Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Allen Weiner

Eclipse Foods Believes It Has The Secret Sauce for The Best Plant-Based Ice Cream

One of my favorite culinary memories was walking through the heart of Buenos Aires sampling Italian-style “helado” from myriad shops, one scoop better than the next. In going vegan 10 years ago, I had to push experiences such as that ice cream crawl away for my health and growing concern about the issues related to animal welfare. The absence of that flavorful, rich, creamy taste of goodness left a hole in my diet as I soldiered on into the vegan lifestyle.

Thanks to the founders of Berkeley, California-based Eclipse Foods, those on a plant-based diet can enjoy the look and taste of ice cream that replaces even the best dairy products available in scoop shops and freezer cases. The secret is a platform/process devised by experienced chefs in a kitchen using a form of bioengineering that blends plant-based ingredients.

Eclipse Foods believes the answer to satisfying the ice cream cravings of the plant-based food crowd is not to create a substitute, but to create a replacement. Company CEO Aylon Steinhart saw the impact Beyond Meat had on the vegan food scene, creating an actual replacement for those craving hamburgers rather than yet another bean burger that acts more of a substitute for meat lovers.

The Eclipse Food story is bigger than ice cream, its first product to hit the market. Working alongside CTO, Thomas Bowman, an accomplished chef and former head of product development for JUST, the result was to learn the characteristics of the microbe in casein, the main protein in milk, and replicate that leaving the diary properties behind.

“We figured out the magic of milk,” Steinhart said in a recent interview with The Spoon. “The secret sauce is our secret sauce.”

Eclipse has made a lot of progress since The Spoon’s Catherine Lamb wrote about the launch of the company’s limited edition flavors less than a year ago. Lamb compared the Eclipse non-dairy process to that of Perfect Day, a significant competitor in the space whose product also avoids the use of nuts.

“Unlike Perfect Day, which ferments actual dairy proteins using genetically modified microbes, Eclipse’s dairy is made from a combination of everyday plant-based ingredients that the founders claim do a much better job imitating dairy than plain old oat or almond milk,” Lamb said.

The idea to use this magic milk as a building block for ice cream was based on several factors including market opportunity and the decision, as Steinhart said, to go with a product that was “in the center of the plate, not a co-star.” With the ability to create replacements for cheese, sour cream, and cream cheese, Eclipse will likely move forward with those products after they have established a beachhead in the ice cream space. With the plant-based shoppers representing only 18% of consumers, Steinhart believes his products are not in a “winner take all market” with a lot of opportunities.

While I can attest to the sensational taste of Eclipse Foods chocolate plant-based ice cream—which is as good as any traditional dairy product—the company has gone through several blind taste tests to underscore the success of their product.

Eclipse had an independent thirty-party firm conduct a 100-person blind taste test with 73% of those sampling Eclipse versus the best selling ice cream in the U.S. said the plant-based dessert was creamier. While still early in the game, Steinhart is pleased with uptake from consumers who can purchase the product online and the growth in sales for the products on the shelves of independent grocery stores in the Bay Area. Retail has been an important part of the company’s distribution strategy with the closure of restaurant partners due to the pandemic.

 Steinhart agreed that the vegan frozen dessert space is a crowded one and given the current market conditions due to the pandemic, product marketing has its challenges. He describes marketing vision as wanting to create “an aspirational product—the best of the best.” The approach to fulfill that idea is to use leading chefs and influencers whose praise and endorsement create a trickle-down effect. The inability to offer in-store product sampling is a thorn in the side of any new product, especially one whose taste and experience is a strong selling point.

As far as a product distribution strategy goes, in addition to retail and direct-to-consumer, Eclipse has created foodservice partnerships with existing brands OddFellow in New York and Mitchell’s Homemade Ice Cream in San Francisco. And it doesn’t stop there.

“We want to be in every Sonic, Wendy’s, Dairy Queen, and Carl’s Jr.,” Steinhart said. This milk product will spin in any type of ice cream machine, meaning it can be used for soft serve and milkshakes. With time and taste on its side, plant-based ice cream lovers have a lot to look forward to.

Plant Jammer Gets €4M Investment for its AI-Powered Recipe Platform

Plant Jammer, a four-year-old Danish startup building an AI-powered cooking assistant, is one step closer to its goal of reaching one billion people, thanks to a €4 million investment in its AI recipe algorithm and platform. The Copenhagen-based company plans to expand its presence in the digital food space by licensing its API to third parties who can build branded customized experiences for their customers.

