UNSTUCK 043: Permission Is Not Demand

At UNSTUCK, we’re fans of cultivated meat. With Zoran living in Singapore, the most progressive market and ecosystem for cultivated meat, we’ve been fortunate enough to eat our way through all the products that have reached a commercial stage. From Good Meat’s chicken in hawker, restaurant and take home versions to Vow’s japanese quail parfait and foie gras (the one exception being Friends&Family’s cultivated dog and cat treats which we’ll leave to their intended target markets).

That’s why the news of Aleph Farms getting approval for its “thin-cut steak” got us salivating, especially on the back of Parima’s recent approvals for its own cultivated chicken and duck. But people can’t actually eat an approval, as much as some in the industry may see them as a finish line or a route to even more approvals.

Real leaders should be recognized by their ability to create real demand, and cultivated meat is still waiting for a breakout brand. 

The scoreboard so far

Since Good Meat’s theatrical launch six years ago, the Singapore Food Agency has issued a seemingly unstoppable march of approvals for cultivated meat driven by post-COVID food security concerns and a lack of domestic farmers to appease. Here’s the impressive regulatory timeline so far:

1. Dec 2020: Good Meat, Cultivated chicken (FBS-based)
2. Jan 2023: Good Meat, Cultivated chicken (Serum-free)
3. Apr 2024: Vow, Cultivated Japanese quail
4. Oct 2025: Parima, Cultivated chicken
5. Apr 2026: Parima, Cultivated duck / foie gras
6. Aug 2026: Aleph Farms, Cultivated beef 

The commercial picture, however, is not quite as rosy. After its highly visible launches in both F&B and retail, Good Meat is no longer sold in Singapore and its planned Singapore factory never opened. Vow’s cultivated Japanese quail made a splash through its Forged events and made inroads into the fine dining scene, but doesn’t appear to have gone any further in Singapore to date.

The industry has spent too much time and effort talking to itself, timing publicity to the regulator’s clock instead of the diner’s, and treating safety clearance as a launch. The irony however is the government that issued six approvals in six years also announced recently that it has stopped counting on alternative proteins for its food strategy citing “weaker than expected consumer acceptance.”

So what do Parima, Aleph and others eyeing the Singapore market need to get right as they enter in the next 12 months?

Avoiding the substitution trap

We’ve been working with, and commenting on, companies within the industry for long enough to know one thing is very clear. A parity strategy is a road to nowhere. Which leaves three choices: differentiate and be better at something consumers actually care about and will pay more for; become a commodity at a lower cost than what is already available; or avoid trying to be meat altogether and look to technology verticals in industries like cosmetics or life sciences, something Vow has started pursuing.  

Of the three, differentiation is the one that has generated any real demand in cultivated meat thus far, albeit still at small volumes. From the outset, Vow refused to be a replacement, launching Forged by Vow at the Mandala Club and promising “a dining experience like no other” with their cultured Japanese Quail parfait. The expansion to other elevated restaurants in Singapore, and the same strategy carried into their home market, Australia, all say that Forged is here to be part of food culture, not a cheap switch. 

Parima, the parent company of Gourmey, intends to follow the same strategy with their foie gras, and has entered a manufacturing partnership with Vow. We’ve seen time and again in different categories that creating desirability at a premium can lead to mass adoption at scale and have written before about starting with the bling. In the age of social media, adoption at scale is happening even faster. Cultivated meat has found the bling, but has yet to crack demand that can scale.     

The commodity path, competing on cost rather than improved experience, remains untested until production costs can meet the strategy. However, without proven acceptance, high volume, low cost production will remain elusive.

Leading with the benefits

Aleph has so far been tight-lipped about its Singapore launch other than to confirm it will be a thin cut steak under the Aleph Cuts sub-brand. The closer a brand positions itself to the incumbent, in this case, a beef steak, the more it invites a direct comparison (“is it worth the extra price?”) or inertia (“there’s nothing wrong with what I eat today”). With a product that is 10-20% cultivated meat and the rest soy and wheat scaffolding, the differentiation that will entice consumers to try and continue to buy will have to come from tapping into benefits beyond parity and an experience worth talking about.

It’s perhaps ironic that cultivated pet food has already gotten there. Friends & Family is available online and in 6 stores in Singapore with their cultivated quail (at 70% inclusion nonetheless). Since the buyer isn’t the eater here, the benefits have to be self-interested rather than virtuous (highly digestible, improved coat quality, healthier teeth & gums). Nobody has any illusions that their dog or cat cares about sustainability.

It’s an imperfect comparison, a pet owner’s calculus isn’t a diner’s, but the underlying lesson transfers: benefits that are concrete and self-interested are the ones that sell. Parima and Aleph should take note. The human plate equivalent might be spec-identical portions (no gristle for the consumer, no fat variance or waste for the chef). It might be a promise of protein content that beats the conventional meat its after market share from. In Singapore there’s the potential of a supply chain rooted in local production rather than long frozen import chains from Australia or South America. These are just starting points. Real traction will come from whoever does the hard work of understanding the pain points of consumers and chefs properly and designing solutions and benefits against them.   

Showing the world what’s possible

The Singapore of 2026 and 2027 is not the Singapore of 2020 and 2024. Cost of living pressures have cascaded through the F&B industry with unprecedented churn and a trend towards trading down. The LA gourmet egg chain Eggslut was selling $23 sandwiches from its posh Orchard Road location before closing last year. One of its former chefs found a price point the market wanted and now runs a crowded hawker stall at Maxwell Food Centre with delicious egg bowls for $6. 

That’s not to say that premium differentiation is wrong; Forged is still the closest thing this category has to working demand. But it’s evidence that the premium play is only the opening act. The latest approvals need to get to the second act with meaningful differentiation at a cost structure that can take a cultivated product from fine-dining novelty to something ordered without a second thought.  

Whilst Singapore will always be small, no other market in the world offers trial appetite at the same density. We have no doubt new entrants will generate initial interest just as they have for us, enticing Zoran to eat cultivated meat on six occasions over the past six years. Approval is the start, and endorsement from fine-dining restaurants is a valid step forward. But differentiation that is maintained at a lower cost point is the prize that cultivated companies must keep their eyes upon if, like Aleph, they want to earn their place on consumers' plates.

What we’ll be looking for are dishes that survive on menus for multiple quarters, second locations that aren’t just launch pop-ups, and retail SKUs that go beyond virtue signaling for retailers.

The opportunity here is about turning approvals into real consumer occasions and real consumer demand.