This Cape Town company is making burgers in a lab – and they reckon the patties are as meaty as the real thing

It's a long time to wait for a burger by any standards. Two years, to be precise. But for the staff at a local start-up the wait was worth it – their exhaustive research and multiple tests to get it right were finally paying off.

And when those patties came off the production line, they had it all: smoke, sizzle, and scrumptiousness. You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between these and a burger bought in a store but there’s nothing ordinary about the patties produced by Mzansi Meat, an innovative Cape Town business. The patties are made of meat grown in a lab, making them Africa’s first cultivated burgers. 

The first batch recently rolled off the production line and co-founders Brett Thompson and Tasneem Karodia couldn’t be prouder.