Mushlabs: fermenting mushrooms into a sustainable food startup — an interview with founder Mazen Rizk

Brussels, July 26th 2023

Summary

›Mazen Rizk founded Mushlabs to develop sustainable foods using mushrooms and fermentation after a PhD in synthetic biology and work in the food industry.
›Mushlabs won the EIC ePitching with Investors on Agritech, Food and Beverages event on 15 February 2023.
›The company focuses on mushroom-derived foods and fermentation but faces the technical challenge of scaling fermentation processes.
›Rizk emphasises mission, team building, resilience and the need to introduce circularity into the food system.
›He cites Bill Gates' How to Avoid a Climate Disaster as inspiration and names mycologist Paul Stamets as a figure he would like to meet.

Mushlabs and the promise of mushroom-based fermentation

Mushlabs is an early stage biotech company building food products from mushrooms using fermentation. The company was the winner of the online European Innovation Council ePitching with Investors event on Agritech, Food and Beverages held on 15 February 2023. In an EIC Coffee Break interview founder and CEO Mazen Rizk described how his background in synthetic biology and a stint in the food industry led him to combine taste, biotechnology and sustainability to address what he sees as deep flaws in the current food system.

From Lebanon to synthetic biology and back to food

Rizk grew up in Lebanon where drought and seasonal limits to production are familiar realities. He trained in biology and completed a PhD in synthetic biology in Germany. After his doctorate he took a role in the food industry which exposed him to the sector's environmental and structural problems. That experience, together with an increasing interest in mushrooms, prompted him to start Mushlabs with the aim of producing sustainable and circular foods through fermentation.

Roots of the idea and terminology:Rizk describes Mushlabs as creating food from the roots of mushrooms. The precise biological structure typically used in fermentation and food applications is the mycelium. Mycelium is the filamentous network that functions as the vegetative part of fungi and is distinct from the mushroom fruiting body. Mycelium and mushroom-derived biomass can be used as a protein or texturising ingredient in various food formats.

Why mushrooms and fermentation

Mushrooms and fungal mycelium are attractive to many founders pursuing sustainable foods for several reasons. Fungi can convert low value substrates into nutritious biomass and can be cultivated in controlled environments that require less land and often less water than traditional agriculture. Fermentation is a flexible production method that can produce consistent ingredients year round. Rizk framed Mushlabs as an attempt to bring circularity and reduced emissions into food production while making appealing food products.

Fermentation explained:Fermentation in industrial food contexts means growing microorganisms or fungal biomass in controlled bioreactors on a chosen substrate. The output can be whole-cell biomass, protein concentrates, flavour compounds or structured materials derived from mycelial networks. Scaling fermentation requires controlling parameters such as oxygen, pH, temperature and substrate composition and ensuring product consistency and safety.

Technical and operational challenges

Rizk acknowledged the hard technical work behind the concept. For Mushlabs the most pressing challenge in recent years has been scale-up of fermentation. Their science team is creating processes that are novel and therefore require bespoke solutions rather than off-the-shelf scaling recipes. The company has invested significant effort to resolve these issues and move towards industrial scale production.

Scale-up issues in practice:Moving from lab scale to industrial fermentation typically raises problems with oxygen transfer, mixing, contamination risk and process economics. For fungal mycelium there are also choices to make about submerged fermentation versus solid state fermentation and how to formulate substrates for cost and sustainability. Addressing these requires engineering work, piloting and iterative process optimisation.

Personal motivations and support network

Rizk described personal influences on the project. Growing up with a father who was a doctor instilled a desire to help people. His family in Lebanon has been supportive of the Mushlabs mission from day one. Two brothers who are entrepreneurs also contributed an understanding of the realities and sacrifices of building an early stage company.

Recognition from the EIC and investor outreach

Mushlabs won the pitching session at the EIC ePitching with Investors event on Agritech, Food and Beverages on 15 February 2023. The EIC highlighted the win in its Coffee Break series, which profiles innovators in the EIC portfolio and ecosystem. The European Innovation Council provides a set of Business Acceleration Services that help awardees and applicants with coaching, investor matchmaking, trade fair participation and procurement matches. Winning EIC pitching events can raise a startup's visibility with investors and potential corporate partners.