The new injection of capital comes from Danish investment firm Vaekstfonden, German food processing company Dr. Oetker, and German appliance manufacturer Miele. Miele had previously invested in Plant Jammer in 2018.

”Plant Jammer’s combination of recipe creation with AI is both unique and functional. We expect that this technology will be a core pillar in the connected kitchen of the future. Therefore, we believe Plant Jammer has great business potential,” says Dr. Christian Zangs, Managing Director of Miele Venture Capital.

Plant Jammer’s application, already in use by 10,000 households in Europe, allows users to build customized recipes by factoring in their individual preferences and what they may have in their home or what may be on sale in the local supermarket. While the app is focused on plant-based and vegetarian creations, partners who license the platform are not limited to those options. The database also contains food choices that include animal products and dairy; the PlantJammer app chose not to surface those results allowing the company to focus its version on a select niche.

In an interview with The Spoon, CEO and founder Michael Haase explained that partners who license the Plant Jammer’s API will pay based on the number of “calls” or accesses by users. For example, a grocery chain in Sweden can use the Plant Jammer API to develop a branded application such as a chatbox, that could include such extras as a link to online shopping. Each time a user of that third-party application builds a recipe, based on ingredients, tastes, diet, or any number of factors, the PlantJammer AI-driven database would work behind the scenes to deliver the results.

“I like to think of the analogy of the gold rush,” Haase adds. “We are interested in being the supplier of the jeans and shovels that enable others to do their jobs better.”

Personalized data from commercial partners will not be shared with Plant Jammer, but those partners can pass on generalized information via tags to allow the Haase’s company to continue to innovate on its platform. There are several areas Haase hopes to develop focused around food waste and the increased use of the excess capacity of local farmers and vendors.
Initially, the company founder says, the goal is to focus on food waste in the home. Haase says that 50% of all food waste takes place in the home, so we want people to build recipes based on what they already have in their refrigerator or cupboard.

“Our declared purpose is to empower one billion people with food habits that increase their health and the health of the planet,” Haase added.

That said, Haase admits his goal is a lofty one. “Right now, we are in a world of what I would call ‘trickle-down gastronomy’,” he says. “There is a huge divide between those whose world is focused on things such as molecular gastronomy and the masses. If we can show people that you can make something great in 25 minutes with simple ingredients, that would be great.”

Former Uber CEO Lands in the Cloud Kitchen Market

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is playing a new game modeled after those HGTV shows, where teams of fortune hunters turn distressed properties into quick-sell gems. In the case of the newly formed City Storage Systems, the narrative differs in that these down-and-out chunks of real estates are empty or neglected strip malls and parking lots, and the endgame is to create an assembly line of cloud kitchens.

In fact, this new company is built upon the ashes of a firm called CloudKitchen which specialized working with food entrepreneurs in the infrastructure end of the food business. CloudKitchen offered a range of services including shared-kitchen facilities, delivery services, and even marketing help. City Storage Systems aims to repurpose a nationwide inventory of non-performing real estate into kitchen facilities primarily for restaurants and other such establishments that want to focus on food and forgo the headaches associated with running a restaurant.

The company’s new website says, “We provide infrastructure and software that enables food operators to open delivery-only locations with minimal capital expenditure and time.” But clearly, it is more than that. Kalanick also has a venture fund, 10100, which will be a position to invest in those restaurants and related businesses that are successful tenants in real estate properties his company manages.

According to a story in ReCode, the former Uber CEO is investing $150 million into City Storage Systems, which is based in Los Angeles. He is joined by other Silicon Valley investors as well as former Earthlink (an original ISP) founder Sky Dayton.

While City Storage System is not necessarily a game changer, its entry into the market forces observers to closely examine the zeitgeist surrounding new models for restaurants in their various forms. To his credit, Kalanick is taking a tried-and-true real estate practice of targeted leasing and subleasing distressed properties. While most of these efforts are done seasonally—such as doing temporary rentals to costume businesses at Halloween—City Storage System is looking at a big picture which more resembles an incubator than a short-term revenue generator.

This zeitgeist leads to a crazy quilt of overlapping help-the-cook concepts aimed at providing one, or more, crucial parts of the value chain with a clear emphasis on the supply side of the food business. For example, City Storage is not alone in the cloud kitchen business (although they are shooting for massive scale) and will go toe-to-toe with the adjacent sector of shared commercial kitchens. These shared kitchens fall into many subcategories. These may include those looking for commercial space for their cottage food businesses. Or it could appeal to startups who find the shared model appealing, offering add-on services such as possible funding and assistance with marketing and legal matters.

