Tesco has committed £20 million as the anchor investor in Bramble Fund I, giving the food investment vehicle the backing of Britain’s biggest supermarket as it looks to accelerate innovation across the food system.
The fund, established by Leon co-founder and former government food tsar Henry Dimbleby is targeting £100 million and will invest between £1 million and £5 million in companies capable of making food healthier, more sustainable and more affordable.
Its investment thesis extends across the food chain, encompassing health and nutrition as well as more sustainable production and circularity.
But Tesco’s involvement is arguably significant for something bigger than the size of its cheque.
Some investment firms have been promoting the idea that agriculture and food should be valued not simply for the commodities and calories they produce, but for their impact on human and environmental health.
The arrival of Tesco suggests that philosophy is starting to move closer to the mainstream.
The supermarket giant isn’t just providing finance. Under the Tesco-Bramble Innovation Partnership, the pair will establish a joint innovation board and give promising Bramble-backed businesses opportunities to test their technologies within Tesco’s supply chain, providing something potentially even more valuable than venture capital: a route to commercial scale.
‘Healthy food sales represent a commercial opportunity’
The move was welcomed by Antony Yousefian, general partner at London-based venture firm The First Thirty, which specialises in what it calls “AgriHealth”, investing in technologies intended to demonstrate connections between agricultural production and measurable human health outcomes. Yousefian also co-chairs the Investor Coalition on Food Policy.
Speaking to AgNavigator, he agreed Tesco’s move is a sign that major retailers are beginning to see healthier and more sustainable food as a commercial opportunity rather than simply a regulatory obligation.
“It is pleasing to see,” he said. “Tesco also recently stripped out many ultra-processed ingredients from its ranges. This follows M&S, which now has an entire nutrient density range and products with fewer ingredients.
“I am also co-chair of the Investor Coalition on Food Policy, which supports the Food Foundation. As a group of investors, we have been emphasising to the industry that healthy food sales represent a commercial opportunity.
“This is why we have been backing the call for mandatory health reporting. It also allows us to assess risks given this clear shift in consumer demand and behaviour.”
For Tesco, health is already a substantial consideration across its existing business. The company says 65% of its UK and Irish food sales are now classified as healthy, while fruit and vegetable sales have increased by 10% since 2022. It says it is seeking to make healthier and more sustainable choices affordable, accessible and convenient.
That makes the Bramble investment look less like an isolated venture-capital punt and more like an extension of a broader strategic direction.
From fertiliser to gut health
Bramble’s pipeline also demonstrates how blurred the traditional boundaries between agriculture, food and healthcare are becoming.
Its first investment is British technology company KluraLabs, which has developed packaging designed to extend the shelf life of foods including berries, grapes and baked goods. Elsewhere, Bramble is examining technologies including biological approaches capable of reducing reliance on fossil fuel-derived fertilisers, food-freshness technology and health innovations.
The common thread is an attempt to capture economic value from improving the food system rather than simply producing more food.
Dimbleby said consumers are “crying out for healthy, sustainable meals that taste good and don’t end up costing them more”, adding that Tesco’s scale provides Bramble-backed businesses with a potentially powerful path from innovation to the weekly shop.
Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy, meanwhile, said the retailer sees first-hand the challenges involved in ensuring everyone has access to “affordable, healthy and sustainable food”.
“By partnering with Henry and the Bramble team, we can help the most promising food innovations move from idea to impact, delivering real benefits for customers, suppliers and the wider food system,” he said.
The big obstacle: can healthy food beat the cost-of-living squeeze?
But given that healthier and more sustainable food can command a premium, the question remains whether consumers will buy into the concept of food as a health intervention.
The extraordinary growth of GLP-1 and other obesity medicines, with the global market estimated to have reached $66 billion in sales in 2025 and forecast to rise to $92 billion in 2026, suggests consumers increasingly see better health as something worth paying for.
But there is a significant difference between paying for a clinically demonstrated pharmaceutical treatment and paying a premium for food marketed as healthier or more sustainably produced.
Affordability also remains a formidable barrier in Britain. The Food Foundation’s 2026 Broken Plate report found that the price gap between healthier and less healthy food is now the widest it has been in more than a decade, with healthier products costing nearly twice as much per calorie.
For households with children in the lowest-income fifth of the population, the Food Foundation calculates that 85% of disposable income after housing costs would need to be spent on food to afford a diet meeting government recommendations.
Nor is the pressure necessarily about to disappear. The Food and Drink Federation expects UK food and non-alcoholic drink inflation to accelerate again, forecasting a rate of 3.9% in December 2026 and 5.5% in 2027.
Tesco’s backing is evidence that major food businesses are increasingly prepared to place capital behind the proposition that improving human and environmental health can generate commercial returns. Now comes the harder test: convincing mainstream shoppers that better food is worth investing in too.
