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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ashlen Wilder

Food & Ag-Tech Companies Make TIME’s Best 100 Inventions of 2021 List

Every year, TIME puts together a list of 100 inventions that change the way we live for the better. The publication judges contenders, who were nominated by TIME’s editors and correspondents, based on creativity, originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.

The list spans multiple categories, such as accessibility, artificial intelligence, consumer electronics, fitness, medical care, transportation, and of course, food and drink. This year the list featured a whole bunch of food tech, including many companies The Spoon has previously covered like SAVRPak, MeliBio, InnerPlant, and Upside Foods.

Here are just a few that made the list:

Kuleana

This San-Francisco-based food tech start-up has developed a “sushi-grade” plant-based tuna made from ingredients like algae, koji, radish, bamboo, and potato. Kuleana‘s tuna deep red color mimics ahi tuna, and it also contains nutrients like B-12, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. Like regular tuna, alternative tuna filet can be eaten in poke bowls, sushi, and ceviche. The start-ups next planned product is plant-based salmon.

SAVRPak

The goal of SAVRPak is to eliminate food waste, and keep delivery food warm and not soggy. In October of this year, the company unveiled a prototype of its delivery packaging aimed at keeping food at 140o or above for more than 20 minutes. The start-up has also developed small packs that can be placed inside to-go food boxes that absorb moisture to keep food fresh and crisp.

Sfoglini Cascatelli

This invention is relatively low-tech, but as one of the three best inventions in the “food and drink” category, it’s worth a mention. Dan Pashman, foodie and the host of The Sporkful podcast, could not find a pasta shape that held the ideal amount of pasta sauce, stayed on the fork, and was satisfying to sink your teeth into. He, therefore, decided to invent, the Cascatelli pasta, which is a short, ruffled noodle that has a half tube shape. The pasta is manufactured by pasta company Sfoglini, and it costs $19.96 for 4 lbs.

MeliBio

Using synthetic biology and precision fermentation, MeliBio has developed plant-based honey that has the same taste, texture, and mouthfeel as honey made from bees. Earlier this year in March, the start-up raised a pre-seed round totaling $850,000. To hear more about the company, watch The Spoon’s interview with the founder Darko Mandich.

Upside Foods

Upside Foods announced in May of this year that its first product will be cultured chicken, which is still pending regulatory approval. Since then, the start-up unveiled its state-of-the-art facilities (totaling 53,000 square feet) in Emeryville, California where it will be capable of producing up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated chicken every year. Check out a glimpse inside the new facilities here.

InnerPlant Innersoy Living Sensor

InnerPlant edits the DNA of plants to enable them to glow a certain color when the plant is stressed from lack of water or under attack from pests or fungal infection. The start-up has so far worked with tomato and Arabidopsis plants, and InnerSoy is the plant it is currently working on commercializing. InnerPlant recently gave The Spoon an exclusive viewing of its glowing living sensor plants, and you can watch the video here.

Alt Protein Round-up: Funding for Cell-Based Milk, A Glimpse Inside UPSIDE’s Factory

According to Forbes, 4.5 million plant-based turkeys will be consumed this year on Thanksgiving in the U.S. That sounds like a lot of alternative roasts and Tofurkey’s gracing holiday gatherings, but compared to the number of regular turkeys that will be consumed (46 million) it’s not much. Maybe next year, we’ll have the option to serve cell-based turkey to our guests?

In this edition of the alternative protein round-up, we’ve gathered together the most interesting stories from the past week in the plant-based, cell-cultured and even bug protein worlds, including TurtleTree’s funding, locusts in the EU, Beyond Meat’s sales, an inside look at UPSIDE’s fancy new facility, the animal-free egg ClearEgg, and cell-based pet food.

Turtle Tree raises $30 million in Series A round

TurtleTree, a Singapore-based biotech company, announced recently that it has raised $30 million in a Series A round of funding, with VERSO Capital as the lead investor in this round. This brings TurtleTree’s total funding to $40 million. In September of this year, TurtleTree opened a 24,000 square foot R&D facility in Sacramento, California, where it is expanding upon its precision fermentation technologies. The start-up is developing cell-based milk as an alternative to infant formulas, as well as a compound found in human milk called lactoferrin. The funding will be used to continue this R&D as well as bring on new hires.

