When Alex and Giangio started making honey in their spare time, they had no idea it would eventually lead to them founding a bee-focused startup. Inspired by nature, PrimalBee® is disrupting a product that has barely seen innovation in 170 years: the beehive. Now they’re looking for investment to scale.

Spotting an opportunity

Alessandro (‘Alex’) Gamberoni and Gianmario (‘Giangio’) Riganti first met in high school and have been friends ever since. Brought together by a mutual love of outdoor sports, they often went on climbing or skiing trips together and frequently spent these outings advising each other on their respective business ventures.  

After several years working hard as entrepreneurs, Alex decided to close his workshop and started making his own honey as a hobby. He invited Giangio along – making honey became an opportunity for the two men to spend time together. The pair gradually became more and more involved in beekeeping; they took a course and became members of a local beekeeping association. But something wasn’t right – they kept losing their colonies. 

The breakthrough came when a beekeeping contact called and invited the pair to see a huge colony he’d discovered. Inside a huge hollow cedar tree, they were surprised to discover an entire hidden world of honeybees – living entirely differently to the way they did in human-raised hives. This planted the seed of an idea that would later become the PrimalBee® Hive.

Taking inspiration from nature

The classic beehive design was created around 170 years ago. It is essentially a wooden box, and limited innovation has been applied since its inception. Anyone with a basic knowledge of carpentry can build one and the market is huge, but it’s far from the best solution for bees. Even high-tech solutions don’t offer much of a benefit – it’s like adding sensors to track your bank account when the balance is always at zero. 

PrimalBee®’s founders realized that allowing the bees to utilize their own resources was crucial and the key to ending hive losses. ‘In a standard hive, honeybees are forced to throw 90 per cent of their resources out the window, so to speak,’ says Gianmario. 

Honey bees, they proved thanks to 12 years’ of R&D, are thermally sensitive. Tiny variations can have an outsized impact on the colony as a superorganism. Bee colonies need to remain at a certain temperature to survive: the role of the worker bees is to keep the queen warm so she can produce a new brood as soon as possible. Once the temperature inside the hive hits 36 degrees Celsius, the queen will begin to lay eggs. These eggs quickly become more important than the queen itself – as the next generation of bees. Over winter, when the colony is broodless, the queen needs to be kept at 28 degrees Celsius to survive and be able to lay eggs the following spring. The hive is the hardware connecting two environments at very different temperatures: the inside and the outside.

Redesigning the beekeeper economy

Alex and Giangio’s patented solution – the PrimalBee® Hive – redesigns the beekeeper economy, protects honeybee populations and fosters a solution that works with the bees rather than against them. It is the first hive designed with bees at the very core of it, thanks to an altered nest shape and material aiming for better thermal efficiency of the box itself.

‘We wanted to create a solution that works from the point of the view of the bee,’ Alex explains. The company’s aim is to let the bees do what they are programmed to do. That is: collect pollen and nectar,  increase the brood population, and produce more honey. Ultimately, that also means better pollination and a more secure food system for humans, too.

From Alaska to Israel

After coming up with their prototype, the team reached out to beta testers. The hive management system was tested first in Alaska, where it showed great promise – the bees survived the winter for the first time. In the Negev desert in Israel, where extremely hot temperatures usually ‘cook’ the bees, the PrimalBee® Hive performed well too, even surviving five years in a row without any chemical treatments. 

Since Alex and Giangio started testing the first iteration of the PrimalBee® Hive almost a decade ago, their hives have not experienced any brood diseases: something unheard of elsewhere, anywhere else in the world. The product also saves beekeepers time and money. Today orchards pay a significant amount of money to professional beekeepers to rent their hives for pollination services, as a means of increasing food production.

Looking ahead

The PrimalBee® team is now looking to scale their solution, setting up a dedicated supply chain in their target markets: USA, Australia and New Zealand, Europe. Aiming for a competitive retail price, the team has redesigned the whole hive system, opting for different production technology and alternative materials. Many of their customers’ suggestions have also been implemented, improving design and operational efficiency. The latest version of the PrimalBee® Hive will be available five to six months after the seed funding round concludes.

Any additional funding will go towards expanding the team, developing their marketing capacities and creating a more affordable version of the system. Their innovation has already won positive reviews from beekeepers and interest from international investors in the US, Singapore, China as well as in Switzerland. 

Connect with Alessandro or Gianmario on LinkedIn, or visit the PrimalBee website to find out more.

Never miss a Swiss food innovation morsel.

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Back in 2019 Christian Kramer spotted an opportunity. Restaurants wanted to create more sustainable menus. Consumers wanted to make greener choices. And both were looking for support to help them in this process. This is exactly the gap that Christian’s new venture, FOOD2050, aims to close.

