Germany’s Barnhouse Debuts Vegan Granola with ‘THIC’ Cocoa-Free Chocolate

From greenqueen.com.hk

By Anay Mridul

In Germany, granola giant Barnhouse’s latest innovation spotlights a future-friendly chocolate alternative devised by some of the world’s best chefs.

The company’s new Krunchy Low Sugar (No) Choco features Danish start-up Endless Food Co’s waste-derived cocoa-free chocolate, dubbed THIC (This Isn’t Chocolate).

“This is a significant commercial milestone, as we’ve formally entered the German market, with our largest volumes to date,” Endless Food Co said.

The plant-based granola is currently rolling out on supermarket shelves in Germany, and is available on Barnhouse’s website for €4.99 per 375g box.

Barnhouse combines THIC with cocoa powder in new granola

                                                                                                  Courtesy: Barnhouse

Endless Food Co has Michelin-starred roots. The company was co-founded by Matthew Orlando, touted as one of the world’s best chefs, who was the owner of Copenhagen’s eco-minded Amass Restaurant and previously worked at The Fat Duck, Aureole and Le Bernardin.

At Amass, Orlando was a colleague of COO Christian Bach (who has previously worked at Noma) and CEO Maximillian Bogenmann. The three built on the restaurant’s sustainability heritage by developing a solution to the chocolate industry’s climate issues while cutting back on food waste, which accounts for a tenth of global emissions.

Endless Food Co’s chocolate alternative makes use of brewer’s spent grain (BSG), the solid residue from malted barley after beer production, and cocoa shells, which are paired with sustainable fats like wild-harvested shea and illipe butters, and organic beet sugar.

The start-up mimics traditional chocolate-making processes to turn BSG into a powder that can be embedded into a chocolate production line. Refining and conching help replicate the chocolate-like mass that speeds through a tempering and moulding line.

“We are proud to be the first food company in Germany to work with this innovative product,” Barnhouse said on its website.

The cocoa-free chocolate granola contains locally grown whole-grain oats, tapioca syrup, sunflower oil, chicory root fibre, puffed rice, desiccated coconut, and 1.7% of cocoa powder, complemented by 4.5% of the THIC ingredient. It contains 9.2g of protein and 15g of fibre per 100g, and just 4.2g of sugar.

Endless Food Co tackling waste and emissions with cocoa-free chocolate

                                                                                        Courtesy: Endless Food Co

One of the central themes around Endless Food Co’s existence – and the clue is in the name here – is food waste. By using BSG, it is valorising an ingredient that makes up 85% of the waste produced by the brewing industry. Every year, 36.4 million tonnes of BSG is manufactured globally, but 80% of this is repurposed into animal feed or biofuel, and the rest ends up in landfill.

Cacao, meanwhile, is among the most wasted fruits in the world – around 70-80% of the fruit is thrown away during chocolate production, despite the discarded parts having high nutritional and functional value. Chocolate production itself is a highly polluting process, thanks in large part to the widespread use of deforestation-linked palm oil.

THIC is positioned as a one-to-one replacement for chocolate, and according to a life-cycle assessment, it has an 84% lower climate footprint than conventional dark chocolate.

Endless Food Co’s ingredient has already begun appearing in several formats in Scandinavia. Last year, it teamed up with 7-Eleven Denmark to launch cookies made from THIC for all 180 of its stores nationwide. And last month, its upcycled chocolate alternative was the base of a cocoa-free chocolate cheesecake at Stockholm’s Urban Deli.

In late 2024, the start-up raised €1M in a funding round led by Nordic Foodtech VC, with EIFO and Rockstart participating as well. This followed an investment from Innovation Fund Denmark in 2023, and was earmarked to help Endless Food Co expand production, set up a pilot plant, and grow its team.

It is part of a growing list of companies working with cocoa-free chocolate, including Germany’s Planet A Foods, British start-ups Win-Win and Nukoko, US firms Voyage Foods and Compound Foods, Italy’s Foreverland, and Singapore’s Prefer, among others.

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/barnhouse-granola-krunchy-endless-food-co-cocoa-free-chocolate/