Jack & Bry raises £1.25m as demand for meat alternatives soars

Funding to drive continued product innovation and follows significant leadership team appointments

London, 4 February: Jack & Bry, a producer of plant-based meat alternatives, has secured £1.25 million in seed funding.  The round was led by SFC Capital, with other backers including KM Capital, Rubix Ventures, and a number of high net worth private investors. The investment comes at a time of rapid growth for Jack & Bry, and follows the recent appointment of FMCG industry veterans including former Quorn chairman Clive Sharpe and Singha Europe MD David Flower to the management team. The funding will support further product innovation as the jackfruit pioneer targets more big-name customer acquisitions. AI to help develop more jackfruit products that closely mimic the texture of meat using its proprietary manufacturing process.

Online retailers and suppliers are stocking a growing range of plant-based meat alternative products to keep up with consumer demand – 40 per cent of UK consumers are either not eating meat or actively reducing their intake (Mintel, 2020). In this climate, Jack & Bry has experienced 400 per cent growth in new customer launches in January alone. 

Reflecting on the booming market, Bryony Tinn-Disbury, founder of Jack & Bry, said: “We know consumers are seeking out meat alternatives in ever greater numbers, but they are also seeking higher quality in the plant-based foods they buy. Key to that is authentic recreation of taste and texture, and we’re proud to have developed a full retail range of branded jackfruit products to mimic all the meats to satisfy that demand.”

“Our ambition is to launch with another major supermarket in 2021 to help meet the booming demand. We predict the Veganuary effect will last throughout the whole year, not just January, and backed by our new investors and non-executive directors we are excited for the next stage of the journey at Jack & Bry.”

Founded in 2019, Jack & Bry has already created a range of innovative jackfruit meat alternatives, including burgers, mince, sausages, and its first product, its famous pepperoni pizza ingredient. It already supplies 138 Zizzi sites, 450 Papa John’s outlets in the UK and Netherlands, and 300 Sainsbury’s stores, with products also set to launch in The Vegan Kind and Central Foods. Jack & Bry recently launched the UK’s first plant-based fast food fish burger when it’s Fillet-no-Fish was added to the menu at Neat Burger, a plant-based restaurant chain backed by Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Jack & Bry recently completed two non-executive appointments. Former Quorn chairman Clive Sharpe joined the company as non-executive chairman, with Singha Europe MD David Flower coming on board as non-executive director. The pair join Jack & Bry co-founder Jennifer Pardoe, who was also appointed as Chief Operations Officer last year.

Speaking about SFC Capital’s investment, Rohallah Ghasemi, Lead Investment Manager, said: “We are delighted to be supporting Jack & Bry with this seed funding. The team has already achieved incredible growth, and we are looking forward to working with them as they expand into more direct-to-consumer channels. Shoppers are looking to add more and more innovative non-meat alternatives to their usual staples, and this trend is only going to continue over the coming years. Jack & Bry is in a great position to lead this new market.” 

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Note to editors:

About Jack & Bry: Bryony Tinn-Disbury was a producer in the advertising industry, making adverts for brands such as Virgin and KFC, but she held ambitions to create her own business and do something closer to her heart. After looking to her family for inspiration (Bryony’s father was a pizza box maker in the packaging industry), combined with a love for plant-based food, she saw a gap in the plant-based pizza ingredient world. After researching jackfruit and discovering its flavour-hugging and binding properties, she created the first Jackfruit pepperoni in late 2018. Jack & Bry was born (Jack being the jackfruit and Bry being short for Bryony).

Jack & Bry has also created other ‘meats’ for pizza toppings, including jackfruit bacon and ham. And has now moved onto a range of everyday favourites, including mince, chorizo, burgers, sausages and mince.

For more information, visit jackandbry.com

About co-founder Jennifer Pardoe: Jennifer has spent 30 years in the food industry in operations and new product development, working for the likes of Starbucks and Eat. For the past eight years, she has specialised in plant-based NPD within her own product development consultancy PB&Co, working with international meat alternative brands. Jennifer was introduced to Bryony by an investor in vegan venture capital fund Beyond Impact. Jennifer helped Bryony complete product development, launch the jackfruit product and joined the business as chief operations officer.

About SFC Capital: SFC Capital is the most active seed-stage investor in the UK, and was ranked fifth globally by Pitchbook in both 2018 and 2019. Founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneur Stephen Page (DataEase, Sapphire), SFC Capital combines an angel syndicate with its own funds to provide investors with diversified exposure to SEIS- and EIS-qualifying businesses. Investors can back the high-potential startups directly or through a portfolio curated and managed by the SFC Capital team. Having backed more than 225 startups since its inception, notable companies in the SFC Capital portfolio include Cognism, Transcend Packaging.

Based in London but active across the UK, SFC Capital has a track record of backing high-growth businesses in parts of the UK where access to early-stage equity capital is often scarce, with notable investments including Vortex IOT (Swansea), Transcend Packaging (Caerphilly), Petalite (Birmingham), and Intupod (Belfast). In total, businesses backed by SFC Capital through its angel network and funds have created more than 500 jobs outside of London. In April 2020, SFC Capital received a £10 million commitment from British Business Investment through its Regional Angels Programme. As part of its regional expansion, SFC Capital is also opening a second office in Macclesfield to catalyse its regional investor base and increase deal flow across the country.

To find out more, please visit SFC Capital’s website at www.startupfundingclub.com or email

[email protected].