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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Video: See Kitchen Robotics’ Beastro Ghost Kitchen Robot in Action

It’s one thing to write about food making robots — but it’s so much better when you can see food-making robots in action. Which is why it’s cool to see the video Kitchen Robotics released this week of its awesomely named Beastro robot making meals.

Kitchen Robotics is in the business of automating ghost kitchens with hardware and software tools. Beastro is its all-in-one standalone kiosk. Similar to RoboEatz, Gastronomous and Karakuri, the Beastro stores all the ingredients, then dispenses them into a bowl where they are mixed and heated into a meal. Beastro is approximately 12 ft. long by 6 ft. wide and 7 ft. tall, and weighs 1,790 lbs. It can make 45 dishes an hour including Italian and Asian cuisines, as well as soups, salads and more.

We got a glimpse at the Beastro just about a year ago with a teaser video, but that didn’t show the robot working with actual food. This time around you get to see Beastro’s robotic grippers holding the bowl, sliding it around as it adds ingredients, and using the spinning induction cooker to prepare the dish.

Beastro™ a Robotic Kitchen by Kitchen Robotics

Adding robots to a ghost kitchen can make a lot of sense. Robots can work odd (or all) hours, and churn out meals in minutes. They can also be tied in to ordering systems so meals can automatically (and algorithmically) be coordinated, cooked and queued based on when a delivery driver will arrive to pick up the food.

As such, we are starting to see robots creep into ghost kitchen operations. In February of this year, DoorDash acquired food robot company, Chowbotics. At the time of the acquisition, we wrote that DoorDash could use Chowbotics’ robots to assemble its own brand of fresh food for delivery from the DashMart convenience stores. This prediction seems to have borne out as earlier this month, HNGRY reported that DoorDash was indeed creating its own line of private label salad bowls and microwaveable meals with Chowbotics tech.

If DoorDash can make a go of its new robotics program, it’s probably safe to assume that other delivery services will follow suit. Gopuff, for instance, is adding ghost kitchens to its delivery network and has reportedly raised an additional billion dollars. That could buy a few Beastros, for sure.

Will Gopuff’s (Second) Billion-Dollar Funding Round Make its Grocery Competition Go Poof?

In addition to delivering groceries fast, Gopuff is pretty speedy when it comes to raising big sums of money. Bloomberg and Axios both reported yesterday that Gopuff is raising an additional $1 billion in funding, according to sources familiar with the matter. This new money comes just months after Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March, and will give the company a $15 billion post-money valuation.

Like others in the space, Gopuff operates a network of dark stores in the U.S. that deliver goods like groceries in 30 minutes, 24 hours a day. But unlike its competition here, Gopuff has raised a ton more money. If this latest round does indeed close next week, the company will have raised nearly $3.5 billion since 2015. By comparison, other speedy grocery services have far less funding: Gorillas has raised $335M, Fridge No More raised $16.9M, JOKR raised $170M, and Food Rocket raised $2M.

Gopuff is also a little different from its competitors in its value proposition. Those other services promise super-fast delivery of groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Because they deliver to a very limited radius, they can tailor their inventories to the particular tastes of the neighborhood they serve. But those services are also very small right now. Three are only in New York City (Gorillas, Fridge No More, JOKR), and two are in San Francisco (Food Rocket, Gorillas). Gopuff, on the other hand, has more than 300 facilities operating in 550 cities across the U.S. With another $1 billion, Gopuff can accelerate its expansion and grab market share before the competition can even get out of their hometown.

But speedy, on-demand grocery delivery will soon become commonplace in big cities, if you believe the CEO of Food Rocket. As such, we are starting to see these speedy grocery services start to differentiate. Food Rocket, for instance, is adding branded ready-to-eat meals and ghost kitchens to make even more types of delivery friendly meals. But there, too, goes Gopuff: the company has been hiring out kitchen staff and managers for its own ghost kitchen services so it can deliver its own meals.

Gopuff’s biggest competitor might actually be DoorDash at this point. DoorDash has a nationwide delivery network and infrastructure, is expanding aggressively into grocery, has a ton of money thanks to its IPO, operates its own growing line of delivery only DashMart convenience stores, and has its own ghost kitchen program. With another billion in the bank, Gopuff has the goods and the cash now to have a go at DoorDash.

I quipped on Linkedin earlier this week that it would be weird if your speedy grocery delivery service didn’t raise over $100 million. Given Gopuff’s furious fundraising pace, I might have to adjust my joke.