Photo by Rick van Houten on Unsplash

Locusts are approved as a sustainable food by European Union

Insects have long been recognized as a sustainable protein source due to their low carbon footprint, and very minimal water and land use. Although many cultures around the world already frequently include insects within their diets, this is not often the case in developed first-world countries. However, this week, the European Union approved the migratory locust as food for humans. This action is a push for bringing awareness to more sustainable foods, especially alternative protein sources. The EU said that locusts, which are high in fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals, would be considered snacks foods or food ingredients,

Are Beyond Meat’s Flagging Sales a Sign Big Cattle’s Negative Messaging is Working?

This week, Beyond Meat had some lousy news for Wall Street: US sales were down 13.9% year over year. According to the company, the culprit for the sales drop was a softening in their grocery and foodservice markets. For some, a sales drop for a high-flying alt-meat pioneer like Beyond might come as a shock. Like Impossible Meat and others in the fast-growing plant-based meat industry, the company has had mostly good news over the past few years, watching as revenue heads up and to the right on the back of new sales channels, geography expansion, and growing consumer demand. So what’s going on here? Why is an alt-meat bellwether like Beyond suddenly seeing its sales drop? Read the full article here.

What Does a Cultivated Meat Plant Look Like? Take a Video Tour of UPSIDE Foods’ New Production Facility to Find Out

At this time, Singapore has been the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat, and Qatar is expected to be next to do so. Despite this, several companies in the cultured meat space have opened up state-of-the-art facilities to develop their alternative meat products in anticipation of receiving regulatory approval sooner than later. One of these companies is UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats). Last week, UPSIDE Foods hosted a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of its 53,000 square foot Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC for short). The center will be used for the production of cultivated meat and the development of new types of meat and product formats. Read the full article and watch the video here.

Animal-Free ClearEgg Debuts in Protein Smoothie

Last month, The Every Company rebranded from Clara Foods and announced the launch of its animal-free egg protein product. Now, the company’s egg protein, called ClearEgg is being used as an ingredient in a limited-time Pressed smoothie.The smoothie is called “Pineapple Green Protein”, and the added ClearEgg boosts the protein content up to 10 grams. Other ingredients include apple, pineapple, banana, spinach, and avocado. Read the full article here.

Bond Pet Food Teams Up With Hill’s To Make Meat Protein for Pets Using Precision Fermentation

Bond Pet Food, an alternative protein company for pet food, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a biology-based pet food company, announced this week that they have partnered to develop an alternative meat protein for pet food using precision fermentation. Precision fermentation makes animal-identical proteins without slaughtering/harming animals. Bond sourced a small blood sample from a heritage hen, and this sample was used to extract the genetic code of chicken protein. Read the full article here.

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Bond Pet Food Teams Up With Hill’s To Make Meat Protein for Pets Using Precision Fermentation

Bond Pet Food, an alternative protein company for pet food, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a biology-based pet food company, announced this week that they have partnered to develop an alternative meat protein for pet food using precision fermentation.

Precision fermentation makes animal-identical proteins without slaughtering/harming animals. Bond sourced a small blood sample from a heritage hen, and this sample was used to extract the genetic code of chicken protein. Then, the code is mixed with specialized yeasts, sugar, vitamins, and minerals and fermented in stainless steel vats to eventually produce meat proteins.

Bond Pet Food produces bio-identical chicken, beef, fish, and other meat proteins that have the same nutritional value as their animal counterparts. Last year, the company unveiled that it had developed a chicken protein prototype for pet food.

Through the partnership, the two companies will develop a pet food formula that acts as an alternative to Hill’s most popular meat proteins for both cats and dogs. The goal is to craft a product that is more sustainable than other pet foods, while simultaneously providing food that contains high-quality nutrition.

Pet food raises concerns due to its use of factory-farmed meat, deeming much of what is available on the market as unsustainable and unethical. On top of this, pet food can contain slaughterhouse byproducts, undisclosed animal species, cheap fillers, and even toxic ingredients that lead to recalls. We have plenty of plant-based and alternative meat options for humans, but not as many for Fido.

Other competitors in the alternative pet food space include Wild Earth and Because, Animals. In September of this year, Wild Earth announced that it would begin developing pet food developed with cell-based meat after raising $23 million in funding. Because, Animals is developing cell-cultured mice meat for cat food.

For Bond, the deal is a big win, as Hill’s appears to be the first large pet food brand intent on bringing a product with animal-identical protein to market using precision fermentation. As more deals like this one are inked, it’ll only be a matter of time before we see a significant number of new alt-protein pet food products from the large players in what is a $30 billion pet food market.