While it is apparently a myth that most restaurants fail in their first year, the restaurant business is not for those wanting to make a financial killing. Because the cost to open a traditional restaurant is about $3,000 per seat, there is a flood of accomplished chefs, newbies, and wannabes taking the lean startup approach to feeding the public for profit. It also is one of the reasons there are about 4,000 food trucks in the U.S., with an annual growth rate of about 8%.  And, as you can infer, it also is the force behind the growth in shared, ghost and other variants of food prep ideas.

All of these options push the important element of demand to the back of the bus. And, those in the demand part of the equation—aka consumers—are faced with a dizzying array of options come meal time. Do I A) order groceries from the store and cook from a recipe I find on the web? B) Open the meal kit that arrived and assembles the ingredients for tonight’s meal? C) Fire up an app and order from a food delivery service D) Go out to eat? Or… there just aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to chronicle the choices. Anyone who professes to have his or her finger on the pulse of dining habits of consumers is fooling him or herself and/or investors. One survey says millennials eat out five times a week. Others say the opposite.

As with many sectors heavily influenced by technology, the food infrastructure business has no clear direction or bottom line. It is a time of experimentation, placing bets on the roulette wheel and ensuring your business plan has multiple pivot points. The good news for consumers is the number of mealtime options is unlikely to slow down anytime soon. If you have a hankering for Ethiopian food at midnight—it’s likely a click away.

Walmart Believes Its New Freshness Technology Can Reduce Food Waste

 

A crucial area for technology in the food world’s battle against waste zooms in on the ability to track the freshness of produce as it travels from farm to wholesaler to retailer to table. Keeping perishables out of the landfill requires more than a passing squeeze of a tomato or thumping of a watermelon to determine its degree of ripeness. Systems must be able to measure the varying conditions that impact spoilage and apply those standards to everything from apples to zucchini.

Walmart made recent headlines with the announcement of its Eden technology—a suite of apps that can determine a product’s freshness from farm to shelf. Developed via a company-wide hackathon, the algorithm uses FDA standards alongside a baseline of more than 1 million images. While not offering specifics, Walmart says the resulting technology is easy enough to be used by its associates to keep its shelves free of spoilage. Presumably, Eden is best applied as produce leaves its warehouses.  As an example, the company explains that a lot of soon-to-ripen bananas headed for store 500 miles away can be diverted to a closer Walmart thus eliminating potential waste.

Parvez Musani, VP of supply chain technology at Walmart says Eden will help the company reach its goal of removing $2 billion in waste over the next five years. Some 43 distribution centers already have the technology in place and have already saved the Bentonville, Ark.-based company an estimated $86 million.

While Walmart’s approach has a noble goal, an image-based algorithm (as described in the company’s blog) may be open to individual interpretation. One man’s rotten tomato is another’s recipe for gazpacho. Using machine learning suggests that such a system is a continual work in progress as opposed to sensor-based technology which is not only more accurate but more easily accessed by all parties from farm to grocery supercenter.

One such provider of sensor-based freshness information is Altamonte Springs, FL.-based FreshSurety. According to its website, FreshSurety, uses inexpensive, disposable sensors that measure and report temperature, moisture and metabolite data using a proprietary wireless communication system connected to the internet. This information is converted to carton-level product freshness and shelf life assessments essential for effective quality-based purchasing, logistics and merchandising decisions.

FreshSurety is not alone in offering what appears to be a more advanced technological approach to product freshness. Silicon Valley-based Zest Labs offers Zest Fresh, a sensor-based logistics system to measure produce freshness. Zest Fresh assigns each pallet of produce an individual code that marks product type and data related to its exposure to the elements which would impact its spoilage. That information is uploaded to the company’s proprietary cloud where the data can presumably be tracked by anyone in the value chain from farm to distributor.

Zest Labs is basing its revenue on the savings it can offer its customers. CEO Peter Mehring told Fast Company that retailers and farmers pay his company 10% of the value of the waste they avoid by using the Zest Fresh platform. Mehring adds that his company aims to reduce a retailer’s waste by at least 50% with that savings going to his bottom line.

Samsung Adds Food Image Recognition To Bixby Through Calorie Mama API

Search has come a long way since the earliest algorithms deployed by Google, Lycos, and Inktomi. After conquering basic and complex queries, search engines set their sites on images, video, and audio as frontiers that required new ways of looking at metadata to provide consumers with useful results.

