PlantSwitch raises $8M Series B to bring plastic-free, compostable coffee cups to market and eliminate microplastics from packaging

Speaker 1: Stop making excuses. Our next guest is Dylan Baxter from PlantSwitch, the cofounder and CEO, raising a series b to expand compost zero into coffee cups, paper coating. There he is. Dylan Baxter, welcome to TVPN. How are you doing?

Speaker 2: I'm doing great, guys. Thanks. How are y'all? We're doing great, dude. You solved straws. Yes. Straws are solved. That's... Went through we went through like a... The paper straw to pop off. Feels like 60% of my life, straws are just completely... They were over. The category was dead. We were just all gonna,

Speaker 1: you know, sit there. Well, they were great. They were great. For fifty years. What is the history of the plastic straw? When was that invented? How long has that been around? Pop quiz. Pop quiz. Do you know your industry? It's been a while. It's while. It's been a while. How long have you been around?

Speaker 8: Been around twenty nine years. So it's probably longer than me. No. The the company. Oh, no. You started

Speaker 3: this through a pod... Since 2020.

Speaker 2: 2020. Okay. Oh. Yeah. Okay. He was just a boy when he... Maybe.

Speaker 8: Maybe. You know? Long... No. It's cool. Introduce company. I I jumped right in. I couldn't help myself. I'm so excited that that you you did it. Yeah. Oh, thanks. It's a beautiful intro. So I started the company back in 2020 to try to fix the straw problem amongst many other problems in disposable plastics. And and it's been one of those things that's been kind of a consensus of, hey, we need to get away from plastic both environmentally, which was the original push for the paper straw. Everyone had the paper straw... The straw on the turtle's nose. Yep. And then you had to suffer through paper straws for a decade. Yep. But then looking out beyond that, we're starting to learn that microplastics are this huge issue and we're finding it in our brain and our hearts and our reproductive organs. And so we're trying to replace plastic throughout packaging. Everyone is, every major company. The question is, if not plastic, then what? No one wants paper, no one wants wood.

Speaker 1: Many of the other substrates... I would want mahogany personally. Yeah. Wait. Wood sounds pretty good, actually. Yeah. So you get a splinter when you're eating your salad. Oh, so mahogany splinter would would do me in potentially. I would... Mine mine would be sealed nicely. Yeah. You want a nice varnish on there? Yeah. Anyways, continue. It's an expensive fork, but you got expensive taste. That's fine. I like the metal straws occasionally, but yeah. It's the official wood of business. So... Yeah. Maybe just for important meetings. What about an Incanal or something? Incanal straw. So you went with plant based alternatives. What was the Yeah. What was the actual build out? I mean, are there co packers for this? Or did you have to set up manufacturing on day one?

Speaker 8: So we set up a fully vertically integrated production site. So we do everything from the raw material to the finished goods, which is, you know, I think we're the only ones that are doing that for a whole portfolio of products today. So we started off developing the material and we got to something that felt and function like plastic, but biodegraded like a plant. So you can throw our material, we don't recommend it, but in the ocean or in your backyard, it's going to biodegrade naturally with no microplastics. And so truly zero waste really just goes away like a plant does.

Speaker 2: If it's a multi... Is that like a few years? I remember would get biodegradable airsoft BBs as a kid, and I would find them years later. And they still hadn't buy a new dude? Making some progress. Okay. But... There's

Speaker 8: a little greenwash in there, I think. But ours has been tested to biodegrade in just few months in most environments. Oh, that's pretty good. Okay. That's solid. So what's the what's the sales

Speaker 1: strategy? Are you going to, like, restaurant supply conferences? How do you actually get this into the stores that I've seen these sold at?

Speaker 8: So originally, we just wanted to make the material and then sell it to manufacturers because it can work on their equipment. Got it. And that didn't work. We tried. We had, you know, bunch of big enterprise deals we were working on and nothing ever really got to the finish line. Yeah. And so that's when we said, you know, screw it. Let's just go fully

Speaker 2: integrated. We'll do it ourselves.

Speaker 8: We'll do it ourselves. We'll make a whole food packaging business. Let's learn everything there is to know about food packaging, which I never really expected to do. And now we've gotten, you know, pretty decent at it. So we sell through food service distributors, we work with companies like Walmart. We work with event companies like Live Nations and Legends Global. And then we're partnered with distributors like Imperial Brady and Bunzl, where then they go sell into the restaurants for us, which a bit more of an efficient way to do it. So we had to take a little crash course in the last few years of how to build a food packaging business on top of a material science business. Yeah. How has the business been scaling?

Speaker 2: I see the product everywhere. So I... But I also live in Southern California which is probably like one of your bigger markets.

Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely one of our bigger markets. It's been scaling like crazy. The straws and the cutlery which are what we got started with, you know, we're starting to see those everywhere which is a lot of fun. But then with the series B, we've now developed the technology for this new product and technology that I think is going to be by far the biggest one and the most game changing product, which is our new coffee cups and lids. People don't know, but every coffee cup you have has a plastic lining on the inside. So every time you're drinking, it's leaching microplastics into your drink. Gross. Yeah. Not not great.

Speaker 2: Known that for a long time, but there's really no... There's no other option. It's like I'd rather have microplastics than not have coffee. What about No. Like a ceramic cup? That doesn't have plastic. Yeah. Bringing... You can't bring... The horror loss from bringing a mug into a coffee shop is just... Again, I'd rather have the microplastics. Yeah. If a plastic fork gets...... Great if people can do it. The problem is, like, realistically,

Speaker 1: aren't gonna do that. Yeah. So... If if a plastic fork gets stuck up a sea turtles nose, this company goes to a trillion dollars. I'm not kidding. It's gonna be crazy.

Speaker 2: 3 to... But... No. The thing that the thing that I appreciate like... It's such a... It's it's an unmitigated upgrade. Well, the thing that I appreciate is, like, the solution came after all of the the sort of, like, drama that was happening, like, at this point, like, closer to almost a decade ago. Yeah. It feels like maybe like eight or nine years ago was like the peak of of of this sort of like focus on we need to switch away from plastic. But then again, there was that gap of like five years where you were just using paper straws. I'm... It still shocks me that, like, more people, maybe a bunch of people did try to go after this category and just didn't come up with with great solutions. But you clearly did and and I'm not surprised that the business is ripping. Yeah. Thank you. When when can we... When am I gonna order Airwon and get one of your your coffee cups? Oh.

Speaker 8: I'm under NDA. So... Okay.

Speaker 1: Well, what what are you... So you raised 8,000,000 Top secret coffee cups. What what what are you using the capital for? Is it, building more manufacturing capacity, hiring more people? What's the use of funds?

Speaker 8: Yeah. So a couple of things as we got in. So, you know, we had the kind of base technology. Now we've developed the ability to extrusion coat paper, which opens up this massive new category. Yeah. So we have to fund manufacturing to get into this new lane. Yep. And then we're also expecting a huge boom in sales with some of the distribution partnerships. So this will help with some of the working capital. Yeah.

Speaker 1: That makes sense. Well, I'm glad you have the money. $8,000,000 raised. Let me hit the gong. Dang. Thank you so much. Thank you for your service. On the show. Thank you for getting rid of paper straws. He did it. He did it. This is, this is an American hero right here. Somebody had to do it. Thank you for everything you've done. Have a great day. Great to meet dude. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.