LOOOPS Food Lab is fermenting broken rice into BITELOOP, a business-to-business ingredient designed to help food manufacturers reduce sugar while retaining important functional properties.
A grain of an idea can go a long way. In 2024, LOOOPS Food Lab co-founders met through EIT Food's Food Solutions programme and developed a prototype using broken rice. After winning the EcoBite Delight Challenge, they saw a bigger opportunity: move beyond one cookie and turn their fermented concept into BITELOOP, an ingredient for food manufacturers.
Two food challenges, one solution
Two food-system challenges that might seem completely different can actually be tackled through one innovative approach.
On one side, the food industry needs to reduce sugar while maintaining product quality. On the other, it needs to create greater value from food side streams.
The World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars to less than 10% of daily energy intake and, ideally, below 5% for additional health benefits. Yet reducing sugar is technically challenging because it contributes not only sweetness, but also texture and stability.
Meanwhile, valuable resources remain underused: around 13% of food is lost between production and retail, while another 19% is wasted across retail, food service and households.
LOOOPS Food Lab shows how fermentation can connect these two challenges. Through BITELOOP, it transforms broken rice into a functional ingredient for food reformulation, creating value from an underused resource while enabling the development of reduced-sugar products.
Rising from prototype to startup
Since its first prototype, LOOOPS has been on the rise. The team won first place among 13 teams in EIT Food's 2024 Food Solutions - EcoBite Delight Challenge, then shifted from a prototype cookie to BITELOOP as a business-to-business ingredient. LOOOPS was shortlisted for the 2025 Open Innovation Forum Food and Drink Pitching Event, selected for the MassChallenge Switzerland 2026 cohort and joined the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship Incubator.
A sweeter route to circularity
The ambition is to make one side stream work twice as hard: reduce reliance on added sugar and create more value from broken rice. BITELOOP has demonstrated potential to reduce sugar by more than 30%. In 2026, LOOOPS also reported 12 active sample requests and one signed letter of intent. The team now wants to extend the same fermentation approach to other food byproducts, with potential to support more circular ingredient production.
EIT Food helped put the first ingredients of the business in place. Through the 2024 Food Solutions programme, the future co-founders worked together on a real-world innovation challenge, combining technical knowledge with business development and testing the commercial potential of their idea. Their work produced the BITELOOP prototype, first place in the EcoBite Delight Challenge and a €1 000 prize. The founders also credit the programme's mentors with helping them recognise the idea's potential and giving them confidence to keep developing it.
EIT Food was the starting point of our journey, back in spring 2024. Throughout the programme, the mentors supported and encouraged us to take the next steps, helping us recognise the potential of what we were developing and giving us the confidence to pursue it further.
Ylenia Ciquera, Co-Founder & CMO at LOOOPS Food Lab
Keeping the loop moving
The next challenge is turning fermentation progress into market traction. LOOOPS is working to standardise and scale its process and validate BITELOOP with food manufacturers. The company also aims to explore other food byproducts. Continued testing, manufacturer engagement and partnerships will be important if early sample interest is to rise into wider adoption.
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