Retailers: Don’t Fret Over Online Grocery’s Downward Trend

In looking at Brick Meets Click/Mercatus online grocery sales data since March of this year, you might start to worry. After matching a record high of $9.3 billion in total U.S. grocery e-commerce in March, the numbers have steadily come down. April’s tally was $8.4 billion. May fell to $7.0 billion. And just this week, the latest data showed total U.S. online grocery sales dropped again to $6.8 billion.

But as Brick Meets Click Partner and Research Lead David Bishop explained to me by phone this week, there’s no need to panic.

“We’ve expected and predicted that 2021 would be a very choppy year,” Bishop said, adding the the pandemic, the subsequent delta and lambda variants and government relief like the child tax credits coming out will make for a very up and down year. But, he added, “Keep an eye on the big picture. We are still at significantly higher levels than prior to the pandemic.” More importantly, Bishop reassured me, online grocery shopping isn’t going anywhere. “We’re still at 70 percent of the peak, and we’re going to keep more than 50 percent of incremental gains.”

A closer look at Brick Meets Click’s numbers shows that almost the entirety of the drop in online grocery sales came from ship-to-home services (think mail order services like Imperfect Produce, Crowd Cow, etc.). Store delivery and home pickup options remained flat from May to June at $5.3 billion, and this, Bishop said, is where retailers should be paying attention — especially when it comes to curbside pickup.

Brick Meets Click’s June data showed that 33 percent of monthly active users received online grocery orders only via pickup, compared with 16 percent receiving their online groceries only via delivery. “The customer is signaling that pickup is the preferred method when given the option between home delivery and store pickup,” Bishop said.

Bishop also said that in the broader landscape, especially in the media, the message has been about delivery, and the need for faster delivery. (We at The Spoon are certainly guilty of adding to that narrative.) “The fact of the matter is that more households use pickup than delivery,” said Bishop, “And the sales gap is widening.”

Bishop doesn’t think retailers should abandon delivery, but more emphasis and resources should be put towards adding and improving curbside pickup options for customers. This in turn will create a virtuous cycle with customers. Adding more curbside pickup options with faster, more convenient pull-up options will get more people to use curbside pickup services.

Adding those pickup options, however isn’t as simple as a CEO snapping their fingers. Operational plans need to be put into place as to how the customer orders, who does the order packing, where that order is staged before pickup and who takes it out to the car. Additionally, larger chains need to order signage that directs people to pickup spots for all their store locations, and there may be city regulations that need to be met before traditional parking spots can be reserved for pickup. All that takes time.

Now that we have data around how consumer behavior is evolving with online grocery shopping, retailers can take action and adjust. Yes, there will be continued month-to-month fluctuations in the numbers, but the overall trend remains the same. “We’re trying to reinforce the underlying point, which is, we have had the acceleration [of grocery e-commerce] thanks to the pandemic,” Bishop said. “This is the year of reconciliation. Retailers and customers will re-jig how they operate and behave.” And The Spoon will be here to cover how stores and customers change with the times — so don’t worry.

More Headlines

Uproot is Bringing Plant-Based Milk Dispensers to College Campuses – the dispenser hardware is free, but schools need to buy the milks from Uproot.

Plant-Based Cheese Company Nobell Foods Raises $75M – The company basically trains soybeans to produce casein, which it says could wind up being cheaper than the costs of producing cheese using cow’s milk.

Instacart and Fabric Partner to Offer Automated Fulfillment to Grocers – Rolling out later this year, the robot-powered fulfillment service will be offered for both inside existing stores or standalone facilities.

Bbot Raises $15M Series A for its Restaurant Ordering and Payment Software – The company offers a range of hardware tools such as tablets, scanners and printer controls, as well as a suite of software to enable contactless and online ordering and manage catering.

Instacart and Fabric Partner to Offer Automated Fulfillment to Grocers

Instacart announced today a new multi-year partnership with Fabric that will see the two companies jointly offer automated order fulfillment services to North American grocery retailers.

The new automated fulfillment option will combine Instacart’s e-commerce ordering capabilities and human shoppers with Fabric’s robot-powered item-assembly process. Retailers can outfit this new system inside existing retail spaces or in dedicated warehouses. So customers will place a grocery order online, robots will assemble those items and Instacart shoppers will pack them up and either stage the completed order for curbside pickup or deliver it to the customer’s front door.

The company didn’t provide many details about implementing this new automated system, only saying it is the first phase of its “next-generation fulfillment initiative” and that it “plans to kick off early-stage concept pilots in partnership with Fabric and grocery retail partners over the coming year and beyond.”

