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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Mars Wrigley Launches Mobile Robotic Kiosk at ShopRite

The impulse aisle in the checkout line has long been the bane of many parents’ grocery shopping trips. While cashiers scan items and parents wait to pay, racks of candy and treats are within arm’s reach of bored kids sitting in carts.

But if you thought tempting kids with treats out checkout was rough, wait until there’s a shiny new robot wandering the grocery aisles, offering up candy.

Mars Wrigley and Wakefern Food Corp. announced last week that they are working with robot company Savioke to deploy a mobile robotic vending kiosk at ShopRite store in Monroe, NY.

According to Kiosk Marketplace, the robot, dubbed “Smiley,” plays music and dances (doing the robot, we assume) (sorry!), while offering up treats and such for sale.

There aren’t a ton of details, such as how many treats Smiley can hold, or the mechanics of how the treats are dispensed and paid for. (We reached out to Mars Wrigley for more information.)

We’ve seen these types of robots before. Self-driving robots can wheel around inside existing retail spaces to act as promotional, err, vehicles, or direct avenues. In China, FANBOT is already scurrying around cinemas, malls and hotels, selling drinks, snacks and more. And Pudutech’s robot, which is basically a series of shelves on wheels, cruise around grocery stores in Japan and the Netherlands, showcasing items that are on sale.

At the risk of tooting my own horn too loudly, automated mobile kiosks was a trend I said to look out for in 2021. So I think we’re going to see a lot more robots roaming store aisles trying to sell us stuff. Maybe their LED faces will need to show a scowl though, to keep the kids away.

Report: Chinese Online Grocer App Xingsheng Youxuan Raises $2B

The Chinese online grocery app Xingsheng Youxuan has raised $2 billion in new funding, Reuters reports. According to Reuters’ sources, investors in the round include FountainVest Partners, Primavera Capital Group and KKR & Co. The new funding values Xingsheng Youxuan at $6 billion, but companies involved did not confirm details with Reuters.

Founded three years ago, Xingsheng Youxuan fulfills online bulk orders to grocery stores in or near residential areas. Xingsheng Youxuan operates in 13 provinces and covers more than 6,000 counties and 30,000 towns. The company gets more than 8 million daily orders.

As with the U.S., online grocery shopping in China skyrocketed last year thanks to the pandemic. While there are vaccines being distributed and (hopefully) the pandemic will recede this year, online grocery shopping is expected to remain sticky with consumers. Grocery e-commerce is predicted to hit $250 billion and take up 21.5 percent of all grocery sales in the U.S. by 2025.

While Xingsheng Youxuan’s new round is by far the biggest single funding round into a grocery company we’ve seen, a lot of investor money has poured into the grocery space around the world over the past year:

We are also seeing increased investment by established players to bolster their online ordering and fulfillment infrastructure. Walmart and Ahold Delhaize recently made moves to expand their use of automated fulfillment centers, for example. And Kroger is set to open up the first of their 20 planned automated customer fulfillment centers across the U.S. this year.

All of this is to say that 2021 is shaping up to be a transformational year for grocery all around the globe.

Bizero Rolls Out Delivery Robots to Help Prevent Driver Deaths in Turkey

There are lots of reasons that delivery robot companies launch their services. Faster food deliveries. A attempt to make delivery more available. One of the main reasons Bizero launched its robot delivery service in Istanbul, Turkey was to help prevent the rampant death of delivery drivers there.

Mehmet Akincilar, Founder of Bizero told me by video chat this week that delivery driver deaths in Turkey is a big problem and that he wanted to deploy his robots to help. According an article in the Turkish publication, Duvar from Feb 2020, “75 of the 103 motorcyclists who died in traffic accidents were delivery drivers” (the publication did not specify where in Turkey or a specific timeframe).

Additionally, the Duvar post said:

While it is estimated that 100,000 motorcyclist delivery drivers are currently working in Turkey, at least 50,000 are believed to be working under the table. Those working informally get paid less, and usually these workers are immigrants or high school students on summer break. While a delivery driver can make between 150-200 TL a day, immigrants and drivers without licenses are paid only 50-60 TL a day

This is where Bizero comes. Akincilar and his team are using self-balancing two-wheeled robots, dubbed PIKA (“Paylaşımlı İnsansız Kargo Aracı,” or “Shared Unmanned Cargo Vehicle”), to make food deliveries in Istanbul. The robots aren’t currently the most high-tech robots we’ve covered (they use an actual padlock on the cargo door and recipients are texted the combination), but they appear to get the job done.

