Checkout Chats: Marty Kolewe, Founder of Foodberry

When Kolewe Kolewe stepped away from a prestigious postdoc position at MIT's famed Langer Lab—the same lab that later birthed Moderna—he wasn't following the expected path for a biochemical engineer. While his colleagues were developing pharmaceuticals and biotech solutions, Kolewe was captivated by a different vision: using advanced science to revolutionize how we preserve, package, and experience food.

"In Cambridge, you see billboards about world-changing science that transforms patients' lives," Kolewe explains. "But I always thought some of those pharma applications are a little narrow. There's such potential in food to take a more tech and science-forward approach that delivers for both people and the planet."

This conviction led him to join a small Cambridge startup called Wiki Foods, which eventually evolved into Foodberry—a food technology company that's reimagining preservation methods by taking inspiration from nature's original packaging: fruit skins.

Nature's Blueprint: The Science Behind Foodberry

At its core, Foodberry's technology is inspired by something remarkably simple yet ingenious: the humble berry. "I like to say a berry literally evolved to be eaten—that's why it exists, so the seeds get spread," Kolewe explains. "It evolved to be something delicious, nutritious, convenient, and inherently sustainable."

This natural design—an edible, protective barrier surrounding a more delicate, nutritious core—became the blueprint for Foodberry's technology. The company has developed a library of proprietary materials that replicate the functionality of fruit skins in nature, from the thin skin of a grape to the heartier peel of an orange.

These edible coatings act as preservatives by providing moisture and oxygen barriers, protecting the food inside without requiring plastic packaging. The result? Food that's convenient, portable, and naturally preserved—without single-use plastics.

The B2B Pivot

While many food startups immediately target consumer shelves, Foodberry took a different approach. After initially attempting to build a consumer brand, Kolewe and his team pivoted to a B2B model, providing their technology to established food companies instead.

"We're more of a platform than just a product," Kolewe explains. "In the consumer space, brands are defined at the beginning with a singular focus on benefits around a flagship product. For us, that was never the case—a yogurt berry has very different benefits than an ice cream novelty or a fresh fruit product."

There was also the challenge of consumer education. "In food, people are resistant to change. Nobody wants to 'eat technology,'" he notes. "The innovation becomes really powerful in the hands of a market-leading brand in a category. People trust the brand, so they're more willing to try something different."

Today, Foodberry partners with established food brands to create innovative products like their yogurt berries, which transform traditional yogurt from a spoon-and-cup experience into something you can pop into your mouth and enjoy on the go.

Balancing Innovation with Practical Business Growth

Navigating the food tech space comes with unique challenges, particularly for a company straddling cutting-edge innovation and practical business growth.

Foodberry's solution has been two-fold. First, they maintain a delicate balance between pushing innovation forward and ensuring their products are immediately appealing without lengthy explanations. "An average person needs to taste your food product, and they don't need a 10-minute explanation about the technology—they just have to love it," Kolewe emphasizes.

Second, they've diversified their partnership approach to manage both short-term revenue needs and long-term growth. "For us, it's finding a mix of long-term strategic partners that are usually companies with billions in revenue—the big guys that take a long time—and then coupling that with people who can move quickly, want to innovate, and make an impact soon."

While Foodberry does maintain some products under its own brand—like their Trailberries—these primarily serve as market validation tools rather than the company's main business strategy, demonstrating consumer market traction that will ultimately shortcut some larger customers' internal commercialization timelines.

Transforming Food Experiences

Foodberry’s most exciting possibilities? Those that push the boundaries of how we experience familiar foods.

One innovation Kolewe is particularly excited about is the application of vegetables as protective coatings, creating products like a "hummus berry" or a cream cheese berry. These concepts would transform traditionally dip-based foods into convenient, portable snacks by wrapping them in vegetable-based edible coatings like carrot or red pepper.

This approach of "turning the dip into the snack" represents Foodberry's most transformative potential—reimagining not just how food is preserved, but how it's experienced entirely.

The Future of Eating

Looking ahead, Kolewe sees Foodberry's technology aligning perfectly with evolving food consumption patterns. "People talk a lot about the future of food and start throwing out ideas like 'food is medicine' and 'personalized food,'" he notes. But what does that actually mean in terms of a product?

His answer: "The personalized food experiences of the future are going to look more like our snacking patterns of today than our meals from yesterday."

This vision positions Foodberry at the intersection of convenience, sustainability, and personalization—three of the most powerful forces shaping food innovation today. As our consumption habits continue to evolve toward more frequent, portable eating occasions, Foodberry's nature-inspired technology offers a glimpse into a future where convenience doesn't have to come at the expense of nutrition, sustainability, or delight.