Interest in automated fulfillment certainly accelerated over the past year because of the pandemic. Fears of COVID-19 had record amounts of people buying groceries online in the U.S. Those numbers have come down in recent months as the vaccines have rolled out and people feel more comfortable shopping in person. The latest data from Brick Meets Click shows that U.S. online grocery sales for pickup and delivery were $5.3 billion in June, down from its peak of $7.2 billion in June of 2020. If those numbers continue to trend down, will retailers still feel the pressing need to automate?

Big retailers like Albertsons, Kroger and Walmart have all doubled down on their own automated fulfillment plans over the past year. But as Grocery Dive has pointed out, there are still concerns around the efficacy of automated order fulfillment and whether it provides truly valuable productivity gains and return on investment. Now, instead of building their own automated infrastructure, smaller retailers could choose to offload that work to Instacart and Fabric, so we could see more grocers trying these systems out.

Bbot Raises $15M Series A for its Restaurant Ordering and Payment Software

Restaurant ordering and payment processing platform Bbot announced today that it has raised a $15 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by CRV and follows a $4 million extension to its Seed round the company raised in January of this year. Bbot’s total amount of funding is now $22.3 million.

Broadly speaking, Bbot helps restaurants, bars, hotels, ghost kitchens and other hospitality establishments add in-venue and online ordering. The company offers a range of hardware tools such as tablets, scanners and printer controls, as well as a suite of software to enable contactless and online ordering and manage catering.

Bbot’s system uses QR codes, which restaurants can place on tables and customers can scan with their own phones to pull up the menu, order, and pay for items. While the QR code-based ordering isn’t new, it has gained much more attention over the last year because of its inherently contactless nature. In her recent 2021 Restaurant Tech EcoSystem market map, Brita Rosenheim predicted that these type of tools will become more important to restaurants, writing:

Stateside, we’ve increasingly been adopting mobile-first ordering and marketing strategies, but the mobile-only approach (often seen in Asia) wasn’t widely embraced before the pandemic. Now, whether via QR codes, apps or mobile web, there has been a huge shift towards mobile-optimized menus, ordering and payments which eliminate or reduce most employee/customer contact. This can help to improve the guest experience via increased speed and fewer errors. For fine dining, this also saves time/costs in printing and sourcing supplies for paper menus.

Bbot is just the latest bit of restaurant tech funding we’ve seen over the past month. 86 Repairs raised $7.3 million for its restaurant machine maintenance and repair service. Choco raised a whopping $100 million to digitize the relationship between restaurants and food suppliers. And Zenput raised $27 million to help multi-unit restaurants widely release and enforce operating procedures and health and safety protocols.

In its press announcement, Bbot said it has added more than 700 customers and reached 85 employees across 14 states over the last year. With its new funding, Bbot said it will create new POS and loyalty program integrations, and will focus on features for food halls and virtual brands. The company also plans to launch a self-service Bbot app store, so developers can integrate their apps with Bbot’s existing platform.

Why Plant-Based Nuggets are Gold

When I think of chicken nuggets, I think of my young son. More specifically, I remember how at one point I surreptitiously replaced his animal-based chicken nuggets and tenders with plant-based ones… and he didn’t notice (or didn’t care). That small bit of deception is why I think the plant-based chicken nugget market could be a very big deal.

Plant-based chicken nuggets are nothing new. Companies like Quorn, Morningstar and Gardein have been selling them in the frozen aisles of grocery stores for years now. But things really heated up this month when both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods jumped into the faux poultry ring. Beyond, which had previously piloted plant-based chicken with KFC, announced a couple weeks back that its new tenders are available at 400 restaurants across the country. That announcement was quickly followed by the news that Impossible was unveiling its nuggets to potential restaurant customers this week for a fall rollout.

While both of their plant-based chicken products will debut at restaurants, it’s a no-brainer that their nuggets will eventually make it to store shelves. Both Beyond and Impossible spent a great deal of time last year vastly expanding their national retail sales footprint, all the heavy lifting of getting into stores in done, they now just need to roll out their nuggets.

And it’s on the store shelves where things get interesting, as there will be ton of competition. Not only are the stalwarts like Quorn, Morningstar and Gardein already there, but giants like Tyson has its Raised & Rooted plant-based nuggets, and Target has its own Good & Gather brand. Not to mention there is also a new crop of plant-based nugget startups like Rebellyous, SIMULATE, Nowadays, and Daring Foods competing for your dollar.

