Featured image for Meet SciFi: The Future Of Real Meat

Meet SciFi: The Future Of Real Meat

by Chloe Gordon on 03/13/2023 | 4 Minute Read

For the past few years, we've found ourselves in a meatless market shift as consumers want to eat less animal flesh and help curb carbon emissions. 

We're used to seeing meatless options branded differently than those containing animal products—think Beyond Meat and its unrestrictedly green branding and packaging. However, we can now see meatless products branded and packaged similarly to their meat-included counterparts. 

SciFi Foods, for example, is one of the newest brands leaning into this paradigm shift. The brand is, in fact, entirely reinventing how we consume animal products, and its lab-grown meat possesses the same taste, texture, and nutrition as its conventional counterparts but without any cruelty or harmful environmental impact.

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The brand creates real, cultivated meat grown from cells to bring consumers the real beef taste. And instead of shying away from the foundation of technology and science they built the brand on, the visual identity and packaging systems lean directly into it. Part of the problem for the brand was consumers who wanted to decrease their overall meat consumption but didn't want to go all-in for a vegan or vegetarian diet.

However, SciFi saw a gap in the market and that meat eaters needed to be catered to, especially when it came to products that had a genuine meaty taste. SciFi Foods turned to Day Job to help visually execute their idea through a branding and packaging lens. And while they wanted to hone in on carnivore love, they also wanted the brand’s future-forward ideas to shine through.

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“The design process actually started with naming. We presented several concepts to the client, but SCiFi stood out. The strategy was differentiation,” shared Rion Harmon, co-founder of Day Job. “We anticipated how their competition would position cultivated meat: by obfuscating, blending in, or focusing on the positive impacts. We wanted to embrace the novelty. We wanted to say: yes, this is strange, isn’t it? But it’s also very cool, and very huge. No longer do cows have to die for us to eat meat. That is the future. Welcome.” 

The packaging system mimics its animal-based counterpart, while the label graphics combine futuristic symbolism and typography dripping with sci-fi undertones and Gen Z inspiration. “We put the cows in little protective bubbles floating around the packaging, a subtle nod to saving the cows from factory farming,” stated Harmon. Suspending the bovines in bubbles was also a subtle nod to one SCiFi’s most groundbreaking technical achievements—single cell suspension. Essentially they isolate cells at a higher rate in a liquid medium for cell growth and development. In this case, the scientists feed cells with nutrients so they can grow and reproduce enough to be used as “ground meat.” 

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“We started by humanely collecting beef cells—the only part of our process that involved an animal—and then we used CRISPR technology to tweak their genes, allowing them to keep growing in large bioreactors. Thanks to our synthetic biology platform, we can generate hundreds of cell lines each month, allowing us to continuously experiment with and refine our process to produce desired results as quickly as possible,” the brand’s website shares. 

Previous alt-meat brands have utilized green and brown hues to help prove to consumers that the products were plant-based, but SciFi foods relies on the copy and keeps the colors bright and vivid. “The goal for this brand was ubiquity—everyone, everywhere—so we went with familiar, appetizing colors (ketchup, mustard, blue skies) that will span generations, evoking nostalgia and optimism for the future at the same time. We wanted the brand to feel like a future that was once envisioned was finally here,” shared Harmon. The red and blue hues are reminiscent of those pesky pills from The Matrix, again with sci-fi undertones, but the pop of yellow throughout the packaging system adds a splash of playfulness to the design. 

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The result is a playful and proud packaging system that differentiates the brand from other plant-based products that attempt to behave like the real meaty McCoy. Day Job Day Job infused the design with sci-fi-inspired details, fully embracing the brand's scientific, lab-grown background. Where other plant-based brands maintain monotony and a focus on green and brown hues, SciFi welcomes energetic colors helping differentiate the brand even more. 

The brand aims to be on menus at select restaurants and grocery stores by 2024. 

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