Image recognition has been a focus of developers wanting to add value to the basic ability to capture and identify a picture of a peach or a fast food meal at Wendy’s. The key, as exemplified by companies such as Palo Alto-based Azumio, is to link image recognition to valuable datasets. For Azumio’s Calorie Mama AI-powered platform, the company offers an API available for third-party developers as well as a consumer download which allows users to track nutrition intake.

While Azumio faces competition from Google and Pinterest, a new partnership with Samsung may allow the folks behind Calorie Mama to separate itself from the pack. Samsung has announced a working relationship with Azumio to adds its Calorie Mama technology to Bixby, the South Korean giant’s AI personal assistant platform. Calorie Mama will be baked into the new Galaxy S9 and S9+ enabling users to obtain instant nutritional information about the food they eat.

“Our vision for the Calorie Mama API is to provide the best food image recognition technology to our partners,” Tom Xu, co-founder of Azumio said in a press release, “and to simplify nutrition tracking and food discovery for healthy living to their customers.”

While this announcement is a nice to have for Samsung smart device users, the true value goes far beyond the basic ability to count calories and set nutrition goals. Azumio’s work primarily is focused in areas related to health in such areas as diabetes and sleep disorders. The company’s Argus platform offers activity and diet tracking along with a social network focused on health and fitness. Argus powers its suite of applications such as Instant Heart Rate, Sleep Time, Fitness Buddy and Glucose Buddy.  The endgame of connecting food recognition with health-related applications, focusing on those in which diet management is essential, is where the real power lies.

Samsung and Azumio’s combined efforts began in 2013 when the Argus platform was offered in Samsung’s Gear line of devices. Samsung continues to work on its own proprietary health and fitness apps, but those have not been offered to consumers outside of Korea. The value of adding Calorie Mama to Bixby could show great promise. For example, a cook wanting to create a healthy meal could ask Bixby to recommend a substitute for a high-fat ingredient by tapping into its database of image data.

Pinterest—which is preparing for a possible IPO—will undoubtedly rise to the challenge to go beyond its image recognition work with Google (called Lens) which allows users to find recipe pins based on captured pictures. Pinterest recently has hired a new head of computer vision, Chuck Rosenberg, a 14-year Google veteran. Given the primary task of computer vision technology is to analyze images and tie those results to associated data, Pinterest is on an accelerated path in this space. Unlike Samsung, working in a somewhat closed ecosystem, Pinterest will make its application available to all takers.

France Offers Model On Cutting Food Waste

The idea of not only ending food waste but also putting those goods into the hands of those in need is a great idea on paper. In many cases, however, the devil is in the details of how to get near-expired perishables from there to there.

France has gone beyond the traditional approach in which NGOs and food banks create informal links with local grocery stores, supermarket chains and produce wholesalers. In 2016, the country enacted a law that prohibits grocery stores from throwing away edible food. Essential to implementing that law is Banques Alimentaires a network of food banks that help feed more than 5,000 charities.

“There was one food manufacturer that was not authorized to donate the sandwiches it made for a particular supermarket brand. But now, we get 30,000 sandwiches a month from them — sandwiches that used to be thrown away,” Jacques Bailet, head of Banques Alimentaires told NPR in an interview.

What works in France, though, might be difficult to put in practice in the United States. Or at least so says Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland. Bloom, a journalist who is an expert in issues related to food waste, believes the current political climate in the U.S., where businesses are seeking less government interference, makes the French law close to a non-starter in a nation where its citizens waste more than 200 billion pounds of food per year.

“The French version is quite socialist, but I would say in a great way because you’re providing a way where they [supermarkets] have to do the beneficial things not only for the environment but from an ethical standpoint of getting healthy food to those who need it and minimizing some of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come when food ends up in a landfill,” Bloom told NPR.

Members of the French Parliament that drafted the law believe cutting down, if not eliminating food waste, should be a governmental issue akin to rules such as forcing drivers to wear seatbelts. Connecting grocery stores and supermarkets to those in need has also developed many startups that assist in the logistics of transportation and inventory management.

Close to home, a Canadian startup, Flashfood, has developed an app that allows supermarkets to take photos of perishable items that were headed to the landfill (or worse) and offered those goods to consumers at a discounted rate. Already going strong in Vancouver, B.C., and in selected locations in Ontario, CEO and founder Josh Domingues is proud of the fact Flashfood has diverted over 5,500 meals from landfill and into the homes of happy shoppers.

