Bolder Foods

Bolder Foods supplies the missing ingredient for tastier, more satisfying dairy-free cheese.

Cheese is the third most carbon-intensive food product. While demand for dairy alternatives continues to grow, most existing solutions fail to deliver on taste, texture, or accessibility—leaving dairy companies and alt-cheese makers with limited tools to serve a broader market.

Bolder Foods set out to solve this with MycoVeg: a clean-label, non-GMO ingredient developed through biomass fermentation. By growing select fungi on vegetable feedstocks, the team created a protein base that delivers both flavor and functionality—enabling plant-based cheeses that actually feel and taste like cheese, without compromise.

Led by Ilana Taub and Michael Minch-Dixon, with scientific lead Stacey Skaalure, Bolder Foods was part of biotope’s very first cohort. In a short time, they

launched Chizou in Belgian supermarkets,
initiated corporate pilots,
secured over €1.5 million in equity and grant funding, and
pushed their R&D toward a more scalable and sustainable solution for dairy-free cheese.

We tried

Today, Bolder Foods is no longer active. We’re proud to have backed founders who challenged the status quo. The Bolder Foods team tackled a hard problem with urgency and creativity. That’s why we don’t say we failed, but: we tried.

“Did we have an amazing team? Absolutely. A great product? Yes. Strong IP? Helpful investors? Yes and yes. But still, it wasn’t enough and that really sucks. Not just for us, but because the world needs more bold climate-positive solutions.”

Ilana Taub

We will carry all our lessons forward, quite literally in this case, as Ilana has since joined the biotope team as Stakeholder Manager, helping other biotech founders build what’s next.