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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Meat-Tech Says it has 3D Printed Cultured Beef Fat Structure

Meat-Tech, a publicly traded (TASE: MEAT) Israel-based cultured meat company, announced today that for the first time it successfully 3D-printed a cultured beef fat structure composed of bovine fat cells and bio ink.

The bovine fat cells and bio ink were created from stem cells in Meat-Tech’s labs. Meat-Tech says its edible bio ink helps “create an accurate, digitally-printed structure by supporting 3D printed cells.” The edible structure Meat-Tech announced today reached a height of 10 mm, which is larger than previous versions of 3D-printed meat the company has produced.

Meat-Tech’s milestone comes on the heels of news earlier this month that the company had closed a $7 million round of funding and had started the process of filing for an IPO in the U.S.

The 3D-printed cultured meat space has certainly heated up in the past few months. Fellow Israeli company SavorEats announced just today that it had raised $13 million by going public on Israel’s stock exchange (where Meat-Tech is also traded). And at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October, Spanish startup NovaMeat revealed that it has been 3D-printing hybrid cell-and plant-based meats.

There is still some debate around the efficacy of cultured meat as a whole. Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods thinks that mass market cultured meat never going to happen. But that is not stopping the startups looking to prove the un-cultured wrong. Future Meat is looking to bring costs down by using fibroblast cells as its starter cells. Super Meat launched a restaurant that serves its cell-based chicken meat. And Eat Just, which is also developing cell-based meats, expects it will take 15 years before cultured meat to reach the “Coca-Cola phase” of ubiquity.

There is still a lot to happen for cultured meat to move from the lab to our dining tables including technology, scaling and even governmental regulation. But announcements like the one from Meat-Tech today show that slaughter-free meat is getting closer to reality.

South Korea: LG’s Robots to Ride Elevators and Make Convenience Store Deliveries

Delivery robots are making their way indoors. At least, they are starting to in South Korea. ZDNet reports today that LG has started using its Cloi Servebots to make deliveries from a local convenience store to anyone within the LG Science Park in Seoul.

The Serve bot, which features a series of shelves to hold food and drinks, will be able to get on the elevator at the Science Park and navigate nine above-ground floors as well as the basement to make deliveries to people there.

Typically, food delivery robots stop outside of a building, requiring the recipient to come out to retrieve the order. But robots in South Korea are starting to cross that threshold, as it were, to venture inside office and residential buildings to make deliveries more direct.

Earlier this month, Woowa Brothers announced that it was working with HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to allow Dilly robots to enter a residential complex and autonomously work the elevator.

As with the Woowa deal, there are still some details left unclear by ZDNet’s report about LG’s machines. To use the Cloibot, a user places an order through the KakaoTalk chat app. A human at the GS25 convenience store packs the order into the robot and sends it off. Then, as ZDNet writes:

The robots will then depart and send their destination information to a nearby elevator wirelessly. Once the robots arrive at their destination, they will call and text the customer to notify them of their arrival.

As with Woowa, which didn’t mention how its robots would navigate to a specific apartment after getting off an elevator, we don’t know how far the LG bot will go. Will it travel to a lobby, or a conference room or to a specific desk? Hopefully we’ll see more details from LG soon.

The bigger point is that delivery robots are gaining the ability to traverse indoor settings at the right time. The pandemic has businesses looking for a way to reduce human-to-human contact to reduce potential virus transmission. Having a robot means that a store or restaurant doesn’t have to send one of its workers out to make deliveries, and office/residential buildings can cut down on the number of different people coming in and out its doors.

The Automato Aims to Be a Mobile Automat for Food Pickup

On a podcast a couple months back, The Spoon editorial team asked “Did The Automat Ever Really Go Away?” If they did, then they have returned with a vengeance, and are now poised to hit the streets, if BIB Technologies’ Automato works as promised.

The Automato is an all-electric vehicle that carries an array of temperature-controlled cubbies that can store food orders. It’s only in the protoype phase right now, by creator Deloss Pickett (who also created the all-electric FRO mobile frozen yogurt cart) gave me a video tour of the device.

Right now, Pickett is focused on the prepared meals market, meaning that restaurants would sell basically kits of food through the Automato that a person would grab and assemble and prepare on their own. This may seem a little counter intuitive at first because one of the conveniences of an automat is the ability to grab your food and go, not grab your food and go make it somewhere else.