Delivery Robot carries greengrocery at Turkish Bazaar, Istanbul | Bizero cooperation w/Pazardan App

The PIKAs have a range of 100 kilometers on a charge, can carry 30 kgs worth of stuff, and have a maximum speed of 10 kmh. Bizero’s robots are semi-autonomous, so there is a human pilot that plots the course for the robot (they are not fully driven by teleoperators). One person can pilot up to five robots at a time. This also means that robots won’t fully replace humans in the workforce, as some drivers can move into working as robot teleoperators.

The program was launched last July, and Bizero has 10 robots making deliveries around Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Akincilar says that the company will have 100 robots making deliveries by the end of this year (and that they will have digital locks).

Bizero’s business model is to sell the robots outright. There is no subscription or per mile fee, just selling robots to delivery services, restaurants, markets, etc. Pricing was not disclosed.

Bizero is actually the second delivery robot company operating in Istanbul right now. Delivers AI uses four-wheeled autonomous ‘bots and also plans to have a fleet of 100 robots making deliveries in a year’s time. Unlike Delivers AI, however, Bizero is bootstrapped.

Given the mortality issues with delivery drivers in Turkey, having more robots making deliveries in Turkey seems like a good thing.

Imperium Drive Comes Out of Stealth with Bandwidth-Aware Teleoperation for Robots

One of the many questions facing delivery robot startups as they come to market is how much autonomy to give the robots. Should they go full autonomous driving, even though that is more technically complex and there is still a patchwork of regulation that needs to be dealt with? Or should they go with less autonomy and use humans to help guide or even drive their robots to sidestep some of the complications that come with self-driving vehicles.

For robot delivery startups wrestling with these questions, Imperium Drive says it’s here to help. Based in Europe (the company is scattered across different countries because of the pandemic) and part of the TechStars Smart Mobility cohort, Imperium Drive makes a teleoperation system for autonomous vehicles, including the small rover robots favored by the likes of Starship, Kiwibot, Postmates and others.

Imperium does the whole teleoperation stack, from the software onboard the robot to the human on the other end who helps the robot navigate. Imperium lets robot companies choose how much teleoperation they want, depending on their robot’s level of autonomy. Imperium can have a human simply monitor the robot remotely in case it gets stuck or runs into trouble, or the company can plot points on a map for the robot to autonomously follow. At the far end of the spectrum, Imperium can have a human actually drive the delivery robot remotely, like a videogame.

Imperium Drive Co-Founder and CEO, Koosha Kaveh, told me by phone this week that his company’s secret sauce is its ability to operate even when network connections provide only low bandwidth. As the robot runs around town, the strength of its cellular connection will vary, sometimes offering very small pipes for data to get through.

“We’ve developed our own AI predictive engine that predicts changes of network parameters,” said Kaveh, “And we change automatically our streaming engine based on availability.”

A easy way to think about Imperium’s bandwidth technology is Netflix. The movie streaming service will detect how much bandwidth you have (e.g., a cellular connection versus wired Ethernet) and serve a movie in a resolution fit for that situation. Imperium does the same thing, just with data from the robot.

Delivery robots are actually streaming a lot of data back to their headquarters. There’s video from the robot’s on-board cameras as well as lidar and radar information. Imperium adapts what is streamed based on the amount of bandwidth. For example, if there’s very little bandwidth, Imperium can send just wireframes of the robots surroundings. Kaveh said that it can stream the relevant information a teleoperator needs at under 1MB of data.

The idea of teleoperating robots brings up the question of scale. It’s easy to understand self-driving robots scaling up to meet demand because that’s the whole point — there is no human labor to pay. Once you have the robots, they can just run around the clock with no additional cost. What happens to the economics when you have a human handling a robot?

Kaveh says Imperium has a network of inexpensive labor in Eastern Europe that it can tap into to teleoperate robots. And Imperium isn’t alone in using humans to guide robots. Kiwibot has a team of people in Colombia that plots the courses for its robots (not full-on driving). And Tortoise skipped the idea of self-driving altogether for its robots, believing it can create a Mechanical Turk style army of human gig-work teleoperators.

