As the old saying goes, “when you find gold, sell shovels.”

During the California gold rush in the 1800s, very few people made their fortune on found minerals. In fact, most prospectors found very little.

Back then, the more reliable way to make money was to sell shovels, tents and other supplies to the hapless rubes heading into the hills on the hope that they might find gold.

We can see the same idea playing out right now in the tech world: Companies that sell cloud computing services, processor chips or data analytics tools tend to make more money and remain solvent longer than most of the entrepreneurs trying to develop the next big app or e-commerce platform.

In theory, this same concept should also play out in the alt-meat space.

As companies aiming to create the next Beyond Burger find themselves filing for bankruptcy or quietly shutting down (think: Tattooed Chef, SCiFi or New Age Eats), new entrepreneurs are entering the market, so companies providing the picks and shovels needed to build a better meat product should still be able to find customers and make a profit.

The shovels needed for alt-meat production are many, from functional ingredients and natural food colorings to extruders and mixers to growth media and bioreactors. And that’s not to mention the shovel companies scaling up processes or building and operating production infrastructure at scale.

A few early success stories show that investing in shovels is the smart move. As a plant-based example, look at The Better Meat Co. Its mycoprotein ingredient Rhiza (the shovel) has netted the company partnerships with Perdue, Hormel and several other large meat companies as well as collaborations with alt-meat makers, like Quorn. Rather than going after the creation of the coveted retail success story, Better Meat has opted to cash in on being a sturdy (nutritious, versatile) shovel.

If you’re still not convinced selling shovels is a smart move, look at some of these very old, very prestigious shovel salesmen:

165-year-old Swiss multinational equipment manufacturer Bühler — worth an estimated US$4 billion — is working with Ever After Foods to create the machines needed to scale up the Israeli firm's cultivated meat.

154-year-old French flavorist MANE — with an annual sales clocking in at US$2 billion — partnered with Newform Foods to develop the taste profile of cultivated meat with an eye toward creating both premium and cost-effective products.

144-year-old German food production company GEA — with an annual revenue of nearly US$6 billion — has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Believer Meats to co-develop bioreactor technology needed to scale the firm's cultivated meat.

These legacy companies know where the money is. It’s in selling shovels.