Hello. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’m Christian Kramer, CEO & Co-founder at FOOD2050. I’m a restaurant industry veteran who is passionate about global food system transformation.

Can you pitch FOOD2050 in a single sentence?

FOOD2050 promotes more sustainable food systems by rating and optimizing food service sector recipes, enabling better consumer choices and making it easy for businesses to achieve their sustainability goals.

How did you come up with the idea behind FOOD2050?

Back in 2019, I was involved in introducing the Beyond Burger in Europe. Throughout this process, it became really clear to me that consumers were ready for more sustainable solutions in the hospitality sector. 

I started talking to food service sector colleagues about what sustainability meant to them. Everyone recognised that there was a market need and that consumers wanted clear and robust information to help them make better choices. But no one had the time to figure out their own solutions.

So together with my business partners, Adrian Hagenbach and Leopold Weinberg, we came up with the idea of creating a platform that allowed restaurants and caterers to connect their sustainability goals with practical measures to achieve them – and help them monitor their progress. This seed then grew into FOOD2050.

What have you done so far?

Using a scientific database, we’ve created a system that evaluates food products for their environmental impact in Eco-Points (EP). This allows our partners to quickly and easily develop delicious recipes that also respect planetary boundaries. They can either choose recipes from our existing database or can use the FOOD2050 system to rate and optimise their own recipes. 

In January we launched a pilot project with the University of Zurich and ZFV, one of Switzerland’s largest caterers. This allowed us to better understand the different ways to measure the impact of food we consume and explore how to make this information tangible and actionable for consumers. After testing out multiple options, we found that Co2 equivalent was the most common metric used in food service businesses and that consumers wanted to understand how that translates into environmental goals we are all trying to achieve. It feels more motivating: it links their choices to the goal of tackling climate change.

We also tested the best ways to share the information with consumers and tested which promotional channels were most likely to drive a change in behaviour.

What are you working on right now?

We’re looking to create software to help us scale our solution. This platform will make it easier for consumers to view and interact with product ratings, as well as providing content that promotes sustainable products and the producers behind them. Participating businesses will also have access to a monitoring dashboard that will track their climate impact over time. Commercial rollout is planned for 2023. We’d be really interested in connecting with other innovators developing software for the food service sector to learn from their experiences.  

Once we’ve created software that guides our recipe development we’ll focus on creating food innovation with our partner Blue Horizon, who has been very helpful in facilitating the access to innovative producers with real environmental impact. 

Also, as a member of the EHL Innovation Village, we’re looking to collaborate with other promising start-ups working on creating a sustainable food system to maximise our long term impact.

How do you see FOOD2050 developing in future?

Our solution is currently focussed on supporting caterers and manufacturers. But in the longer term, we’d like to be able to drive change across the whole food supply chain and share the data gathered with government colleagues to shape positive food and nutrition policies.

How can the SFNV community help you achieve your goals?

We’ve recently submitted a project proposal as part of SFNV’s Impact Platform on sustainable protein to team up with other SFNV members to boost the impact of sustainable proteins within food service operations. We’re eager to work alongside leading alternative protein brands, large scale food service operations, professional chefs and environmental specialists to develop a range of recipes that could be promoted in some of the largest food service operations in Switzerland.

These collaborations would then lay the foundations for an open-source recipe platform, where knowledge is freely shared between key stakeholders to drive innovation for environmental and human health.

Additionally, we want to apply the concept of the Planetary Health Diet from the EAT Lancet Commission in a national context and help to translate it from theory into practice. To make this a reality, we’ll be looking to connect with relevant partners along the entire supply chain. 

SFNV recently launched its third Impact Platform on Food Systems 4.0. How do you see digitalization reshaping the future of food?

We see huge potential in using digital tools to enable food system transformation. In the short term, we can facilitate access to relevant food information to guide consumption choices and raise awareness of how much our diets impact our planet. In the longer term, we believe that data can help us understand the complexity of global food systems and reduce greenwashing to really drive the food revolution that we desperately need.

Tell us something we didn’t know about your company.

Through our pilot operation with a fairly small food offer, we’ve enabled students at the University of Zurich to save a whopping 36 million litres of water since the start of this year. That’s the equivalent of the water used in 1 million showers or baths! This demonstrates very clearly how food choices have a huge impact on our planet and that every individual can have an impact through their actions, however small.

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn or visit the Food2050 website to find out more. 

Got an idea for a collaborative project in this space?