The fact that Imperium Drive exists is at least some indication that the delivery robot space is maturing. As we outlined in our Delivery Robot Market Report, there are many companies around the world deploying delivery robots on city streets. Imperium Drive is part of a typical business cycle for new market categories like delivery bots. It’s not creating the robots themselves, but adding a layer to make those robots run more efficiently. As robots gain traction, we’ll see more third-party add-ons like this meant to improve robot delivery operations.

We Need to Talk about Cashierless Checkout

What the heck is happening with cashierless checkout right now? To put it mildly, a lot.

There has been a steady stream of news in recent months about startups creating new grab-and-go shopping experiences where consumers can walk into a store, take what they want, then simply leave. These systems automatically charge customers for their items as they exist the store without those people having to visit an actual cashier.

Things really turned up in the cashierless space yesterday when AiFi announced a new partnership with Wundermart to create up to 1,000 new unattended locations. But we weren’t done yet because right after that story went up, Standard Cognition announced that it had raised a $150 million Series C round of funding and plans to open 50,000 checkout free stores over the next five years.

This however, was just the latest news. The whole cashierless checkout space has been simmering with activity for quite some time. Consider these other headlines from just the past three months:

Why is all this happening right now? To find out, we hosted a Clubhouse chat yesterday with Trinh Le-Fiedler, Founder and CEO of Nomitri; Krishna Motokuri, Co-Founder and CEO of Zippin; and Lindon Gao, Co-Founder and CEO of Caper.

The panel agreed that one of the factors pushing the accelerated adoption of cashierless checkout is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Cashierless checkout helps minimize human-to-human interaction. This helps protect both consumers and a store’s staff because you don’t have one cashier interacting with a bunch of different strangers throughout the day. Plus, the elimination of checkout lines also means that you have fewer customers congregating with one another.

In addition to the pandemic, competitive forces are also at play. As Gao pointed out, Amazon has rolled out services like Amazon Go stores and its own Dash smart carts. This has spurred other retailers into more examination and exploration of adopting their own cashierless checkout capabilities.

But, despite all the recent news about cashierless checkout, the concept is still a ways away from mainstream adoption. Fiedler, whose company is among the newest of the cashierless startups, noted that it’s much easier for a small- or medium-sized retailer to adopt new cashierless options because they aren’t weighed down by legacy IT systems.

For his part, Motokuri predicted that over the next two years most of the convenience-style shopping people do at stadiums or airports will be via cashierless stores. Larger convenience stores will need three to four years before they commit to cashierless technology.

Gao thinks that cashierless checkout needs to get “dirt cheap” before we see mainstream adoption. By that he meant the hardware, software and service needs to become much more inexpensive, and the ongoing operational costs need to be dirt cheap for the retailer as well.

More Headlines

Supply Change Capital Aims to Diversify Investments in Food Companies – Founded by Shayna Harris and Noramay Cadena at the end of 2020, the firm aims to invest in food and food tech companies with female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ founders.

Revol Greens Launches Its Own Plant-Based Nutrient Source for Greenhouses – Dubbed Plant Fed, the product is currently patent pending, and its existence on Revol’s farms means leafy greens will be fed entirely by plants and not with animal ingredients, as is often the case with fertilizer.

McDonald’s Agrees to Third-Party Audit of Disputed Technology Fees – The review, requested by a group of McDonald’s operators called the National Franchisee Leadership Alliance, will look into the $423-per-month technology fee McDonald’s announced in December of last year.

Gatik Debuts Electric Version of its Autonomous Middle-Mile Delivery Truck – The first of Gatik’s electric trucks will be Ford Transit 350 HDs that were developed in partnership with electric drive company Via Motors.

Rotender is a Drink Making Robot Built for High-Volume Bars

I worked at a nightclub in college and one thing I remember from that experience was the sheer volume of drinks bartenders poured each night. Our job wasn’t about fancy bottle flipping a la Cocktail, just getting drinks to the consumers and their money in the till.

This high-volume approach is what’s driving the team at Rotender, which has built a robotic vending machine that serves drinks. Each Rotender holds 16 one-liter bottles and five different types of syrups (e.g., cranberry or orange juice), has an automated soda gun and makes it own ice. Once up and running, the Rotender can serve a drink in 15 seconds and make more than 350 drinks before needing to be refilled.

