Hampton Creek / JUST
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：02 · 05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Hampton Creek, founded in San Francisco in 2011 by Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk, was a plant-based food technology company best known for Just Mayo. Using lab analysis of plant proteins, it built a product line of plant-based mayonnaise, cookies, cookie dough and salad dressings that reached over 100,000 retail and food-service distribution points, plus 3,300 K12 schools and 500+ universities. It raised more than $220 million, became a unicorn in 2016, and later rebranded to Eat Just (legal name changed in 2018), moving into cultured meat and the mung-bean-based Just Egg.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk founded Hampton Creek in San Francisco as a plant-based food technology company.
- Unicorn
Hampton Creek raised another round from investors, becoming a unicorn with a valuation over $1 billion.
- Crisis year
Target pulled all 20 Hampton Creek products over anonymous food-safety allegations; the FDA investigated and closed the matter with no findings, but Target ended the relationship; most of the board was replaced amid disputes with the CEO.
- Rebranded
The company's legal name was changed to Eat Just, shifting focus to the Just brand, Just Egg and cultured meat.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
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Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
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