These actions should make observers of the future of food wonder: how a nation that can create every sort of lab-grown clean meat product and myriad meal kits suited for every taste fail to come up with powerful solutions that could make a dent in our nation’s food waste which is enough to fill the Rose Bowl. Are our priorities slightly out of whack?

What We Can Learn from H-E-B’s Acquisition of Favor Delivery

San Antonio-based H-E-B, the largest grocery chain in Texas with more than 400 stores, has acquired Austin-based Favor Delivery, a service that provides a wide-ranging menu of consumer-facing food delivery services. With so much noise in the grocery/restaurant-to-table market, why is this move such a big deal?

Privately-held H-E-B, which includes upscale Central Market among its brands, is a major player in three of the nation’s 10 largest metro areas—Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Toss in Austin, the current headquarters of rival Whole Foods, and you have a powerhouse whose decisions in all things food have a major impact on more than six million shoppers.

Despite what it says in its PR missives, H-E-B has taken relatively small and deliberate steps into the future with curbside pickup and delivery options with Instacart and Shipt. Favor’s 50,000 contract drivers give the regional grocery giant an army of delivery agents. H-E-B’s COO Martin Otto says his company and Favor have similar working cultures, making the purchase an ideal combo.

“We see a unique opportunity with this partnership to support and accelerate each other’s growth through the sharing of experience, insight, and resources,” Otto said in an announcement.

Here are some interesting takeaways from the H-E-B deal with Favor:

  • Amazon will have its work cut out to be a major player in the fastest-growing state in the nation. Not only does H-E-B have a market share lead over Whole Foods in major Texas cities, but Wal-Mart’s grocery business is stronger than Amazon’s grocery division. Technology alone will not allow the Seattle-based giant to leapfrog two entrenched players.
  • Beyond Amazon/Whole Foods, as H-E-B begins its slow march into the 21st digital century, its new channels to the consumer for groceries and prepared foods will have a chilling effect on domestic and international competitors wanting to enter the Texas market.
  • As far as Instacart goes, with $200 million new cash in its pocket, and a deal with Albertsons, what happens to its existing relationships with H-E-B and Whole Foods (which recently launched its own delivery service)? The smart money says that the San Francisco-based delivery service will look at other opportunities in the value chain beyond groceries. It would make sense for the growing number of ghost kitchens to partner with Instacart as the popular delivery company. This would work to leverage Instacart’s infrastructure in terms of drivers and likely some detailed data on customer behavior.

H-E-B will not be alone as a bellwether for future trends. More attention must be paid to chains such as Wegmans, Publix, and Harris-Teeter. These companies have intimate knowledge of their customer base and brand loyalty. These factors, more than any tech strategy, are the key to future success.

Uber Eats’ Move Adds to a Noisy, Competitive Delivery Market.

The food delivery business has suddenly shifted from being about consumer convenience to a battle of market competitors more focused on profits and flattening the value chain than providing options. An industry focused on giving hungry consumers the opportunity to select from a wide array of dinner-time choices has morphed into pizza delivery 2.0 and that’s, at best, boring. Simply said, the home chef faces a lot of cacophonies when it comes to grocery delivery, meal kits, and restaurant fare (home and away).

Profits are a good thing, especially for public companies or ones with an eye on expansion or acquisition. However, what we find in recent announcements is a change from the initial concept of turning a fleet of rideshare drivers into a virtual extension of a city’s best restaurants.  When Uber Eats acquires Ando, a “dark kitchen,” its fare likely will become the focus of its New York delivery options.  The king of all rideshare firms thus sends a signal to its customers that Ando’s bibimbap and fried chicken will be tonight’s special every night. The food delivery business is heading for a 180-turn, moving from delighted consumers (as we see in the GrubHub ads) to one of supplier vertical consolidation.

“We are committed to investing in technology that helps consumers, delivery and restaurant partners alike,” Jason Droege, Head of Uber Everything told TechCrunch. “Ando’s insights will help our restaurant technology team as we work with our restaurant partners to grow their business.”

None of this is to say that Uber Eats is wrong or alone in seeking ways to increase its bottom line. Others such as Deliveroo and Amazon are connecting pieces of the value chain—that is owning the food prep and delivery segments of the business—to streamline its operations. And, from a business 101 perspective, it is a sound idea if the founding principle of consumer choice remains intact.

