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Jessica Schwabach ’21 didn’t intend to become an entrepreneur who created plant-based meat. She planned to go to medical school. But, after taking the Alternative Meat Challenge Lab at UC Berkeley, everything changed. “It sounded like it was about vegetarian food and I was vegetarian,” she said. “I figured you’d get to eat a lot and hang out with people. It just sounded like a fun class.”
But instead of sampling alternative meat cuisine, on the first day, the professor gave a presentation about the market opportunity and trends for plant-based meat as well as why it’s impactful. According to market research firm Grand View Research, the plant-based meat market was valued at $8.5 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $24.8 billion by 2030.
“I remember walking out of the class and thinking that this was a really interesting opportunity and something that should be explored further because it was going to grow very rapidly. And it was something I could get involved in right away while I was still a student,” she said.
That’s precisely what happened. She was assigned a group project in the alternative meat class where she met her future co-founder, Siwen Deng ’19, who was in her last year of a PhD for Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley. The two became interested in the technical challenges around plant-based meat and how to improve the taste. Oftentimes plant-based meat can be dry and doesn’t fully mimic the experience of eating meat. “We thought if we came up with a good solution, we could actually be the ones to commercialize that,” Schwabach said.
And they did—Schwabach and Deng co-founded Sundial Foods and created plant-based wings from a short list of ingredients including chickpeas, sunflower oil, and nutritional yeast that created crispy, edible “skin” made from a protein-lipid film to lock in moisture. However, there’s a difference between having an idea for a company and actually starting one. Schwabach credits UC Berkeley for helping her turn Sundial Foods into a reality.
“In the early days, we had no idea what we were doing,” she said. “We were science students who had not thought of ourselves as entrepreneurs but UC Berkeley pointed us to a lot of resources.” They enrolled in FORM+FUND, Berkeley Law’s free workshop series that teaches the core legal, financial, and organizational aspects of starting and scaling a venture-backed business. Also, Schwabach participated in UC Berkeley’s CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) and the Banatao Institute’s spring 2021 cohort. As a program within that interdisciplinary institute, the cohort experience provided Schwabach with the resources she needed to learn how to create a company.
“In the early days, we had no idea what we were doing. We were science students who had not thought of ourselves as entrepreneurs, but UC Berkeley pointed us to a lot of resources.”
Jessica Schwabach ’21
“We learned things like how to pitch and tell our story,” she said. “And also how to address technical challenges, R&D challenges, and how to describe them to people who might be potential investors.” Those skills paid off because in November 2021, Sundial Foods secured $4 million in seed funding from Nestle. They continued to develop and refine their wings and in 2024, they sold the intellectual property to the food giant.
Schwabach is no longer the CEO of Sundial Foods but she’s still focused on sustainability. “My evolution in thinking over the past few years is that approaching sustainability from a food processing standpoint is the fastest way to make an impact,” she said. “It’s more interesting to look at things like agricultural practices and what we can do to make sure that we’re able to supply enough food for everybody on the planet in a way that aligns with the planet.”
Her next project, also at UC Berkeley, involves sustainable farming practices. Her specific project is still in its infancy but in general, sustainable farming practices include things like using certain plants to reverse desertification or picking crops that work well in low-water environments.
Schwabach continues to concentrate on building a sustainability-focused business because it’s very much needed. “There are so many amazing ideas and so much fundamental research that could be really useful if it’s applied,” she said. “But if you see an idea like that and you’re not the one who tries to get it out into the world, then it probably never will, and won’t make an impact. But these businesses are very necessary.”