Milestone	Date or period	Notes
Grew up in Lebanon	Childhood	Experienced Mediterranean climate and drought
PhD in synthetic biology	After undergraduate studies	Completed in Germany
First job in food industry	Post-PhD	Exposed to sustainability issues in food production
Founded Mushlabs	Following industry experience	Focused on mushroom-based fermentation foods
Won EIC ePitching event	15 February 2023	EIC Agritech, Food and Beverages online pitching
EIC Coffee Break interview published	26 July 2023	Profile of founder and company

Advice to other founders and researchers

Rizk offered practical and motivational advice for people considering starting a company or a research project. He stressed that founders must be the biggest believers in their vision from the outset. He advised aspiring founders to identify what they personally bring to a project, to assemble a world class team because of the time spent together, and to cultivate resilience and willpower to tackle large social problems.

Influences, reading and role models

Rizk mentioned How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates as a current and inspiring read. He cited the book's argument that we need to accelerate technology development to reach zero emissions and flagged the idea that current food production methods are unsustainable. He also said he would like to meet Paul Stamets, the mycologist known for popularising fungi and their uses, to discuss mushrooms and their potential in more depth.

A note on claims and numbers:The interview relays Rizk's view that current food systems would require roughly 1.8 planets to support the projected population if production methods do not change. That figure reflects a common type of high level argument about ecological overshoot. Such numbers can be useful to communicate urgency but they depend heavily on assumptions about diets, technology and productivity and should be treated as indicative rather than precise forecasts.

What the interview does not yet answer

The EIC Coffee Break profile gives insight into founder motivations, technical hurdles and early recognition. It does not provide detailed information on Mushlabs' specific product formulations, regulatory pathway, commercial timeline or funding beyond the EIC pitching win. For novel fungal food ingredients or novel production methods in the European Union there are regulatory processes such as the novel foods approval route that startups must navigate. Commercial success will depend on product-market fit, cost competitive production, safety approvals and distribution partnerships.

Context from the European innovation ecosystem

The European Innovation Council offers funding and business acceleration services aimed at taking deep tech from lab to market. EIC-supported companies typically benefit from coaching, investor matchmaking, access to trade fairs and procurement matching. For food tech in particular, the combination of technical scale-up work and regulatory approvals tends to be capital intensive and time consuming. Winning EIC exposure through pitching events can open doors to investor meetings but it is one step in a longer path to industrialisation and market adoption.

Mushlabs' emphasis on circularity is aligned with broader EU policy priorities on sustainable food systems and reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture. Startups in this space must balance engineering, cost, taste and regulatory compliance. Fermentation and fungal proteins are promising routes but practical deployment at scale remains a complex engineering, supply chain and regulatory challenge.

Final takeaways

Mushlabs is an example of a new wave of startups combining biotechnology and food production with an explicit sustainability mission. The founder's technical background and early EIC recognition are positive signals. The company is candid about the technical hurdles it faces particularly around fermentation scale-up. For observers and potential partners the important next questions are product specifics, regulatory plans, production economics and commercial partnerships. Those details will determine whether the promise of mushroom fermentation can translate into a scalable, competitive business that contributes to a more circular food system.

About the EIC Business Acceleration Services mentioned in the interview:The EIC Business Acceleration Services provide coaching, access to investors and corporates, trade fair participation and procurement matchmaking to EIC awardees and selected innovators. The Coffee Break series is part of the EIC Community outreach to profile beneficiaries and share knowledge. The EIC also runs pitching events and investor outreach programmes to connect early stage innovators with potential funders and partners.

Disclaimer The content reflects the founder's account as published by the EIC Coffee Break series. It is intended for knowledge sharing and should not be taken as an official position of the European Commission or as verification of commercial claims.