Animal-Free ClearEgg Debuts in Protein Smoothie

Last month, The Every Company rebranded from Clara Foods and announced the launch of its animal-free egg protein product. Now, the company’s egg protein, called ClearEgg is being used as an ingredient in a limited-time Pressed smoothie.

The smoothie is called “Pineapple Green Protein”, and the added ClearEgg boosts the protein content up to 10 grams. Other ingredients include apple, pineapple, banana, spinach, and avocado.

While it might sound gross to have egg protein added to a smoothie, The Every Company’s egg protein product is actually completely tasteless and odorless. The company intended for its protein to be added to both cold and hot beverages, like juices, energy drinks, and protein shakes, as well as snacks like protein bars.

ClearEgg is created through precision fermentation, where yeast or other microorganisms are fermented and converted to create protein identical to those found in animals and their byproducts. Because the protein is identical, those who have egg allergies should avoid consuming ClearEgg.

The Every Company has been working on developing an animal-free egg since 2014, and is one of the early pioneers of the precision fermentation space. While lots of companies are developing plant-based egg alternatives – Float Foods, SavorEat, and Migros to name a few – The Every Company is the only one we’re aware of using precision fermentation for their alt-egg.

For now, the ClearEgg protein smoothie, which costs $7.95 will be offered at Pressed locations in Los Angeles and New York. Starting in 2022, the juice company will begin to carry the item at more locations

Watch This Video of Innerplant’s Glowing Plants in Action

InnerPlant is an agtech company that engineers plant DNA to turn them into “living sensors”. When plants glow a certain color, this signals that it is stressed from lack of water, pests, or nutrient deficiencies. This helps farmers spot stressed plants much more quickly than they normally would be able to, and therefore have a better chance of mitigating crop loss.

Last week, The Spoon was given a virtual zoom tour of the InnerPlant facilities and shown the glowing plants under lasers. The company had examples of the two plant species it is currently working with, tomatoes and Arabidopsis. The colored light is not visible to the human eye, so Roderick Kumimoto, the Chief Science Officer of InnerPlant, used different laser pointers to demonstrate the glow. In the field, farmers use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph with an iPhone or iPad to detect glowing plants.

As you can see, the engineered plants look just like the regular non-engineered plants in normal lighting. Turn the lights off and point a laser at them, the engineered tomato and Arabidopsis plants have a yellow, red-orange, and green glow.

To create the living sensor plants, InnerPlant adds a fluorescent protein (which is safe for human consumption) into the plant’s DNA. Different colors signal different problems. If the farmer is using satellites or drones to view the plants from above, then up to three colors can be detected. From a ground-level view, upwards of seven to eight colors can be seen.

The companies first products are tomato and Arabidopsis plants that signal if they are under attack by fungus or pests. Currently, the company is working on commercializing InnerSoy plants. After that, they plan to develop cotton and corn versions of their glowing plants.

What Does a Cultivated Meat Plant Look Like? Take a Video Tour of UPSIDE Foods’ New Production Facility to Find Out

According to the Good Food Institute, there are approximately 70+ companies working on cultivated meat services, inputs, and end products. At this time, Singapore has been the only country to offer regulatory approval for the commercial sale of cultivated meat, and Qatar is expected to be next to do so. Despite this, several companies in the cultured meat space have opened up state-of-the-art facilities to develop their alternative meat products in anticipation of receiving regulatory approval sooner than later.

One of these companies is UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats). Last week, UPSIDE Foods hosted a ceremony to celebrate the unveiling of its 53,000 square foot Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC for short). The center will be used for the production of cultivated meat and the development of new types of meat and product formats.

It’s easy enough to find Youtube videos about how plant-based meat or real hamburger is made, but because the cultivated meat industry is so nascent, behind-the-scenes looks at this industry have been harder to come by. Until now. UPSIDE Foods shared a video tour of the inside of its EPIC facility. Take a look:

UPSIDE Foods Grand Opening

The front of the facility hosts a kitchen for hosting tastings of cultivated meat. There are areas dedicated to the milling and mixing of cell feed, as well as areas for packaging and testing products. Products will be tested for safety and quality in EPIC’s quality assurance facilities. UPSIDE has also provided an office for federal inspectors to oversee every process, which is required in all meat and poultry processing facilities in the U.S

UPSIDE’s innovation center will employ about 50 people throughout different departments, including maintenance, production, quality & food safety, engineering, and plant management.

