The woman-owned plant-based sustainable seafood company, New Wave Foods, will launch its vegan shrimp this July in restaurants throughout New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Long Island. The plant-based shrimp will be available in “raw” form or a crispy breaded variety. The company has partnered with Ace Natural, one of the most recognized organic and natural foods distributors in the metro area.
Kiki Adami, founder of NYC-based restaurant consulting firm Veganizer and New Wave Foods representative, told LIVEKINDLY that the vegan shrimp will be offered at a number of key NYC locations, including vegan French restaurant Delice +Sarasinn, Orchard Grocer’s deli counter, 3 Brother’s Cafe, William Halet Bar, Upper Crust, More Life Cafe, Fusion Juice Bar, and Jajaja, among others. This follows the launch of the brand’s vegan shrimp at the Monterey Aquarium earlier this year. The company plans to launch its product in retail stores next year.
New Wave Foods also plans to release additional vegan seafood products such as Sriracha and Buffalo-style shrimp, fish filets, plant-based crab meat, tilapia, salmon, lobster, and tuna.
True to the company’s ethos, “we disrupt seafood, not oceans,” New Wave Foods shrimp is a sustainable, plant-based alternative to conventional shrimp. The product is indeed a “seafood” — it’s made from non-GMO algae sourced from the Netherlands, and the contracted algae farmers are paid fairly.
New Wave Foods co-founders Michelle Wolf and Dominique Barnes, a biochemical engineer and marine biologist respectively, were driven to create sustainable shrimp as a way to combat the devastation shrimp harvesting causes to marine ecosystems as well as the rampant slave labor practices within the industry. Most shrimp exported to the United States comes from Southeast Asia, where vulnerable people seeking jobs are tricked into working for the industry for little to no pay.
“[The shrimp industry] will entice people saying ‘Hey, we have jobs for you, come down to our farm, we’ll pay you, you’ll be able to eat,'” Barnes told Foodbeast. “And so people put in all of their resources to get to this farm and then when they get there, they don’t get paid and become slaves to the industry.”
Image Credit: New Wave Foods
