A Menlo Park biotech company that had just three employees when it formed in 2014 is set to go worldwide with a food safety platform as early as 2019.
Clear Labs, which aims “to index the world’s food supply and set worldwide standards for food integrity,” according to its website, has in the past year nearly doubled its staff from 20 to 35. It recently moved its offices from 1455 Adams Drive to a larger space at 3565 Haven Ave., where it can accommodate an additional 10 employees and begin working on its platform.
“We started out with the vision of building a platform for the food industry to identify any ingredient type within a food item and really build a safer food supply around the globe,” co-founder Mahni Ghorashi said Wednesday.
Ghorashi said Clear Labs might not be at the site for long, although the company hopes to remain in Menlo Park. That’s because it aims to have 200 employees within the next five years.
“We’ve been happy here and hope to stay in the neighborhood as we grow,” Ghorashi said.
He said Clear Labs is looking to aggressively expand, thanks to recent advances in DNA sequencing that have brought down costs and boosted speed and accessibility. The company received $13 million in venture capital funds from Wing VC, Google Ventures and others last December to work on improving food safety. Ghorasi said every food recall costs a company responsible at least $10 million to $15 million.
“It can climb into the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Ghorashi said. “Chipotle, their stock took a $10 billion hit after their recall.”
Clear Labs on Monday received approval to begin using and storing hazardous materials at the site, which is 300 feet from the Anton Menlo housing development going up in Belle Haven. Ghorashi said the most hazardous items the facility will work with is live food-borne pathogens, which would only impact residents if they were ingested, something he considered implausible.
