Agrifood Tech | May 30, 2018

Nashville’s Porter Road corrals $3.7 million to sell humane meat

Jessica Pothering
ImpactAlpha Editor

Jessica Pothering

ImpactAlpha, May 30 – There’s been a lot of deal-making around the future of food, particularly in sustainable proteins. Investors, including major meat industry players, have backed “vegetarian meat” companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, lab-grown meat companies like Future Meat and Memphis Meats, and sustainable seafood ventures like LoveTheWild and Fishpeople Seafood.

Founders of Nashville-based butcher Porter Road are betting Americans’ appetite for meat isn’t going anywhere anytime soon—the U.S. leads the world in beef consumption, and ranks third in pork and poultry—but also that demand for humanely-raised meat will increase.

Porter Road got started in 2010, opening up a brick-and-mortar butcher shop that vetted and sourced pasture-raised, hormone- and antibiotic-free meat from farmers in Tennessee and Kentucky. This year it launched an online shop to ship to customers across the U.S.

  • Investor appetite… Porter Road’s funding round was backed by Max Ventures, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Tribeca Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund and Great Oaks VC.
  • …Meets consumer demand… “There is a major movement away from the traditional mass produced meat supply chain, especially among younger consumers,” said Max Ventures’ Ryan Darnell.