Rather than sitting behind the bar like SomaBar, the Rotender is actually meant to be installed where consumers can use it. A customer uses their mobile phone to scan a QR code on the Rotender, which brings up the drink menu in the Rotender app. Users select their drink, pay for it, place their glass in the machine and then scan a QR code again to ensure that they are by the machine to pick up their drink. Once that’s done, the Rotender mixes the drink and serves it.

Right now, Rotender relies on the venue to handle age verification, though the company is exploring existing software solutions to handle that. The machine also keeps track of how many drinks it serves each customer. Should a consumer order too many drinks in a single hour, Rotender can pause service to that individual so as not to over-serve them.

When we talk about robotics, there is typically a discussion around how robot-like any machine should look. Other robo-bartenders on the market serving drinks at Glacierfire in Iceland or The Tipsy Robot bar in Las Vegas use articulating arms to make the drinks. Rotender has instead forsaken this “robot” approach in favor of creating more of a straight up drink-making machine. As Rotender Co-Founder and CEO, Ben Winston explained to me by phone this week, the reason is speed.

Rotender is built to churn out drinks for high-volume locations. As such, the machine focuses on meat and potato drinks — rum and coke, gin and tonic, etc. More complicated drinks are left to the human staff at the bar.

By foresaking expensive articulating robotic arms, Winston also said that Rotender is a more economical option for bars. It costs $999 a month to lease a Rotender (a robotic arm on its own can cost tens of thousands of dollars). In addition to that lease, Rotender also adds a per drink charge that it determines with the venue.

Rotender is about to do a pilot with a bar in Los Angeles, and Winston said they can currently serve clients in California and Nevada. Sadly, though, the Rotender won’t be doing any Cocktail-style bottle flips.

Standard Cognition Raises $150M Series C for its Cashierless Checkout

Cashierless checkout startup Standard Cognition announced today that it has raised a $150 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from existing investors CRV, EQT Ventures and TI Platform Management, along with new investors SK Networks and others. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Standard to $236 million.

Standard Cognition creates cashierless checkout experiences for retailers using a system of cameras, computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI). Once installed and integrated with a payment system, customers can walk in, grab what they want, and leave without needing to scan items or wait in a checkout line.

Shopping in seconds with Standard, the world's most advanced autonomous checkout solution

This round of funding is far and away the largest we’ve seen for a cashierless checkout startup. Similar startups that retrofit stores with cameras and AI include Grabango ($32 million), Trigo ($89 million), and Zippin ($12 million). Also worth mentioning is Accel Robotics, which raised $30 million from SoftBank the company, not SoftBank Vision Fund.

In its press announcement, Standard said this new funding will help the company scale up its solution. Standard said it has already been working with customers including Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. (parent company of global convenience store brand “Circle K”) and Compass Group. Standard said it will outfit “hundreds” of checkout-free stores this year and has a goal of more than 50,000 stores over the next five years.

It is an understatement to say that it’s been a busy year so far for cashierless checkout. Just today, cashierless startup AiFi announced a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that includes plans to open up 1,000 checkout-free stores. Previously, New Zealand-based IMAGR partnered with Japanese retailer H2O, Berlin-based Nomitri came out of stealth, and Zippin launched a checkout-free store in a hotel in Japan.

A big reason for all this activity (and investment) is the ongoing global pandemic. Retailers are looking for ways to alter the shopping experience in a COVID world, which includes reducing the amount of human-to-human interaction the happen at the store. Removing the cashier removes one vector of transmission, and removing the checkout line altogether means that fewer people congregate inside a store.

In other words, expect to see more cashierless checkout announcements (and investments) in the coming months.

AiFi and Wundermart Partner up for Cashierless Checkout Stores

AiFi is bringing its computer-vision based cashierless checkout technology to Amsterdam-based Wundermart‘s chain of convenience stores worldwide, the two companies announced today.

Wundermart currently operates 70 unattended “grab-and-go” convenience stores throughout Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. These stores are typically between 50 and 200 sq. ft. and located in hotels, offices and transportation hubs. While the stores themselves are unattended by staff, Wundermart shoppers currently need to manually scan each item and make their payment at a self-checkout kiosk.