Competing for your top dollar, that is. Right now, you have to pay extra for plant-based chicken. A quick look at Safeway shows that an 8-ounce package of Raised and Rooted nuggets is $4.99, compared with a 32-ounce package of traditional animal based nuggets for $7.79. That’s almost four times as much food for a few dollars more.

But this is where Beyond and Impossible can help. While both of their burger products are still more expensive than traditional meat, consumer prices for Beyond and Impossible have steadily come down over the past couple of years. It’s a safe bet that the same will happen for their chicken products. With the brand recognition both Beyond and Impossible have, they should be able to quickly gain market share at retail and exert price pressure on other players in the space.

Another big opportunity for plant-based chicken nuggets and tenders is in schools cafeterias, where nuggets are menu staple. The USDA reports that schools served 5 billion lunches in fiscal year 2019, so it’s no surprise that schools were actually one of Rebellyous’ primary markets before the pandemic shut everything down last year. Also consider that this past May, Impossible received the Child Nutrition (CN) Label authorized by the USDA, which will make it easier for schools to purchase the Impossible Burger. With Impossible running pilots programs with a number of school districts across the U.S., it’s a safe bet the company will get the same regulatory approval for its nuggets.

But the big reason plant-based chicken nuggets and tenders will be huge goes back to my son. Nuggets and tenders are really more of a kids’ food (though, who doesn’t love a good nugget?), and if you can create a reasonable facsimile, they aren’t going to care. It’s not like trying to replicate a filet mignon at a fine dining establishment. Creating a plant-based filet requires “muscle” and fat structures. Plus, consumers have a heightened expectation around what a filet is and should be, so the uncanny valley is much greater. Nuggets, on the other hand, are junk food. (I say that with love) There doesn’t need to be a ton of complexity to make a good nugget. Bread it, flavor it, make sure it looks enough like meat on the inside and there you go. Kids will knock ’em back no fuss no muss.

Until now, burgers have been the star of the plant-based meat world, but don’t be surprised if next year plant-based chicken nuggets take center stage.

Photo from Nature’s Fynd website

More Headlines

Nature’s Fynd Raises $350M Series C for its Microbial Protein – The protein originates from a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park.

Gathered Foods is Bringing Plant-Based Options to Long John Silver’s – Five locations in California and Georgia now serve Good Catch’s Crab-Free Cakes and Fish-Free Fillets

Multus Media Raises $2.2M for Cultured Meat Serum Replacement – The company says its growth media lasts twice as long as existing serum.

Mzansi Meat Co. is Bringing Cultured Meat to Africa – Representing the food and farming culture of Africa is important to Mzansi Meat Co., and the company will be extracting cells from indigenous cattle breeds.

AiFi Retrofitting Two More Loop Neighborhood Stores with Cashierless Checkout Tech

AiFi announced today that it is adding its cashierless checkout technology to two Loop Neighborhood store locations in California, starting in the San Francisco Bay Area. The deal expands on an existing partnership that saw the two companies opening a fully autonomous gas station NanoStore in Campbell, California in 2019.

AiFi retrofits stores with cameras to create a computer vision-based cashierless checkout system, allowing customers to walk in, grab what they want, and leave, getting charged automatically on their way out. For these new Loop Neighborhood stores, customers will use the AiFi app to scan a QR code upon entering or leaving the store so they can skip the checkout line.

AiFi x Loop Neighborhood: Autonomous stores in Silicon Valley

Cashierless checkout has been gaining momentum throughout 2021, with a number of startups getting funded and system installations going public. It’s been a particularly busy year for AiFi, which entered into a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that will eventually see 1,000 autonomous locations opened up. AiFi also partnered with Verizon to open a 5G-powered popup NanoStore at this year’s Indianapolis 500. Most recently, the company opened an autonomous NanoStore with the Polish convenience chain Żabka.

But AiFi isn’t alone in advancing autonomous retail this year. Zippin has opened up a store in the Barclay’s Center in New York. Trigo is opening cashierless checkout with the Rewe grocery chain in Germany. And Amazon opened up its first full-sized cashierless checkout grocery store in Washington state.

There are a few reasons for all of this accelerated interest in cashierless checkout. First the pandemic (which hasn’t gone away) is pushing retailers to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction in their stores. Cashierless checkout not only removes a human cashier from the shopping equation, but also means customers don’t have to stand in line next to each other. Additionally, cashierless checkout can benefit the retailer with more real-time insight into shelf inventories. Cameras and sensors keep tabs on what people are picking up and putting back, so managers can identify shortages more quickly.

