#89 Compound
Bean-free coffee and cocoa-less chocolate
Read time: 5 minutes
Hi, I’m Javi Gascón.
This is Climate Tech Distillery, a newsletter where I talk about one specific climate tech company every week.
Today we’ll distill a company that’s making bean-free coffee and cocoa-free cocoa to minimize the climate impact and supply chain issues of these products: Compound 🇺🇸
Shoutout to my friend Hugo Rauch at New Wave, the only podcast you need to keep up with Europe’s climate-tech VC world.
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What Problem Does Compound Tackle❓
They specifically deal with the vulnerability of coffee and cocoa supply chains that are collapsing under climate change. It’s a big deal:
1. Coffee Supply Crisis: By 2050, climate change could make 50% of current coffee-growing land unsuitable for cultivation. Coffee prices hit 50-year highs in 2024 with Arabica up 60% year-over-year. Brazil, producing 38% of global coffee, saw its worst drought in 70 years, slashing 2025 yields by 12%.
2. Cocoa in Free Fall: Cocoa prices quadrupled between 2023 and 2024, spiking from $3,000 to $12,000 per metric ton, the highest in 50 years. Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, which produce 70% of global cocoa, saw devastating harvest losses from extreme weather and disease outbreaks.
3. Impossible to Replace Quickly: Coffee trees take 3-4 years to produce their first harvest, and cocoa trees even longer. Both crops require extremely specific temperature ranges and rainfall patterns that climate change is rapidly disrupting, and farmers can't simply relocate when growing regions become unsuitable.
4. Farmers Abandoning Crops: Millions of smallholder farmers who produce 90% of the world's cocoa and 70% of coffee earn below living wages and can't invest in climate adaptation. Many are abandoning these crops entirely for more profitable alternatives, accelerating supply shortages.
Product / Service 📦
They create beanless coffee and cocoa ingredients using fermentation and upcycled materials. They rock:
Revolutionary Molecular Mapping: They mapped over 800 flavor compounds in coffee to recreate exact profiles using fermentation and upcycled ingredients like date seeds, sunflower seeds, and grape seeds. Matches taste, aroma, and caffeine without any coffee beans.
Proven Taste Performance: In blind taste tests with Purdue University, 60% of tasters preferred Compound's coffee over premium brands like Blue Bottle. Their fermentation technology can dial caffeine levels up or down for different use cases.
Price Protection & Supply Stability: Their ingredients shield food brands from wild commodity price swings. By using diversified, domestically-sourced inputs instead of equatorial monocrops, Compound offers predictable pricing and reliable supply that doesn't depend on weather in Brazil or Ghana.
B2B Platform for Scale: They offer instant coffee, coffee concentrate, cold brew, cocoa powder, and chocolate compound to food manufacturers. Their ingredients integrate into existing pipelines without costly reformulation, making adoption seamless for brands facing supply disruptions.
Platform for Future Crops: Their tech can grow so much more. Like their CEO said “In the future, we will look into other crops that are either at risk because of climate change, or that are big contributors to climate change.“
Market 🌐
The global coffee and chocolate markets are both valued at $100B+ annually. Climate change threatens to eliminate 50% of suitable growing land by 2050, while coffee and cocoa production emit 79 kg CO2 per kg.
Record-high prices (both hit 50-year highs) and chronic supply volatility are driving urgent adoption of beanless alternatives.
Other Key Players
There are many companies creating more sustainable alternatives to these mega famous crops, here are some:
Voyage Foods 🇺🇸: Making nut-free spreads, cocoa-free chocolate and beanless coffee from roasted chickpeas. Sells to food service and manufacturing channels.
Atomo Coffee 🇺🇸: Produces beanless coffee from upcycled date seeds, chicory, and other ingredients, mimicking traditional coffee’s taste and effects.
Planet A Foods 🇩🇪: Uses fermented oats and sunflower seeds to make different types of chocolate. Available across 7 European markets. Most scaled fermentation-based alternative.
Compound’s tech seems to be the easiest to scale across other products and their deep molecular mapping makes them more flexible and resilient thanks to custom formulations for B2B clients and easy ingredient swaps.
Founding Story 🦄
Compound was founded in 2020 by Maricel Saenz, a Costa Rican entrepreneur passionate about sustainability and coffee. After co-founding Nextbiotics (a synthetic biology startup tackling antibiotic resistance), she saw an opportunity to apply similar technology to food systems.
Witnessing the ecological devastation of traditional coffee farming in her home country (exacerbated by climate change, where coffee ranks as the fifth-most polluting crop) she sought to recreate coffee's flavors, aromas, and effects without beans using precision fermentation and synthetic biology.
They launched their first consumer product, Minus Coffee cold brew, in 2022. When cocoa prices quadrupled in 2024, they leveraged their platform to fast-track a cocoa-free chocolate solution in record time, proving the versatility of their technology.
They've since raised over $10 million and pivoted from D2C to B2B, offering ingredient platforms to food manufacturers and are in discussions with partners to scale production to hundreds of metric tons for both coffee and cocoa applications.
Top Impact Stats 📈
86% less greenhouse gas emissions and 94% less water use compared to regular coffee. No verified data about their cocoa but probably similar.
92% less land required and 41% upcycled ingredients compared to regular coffee. No verified data about their cocoa but probably similar.
Significant reduction in geopolitical and logistics risks, ensuring more stable prices and supply.
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