Luvi Bio secures Kost Capital backing to turn farm sidestreams into beverage ingredients

Luvi Bio has secured investment from Kost Capital to advance its on-farm fermentation platform, as the newly formed biosolutions company set out to convert fast-spoiling agricultural sidestreams into functional ingredients for the beverage industry.

• Kost Capital invested in Luvi Bio to support the development of farm-ready fermentation systems for agricultural sidestreams.
• The company focused on stabilizing fresh biomass directly on farms to create functional beverage ingredients.
• Luvi Bio’s first product targeted coffee cherry pulp, a widely discarded byproduct of coffee production.

The company was founded to address a persistent inefficiency in agricultural supply chains, where large volumes of nutritious crops and sidestreams spoiled shortly after harvest due to a lack of processing options at origin. Luvi Bio designed fermentation systems intended to operate directly on farms, stabilizing fresh biomass before spoilage and transforming it into shelf-stable ingredient bases.

According to the company, millions of tons of crops and sidestreams were lost each year because farmers lacked practical tools to preserve or upgrade them immediately after harvest. Luvi Bio’s approach aimed to intercept that loss by using fermentation to capture value at the earliest possible stage.

Kost Capital described the investment as a way to support high-value ingredient production from agricultural sidestreams. The firm pointed to Luvi Bio’s focus on scalable, farm-ready fermentation as a means of increasing value capture while maintaining a close connection to agricultural origins.

At the center of the company was founder Therese Scherer, who took on the role after leaving an established career to build the business from scratch. Reflecting on that decision, Scherer said, “Six months ago, I made the scariest decision of my career. Today, I can finally talk about it.”

She said she left the security of her previous work to address what she saw as a systemic problem in agriculture. “I left everything I knew to build something that didn't exist yet. No safety net. No guarantee it would work. Just a problem I couldn't ignore and a belief that we could solve it differently,” Scherer said.

That problem, she added, was the scale of food loss occurring before crops ever left the farm. Scherer cited figures indicating that 1.2 billion tons of food were wasted on farms each year, representing around 15.3% of all food grown. “Not because farmers don't care, but because they don't have the right tools to do anything else with it,” she said. “This isn't waste. It's untapped value waiting for a second life.”

Luvi Bio emerged from collaboration with Kost Studio, which had explored the challenge of farm-level food loss and developed an early technical concept. Scherer said Kost Studio and Kost Capital had been seeking a founder to turn that concept into a company. “When they asked me to take the lead, it was the scariest and easiest yes I've ever given,” she said.

Over the past six months, the team focused on building what Scherer described as “easy-to-use microbial biosolutions that work right on the farm”. She said the systems avoided the need for drying, cooling, or complex infrastructure, relying instead on fermentation to stabilize fresh biomass and convert it into flavor-rich ingredient bases with functional properties.

Luvi Bio’s first commercial focus is coffee cherry pulp, also known as cascara. The fruit surrounding the coffee bean accounted for roughly half of the coffee harvest by weight and was largely discarded. Scherer said this represented around 26 million tonnes of material wasted each year.

“This fruit makes up half the coffee harvest,” she said, adding that the scale of waste was equivalent to Europe’s entire annual banana consumption. Luvi Bio’s initial product was a liquid ingredient derived from coffee cherry pulp, containing natural caffeine, antioxidants, and other bioactive compounds aimed at beverage applications.

The company framed the opportunity as both economic and environmental. Scherer pointed to the potential for increased income for coffee producers, new ingredients for food and beverage developers, and the conversion of large volumes of waste into usable products.

While coffee was the first target, Scherer said the underlying technology was not crop-specific. She said Luvi Bio envisioned applying the same fermentation approach to a wide range of fruit and vegetable sidestreams, including surplus harvests, imperfect produce, and plant components typically discarded after harvest.

“These past six months have shown me something,” Scherer said. “The problem is everywhere, and the opportunity is massive. When I think about the scale of what we could unlock, I am equal parts terrified and energized.”

She credited Kost Studio and Kost Capital for backing the venture, as well as technical advisor Josue Castro, who supported the company’s fermentation development. Scherer said the early support had been critical in turning the concept into an operating business.

Luvi Bio said it was now focused on advancing its fermentation systems and engaging with partners across agriculture, fermentation, and beverage innovation as it moved from early development toward broader deployment.