Even with innovations, such as robotic delivery and ordering food based on your specific health DNA, this is an industry headed for a major reckoning. Why? Here are a few good reasons:

  1. The barrier to entry is low. Take Evansville 2 Go for example. A local man in Evansville, Ill., has built a food delivery service for his local community by hiring some drivers and connecting with a handful of local restaurants. There are many similar examples taking place around the country where entrepreneurs in markets too small for the “big guys” to tackle are building simple versions of GrubHub, Uber Eats, and Amazon Restaurant delivery. As pizza parlors as far back as the ‘60s (that’s the 1960s) knew, all it takes to deliver a fresh pie is a telephone and a trustworthy person with a car.
  2. Dark kitchens are a weak link in the restaurant delivery business. When a customer looks at his or her menu options for food, what is the more likely choice—an establishment at which they have had a memorable meal or one that may be run by a celebrity chef but lacks the cache of a local favorite?
  3. Competition for the consumer dollar. The average American dines out a bit more than four days a week. That leaves three days for restaurant delivery and home meal kits (of all varieties) to battle it out for the consumer dollar. Given dining out often costs more than these two alternatives, there’s not a lot left in an individual or family’s food budget after those four out-of-home meals.

For those who believe that millennials will drive the restaurants delivery business, here’s some interesting news from economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Millennials are losing their taste for restaurant dining.  Spending at restaurants went down more than seven percent since 2015.

“It stands out as a bit unusual how soft restaurant spending has been considering where we are in the business cycle,” Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at BofA Merrill Lynch told CNBC. “The consumer should be spending more on a broad range of items. But we’ve seen restaurants slowing more akin to a recessionary environment.”

Take heart—pizza delivery isn’t going anywhere.

No End in Sight for Innovation in the World of Food Delivery

Commerce’s path, from mall-based retail foot traffic to the ‘90s bloated iteration of digital shopping leading to Amazon’s far-reaching store-to-door tentacles, may appear to have taken a circumventurous route. The exact opposite is true. From the early days of the web to today’s AI/VR-powered shop-on-voice command, the value proposition remains the same—convenience.

The major change from clunky versions of e/t/m/d-commerce (electronic, TV, mobile, digital) to a more transparent experience results from a focus on partnerships and a more realistic view of the value chain. Amazon, as an example, understands that it cannot alone drive the future of purchasing goods and services; the Seattle-based giant has amassed an array of teammates from grocery chains to CPG manufacturers to department stores with Alexa-powered kiosks. There was a time, not so long ago, when Apple, Amazon, Google, and Apple wanted to own every building block from manufacturing to consumer products. Time and a lot of failed experiments had led to more realistic aspirations in the world of commerce.

Grocery delivery is a case in point. Early 2018 points to some dramatic changes in the world of home shopping. Players in the space—big and small–are breaking the meal journey down to micro inflection points to hit consumers when they are taking actions (or inactions, as the case may be) where ordering fresh food and pantry staples are likely to take place. For example, the term “shoppable recipes” is especially buzzy as it refers to turning the passive act of reading a recipe into an actionable event. Companies such as Chicory, Fexy, Serious Eats, Amazon, and Kroeger are using technology to allow home cooks to order ingredients in real time for a given recipe while scanning the step-by-step process of making tonight’s dinner.

Another key inflection point in the meal journey is the delivery process with a focus on the delivery of groceries (and other items) to residences when no one is home to accept packages. Amazon’s 2017 announcement of its Amazon Key at-home product/service raised significant skepticism but “homeowner not present” delivery services are gaining traction in the new year. With an understanding that in successful partnerships each party does what it’s best at, lock maker August (owner by lock giant Assa Alboy) is expanding its August Access delivery service which allows delivery to homes where the owner is away. Teaming up with Deliv, a UPS-backed delivery startup, grocers (using the Deliv Fresh service) and other retailers can securely open the front door of a home to drop off a package.

“Through this unique partnership, we are bringing a bit of magic to the shopping experience,” said Daphne Carmeli, CEO of Deliv, in a statement. “Deliv provides the last mile fulfillment solution for a broad retailer network across the country while August Home supplies the technology to take the final step into the home for a totally seamless experience, start to finish.”

Other early stage opportunities in the meal journey take a series of inflection points and bundle them into a single solution. Tovala, a Kickstarter-funded manufacturer of smart ovens, tackles the chore of meal prep and the hassle of buying/ordering groceries by selling prepackaged meals that are geared to work with their appliances. A frozen meal’s barcode is scanned into the Tovala and the oven takes care of the rest.

