Seafood consumption is going up around the world, including in the US, with salmon being the fish species Americans love to eat the most. (The only seafood Americans eat more is shrimp, who of course are crustaceans, not fish.) 

The biggest wave of alt-meat so far has focused on beef replacement like burgers and sausages, given how many consumers already view red meat as bad for their health. But the perception that salmon is a healthy food is widespread, meaning that any effort to entice consumers to switch to alt-salmon will be swimming upstream in ways that alt-beef isn’t. 

Yet the need for fish-free salmon is as vast as the sea, both for animal welfare and ocean health reasons, but it’s far more difficult to replicate salmon’s texture than ground beef.

Enter, Oshi, a three-year-old startup that’s raised $14.5 million dollars to date and has invented new machinery to essentially build a fish-free salmon filet layer by layer. 

In this episode, Oshi CEO Ofek Ron talks about his journey from being an animal advocate working at a nonprofit vegan advocacy organization to taking the leap to start his own alt-protein company. As you’ll hear, at first he really had no idea how he’d remake salmon, yet still assembled a team of technical co-founders inspired by his desire and they have raised money based on their skills and not the idea. 

Since then, they’ve invented new technology, released various iterations of their salmon filet, and now have entered more than a dozen US restaurants. For full disclosure, my own company, The Better Meat Co., works with Oshi, but I can assure you that my admiration for the company predates that partnership and the decision to bring Ofek on this episode is also independent of it. 

So, will Oshi help turn the tides for our oceans and their finned inhabitants? Time will tell. But Oshi is certainly riding a wave right now that’s taking them from across the Mediterranean to the shores of the US. 

Discussed in this episode

• Ofek was influenced to become vegan after seeing this speech online.

• Ofek is a founding board member at the nonprofit Vegan-Friendly.

• He met his cofounders via the Good Food Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

• You can see a photo of the Oshi salmon filet here.

• Paul loves fava bean tofu.

More about Ofek Ron:

Ofek is the co-founder and CEO of Oshi, a leading company in the plant-based seafood industry, where they have been at the helm for 3.5 years. Before Oshi, Ofek served as a founding board member and Vice President at Vegan-Friendly, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting veganism and animal rights. Prior to that, they were the CEO of Software Sources, a role that followed their entrepreneurial venture as the co-founder and CEO of Buzz Production, an event production company.

Ofek holds a BA in Economics and Business from Reichman University in Israel. A dedicated vegan for 13 years, Ofek has been an active advocate for animal rights, notably co-hosting the largest animal rights protest in Tel Aviv in 2017. Outside of professional and advocacy work, Ofek is a proud parent of two and is married.