Through this new partnership, Wundermart will incorporate AiFi’s camera-based checkout system. As shoppers enter a Wundermart store, they will need to scan the store app or swipe their credit card at a kiosk. Once inside, AiFi’s camera+computer vision system will automatically keep track of what people take and then charge them automatically as they leave the store — no product scanning needed.

In addition to its computer vision checkout, Wundermart will be implementing AiFi’s OASIS system, which uses computer vision and sensors to track products in the store for more automated inventory management.

Wundermart will also be integrating AiFi’s technology into its Wunderware SaaS package. Wunderware is sold to third-party retailers so they can create their own autonomous stores. According to today’s press announcement, Wundermart and Wunderware plan to open more than 1,000 locations equipped with AiFi’s technology.

The COVID pandemic is pushing retailers of all sizes to re-evaluate the number of touchpoints they have in their stores. Cashierless checkout provides a more frictionless shopping experience that reduces the amount of human-to-human interaction. Not only does it remove the cashier as a vector of viral transmission, but early data suggests that shoppers using cashierless systems spend less time in a store, so there are fewer people congregating in checkout lines and aisles.

In addition to more frictionless checkout, Wundermart said it will be using AiFi’s system to also learn how people are shopping inside their stores. While the company’s system doesn’t use facial or biometric data to track someone, it can analyze what items people pick up (and put back) to help a store operator determine how to most efficiently set up products.

Only a couple of months in and 2021 has already been a busy year for cashierless checkout. New Zealand-based IMAGR has launched its smart-cart solution with retailer H20 in Japan. German startup, Nomitri came out of stealth with its smartphone-centric, cashierless checkout. And Zippin launched an unattended convenience store at a hotel in Japan.

For its part, AiFi has said previously that it plans to have deployed 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores by the end of 2021. With the Wundermart partnership, they are certainly on their way to achieving that goal.

Gatik Debuts Electric Version of its Autonomous Middle-Mile Delivery Truck

Gatik, which focuses on self-driving vehicles for middle-mile delivery, today announced its electrification strategy and introduced its new Electric Autonomous Box Truck.

The first of Gatik’s electric trucks will be Ford Transit 350 HDs that were developed in partnership with electric drive company Via Motors. The new trucks have an all-electric powertrain, a range of 120 miles and can charge in less than 1.5 hours.

Gatik’s self-driving vehicles handle middle mile delivery, meaning that they transports goods closer to a consumer, but not all the way to them. A typical middle-mile route might be between a warehouse and a store location, and Gatik’s trucks become, in essence, a self-driving conveyor belt between points. Since the trucks travel a fixed route, Gatik can eliminate some of the variables that come with self-driving technology. They don’t, for example, need to constantly calculate new routes through a bunch of different neighborhoods to people’s front doors.

Gatik has previously said that this limited scope makes it easier to get regulatory approval and therefore its self-driving trucks on the road. Walmart announced in December that the Gatik trucks on one of its Bentonville, Arkansas routes will be allowed to remove the safety driver altogether and go full driverless this year.

In December, Walmart also announced that it would be adding Gatik’s truck to a second delivery route between New Orleans and Metairie, LA. That route is where the first of Gatik’s electric trucks will be in operation starting this month.

Electrification of its vehicle fleet is actually a stated goal of Walmart as the giant retailer aims to reach zero emissions by 2040. In addition to fewer emissions, with a recharge time of just 1.5 hours, Gatik’s new electric vehicles can recharge as they are being unloaded and loaded allowing for continuous operation.

The middle mile isn’t the only area where Walmart is testing out electric, self-driving delivery. The retailer has also partnered with electric car maker Cruise to test autonomous grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Last- and middle-mile delivery may also begin to blur in new ways, thanks in part to automation. Walmart has indicated that the middle mile may include consumer pickup stations, allowing people who don’t live near a Walmart store to purchase items from the retailer and pick them up closer to their homes.

Ahold Delhaize Launching Automated Fulfillment Center in Philadelphia

Ahold Delhaize announced today that it is building out an automated fulfillment center in Philadelphia (hat tip to Winsight Grocery Business). When completed, this facility will be able to fulfill 15,000 online delivery orders a week.

