Forget everything you know about vegan cheese!
Viva la Faba is transforming plant-based dairy with Europe’s first organic faba bean cheese, combining bold sustainability credentials with authentic taste, and a melt to please even the most hardcore cheese enthusiast.
Curd Your Emissions with Viva la Faba
In the middle of a pandemic lockdown, two bioeconomy students turned their shared kitchen flat into a test lab, armed with nothing but curiosity, corn by-products, and a stubborn belief that sustainable food should and could taste better.
That late-night experiment became Viva la Faba, a German startup now leading the charge on plant-based dairy innovation. With a proprietary process that unlocked the full potential of regeneratively grown faba beans, they’ve created an award-winning brand, is proving that small ideas can have a big impact.
From Pitch to Pulse
Since its founding in 2021, Viva la Faba has moved fast and made it count. They have developed Europe’s first organic certified vegan cheese made from regeneratively grown faba beans, tackling one of the most environmentally intensive foods in the modern diet. In partnership with the University of Hohenheim, a 2024 study confirmed that their cheese-cut submissions reduced emissions by up to 75% compared to traditional dairy, a massive reduction with the potential to reshape the carbon footprint of cheese lovers' diets across Europe.
They’ve already been recognised with major prizes, including the PETA Vegan Food Award for Best Vegan Cheese, and the 2024 Baden-Württemberg Bioeconomy Prize.
No Whey, Just Results
At the heart of the company’s mission is a belief that sustainability must be local, inclusive, and rooted in real relationships. That’s why they partnered with former dairy farmers in southern Germany to help convert land for organic faba bean production, ensuring their work is not about replacing farmers but giving them a future in a changing food economy. The shift is already tangible: beans now grow where cows once grazed, and new supply chains are being built to prioritise biodiversity, fair pay and regional resilience.
Every decision the team makes, from using organic ingredients to investing in local suppliers, feeds into a bigger goal: helping consumers eat better without putting more pressure on the planet or the people who grow their food. In doing so, Viva la Faba is building a community around their renovation, one that connects farmers to consumers, science to flavour, and sustainability to something you actually want to put on toast.
At their current capacity, Viva la Faba could help mitigate up to 8 850 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, which is the same as taking over 4 000 petrol cars off the road or powering nearly 1 800 homes. For every kilo sold, the climate wins, and for a product as culturally beloved and nutritionally dense as cheese, that’s a rare and powerful kind of impact.
EIT Community Support
From the outset, Viva la Faba’s Journey is closely connected with the EIT Food ecosystem. The founders entered the 2020 Food Solutions programme which proved to be the springboard for late-night lockdown innovations. The programme offered funding, industry mentoring, R&D support, and access to the EIT Food Network, all of which Viva la Faba points to as indispensable in turning their prototype into a launch-ready product.
Alumni ventures like Viva la Faba are examples of how EIT Food’s education and entrepreneurship pathways (including master’s and PhD programmes, upskilling academies, venture coaching) help startups scale.
The Food Solutions programme opened so many doors for us. It gave us access to funding, industry connections, R&D support, and, most importantly, an amazing network through EIT Food. That network really helped turn our idea into something tangible.
Ariana Alva Ferrari, Co-Founder of Viva la Faba
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