Compound Foods

Founded in 2020, Compound Foods is a food science company based in San Francisco. Their first product, Minus Coffee, is coffee without coffee beans. Inspired by their founder Maricel's time in Costa Rica—where she saw firsthand the ecological impacts of traditional coffee farming—the company utilizes a proprietary fermentation platform that transforms low-value and low-carbon embodied feedstock into high-value products such as coffee. The taste is the same as traditional coffee, but the process uses 94% less water and emits 91% less greenhouse gas.

Minus Coffee launched direct-to-consumer in January 2023. Since then, the product has received rave reviews and consistently sells out.