But the Automato isn’t meant to be a delivery vehicle running back and forth between a restaurant and different neighborhoods. Nor is it a food truck making orders on-demand. It’s meant to go out to a busy area (or multiple areas in a day) and park, with customers coming to it. With that in mind, the first version of Automato only offers cooled cubbies and not heated ones. A refrigerated meal kit can last a lot longer than a fully cooked meal sitting in a heated box all day.

That’s not to say Automato won’t ever offer heated foods, the vehicle is customizeable to different client needs. It’s just starting with this cold prepared meal kit approach.

Pickett has been lobbying his local government officials in LA to get his vehicles sidewalk clearance. That way, a restaurant that’s buying or leasing an Automato could park it on a busy pedestrian area. People would order through the restaurant app, designate the nearby Automato as the pickup location, and use a QR code to unlock the cubby.

Pickett didn’t provide any specifics around when the Automato would come to market, or where (though LA is a safe bet given that’s where the company is located). The cost for an Automato will be $1,000 down and $3,000 a month ($2,500 a month with a yearlong commitment). This includes the truck, the insurance the app and POS system. There’s also a $1 per order fee as well.

If this idea of a mobile automat sounds familiar, that’s because it’s something Veebie tried a few years back (although in a different fashion) before it eventually became Minnow and pivoted to stationary pickup lockers.

Automats may have never gone away, but they are certainly experiencing a renaissance right now as restaurants explore more contactless food delivery/pickup options during this pandemic. The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is using automats to create “zero human interaction” in its stores. And as my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote, we could be seeing more automat concepts, especially for ghost kitchens:

By way of a hypothetical example, imagine a virtual deli that has a kitchen space from which it fulfills online orders. It would fulfill delivery orders, but also maintain a cubby system outside to hold any pickup orders. Throw a few tables and chairs near the machine where those who want can eat onsite. Other than the smartphones and the digital ordering, the setup isn’t hugely different from the original Automat concept.

Now we’ll have to see if the Automato can take the automat show on the road.

Review: BEERMKR Makes it Easy to Make Beer

The fact that I hate beer either makes me the worst person to do a review of the BEERMKR countertop home brewing system or the best person to do such a review.

On the one hand, I can’t tell the difference between “good” beer and “bad” beer because IPAs, stouts, lagers, and what have you all taste gross. So I’m not the best judge of BEERMKR’s end product.

On the other hand, my particular dislike for beer means I know nothing about hops or grains. It also means I have never tried to make my own beer. So if a device promises to render that process idiot-proof, well, then I’m probably the right idiot.

Avid Spoon readers will know that I included the BEERMKR on my 2020 holiday gift guide. So you already know I like it. For the TL;DR set, despite some of its quirks, I actually had fun making beer with this, and that’s probably because I got all the benefits (beer) with hardly any work.

All the ingredients you need.

And brewing beer at home the old fashioned way takes lots of work. The traditional process involves buckets, hoses, bottles, bottles potentially exploding, babysitting, sterilizing… All that is to say that it’s complicated! And all those complications have turned a lot of people away from making their own beer.

BEERMKR solves this by putting everything in two pieces of hardware: a (big) countertop brewing/fermenting system and a slightly less big BEERTAP, which sits in your fridge and dispenses beer.

BEERMKR’s grain hopper. Just throw everything/anything in there.

One of the keys to BEERMKR’s ease is the fact that it replaces buckets and bottles with a one-gallon plastic bag/bladder (equivalent to 12, 12-oz bottles). Snap it into the brewer/fermenter to make the beer. Then once that’s done, transfer the bag to the dispenser.

We’ve actually written about how BEERMKR works (and shot videos of it) a few times over the years, so I don’t want to get too bogged down with the mechanics of the system. Like the machine itself suggests, let’s get to the fun part!

BEERMKR sent me a test unit along with the ingredients for two different beer recipes: A stout and an IPA. All of the ingredients are separated out in pre-portioned packets. In the accompanying BEERMKR app, you select either a BEERMKR’s recipe or you can DIY it if you’re a pro. Because I’m a n00b, I used the BEERMKR recipe for the Chubby Stout.

BEERMKR app

With my recipe selected, the BEERMKR app used a series of videos to guide me through the set up of the machine: how to install the bag, how much water to add, where to put the grains, what to expect in the first phase, etc.

