The Bland Company wants to make eggs obsolete in food manufacturing

Backed by new pre-seed funding, The Bland Company is developing a protein platform designed to replace eggs in food manufacturing by upgrading overlooked agricultural side streams

When egg prices have doubled and, at times, nearly tripled in under 18 months, food manufacturers do not panic publicly. They reformulate out of sight, renegotiate contracts, and re-forecast margins that no longer make sense.

In reality, eggs have become one of the most volatile ingredients in the modern food system.

• The Bland Company raised US$2.67 million in pre-seed funding led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Entrepreneurs First, Transpose Platform, Behind Genius Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Vento.
• The company developed a protein functionalization platform that transformed agricultural side streams into multi-functional ingredients designed to replace eggs in baked goods, condiments, and confectionery.
• Co-founders Yash Khandelwal and Micol Hafez expanded their scientific team to accelerate commercialization and advance trials with food manufacturers.

One third of all eggs are used in food manufacturing. They are broken down and functionalized to produce baked goods, sauces, confectionery, snacks, and prepared foods. They foam, bind, emulsify, and stabilize. They are not just ingredients. They are infrastructure.

They are also, increasingly, a liability.

The Bland Company, founded by biochemists Yash Khandelwal and Micol Hafez, believes that whoever solves the egg problem solves something much bigger: the supply chain fragility at the heart of industrial food production.

This week, the company announced it has raised US$2.67 million in pre-seed funding led by Initialized Capital, alongside Entrepreneurs First, Transpose Platform, Behind Genius Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Vento. The round will fund team expansion and accelerate development of what it calls its protein functionalization platform.

Khandelwal, Co-founder & CEO, did not describe the opportunity in terms of alternative protein trends. He described it as a structural bottleneck.

Functional proteins are a massive supply-chain bottleneck, and whoever builds the replacement becomes the backbone of modern food manufacturing, said Zoe Perret, Partner at Initialized Capital. Yash and Micol have paired real scientific rigor with a platform that’s already surpassing egg-white performance and hitting the economics manufacturers actually buy. That combination is why commercial interest is moving fast and why this is such a clear infrastructure play.

The word infrastructure is important here. The Bland Company is not trying to persuade consumers to eat differently. It is targeting procurement teams.

Egg prices fluctuate wildly due to avian flu outbreaks, cage-free regulation rollouts, demand seasonality, climate shocks, and feed costs. In the past 18 months alone, prices have moved by multiples. For manufacturers operating at scale, that volatility translates into reformulation cycles, margin compression, and unpredictable supply planning.

And yet, eggs remain irreplaceable. Existing alternatives often fail on performance or cost. Many plant-based egg replacements struggle to replicate the full suite of functionalities required across industrial applications. Others are too expensive to justify switching at volume.

Khandelwal’s view is blunt. The challenge is not scarcity. It is performance.

From his previous work building next-generation ingredients, including launching the world’s first watermelon-seed cheese and later scaling bioprocesses at Better Dairy in the UK, one pattern became clear: plant feedstocks are abundant, but their proteins lack the functionality of animal-derived ones.

Hafez, who studied Biochemistry at Columbia and Bioengineering at Imperial College before building a personalized nutrition platform, reached a similar conclusion from the product development side. Sustainability does not scale unless it is cheaper, easier, and better than the status quo.

The Bland Company’s answer is biochemical rather than behavioral.

Using what it describes as a proprietary biochemical process, the company transforms agricultural side streams into highly functional proteins without requiring novel equipment. Instead of building a new hardware stack, the platform plugs into existing food manufacturing infrastructure.

The focus is on three levers: multi-functionality, cost efficiency, and feedstock flexibility.

The proteins developed through the platform are highly soluble and can foam, bind, and emulsify. They are derived from overlooked raw materials, keeping input costs low. And the process is feedstock agnostic, allowing adaptation to abundant side streams rather than dependence on a single crop.

That flexibility may prove decisive. Traditional protein supply chains are under increasing strain as demand for highly functional proteins accelerates across categories. Securing key raw materials has become more complex and more expensive.

By contrast, agricultural side streams are often underutilized. They are plentiful, low-cost, and embedded in existing production systems. The challenge has been upgrading their proteins to match the performance of animal ingredients.

If the company’s claims about surpassing egg-white performance hold up in scaled trials, that shifts the equation. Egg replacement in baked goods, condiments, and confectionery is only the starting point.

With the new funding, Bland plans to expand its scientific team and work closely with food companies to run trials, validate performance of its first solution, and identify beachhead applications. The stated goal is to accelerate commercialization of its initial ingredients while continuing to develop the broader platform.

The long-term vision extends beyond eggs. The company describes its ambition as building a technology platform that transforms overlooked plant side streams into a new class of functional proteins.

There is a pragmatic edge to that ambition. Rather than launching consumer brands or focusing on finished products, Bland is targeting the invisible layer of food manufacturing where texture, stability, and process compatibility determine success.

Eggs became ubiquitous not because consumers demanded them in every formulation, but because they worked. They solved problems across multiple applications. If plant-derived proteins can do the same, at lower cost and with greater supply stability, procurement logic changes.

For now, Bland remains early. US$2.67 million is a pre-seed round, not a scale-up war chest. But the company is entering the market at a moment when volatility in traditional protein supply chains is no longer theoretical.

The bet is straightforward: if you can match or exceed egg functionality, deliver predictable economics, and integrate into existing infrastructure, you do not need to convince the world to change its habits. You simply replace a bottleneck.

And in modern food manufacturing, bottlenecks are where the real leverage sits.