Slashing CO2

Founded: 2020

HQ: San Mateo, CA

Cooking oil that doesn’t fry the planet.

Big Picture

Vegetable oils like soy and palm are the most consumed food products in the world after rice and wheat. The scale of consumption makes them one of the primary drivers of deforestation and biodiversity loss, particularly in carbon-rich forests like the Amazon and Indonesia. And while “vegetable oils” may sound healthy, their consumption is causally linked to all manner of chronic disease.

How it Works

Zero Acre introduces a new standard for the fry oil to power all industrial kitchens. They are the exclusive producers of Fera fruit oil, pressed from an antioxidant-rich fruit of a distinct South American palm tree, oleifera x guineensis. Fera meets the clean taste and low costs chefs need for their hardworking fryers – all 100% deforestation-free and with no seed oils, preservatives, or other nonsense.

Unfair Advantage

Fera fruit oil is healthier, tastier, and better performing in culinary applications than conventional vegetable oils, all with a small fraction of the environmental footprint. Zero Acre is developing additional products, proprietary fermentation processes, and microorganisms to address all the ways that vegetable oils and fats are used across home kitchens, restaurants, and packaged food.

222

Square feet

of land saved per bottle

JEFF NOBBS CEO & CO-FOUNDER

Jeff is the owner of Bay Area restaurant Kitava and was previously the CEO and co-founder of Extrabux, which was acquired by Rakuten.

CAMILLE BAMFORD PRESIDENT

Camille was previously VP of Business Development & Sales at Plenty and worked in Business Development at Palantir. She holds an MBA from Harvard.


The World Needs an Oil Change

Zero Acre Farms

Zero Acre Farms puts microbes (and $37M) to work on a better alternative to vegetable oil

TechCrunch

Alternative Cooking Oils Are Taking Over Restaurant Kitchens

Bloomberg