After you do all that, you push the single, solitary button on the machine, and congratulations! You’re well on your way to making your own beer. From there BEERMKR takes over, keeping your beer at the right temperature, agitating it, and literally doing all the work. When it came time to pitch my yeast, BEERMKR sent me an alert and showed me some more videos on how to do that. Easy peasy.

The app fills you in at each step along the way, telling you what temperature the beer is at, the different stages of fermentation, and the resting (FWIW, I never knew beer had to rest). Once I pitched my yeast, I just sat back and watched on my app over the following nine days or so as the beer came together.

When it was done, the app sent me an alert. I removed the plastic bladder holding the beer, placed it into the BEERTAP, screwed in the CO2 cartridge and waited a day for the liquid to carbonate. Which… didn’t exactly happen the first go-round.

BEERMKR app

BEERMKR is still very much a new product. As such, there are several kinks the company is working out. My beer didn’t actually fizz up all that much because there were leaks in the CO2 lines. But the BEERMKR customer service team is super attentive, identified the problem quickly and sent me some clamps to tighten up the hoses. (A service rep even Zoomed with me to make sure I installed them correctly.)

Once the clamps were in, I waited another 24 hours, then I was able to enjoy a frosty, chocolatey stout. Or, at least my neighbors did (you know, because I hate beer).

One downside to the BEERMKR’s bag system is that it removes the need for bottling. That means that in order to share my beer, people had to come to me. This might be a bummer for hardcore brewers who like gifting their beer, but it was fine for me.

The biggest complaints I have are that during the fermentation phase, the machine gets loud twice a day as it does some kind of vibration something. I couldn’t control the timing of this vibrating, so it wound up waking me up in the middle of the night because it is loud. This is an issue the company said it is fixing in the app, so by the time you get yours, it might not be a problem. I fixed the issue by moving the machine into the garage.

Big BEERTAP

The app also had some other quirks about updates on different stages of my beer, but those didn’t impact the end product and they too are being addressed in updates.

But look. The point is, I had fun making beer! And I hate beer! If I loved beer and knew what I was doing, I would probably have had even more fun because BEERMKR lets you add whatever kind of flair you want to your beer. Want to throw in some raspberries or dandelions or cinnamon? Go crazy! Toss it in the grain bin and let that new/crazy flavor soak in.

At $499, the BEERMKR isn’t cheap, but what’s good is that unlike the now-defunct PicoBrew, it doesn’t rely on some proprietary pod system, so you’re free to go hog wild with your brews. But also homebrewers I know said that the price was good for what it does, given all the time and work it saves you.

BEERMKR didn’t make me love beer, but it made me love how easy it was to make beer.

Swedish Grocery Delivery Service Vembla Raises 6M SEK

Vembla, a Swedish delivery service for groceries and other goods, told The Spoon via email today that it has raised 6 million Swedish Krona (~$704,000 USD) from angel investors including Tuomas Kukkonen (FMCG entrepreneur in Finland), Michael Wolf (ex CEO of Swedbank), Manfred Aronsson (ex. CEO Discovery Networks).

Similar to Instacart here in the U.S., Vembla is an app that partners with local grocery stores in Sweden. Customers shop at stores on the Vembla app, while Vembla “shoppers” go in and pick up the order and deliver it. The startup promises to deliver orders in an hour.

According to the press announcement that Vembla sent, online grocery shopping in Sweden hit 5 percent of total sales in 2020, up from 2 percent in 2019. That growth is projected to continue to hit nearly 7 percent of total sales in 2022 (Source: Industry reports, DI, Nordea).

We aren’t that well versed in the Scandinavian grocery market, but it stands to reason that the COVID-19 pandemic would have a similar effect in Sweden as it has here in the U.S. Even though Sweden has been more lax in its approach to tackling the virus.

Domestically, the pandemic pushed online grocery shopping to record heights this year. Over the next five years, online grocery shopping is projected to take up 21.5 percent of all grocery sales in the U.S.

The bigger question for pure delivery plays like Vembla and Instacart is how long retailers will rely on them. Right now, third-party delivery services can help with the crush of new customers. But over the long haul, will retailers want to keep handing over the customer relationship to an outside delivery service, or do more investment to bring delivery in-house?

Farmer’s Fridge Adds Contactless Ordering and Payment

Farmer’s Fridge vending machines have always had a lot of things people were looking for: 24 hour access, a creative menu, and fresh salads served in cute jars. But the one thing Farmer’s Fridge didn’t offer was contactless ordering and payment, features made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers still needed to touch the machine to place there order and make a payment.