Less than half, or only about 40 percent, of Americans are willing to try cultivated meat. Hopefully, allowing consumers to get a glance into cultivated meat facilities might help them warm up to the idea of this alternative protein.

Want to see a cultivated meat facility in action for yourself? UPSIDE will begin offering in-person tours at its Emeryville, California facilities in January 2022.

Noka’s Smart Shopping Baskets Lets Customers Walk Out Without Going Through the Check-Out Line

According to Omnico’s US Retail Report, 74 percent of consumers believe technology will make shopping easier and remove sources of annoyance, like long lines at the register. A start-up called Noka recently introduced its cashierless technology for grocery stores and supermarkets.

What sets Tbilisi Georgia-based Noka’s tech apart from simple self-checkout is its smart shopping baskets. When customers enter a store equipped with Noka’s technology, they grab a basket and touch a sensor button (not a fingerprint sensor). They are then let in the barrier separating the entrance and main store area.

Once in the store area, customers grab items and fill up their baskets. Noka’s baskets identify the shopper and track the items placed into the basket. All products are located behind fridge-like doors which cannot be opened unless a customer has their hand on the basket. Shelves within the store are equipped with weight sensors that recognize how many products are picked up from the shelf.

Introducing NOKA Technology: Shopping experience in the first cashierless store

If a customer decides to put an item back, it is automatically subtracted from the order. At checkout, they simply press the sensor button again and pay with a credit card or Apple pay. After payment is complete, the customer can exit out the two-way barrier.

According to David Topchishvili, the CEO of Noka, “Unlike Amazon Go, Trigo, AiFi and other competitors, NOKA technology doesn’t use recognition cameras, we don’t need large servers for computing, and it can be easily scalable.”

Although Noka does stand apart with its smart shopping baskets, there are still a lot of companies in this space. A company that has a similar concept to Noka, is Israel-based Shopic, which has created smart shopping carts. Amazon was one of the first to debut its cashierless tech in 2018, with its first Amazon Go. Other companies in the cashierless space include AiFi, Mashgin, Grabango, and Trigo.

Noka unveiled a prototype of its system in August 2020 and trialed it at an experimental store with 100 SKUs in November 2020. In September 2021, the company’s deployed its baskets for the first time in an actual store environment in its home country of Georgia. In this first real-world deployment, the company’s baskets can identify up to 1,000 product SKUs.

Alt. Protein Round-up: Upside’s New Cultivated Meat Plant, Plant-Based Hard-boiled Egg

It was another action-packed week in alt-protein, including the launch of one of the industry’s largest production facilities to date for cultivated meat and the unveiling of a new plant-based hard-boiled egg.

If you missed them earlier, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the week’s biggest stories from the world of alternative protein:

Upside Foods unveils cultured meat innovation center

Cultivated meat company Upside Foods (previously Memphis Meats) announced this week that it had completed its Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center. Located in Emeryville, California, the 53,000 square foot facility can produce up to 50,000 lbs of cultivated meat product per year. The facility is also flexible: Any species of meat or seafood in both whole-cut and ground form can be produced. Upside expects the facility to be fully operational by the end of the year.

Future Farm raises $58 million

Brazilian-based Future Farm (also called Fazenda Futuro), an alternative meat startup, closed a $58 million Series C round this week. The round was led by BTG and Rage Capital, with participation from XP Inc., Monashees, Go4It Capital, Turim MFO, and Enfini Ventures. The company will use the funding to expand its product availability to retailers throughout the U.S. and Europe. Additionally, Future Farm will begin developing dairy alternatives like milk and butter.

Yali Bio comes out of stealth mode to discuss future synthetic fat products

San Francisco-based startup Yali Bio aims to address the environmental concerns of both animal products and tropical oils by producing a synthetic, plant-based fat product. Apart of the Illumina Accelerator program (which runs from September 2021-March 2022), Yali Bio combines synthetic biology and genomics to develop its products. Read the full article here.

Migros launches plant-based hard-boiled egg. Watch this video to see how it’s made

The new egg, called The Boiled, is the latest from the company’s plant-based product line, V-Love. According to the announcement, The Boiled is made with fourteen different ingredients but gets its protein punch from soy. The alt-egg will be on sale this month in stores across Switzerland in four-packs and will retail for 4.40 Swiss Francs (~$4.84). Read the full article and watch the video here.

