Caviar, Reimagined

An HBS founder’s bold take on a luxury icon.

On a balmy evening in Cambridge, Ash Overbeek gathered a group of HBS classmates for a tasting menu like no other. The setting was intimate: candlelight, natural wine, warm conversation. The star of the evening? Caviar. But not as you know it.

Overbeek, an EC at HBS is the founder of Pearle, a new company redefining one of the world’s most exclusive delicacies. Her product is entirely plant-based, ethically sourced, and meticulously crafted to honor the flavor, texture, and tradition of sturgeon caviar without contributing to the collapse of a species on the brink of extinction.

“The goal isn’t just to replace caviar; it’s to reimagine fine food through a sustainable lens,” Overbeek says.

Before HBS, Overbeek earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Earth Systems from Stanford with a concentration in Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Professionally, she’s spent years working at the heart of the luxury industry — first at Emilio Pucci (part of the LVMH portfolio); then in McKinsey’s Apparel, Fashion & Luxury Group; and most recently as a director at Gagosian, where she helped shape global strategy for one of the world’s most influential modern and contemporary art institutions.

“Sturgeon are the most endangered species group on the planet,” she says. “In the industries where I worked, caviar would be served all the time. I started Pearle because I couldn’t stop thinking about how something as small and precious as caviar could carry so much weight — ecologically, culturally, and emotionally. I wanted to create something that honored that complexity, but pointed us forward.”

The Menu: Potatoes, Pearls, and a Twist

The evening’s tasting menu was small in size, big in personality — a mix of fine-dining technique and joyful irreverence. Each dish was prepared by Ash to show off Pearle’s signature product: a seaweed-based, cruelty-free caviar.

“I’ve always loved cooking. It’s how I relax, how I connect. I sometimes do my best thinking chopping vegetables or hovering over a stove,” she says. “And I love feeding people.”

Hosting has long been part of her rhythm. During her RC year, Overbeek and her fiancé famously moved their sofa out of their Cambridge apartment living room just so they could fit two full dining tables — enough to seat 20 guests for a proper, home-cooked meal.

The tasting menu reflected that energy: bold and inviting.

First up: a crispy smashed potato medallion, topped with tangy Greek yogurt, Pearle’s vegan caviar, and fresh-cut chives — a riff on a bar snack that just got back from a semester in Paris. Then came a miniature baked potato, still warm from the oven, split down the center and lavishly topped with vegan caviar.

Next, a glossy cacio e pepe with a briny pop of Pearle pearls on top. The pasta was paired with a zucchini carpaccio — paper-thin ribbons of marinated zucchini with lemon zest, olive oil, and fresh herbs, finished with Pearle.

But the real twist came last: caviar ice cream — a thick vanilla base layered with the caviar’s subtle brine and finished with a drizzle of cold-pressed olive oil. Unexpected? Yes. Weirdly good? Also yes. 

From the Classroom, to the Stage, to the Test Kitchen

The idea took shape during Overbeek’s first year at HBS, where she began drawing out a business plan between FIN2 models and STRAT cases. In her EC year, she began developing the recipe for her product and trialing it with some friends on a weekend away in Connecticut. The response was immediate and enthusiastic.

According to EC Justus Otto, Pearle was “surprisingly close to the real thing in texture and taste, yet delicious in its own right.”

A few months after her first taste test, Overbeek took the stage at An Evening in the Shark Tank, HBS’s high-profile pitch competition in Klarman, presenting Pearle to a live audience of more than a thousand. She wore a dark green velvet suit — seaweed-colored, some might say — and heels. 

But outside the spotlight, things looked a little different.

Most days, Overbeek was in an apron, focused on spherification experiments and flavor tests. While the pitch turned heads, the real work was happening offstage: in test kitchens, in the late-night WhatsApp group chat with Pearle’s food scientist and chef, in long Zoom meetings with her co-manufacturer in Western Massachusetts about packaging and product shelf-life.

“The product has to deliver on all fronts: taste, mouthfeel, stability, color,” she says. “It’s been incredibly technical and also incredibly fun.”

After seemingly endless recipe tweaks, the product was ready for real-world testing. Pearle’s unofficial debut took place at a final club in Cambridge, served on a silver tray in a room full of people that knew their way around both a tasting menu and a term sheet. Within minutes, the vegan caviar was gone. Guests circled back pretending they hadn’t already tried it. One person hovered politely, waiting for a second pass. Another asked if they could sneak a tin home in their coat pocket.

People weren’t just impressed; they were delighted. The next day, someone stopped Overbeek on campus and said, “That caviar? I’m still thinking about it.”

It was the kind of reaction founders hope for but rarely say out loud: a moment where you realize you’ve made something people not only love but also want more of.

Serving What’s Next

Overbeek is launching Pearle with intentionality, knowing word-of-mouth is still one of the most powerful currencies in luxury. Her early focus is on fine dining chefs, members’ clubs, curated pop-ups, and the occasional HBS dinner party.

Her long-term targets? First-class airline cabins, boutique hotels, specialty grocery shelves, and anywhere else that caviar has historically lived or should live moving forward. 

“Of course I want Pearle on the menu in Delta One,” says Overbeek, “but I also want it in the back room of a record bar in Tokyo. Or served with kettle chips at a Berlin gallery opening. Pearle doesn’t have to constantly announce itself; it just has to show up at the right moments.” Overbeek calls it luxury with a lowercase “l”: thoughtful, clean, and confidently off-center.

Small Spoon, Big Vision

But beneath the polish is a deeper imperative. Pearle was created in response to a truth that’s easy to ignore: sturgeon, the ancient fish behind traditional caviar, are in crisis. Having survived for over 200 million years, these prehistoric species are now the most endangered animal group on the planet due to overfishing, habitat loss, and caviar harvesting.

Today, over 90% of wild sturgeon populations have vanished. In some regions, the decline is even steeper, with Atlantic sturgeon populations in the U.S. down by more than 99% since the 1800s.

Traditional caviar extraction, even on farms, often involves killing the fish just to remove the eggs. In many operations, sturgeon are raised for years only to be cut open at maturity in a process known as “stripping.” Some farms are working on no-kill extraction methods, but they’re often not as gentle as they sound.

“Pearle was born out of the question: what if we could create something just as special to eat without the harm?” Overbeek says.

That question — how to keep the joy and lose the damage — touches everything Pearle does. “From the recipe to the plating, the whole experience is designed with heart: thoughtful, a little glamorous, and just self-aware enough to know that the details matter, especially the tiny, shiny ones,” Overbeek says.

“At our tasting dinner and at all of our events, we serve our product with a custom mother-of-pearl caviar spoon. The handle is engraved with ‘Pearle’ in our signature script. It is a small spoon, but it carries a big idea: that sustainability and taste don’t have to be at odds; they can live in the same bite.”

Jay Bhandari (MBA ’25) is originally from Houston, Texas. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2018 with a degree in Economics. Prior to HBS, Jay served as Chief of Staff at thredUP in San Francisco and as an Investment Associate at Blackstone in New York.