Until recently, that is. I spoke with Farmer’s Fridge CTO, Candice Savino, this week, who told me that the company rolled out contactless reserve and pay functionality to its machines at the end of August.

Like so many other players in the vending machine space, the addition of contactless ordering was on Farmer’s Fridge’s roadmap but was bumped to the head of the feature queue when the pandemic hit. Savino’s team worked quickly, creating an early prototype in May and rolling out the finished product in August to 160 of its 200 machines that are still active (prior to the pandemic, Farmer’s Fridge had 700 machines active in places like office buildings and convention centers).

Farmer’s Fridge contactless ordering works through the company’s mobile app. In the app, the user selects the machine it wants to order from, places the order and pays. That machine then holds the food until the person arrives and punches in a special code generated by the Farmer’s Fridge app.

Savino said the solution allows the company to actually have more accurate inventory management across its entire fleet of machines because it moves stocking data from the edge to a centralized location in the cloud. There are also safeguards in place to prevent remote dispensing, say if you accidentally went to one machine but had ordered from a different machine across town. (If that is the case, the user cancels and re-orders.)

Savino said that adoption of the new ordering system has been good, with 20 percent of Farmer’s Fridge orders going through the mobile app and growing week over week.

With the pandemic still raging, it’s a safe bet that all vending services will adopt contactless ordering and payment going forward. Chowbotics, which makes Sally the robot salad maker, added contactless ordering at the end of last month, and Blendid, which makes a robot smoothie kiosk, has always featured contactless ordering and payment.

Farmer’s Fridge is definitely in touch with the times, especially when it comes to removing touch from its retail experience.

Zippin Cashierless Convenience Store Now Open in Mile High Stadium

Back when they were open and operating at full capacity, stadiums were an excellent way to get a glimpse at the future of food tech. The high-volume, high-speed nature of eating at sporting events and monster truck rallies lent itself to things like robots, AI for line management and mobile ordering.

While the pandemic shut stadiums, arenas and civic centers down for most of the year, some, like Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado have re-opened, albeit cautiously. Only 5,000 fans can spread out across Mile High’s 76,125 seats for Broncos games. And though the crowd size may be diminished, that isn’t stopping Mile High from going high-tech with its approach to concessions.

Earlier this, foodservice operator Aramark tapped Zippin to transform the Mile High’s Drink MKT store into a cashierless checkout experience. Zippin’s technology, which includes cameras and shelf sensors as well as computer vision and AI, allow shoppers to tap their credit card as they walk into the store, grab what they want and leave. Upon exit, customers get charged automatically and receive an itemized receipt. The new Drink MKT opened at the end of September this year.

Not only is the Zippin-powered store contactless, Zippin CEO, Krishna Motukuri told me by phone this week that the entire transaction process is faster. Between grabbing what you want, standing in line and checking out with a cashier, the traditional retail transaction can takes minutes. With Zippin cashierless checkout, Motokuri said “We were able to show that most of the customers checked in, picked their stuff walked out in 45 seconds.”

Mile High Stadium is the second sports venue to house a Zippin convenience store. In September of last year the startup opened one in the Golden 1 Center arena in Sacramento.

For its part, Mile High Stadium is no stranger to high-tech concessions. Last year the stadium used a robot to pour out Bud Lights to thirsty fans.

Motukuri told me that his company has seen an influx of interest from stadiums and office buildings as they look to create more contactless retail experiences when they re-open. For example, office buildings want to replace cafeterias with contactless grab-and-go food options. It will face competition there from Amazon, which has also openly explored the idea of putting small Go stores in offices.

How many more stadiums Zippin builds in is dependent upon how soon those buildings open up. The pandemic is still going strong, but there is a potential light at the end of the tunnel with the forthcoming arrival of vaccines. That said, even when the virus recedes, fans will probably still be a little gun shy about congregating in stores for a long time just to grab a Gatorade, so cashierless checkout could be the big winner at the big games.

The 2020 Kitchen Gift Guide: Bonbowl, BEERMKR, PantryChic and More

There hasn’t been much cause to celebrate during this past year, but maybe the holidays can bring with it a little retail therapy.

If you’re looking to give (or get) the best kitchen gear, than look no further than this list that we’ve put together for you!