Ingredient optimized raises Series A funding to expand protein enhancement tech

Ingredient Optimized is a different kind of protein startup. While others in the space are focused on perfecting plant-based burgers and growing more protein-rich peas, the biotech company uses a novel process to alter the physical structures of proteins, making them easier for the body to absorb. Read the full article here.

Meet Bloom, a Machine That Aims to Make Growing Spirulina at Home as Easy as Brewing Coffee

Spirulina is a blue-green algae considered a “superfood” due to its nutrient density, and it contains iron, B vitamins, and Vitamin E. A start-up called Canopi launched an Indiegogo campaign for its countertop machine named Bloom, which enables people to cultivate spirulina in their own kitchens.

Canopi aims to make growing spirulina with its system is just as easy as brewing coffee. Once the user adds water, a nutrient tablet, and living spirulina culture to the Bloom’s two growing pods, the machine optimizes light, heat, and airflow to create a perfect environment for spirulina to bloom.

With Bloom’s mobile app, users can track the growth of the spirulina, and be notifed once it is ready to harvest. After day five, users can simply press a button on the machine to turn the liquid spirulina into a paste. This paste can then be used in smoothies, soups, dressings, sauces, water, or even frozen into cubes for later.

The double pods provide a total of 10 grams of spriulina every five days (the recommended serving size is 5 grams), which equates to 14 servings per month. The Early Bird pre-order price for Bloom is £174 GBP (~$237 USD), and it comes with three months worth of nutrients.

In 2018, we covered a company called Spirugrow that had launched a campaign on Kickstarter for its at-home spirulina growing machine. This machine was bulky and costs €471 ($549 USD). Spirugrow, as The Spoon predicted, failed. Rob Russell, one of the creators of Bloom, said that the company learned from Spirugrow’s mistakes, and used this to inform its own machine design. Bloom is cheaper, smaller, and appears to be more streamlined compared to Spirugrow.

Of course that’s if and when they deliver the product. While Canopi has finished the Bloom design, they still need to go through testing and ramp up manufacturing. As readers of The Spoon know, manufacturing is usually the most challenging phase for young hardware startups.

Finally, although Bloom seems like an overall better design and concept compared to Spirugrow, it still begs the question: is there enough demand for homegrown spirulina? According to its Indiegogo campaign, there might be. Bloom has raised $116,987 USD of its $20,462 target, exceeding its goal by 571 percent. There are four days left in the campaign, and preorders for Bloom are still available.

Yali Bio Comes Out of Stealth Mode to Discuss Future Synthetic Fat Products

While alternative protein products are generally considered more environmentally friendly than animal-based products, there are a few ingredients in this plant-based space that raise concerns. Tropical oils like coconut and palm oil, which are commonly used as the fat alternatives to animal-based products, have become notorious for being a cause of deforestation and habitat destruction in Asia.

San Francisco-based start-up Yali Bio aims to address the environmental concerns of both animal products and tropical oils by producing a synthetic, plant-based fat product. Apart of the Illumina Accelerator program (which runs from September 2021-March 2022), Yali Bio combines synthetic biology and genomics to develop its products.

This week, I spoke to Yulin Lu, one of the co-founders of Yali Bio, who said, “We think plant-based meat and dairy will just never be great without tailored fats.” What Lu means by this is that companies too often rely on generic fats like coconut, palm, or canola to craft alternative dairy, cheese, and meat products, when in reality, all of these products need fats tailored for each purpose to be great.

So what is Yali Bio’s secret ingredient for its synthetic fat? Yeast. This ingredient is fed sugar in bioreactors, where a lipid biosynthesis mechanism occurs within the cells. Yali Bio is an early-stage company, so it is unable to disclose more information about its technology and process.

Lu has previously worked for big players in the alternative protein space, like Eat Just and Impossible. One thing he realized with Impossible and Beyond’s meat analogs is that as soon as you cook them, the fat (which is mostly coconut oil) seeps out of the product and into the pan. When you bite into one of these burgers, you’ll still get some of the fat, but a lot has already melted out, resulting in a drier product.

A few other companies are focused on making better and more tailored fats in the alternative protein space. In September, MeaTech 3D announced that it has filed a provisional patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its new stem cell manipulation technology used to create fat cells. Melt&Marble, previously known as Biopetrolia, announced in August that it has raised $$876,000 USD to continue to develop its fermentation-based fats for plant-based foods. Earlier this year, Mosa Meat unveiled that it was able to reduce the cost of developing its fat media by 66 times.