All of these developments take us back to the value proposition of convenience as it relates to the meal journey. Consumers want to save time and have the ingredients for tonight’s dinner (or the dinner itself) magically arrive at the door (even when they are not home) but at what cost.  And who bears that cost? And how much are today’s busy millennials willing to spend? In the ultra-competitive grocery world Albertson, Kroger, Whole Foods/Amazon, Sprouts, and others may be willing to absorb the cost of home delivery just to win market share. On the other hand, if you buy a meal kit or want a hot meal delivered to your door, the cost hits your pocketbook with a premium for the convenience. For consumers engaged in the ever-changing meal journey, the cost-convenience continuum is at its earliest stage. Like the halcyon days of premium channels on cable, subscribers loaded up on Showtime, HBO, Cinemax and a few others only to be hit with the budget–blowing cable bills. In a world where the click of a mouse or a few kind words to Alexa can bring Peking Duck to your front door, or your 10th week of a meal kit service, everything is fine and dandy until your credit card bill arrives.

Yes, life sure was convenient—but at what cost?

Myxx Brings Shoppable Recipes To Krogers

Why bother knocking on your neighbor’s door to borrow that cup of sugar you need to complete your batch of chocolate chip cookies when you can order sweetener, flour or even tasty morsels of cocoa right from your recipe. That is a) if your recipe is online and b) if you are taking advantage of a new technological wonder, shoppable recipes.

A shoppable recipe allows the home cook to click on a “buy” button alongside the list of ingredients in each recipe and add those to a shopping cart. Depending on the vendor and its partners, that list can be sent to a virtual grocery cart which is then sent to a supermarket where the items are assembled and delivered to the consumer. In cases where the store is part of the August Access program, those goods can be placed inside your home if you are not around.

As with any emerging application of technology, the shoppable recipe concept is being approached from many different angles. As you might expect, Amazon has been on this idea for several years, filing a patent in 2015 for “automatic item selection and ordering based on recipe.” In Nov. 2017, the Seattle retailing giant teamed up with Fexy, a content aggregator which has Roadfood and Serious Eats under its umbrella. Weeks later, Amazon partnered up with Allrecipes to integrate Amazon Fresh shopping into some of the online recipe goliath’s recipes.

This brings us to Myxx, which uses a proprietary algorithm to convert individual recipes into shopping lists that can be taken to a partner store and morph into an aisle-by-aisle selection guide, a deliverable bundle of goods or a curbside pickup box (or bag as the case may be). CPG companies and retailers can promote specific products (no doubt for some promotional fee) with a key differentiator for Myxx being its ability to adapt its more than 50,000 recipes to suit special dietary needs such as gluten-free, low carb, vegetarian, paleo, and low sugar. The application also can filter out recipes that include soy, peanut or lactose.

Last week Myxx announced a partnership with Kroger’s to bring their shoppable recipe platform to Kroger’s and Harris Teeter stores (at the time of announcement, the company indicated their platform is available today to Krogers customers in 17 states with more to follow). The company has a clear roadmap for its future and one area it knows is should approach is that of coupons. “Coupons are not currently a feature in the Myxx platform, however, we are developing the ability to offer promotional discounts to users based on certain brand selection and users’ actions,” a company spokesperson said. “This is exciting for both brands and retailers as it provides a new incentive channel based on user engagement but also helps minimize the effort involved in the coupon redemption process.  Today, print and digital coupons can be used at the point of transaction – either at the store or via their loyalty card.”

It will take a powerful vision and understanding of consumer behavior to win in this shoppable recipe game, especially with Amazon holding a powerful position. In addition to Myxx, others such as Chicory, Whisk, and Avocando all are looking to grab market share in this nascent space.

The link between content and commerce is a holy grail that has been elusive. T-commerce, that is buying products that are shown during an on-air TV show, has yet to take off (the technology is tough) and scanning embedded ads in print have had limited success. Capturing the hot lead is a mantra taught to salespeople the first day on the job; how it translates to big success in the tech world remains a mystery.

Peapod Hopes Its Chat-to-Cart Feature Boosts Its Bottom Line

The grocery delivery space is moving far beyond the task of bringing fresh kale and imported cheese to your doorstep. Merely offering the luxury and convenience of avoiding crowded grocery aisles is no longer enough to woo time-starved consumer, who now has myriad choices when it comes to selecting a personal supermarket shopper.