JENN

Bonbowl ($149)

My colleagues can attest to the fact that I won’t shut up about the Bonbowl, so it’s only fitting it lands somewhere in this gift guide. As food tech gadgets go, the device is ridiculously simple: it’s an induction cooktop the size of a stove burner and an accompanying bowl you can both cook in and eat from. But you can get a lot of uses out of this simple setup. Since purchasing mine a few months ago, I’ve made single-serving soups and pastas, scrambled eggs, reheated countless leftovers, and made rice krispie treats. Sometimes I use it as a fifth burner for heating sauces when cooking a big meal. Obvious recipients of this device would be a college student (if they ever get to go back to the dorms). That said, I’d buy it for just about anyone who regularly needs to throw a quick meal for one together and hates washing dishes.

Imperfect Foods Gift Box ($24.99)

Fight food waste through holiday gifting. That’s the credo behind online grocer Imperfect Foods’ new holiday snack box. Each box contains a mix of snacks made from “rescued” food — that is, foods that would have otherwise gotten chucked out of the grocery store because of cosmetic imperfections. Some of the included snacks are dried mango considered too “sunburnt” to sell, peppermint- and dark chocolate-covered pretzels that broke into pieces during production, and surplus seasonings. Imperfect Foods says each box saves about nine pounds of food from going to waste. It’s also just a fun way to get your loved ones alert to the world’s 1.3 billion-ton food waste problem. Finally and most importantly, proceeds from the boxes go to Feeding America.

The Personal Rise Garden ($279)

While we’re on the subject of kitchen tech for small spaces, The Personal Rise Garden, a countertop version of Rise Garden’s automated smart farm, just launched and will ship in time for the holidays. Like Rise’s other indoor farms, this one is meant to be used in the average person’s home and doesn’t require agricultural experience or even tech savviness. The accompanying app does most of the work: it calculates temperature, manages the nutrient levels of plants and alerts the user when it’s time to water the garden. The price point is a little high for the average holiday gift, but if you have a loved one who’s a leafy greens devotee and is tired of having to haul ass to the grocery store every other day in the midst of a pandemic, this might be a good investment.

CHRIS

BEERMKR ($499)
I have a full review of the BEERMKR system coming out soon, but here’s all you need to know. I have never attempted to brew beer before. With the BEERMKR, though, I was able to make what is, according to everyone I’ve shared it with, a delicious stout on my first try. BEERMKR’s unique system is simple enough that a N00b like me can use it, but open ended enough that a pro can customize their brew however they like. What’s nice is that it doesn’t require buckets and hoses and bottles, and it doesn’t take a bunch of your time and attention. It just works and is perfect for the BEERLVR in your life.

Photo: Crowd Cow website.

CrowdCow Gift Certificate ($25 – $250)
When the pandemic first hit and we weren’t sure how safe it was to go to grocery stores, I immediately started buying meats through CrowdCow’s online marketplace. It’s been eight months and I’m still buying fish and chicken from CrowdCow’s small farms and fisheries. The service is fast and the quality is top-notch. I highly recommend the halibut!

Philips 3200 LatteGo Superautomatic Espresso Machine ($799)
Look. I’m sorry that I’ve put two very pricey items on my gift guide here. Really. But if you are able to swing it, this superautomatic coffee machine is worth every penny. I saved up and got one for my wife for her birthday+mother’s day towards the beginning of the pandemic. My reasoning? If we’re going to be stuck on lockdown, she may as well start each (Groundhog) day with a delicious cup of coffee. This machine grinds and brews (excellent!) espressos, cappuccinos and straight-up coffee. Plus, the LatteGo system is a super-easy, hose-free way of steaming your choice of milk. And yes, it’s expensive, but given how often it gets used in our house, the cost comes out to about $3.60 a day, which is less than getting a Starbucks latte everyday. And given that this pandemic won’t be over anytime soon, that cost per day will continue to drop.

MIKE

Misen Carbon Steel Pans ($55)

Like many, In recent years I’ve started to move away from chemical heavy non-stick surfaces and rely more heavily on things like my Lodge cast iron skillet. The only problem is the thing weighs more than Thor’s hammer and requires an oven mitt to move around once hot. Enter carbon steel. Carbon steel has been one of those pro kitchen secrets that has started to make its way into the consumer kitchen, and now it’s one of the fastest growing categories for consumer cookware. The growing popularity is due in part because carbon steel offers most of the same benefits of cast iron (durability, high heat tolerance) without its downsides. So when Misen, which got its start as an Instagram purveyor of knives, recently launched their line of carbon steel and I picked up the 10 and 12” bundle. They work great. You still need to season them, but if you or your loved one is looking for a new set of go-to pans, I’d try them out. 