Many of these companies making alternative fats are going the cultivated cell route, which means they will have to go through the regulatory approval process. Yali Bio is using plant-based ingredients, therefore eliminating the need for government regulatory approval. This means we may be seeing Yali Bio’s synthetic fats in alternative protein products before companies like MeaTeach and Mosa Meat.

Alt. Protein Round-Up: Smoked Salmon, Funding Rounds, and Brave Robot’s Cake Mix

Alternative protein news has been dropping in faster than fall leaves, and so we’ve gathered some of this week’s top stories, including Revo Foods’ product launch, Aquacultured and Daring Foods’ funding rounds, and Brave Robot’s new cake mix.

Revo Foods launches plant-based salmon in Austrian grocery stores

This week, plant-based seafood startup Revo Foods launched its alternative salmon product in the Austrian supermarket chain Billa Plus. The product now available on retailer shelves is Revo’s plant-based smoked salmon, made from a base of pea protein and algae oil. Additionally, Revo Foods recently appeared on the Austrian show “2 Minuten 2 Millionen” (similar to Shark Tank), where the company garnered interest from potential investors. In 2022, the company has plans to launch plant-based tuna, smoked salmon spread, and sashimi products.

Aquacultured raises $2.1 million in oversubscribed seed round

Alt-seafood startup Aqua Cultured has raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding. Unlike many other alt-seafood startups using a straight plant-based or cell-cultured approach, Aqua Cultured uses microbial fermentation techniques to create whole-muscle cut seafood alternatives. The company has developed formulas for tuna, whitefish, squid, and shrimp that leverage its novel fungi as the primary ingredient. Investors include Supply Change Capital, Aera VC, Sustainable Food Ventures, Hanfield Venture Partners, Lifely VC, Conscience VC, Kingfisher Capital, Big Idea Ventures. $2.1 million, a nice pre-seed raise, is even more impressive considering the company only started last month.

Brave Robot releases cake mix

Brave Robot, the first consumer products spinout of precision fermentation platform company Perfect Day, unveiled a new product this week, the “Climate Hero Super Cake.” The yellow cake mix uses the same animal-free milk protein found in the company’s ice cream and replaces the equivalent of three eggs. The mix – which is packaged in a compostable bag – contains other standard ingredients like wheat flour and sugar and requires added oil and water to prepare. One bag of the mix makes two 8-inch round cakes and costs $18.

Daring raises $65 million, launches in Walmart

Daring Foods, a plant-based chicken brand, announced this week that it has closed a Series C round totaling $65 million, and that it will launch its products in Walmart. The round was led by Founders Fund, with D1 Capital Group, and celebrities such as Naomi Osaka, Cameron Newton, Steve Aoki and Chase Coleman participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $120 million. Daring’s plant-based chicken will be available in 3,000 Walmart locations nationwide.

IBM Partners With McDonald’s, Acquires McD Tech Labs to Automate Drive-Thru Orders

Over the summer, McDonald’s announced that it was trialing automated ordering at 10 Chicago, Illinois locations. Now, it appears that we will be seeing automated ordering at more locations sooner than later. Today, IBM announced that it has partnered with McDonald’s to continue to develop automated drive-thru orders and acquired its proprietary McD Tech Labs. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

McDonald’s acquired Apprente, a voice technology company, in 2019, and shortly after developed McD Tech Labs based on Apprente’s tech. This technology uses artificial intelligence to process drive-thru orders and then sends the order to the kitchen, where it is fulfilled by staff.

What is the benefit of using an AI-powered ordering system? In the trial run at the Chicago locations, McDonald’s found an 85 percent accuracy rate with orders and about 20 percent of orders needing staff assistance. AI can also help reduce customer wait time and free up employees to assist elsewhere in the restaurant.

In addition to the acquisition of McD Tech Labs, IBM will assist in the continued development of the Automated Order-Taking (AOT) technology and work on additional languages and dialects.

Consumers have traditionally voiced a certain degree of hesitancy in interacting with artificial intelligence. However, in Datassential’s AI & Menus report, it found that 43 percent of consumers found voice ordering technology unappealing initially, but after experiencing it, 68 percent were satisfied with the tech.

McDonald’s operates nearly 14,000 locations throughout the U.S, and it was not disclosed when a large rollout of the AOT technology might occur. IBM stated in the press release that it will help the quick-service chain accelerate the deployment of the AOT technology across different markets.