If it’s tech inspired bells and whistles you want, Peapod, a 28-year veteran of the grocery delivery wars, is attempting to boost its sagging growth by adding a new text-to-order tool. Dubbed “Chat to Cart,” consumers can create lists on their phone via text (not to mention voice-to-text or emojis) and send them over to Peapod for fulfillment. The new feature was developed by Chicago-based online shopping tools developer, StorePower.

To use the service, customers text the toll-free number, 1-833-TXT-PPOD and provide a list of products by name or by emoji symbol. The service includes an option to share the shopping list among family members who can add products to the order. After an initial order, or once the number is saved, orders can be placed via Siri or Google Assistant.

“At Peapod, we have always been committed to being the ultimate convenience for our customers,” said Cat De Merode, Peapod’s VP of product in a company release. “The Chat-to-Cart platform was designed for the busy shopper that relies on their mobile device whether at home or on the go. Now, instead of texting a family member to pick up an extra gallon of milk, you can text Peapod and let us do the work. The texting functionality complements the Peapod mobile app and desktop website for one seamless ordering process.”

While digitally based grocery shopping makes up only 3.8% of the grocery retailing market, researchers see a bright future.  Packaged Facts, based in Rockville, MD., believes online grocery sales will go grow from a CAGR of more than 27% over the next five years. By 2022, the company says online sales of grocery items may be worth as much as $42 billion annually.

Peapod’s owner, Dutch-based Ahold Delhaize would like the digital delivery service to contribute more to its overall bottom line. In its most recent quarter, Ahold’s ecommerce revenue was up 20% but Peapod grew in the single digits. Company officials claim its various supermarkets, such as Food Lion, have not successfully integrated Peapod into their services.

Putting aside specialty delivery services such as Farmstead, players in the online grocery/delivery market are running low on competitive factors. Advances such as Walmart’s partnering with Google Home to gain access to their voice-enabled assistants does precious little to create any distinction among the Peapods, Instacarts and Shipts of the world (not to mention store-branded delivery services). Blurring the lines even further is the growing overlap between grocery and restaurant delivery with such all-purpose digitally powered, food-to-home services as Postmates promising speedy grocery services in New York.

That $42 billion revenue figure for grocery delivery sounds like a hefty prize, but the question remains—how much will go to the one-two punch of Amazon/Whole Foods and how many remaining companies will be spending millions to grab minor slivers of market share.

Enjoy the podcast and make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts if you haven’t already.

When Is a Food Truck Not a Food Truck—But Something Better?

 ClusterTruck offers a visionary approach to food delivery, despite its somewhat misleading name. Located at the intersection of virtual restaurants, just-in-time ordering, home delivery and fleet management, the Indianapolis-based company recently has added Kansas City to its growing roster of markets served.

With ClusterTruck, it’s all about synchronization. Food, from an extensive menu, is prepared in a commissary-like kitchen in each of its now six locations. Orders, via a dedicated app or via the company website, are only offered within zones in each city where meals can be delivered to a customer’s curb within a reasonable time frame to ensure freshness. The twist, compared to other food delivery options, is that an individual order is not started until a driver can be located. For those who live outside a designated zone, a customer can place their food request and meet a driver within the delivery area.

“Having come from a deep technology background, we approached the growing problem of unsatisfied food delivery customers from a software perspective,” ClusterTruck Inc. CEO Chris Baggott, who co-founded digital marketing software company ExactTarget, said in a release. “We believe hungry people should never have to choose between the convenience of fast delivery, the food quality they’d get at a sit-down restaurant and the personality of street food, so we created a service that offers all of the above.”

Essential to ClusterTruck’s success is the specially designed kitchens where the food is prepared. Large digital displays cue chefs when to begin meal preparation, based on not only finding a driver but calculating the time it will take the vehicle to reach the meal prep location. According to company information, Baggott hand-coded the software to ensure accuracy for this crucial step.

Baggott also has his hands in the process far beyond prep and delivery. The ClusterTruck CEO owns a farm where animals used for much of the company’s menu are sourced, in a pasture-raised and antibiotic-free environment. With increasing demand, Baggott is contracting with other farms who are willing to raise their cows and pigs to ClusterTruck’s specifications.

ClusterTruck’s delivery fleet is made up of drivers who also may work for other services such as Uber, Lyft or Postmates. One of the company’s big selling points to recruit new drivers is that ClusterTruck provides only curbside delivery, all of which eliminates the hassle of parking, apartment building codes or elevators. Also, the company says it pays its drivers daily, rather than weekly or monthly, as is common with other food delivery services.

Enjoy the podcast and make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts if you haven’t already.