The PantryChic Smart Storage System ($350)

Do you have a hyper organized type on your gift list who wears out their label maker organizing everything into little containers and bins? You might want to consider buying them the PantryChic smart storage system. Sure, the system allows you to store food into interchangeable bins and then dispense using exact measurements with the built-in scale, the container system is BPA-free and airtight, and it all works with the Chefling smart kitchen app to manage food inventory. But you can also feel good buying the product from a founder who has worked long and hard to get the product to market: PantryChic was invented by Nicole Lee who, together with her husband, showed off a prototype at the first Smart Kitchen Summit back in 2015. After half a decade of persistence, they finally started shipping the product last month. You can find the on  PantryChic’s website or on Amazon.  

Stasher Bags

Like everyone else, I’m cooking more at home during the pandemic, and that has meant firing up my sous vide circulator at least once or twice a week. While many are still using plastic bags – either in the form of Ziploc or vacuum seal bags – a couple years ago I started using reusable silicon bags for all of my sous vide. The category got its start when Kat Nouri launched Stasher bags back in 2016 and a couple years later got an investment by Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. The bags aren’t cheap – the half gallon bag (which I use) costs $20 – but you won’t have to keep buying Ziplocs or a vacuum sealer and don’t have to feel bad about putting more plastic into the waste stream. If you’re just getting started or buying for a sous vide fanatic in your family, start at least with a half-gallon or go up to the stand up mega bag, which holds almost up to a gallon. 

With Self-Driving Delivery Vehicles, KFC’s International Brands Keep Pushing Us Into the Future

As with many posts we write about on The Spoon, there is the news and then there is the story.

The news rumbling across Twitter and as reported by Cnet’s Roadshow is that KFC-branded self-driving vehicles were spotted on the road in China bringing fried chicken to people outside. Roadshow reports that this “restaurant on wheels” looks like it’s a partnership between Yum Brands (which owns KFC) and a Chinese company called Neolix (though neither company confirmed that news). From Roadshow’s story:

As for how the little food pods work, it looks like customers make a selection via screens and pay via a QR code and then a door opens to reveal their order. It’s not clear what stops someone from taking more than what they ordered, but surely there’s some sort of system for that. There isn’t anyone inside preparing food as it happens.

Keeping people from taking food that isn’t theirs probably isn’t too big of an issue. This could be addressed either through cameras and computer vision or shelf sensors or both. If a person took more than they had ordered, they would probably just get charged more.

So the news is that China has self-driving cars acting as mobile restaurants. That’s cool. But the bigger story here is what the heck is going on with the international KFC brands? This rolling chicken stand is just the latest example of the company bringing its food into a sci-fi-style future. Consider other moves that KFC has done abroad:

  • A KFC in Moscow is using a system of conveyor belts and an articulating arm to shuttle food from the kitchen into a locker from which customers pick up their order.
  • In July, KFC Russia announced that it was “launching the development of innovative 3D bioprinting technology to create chicken meat in cooperation with the 3D Bioprinting Solutions research laboratory.”
  • Last month, KFC in Korea partnered with Hyundai to develop chicken frying robots.

I realize the grass is always greener on the other side, but it seems like the only thing KFC in the U.S. is working is… a better drive-thru (womp womp). I mean, that’s important, but come on! Where are our robots?

HelloFresh Buys Prepared Meal Delivery Service Factor75 for $277M

Meal kit company HelloFresh announced today that it is acquiring prepared meal delivery service Factor75. The deal is being done through Berlin-based HelloFresh’s U.S. subsidiaries and has the company paying up to $277 million in cash (up to $100 million is in the form of an earn-out and management incentives) for Factor75.

Factor75’s revenue is projected to reach $100 million for the full year 2020. HelloFresh is using the acquisition to expand its presence and market reach here in the U.S. Through the Factor75 purchase, HelloFresh will gain a Chicago office along with four production and fulfillment facilities. There is also a forthcoming facility that, according to the press announcement, will provide enough capacity to deliver more than $500 million worth of prepared meals annually.

This the second big acquisition of a prepared meal delivery service is as many months. At the end of October, Nestlé acquired Freshly in a deal that valued Freshly at $950 million (actual purchase price and deal structure details were not disclosed).