This new fulfillment pilot will be powered by Peapod Digital Labs, Ahold Delhaize’s in-house e-commerce engine, and offered to customers of the Giant Co. market. Ahold Delhaize is also working with Swisslog’s AutoStore for the robotics and software systems for the automated fulfillment center.

This is not Ahold’s first trip to the robotic fulfillment center rodeo. The company owns a majority stake in FreshDirect, which is using Fabric for a Washington D.C.-area fulfillment center. And in 2018, the company announced it was working with Takeoff Technologies to create a number of micro-fulfillment centers for its retail brands including Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Giant Food. According to Winsight, Ahold said today more micro-fulfillment pilots are forthcoming.

Ahold Delhaize’s expanded use of automation is no surprise. Grocery e-commerce had a banner year in 2020, thanks in large part to the pandemic keeping people at home. Online grocery is expected to remain sticky with consumers even after the pandemic recedes with some projecting online grocery taking up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025.

As such, grocery retailers are investing in new ways of getting people their food faster. Kroger is building out a series of Ocado-powered automated fulfillment centers across the U.S. Walmart is planning to implement dozens of automated micro-fulfillment centers at its stores. And Albertsons is expanding the use of automated fulfillment as well.

Most of these, however have been announcements. We’ll need to watch this space in the coming months to see if automated fulfillment centers truly deliver on their promise of cost-effective, increased efficiency.

Redefine Meat Raises a $29M Series A Round for its 3D-Printed Plant-Based Meats

Israeli plant-based meat startup Redefine Meat announced today that it has closed a $29 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Happiness Capital and Hanaco Ventures with participation from CPT Capital, Losa Group, Sake Bosch, and K3 Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Redefine to $35 million.

Redefine Meat uses 3D-printing technology along with ingredients it calls “Alt-Fat,” “Alt-Muscle,” and “Alt-Blood” to create whole cuts of plant-based meat that mimic animal-based meat. The company has also mapped out 70 sensorial parameters that let it control factors such as texture, juiciness, fat distribution and mouthfeel.

Last June, Redefine Meat announced that it had achieved high-production of its industrial-level 3D-printing capabilities, allowing the company to print 50 steaks in an hour. In its press announcement today, Redefine Meat said its new large-scale production facility will be completed later this year.

Last month, Redefine Meat announced that it had partnered with Israeli meat distributor Best Meister, which allowed Redefine’s 3D printed meats to be distributed across Israel. Through that arrangement, Redefine said would bring its plant-based meats to market in Israel sometime during Q1 of this year, starting with high-end butchers and restaurants.

February has actually been a pretty active month in the world of 3D-printed alternative proteins. Revo Foods (formerly Legendary Vish) announced it is using its 3D printing technology to create salmon sashimi. And cultured-meat startup Aleph Farms said that it had successfully 3D-bioprinted a ribeye steak.

Redefine Meat is working on other cuts of plant-based meat and said it will use its new funding to expand its meat portfolio, support its commercial launch and international growth throughout this year.

Natufia Labs Raises $3.5M for its Indoor Garden Appliance, Relocates to Saudi Arabia

Natufia Labs, the Estonia-based automated kitchen garden startup, announced today that it is relocating to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). KAUST is also leading a $3.5 million investment round in Natufia, awarding $2 million through the KAUST Innovation Fund. This brings the total amount of money raised by Natufia to $4.7 million.

Natufia makes an automated home gardening appliance about the size of refrigerator that automatically controls elements such as lighting, as well as water and nutrient dispensing. The $13,000 Natufia cabinet uses seedpods that are placed in a special unit to germinate before being transferred to pots to grow and be harvested. Right now, Natufia’s appliance can grow leafy greens, herbs and flowers.

In a press announcement sent to The Spoon, Natufia Labs CEO and Founder Gregory Lu said, “From Estonian icy-snow winters to the arid climate of Saudi Arabia, sustainable access to food supply is a global issue, so it is more than natural that this technology is thriving from Saudi Arabia.”

Problems with our existing food supply chain were revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic last year, causing a surge of interest in consumer indoor agriculture products. A new wave of high-tech appliances automate all the “hard” parts about growing food, allowing people to more easily grow and control their own food supply. Other players in the space including Gardyn, AeroGrow and Click & Grow have all seen demand increase during the pandemic.

With its new funding, Natufia said it will accelerate the development of its next models, hopefully bringing the price down to something more affordable for even more people.