually helped changed the legislation in the Czech Republic. I’m trailing in a different direction here let me return to your question, we had the office in Prague and there we got a little famous. The local market has really welcomed us in. Interestingly, retailers mostly contact us on their own, which is quite unusual. There is a growing trend at the moment where people are interested in what they eat and how their food impacts their environment. Hence, retailers have contacted us knowing this trend and how people are starting to care about sustainability and the future of our planet. Penny has really helped push us to the mainstream. Which is the vision of the company, make insect protein mainstream.
Do you think that the timing of this company is perfect? In the sense that maybe 10 or 20 years ago people didn’t feel this urgency around the impact of our carbon footprint on the environment. This conversation seems to be happening more often. Do you think the warm welcome to your cricket flour bars has something to do with this and what do you think the reaction would have been a decade or two ago?
If it’s thinking about the reaction 10 years ago, I’m not sure it would be that black and white of an answer. However, 20 years ago, in the 90’s the situation was completely different. Even if we compare it to 10 years ago, it’s definitely changing. As humans, we will have to change our diet if we want to survive peacefully on this planet. The way we product proteins now, it is definitely not possible to do that until 2050. Populations are increasing, with that more people are eating meat and there will be more pressure on our agricultural system. It will come down to what is cost-efficient what will be a popular alternative. Lab-meat has quite some issues in acceptance. I think there will be a lot that needs to change, the discussion will be more and more intense. We see the changes in the environment now, it’s happening. We can no longer ignore it.
“I think insect protein will solidify its place in the future because of this one huge benefit…they can be grown on the agricultural by-products that would be normally wasted.”
Is that the reason you started SENS and Cricket Labs?
Since I was a child I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I knew I wanted to be a part of social business. I work a lot and want to devote my time to something meaningful. We’re on the verge of a big crisis that we need to tackle, immediately. I remember the day my cofounder Daniel told me that insects can be a source of protein. We did so much research to see what are the reasons that insects are not on the shelf…this was back in 2015. We saw developments in this type of “insect industry” in the US but it was quite sparse otherwise. We started this company to be the European leader and hopefully eventually the global leader.
Why do you think that insects are not so readily on our shelves? Is it the idea and stigma of it being a critter- something that is scary or gross? Did you experience apprehension from your consumers, and would you consider this as a huge obstacle for you as a company?
When we started we saw two main problems. The legislation aspect was a huge part of it, most people told us we cannot make or sell products like this. There were no companies before 2018 doing this and so legislation was the first obstacle. Then, obviously, we saw there is a problem of social acceptance. The cultural fear of eating bugs. So, we overcome the legislation problem and the whole SENS project is set up in the most palatable form. To avoid a negative reaction to the idea of eating bugs we designed everything very meticulously. It played into who we chose our packaging, logo, the exact words we use to talk about it. We always mention cricket flour, so people don’t visualize whole insects. We chose flavors to be something people can immediately imagine how it will taste and not be surprised with some weird flavors. That way, people don’t assume is that the flavor of crickets. We even didn’t go for big pieces of nuts because people may think, “I’m chewing a cricket head!” We tested against all of this and constructed the company with all of these details in mind.
Why the name? Now I’m curious about the branding!
We thought about Buga, but many British people would read it like a booger or something you could munch on from your nostril. If you read it what would you imagine has the meaning?
I immediately think it makes SENSE. It is sensical.
Exactly!
How about the logo?
The logo is a cricket…but very subtle. Some companies have a more graphic logo, but we chose a more ambiguous route to target the mainstream audience, so we want it to be the most difficult to imagine the bug. When people eat a hamburger, they don’t visualize the cow. Some people don’t want to touch raw meat but when it’s in a burger there okay with that. So that’s the idea, they don’t put a photo of a pig on the steak and so we don’t put a live picture of a cricket on our packaging.
Do you have many competitors?