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Up until now, flavors have been functional black boxes. But Mathieu Asté, Founder and CEO of iSense, is eager to disrupt this 120-year old, $14 billion industry. His solution standardizes flavor taste measurement to enable comparison and provides a software (SaaS) to accelerate flavor selection, matching, creation and sourcing.

Hello. Tell us a bit about yourself.

My entrepreneurial journey began at the age of 16, building windsurf boards. At age 22, I backpacked through West Africa looking for the ideal spot to start a fish farm, another passion of mine. Two years later I traveled to Colombia, near Cali, where I learned about cassava flour processing — a topic I dived into for my master thesis.

After graduating, I worked for two great US companies, first at Ingredion and then at IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances Inc.) where I discovered Sensory Sciences and Consumer Insights.

Creating a startup had always been in the back of my mind. But you need a strong idea — and they don’t come easy or often! While hanging out with friends one day, we were chatting about how flavors are like these functional black boxes. Then and there we realized that the world needed a better way to define flavors.

Can you pitch iSense in a single sentence?

iSense is the first flavor tech company that defines flavors in the same way that Pantone defined color, and provides software to make it easier to choose, match, create, and trade flavors.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

The extraordinary people I meet along the way who share the vision of mapping taste to redefine the flavor industry.

This week I met the CEO of a French tech sensor company, and we explored how to translate chemical signatures into taste representations. The week before it was the chairman of a Swiss flavor house, talking about digital customer engagement. 

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

It typically starts with a few calls about key topics and continues with planned meetings to monitor the progress of our operational roadmap. Then it’s all about customers and investors. The best part is when we can meet as a team – employees, consultants, industrial partners and IT developers.

What were your key achievements in 2021?

We released the first open-source taste language to describe chicken flavors. Imagine a color palette with different shades of blue to help you select the right color. It’s exactly the same with flavor. The iSense Chicken Toolkit helps marketing and product developers to define and select the right chicken flavor.

We also developed a software to match any flavor in a matter of seconds. The first proof of concept with a large beverage manufacturer was successful, and we’re now developing the technology further to support flavor creation.

I genuinely believe that digital customer engagement will change the flavor industry. So we launched a distributor engagement portal for flavor houses. It works as a SaaS, so it’s accessible to every company with a license.

What projects are you and your team working on this year?

This year is all about commercializing our tools and services, and preparing to launch our tech-driven flavor marketplace next year. That includes building preference maps to guide flavor choice, and launching a flavor briefing and creation portal.

Tell us about how you work with others in the ecosystem to innovate.

As a small company, we collaborate with experts, service providers and involve customers early on in our taste language creation and portal development. It starts with sharing our vision: disrupting how we source flavors with tech. It’s about offering flavor selection, matching, and creation within minutes instead of weeks, and making flavor trade easy, quick, and affordable. From there, we co-create a strategic roadmap and set objectives for each phase.

How do you support the Swiss ecosystem beyond your core business offer?

We initially reached out to large flavor houses and F&B manufacturers in Switzerland, looking to collaborate and gain visibility. Then we created proof of concepts and built strong commercial relationships. Now we’re at a point of maturity where we can start to give back and help the ecosystem with taste mapping, flavor guidance and flavor sourcing.

How can the SFNV community help you achieve your goals?

SFNV represents iSense and the startup ecosystem at events when we don’t have the time or funds to attend ourselves.

The global startup and investment scene is also very focused on solutions that help save our planet, like plant-based alternatives, fermentation, and cultured meat. Being part of a well-known network and community that represents these different streams of innovation is important to us.

SFNV also allows us to meet with very busy people! They can bring Stephan Palzer, Fabio Campanile, Martin Vetterli and Calvin Grieder together in a single meeting. This happened at a meeting in Zurich recently, and we were thrilled to be there.

SFNV will soon be launching its third Impact Platform on Food Systems 4.0. What’s your perspective on the role of digitalization in shaping the future of food? 

Digitalization of flavor taste lies at the heart of iSense. Taste and flavors create emotions. But what if we could map taste like Google mapped the Earth?

With agility and affordability in mind, startups like AI Palette are already identifying food and beverage trends using IoT and AI. They accelerate the development of concepts and prototypes. 

While the nutritional and regulatory aspects of food and ingredients can be put into models, taste remains artistry 99% of the time. There is a big opportunity here to change how food products are built, and make the day-to-day lives of marketing and procurement professionals and food developers easier.

We’re looking forward to the launch event and connecting with other Valley members to discuss the innovations in this space.  

Tell us something we don’t know about your company.

The idea of iSense was born on the border of the Hudson River, Hoboken, in 2016, and we drafted our first business model in Shanghai.

Connect with Mathieu on LinkedIn or visit the iSense website to find out more. more.

Interested in food system digitalization?

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