Both these acquisitions come against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has more people eating at home. Prepared meal kit companies like Factor75 and Freshly offer a convenient way to mix up home dining because meals are already cooked and just need to be re-heated. There’s no extensive preparation or lengthy cooking times like there is with traditional meal kits that just send ingredients.

Given that there are now three promising COVID vaccines on the horizon, one has to wonder if Factor75 is exiting at the right time. Obviously there is still a mountain of regulatory and logistical work that needs to be done before any vaccine becomes widely available. But if vaccines start to roll out over the next six to 12 months and consumers feel more free to venture out to restaurants and grocery stores whenever they want, will consumers still have an appetite for meal kits and prepared meal services?

Phood Raises $2M in Seed Funding to Fight Food Waste

Phood, the New York City-based startup that uses a combination of weight scales, computer vision and AI to help foodservice operators reduce food waste, announced today that it has raised a $2 million Seed round of financing. The round was led by New Stack Ventures and Story Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Phood to $2.1 million.

Phood’s technology helps foodservice companies better understand and optimize how their food is being used. As we wrote earlier this year about the company:

There are three parts to the Phood system: a scale, a camera and a software backend. Food is placed on the scale either before going into a dish (to see how much is being used to make meals) or afterwards (to see how much waste is being generated). There’s a camera mounted above the scale that uses AI to automatically identify what each food item is.

The company’s system also connects with a restaurant’s POS and inventory management software to track what particular items are being used and who supplied them. So, if a cafeteria ends up with a lot of extra brussel sprouts, Phood tells the manager to adjust the business’s purchasing.

On its face, food waste is a huge problem because it means food has been, well, wasted instead of consumed, especially during a time when there are so many in need. Food waste is also an acute problem for restaurants, which already operated under thin margins coming into the pandemic. Now with dining rooms going through a second round of closures, restaurants need to get the most out of every dollar spent and literally can’t afford to let food go to waste.

Thankfully, there are a host of companies fighting the good fight against food waste all along the supply chain. Both Winnow and LeanPath offer similar services like Phood’s to help restaurants manage their food usage and inventory. Restaurant supplier Choco recently held a pop-up event in L.A. challenging chefs to come up with foods based on by-products. And earlier this month the nonprofit ReFed launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to help fund projects that reduce waste in the supply chain.

If you want to learn more about the problem of food waste, and what companies are doing to combat it, check The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report over at our Spoon Plus membership service.

Autonomous Middle-Mile Company Gatik Raises $25M

Autonomous vehicle startup Gatik announced today that it has raised a $25 million Series A round of funding. The round was co-led by Wittington Ventures and Innovation Endeavors with participation from FM Capital and Intact Ventures, as well as existing investors Dynamo Ventures, Fontinalis Partners, AngelPad and others. This brings the total amount raised by Gatik to $29.5 million.

Unlike other players in the self-driving delivery space, the Palo Alto, California-based Gatik is focused on the middle-mile — that is, the intra-location routes for a business, for example warehouse to store, store to store, etc.

The advantage of this, from a self-driving vehicle perspective, is that these middle-mile routes are fixed and repeated. This reduces the amount of “thinking” that a self-driving vehicle has to do as it carries goods around because it’s not encountering as many new scenarios. These fixed routes can also help put regulators creating laws around self-driving vehicles more at ease because of their limited scope and reach.

From a business’ perspective, like a grocer, a fleet of autonomous middle-mile vehicles could run all day, every day, ensuring that locations are always fully stocked. In its press announcement, Gatik said that its autonomous vehicles are operating up to seven days a week, 12 hours a day, on single routes up to 300 miles.

Along with its funding announcement, Gatik today also announced that Canada’s Loblaw grocery chain will deploy a fleet of five Gatik vehicles for middle mile delivery in Toronto starting in January 2021. Gatik’s cargo trucks feature temperature control, so they can be used for the transport of cold and frozen foods as well.

In the Loblaw press announcement, Gatik said that its autonomous vehicles will run between automated picking facilities and retail stores, and allows for inventory pooling across multiple location, as well as contactless delivery.

November has been a busy month for autonomous delivery. Last week Walmart announced a partnership with Cruise for self-driving grocery delivery. Nuro announced it had raised another $500 million for its self-driving pod vehicle solution. Part of the reason for all of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated interest in contactless delivery options to reduce human-to-human interaction.

Gatik has previously worked with Walmart, and says it has conducted 30,000 autonomous orders for multiple Fortune 500 customers across North America.  

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said Gatik raised $22.5 million. We regret the error.