Yes, now there are a few in Germany. Two doing bars, one of which is in the UK, and one in France. There was a big hype around creating insect products in 2017 but many of them closed. I was never in the food industry before. To run a food business, it’s so much more than just the idea. You have to figure out the logistics, prove the production, prove ourselves in marketing, in the finances, in managing the sales team. 99% of it is a normal food start-up and thus, very hard to run. The sustainability part of it is the cherry on top. This process has been so hard and slow compared to having a software start-up. It’s very complicated as a lot of the backend is hardware you can’t change things as fast.
You had this crazy idea in 2016 then what?
Yes, we first went to Kickstarter. It sounded way crazier than now. Many told us it was an insane idea, what are you thinking? Kickstarter helped us get a proof of concept, which in turn made it easier for us to find an investor because we were able to be like look in a month, we were able to raise this amount of money and get this number of customers. From there It took us quite a long time to grow the crickets in Thailand. We started selling online, then the first year we did a pilot retail in the Czech Republic, which went well. Now we’re really focusing on Germany.
Would you say your beginning to see the ball rolling?
To be honest, I’m never satisfied, I wanted the whole process to be faster and better. But things are definitely changing and improving. As we want to make crickets mainstream, we have to go to retail and we’re beginning to see the change in how the buyers treat us, the big opportunities we get now. So, it’s definitely changing. We also had to learn how to run a food business and were becoming more confident in that.
How much more sustainable are crickets to normal meat products. And secondly, why would someone choose this bar versus another bar that perhaps has no meat.
I’ll start with the last question. We wanted to make our products competitive without the sustainability case. We went for the most premium ingredients we could get, for example. So, compared to normal protein bars we added more protein and more fiber. This is very unique; we have a lot of athletes going for our bar because it’s the only really natural bar and it also tastes differently to many others on the market. It’s not super sweet because we don’t use sweeteners. The product has to work alone. Why crickets are more sustainable than different animal protein sources comes down to the usage of resources. For the same amount of protein, for example, in comparison to beef, we need 12x less feed, almost no water, produces almost no greenhouse gases. So on one side, we have a steak which is equal to water-consumption of a 4-hour long shower. I don’t shower that long…and that’s for just 1 steak. The greenhouse gases equivalent is like driving from Amsterdam to Brussels. It’s so inefficient. On the other hand, we have this super significant improvement on how the resources are used [with cricket protein] and the impact it has. Also, there are no antibiotics used for crickets. However, the full sustainability benefit comes with the scale. Right now, it’s not optimal, we still have the farm in Thailand, everybody knows we have to transport it. But the vision is to have a lot of different insect farms, even in the suburbs of Berlin for example, and really supplying to the city. As close to the consumption as it gets. It shouldn’t necessarily substitute different sources of protein but should add to the variety or diversity of proteins which we should have in the future.
What does the future of food look like?
The main problem is with proteins, we have enough carbs we have enough fats. I don’t see it as competition in the style of ‘winner takes all’. It’s going to end up with sustainably farmed grass-fed beef, ethically better than what we have in industrial farming of cattle for example. I think there will be some large-scale industrial cattle farms, but the world will try to mitigate it as much as possible. In the spectrum of protein, there will be more microproteins from mushrooms, lab-grown meat, and insect protein. But I think insect protein will solidify its place in the future because of this one huge benefit…they can be grown on the agricultural by-products that would be normally wasted. For example, we eat just the white part of rice and all the husk is left to be wasted. Our crickets right now in some percentage are fed on the rice waste. We can optimize the whole food-chain. There could be organic waste streams converted into high-quality proteins with almost zero impact on the environment.
“Why crickets are more sustainable than different animal protein sources boils down to the usage of resources.”
Do you have a goal that you are working towards?
We are still a startup that needs to grow. We are now raising post-seed investment that would really help us scale. We think we have the basic proof of concept and we want to grow. Right now, we're working to secure the investment.
What’s next?
2019/20 is a focus on German-speaking countries and a lot of new products. We have the protein bars, energy bars, protein bread, we sell small pouches of cricket flour in the southern part of Germany. We want to create new products. Cricket flour has a lot of wide use- protein shakes, protein pasta. We want to improve common foods that people know so people don’t have to change their habits. They just understand that they are buying healthier and more sustainable, and more nutritious food with the addition of cricket flour as a protein source.
Follow this incredible company on their journey to a new food norm.