AiFi’s CEO recently told me that while there is a lot of news and excitement around cashierless checkout, mainstream adoption is still about a decade away. Which means we’ll be writing about similar store openings for a long time to come.

AiFi didn’t disclose exactly where the new cashierless Loop stores will open, but if you’re in the Bay Area and stumble across one, be sure to tell us about your experience with it!

EBar Raises £670,000 for its Mobile, Automated Beer Vending System

EBar, the Aberdeen, U.K.-based beer vending machine company, announced today that it has raised a £670,000 (~$916,000 USD) equity round of funding. In an email to The Spoon, EBar Managing Director Sam Pettipher said that of the new money, £150,000 (~$205,000 USD) came via equity crowdfunding via the Seedrs platform, £300,000 (~$410,000 USD) came from an Irish events consortium, and the rest came from various investor groups. This brings the total amount raised by EBar to £1.4 million (~$1.9M USD).

Built for large events like soccer matches, festivals, concerts and more, EBar makes high-volume automated beer vending machines. EBar machines offer just two drink options, feature a touchscreen for ordering and can pour a beer in under 30 seconds. EBars are also mobile and meant to move around wherever there are events to create what the company calls beer as a service. Instead of leasing the machine, EBar charges each venue a commission on sales, so there is no upfront cost for set up or installation.

EBar launched its equity crowdfunding campaign earlier this year with the goal of raising £275,001 (~$387,827 USD). Pettipher said the company has closed the equity crowdfunding campaign and has moved on to the execution phase of its business, getting fleets of units out and growing the team.

EBar is part of a growing movement towards automating beer service, especially at large events. Macco Robotics, Revolmatic and Hop Robotics all make automated beer pouring machines that can dispense beers in seconds. This type of automation could potentially be huge for events and venues because a robot can churn out hundreds of drinks in an hour without stopping. Human bartenders could then shift their focus to selling more complex (and expensive) mixed cocktails, and would allow event attendees to spend less time in line for drinks.

The bigger question hanging over all of these services isn’t the functionality of the technology, it’s when large events will be able to come back in full force. With the COVID-19 Delta variant flaring up around the world, the pandemic is far from being over. Sporting events and concerts are making a comeback, but there is the constant threat of them being shut down again in the fight against the virus.

Aromyx Raises $10M for its Digital Scent and Taste Technology

Sensory data company Aromyx announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding led by Rabo Food&Ag Innovation Fund and SOZO Ventures, with participation from existing investors Ulu Ventures, Radicle Growth, Capital Energy and Merus Capital.

Aromyx creates sensing technology that digitizes and quantifies information from the human nose and tongue receptors. The company describes its technology on its website like this:

Through our sensor products, human receptors respond to a given odor or flavor sample and then relay information about its quality—such as whether it’s pleasant, contaminated or toxic. Our algorithms measure and quantitatively represent the raw data in the form of digital signatures. These signatures are uploaded into a central scent cloud, which resembles a comprehensive library of the brain’s own smell and taste associations.

Aromyx says it has created the largest database of human receptors, ingredients/chemicals and real-world word descriptions. Companies developing new food and beverages can test their products and ingredients with these electronic receptors to understand how a person would perceive that product. So a new snack chip placed in Aromyx sensory robot (see above) would deliver results like “smokey,” or “buttery,” or “grassy,” and the product makeup could then be adjusted to achieve the desired result.

It may seem easy to equate Aromyx with other digital olfactory startups in the space such as Aryballe and Koniku, each of which make electronic “smelling” devices. But Aromyx is also akin to flavor combination and discovery platforms like Spoonshot, which breaks down flavors and labels food components to help CPG companies figure out novel ingredient combinations for new products. In its press announcement, Aromyx said that it tested more than 100 products for its customers in 2020 and will triple that number in 2021.

Aromyx said that it will use its new funding to increase its capacity and automation capabilities, improve its identification algorithms and hire out its lab and software teams.

Collectiv Food Raises $16.3M for B2B Food Supply Distribution

Collectiv Food, a London-based B2B food marketplace, announced today that it has raised £12 million (~$16.3 million USD) in Series A funding. The round was led by VNV Global, along with VisVires New Protein, Octopus Ventures Norrsken VC, as well as existing investors Partech, Colle Capital and Mustard Seed. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Collectiv Food to £15.8 million (~$21.5 million USD).

Currently servicing Europe, Collectiv operates a network of thousands of food producers that supply items such as meat, seafood, plant-based proteins, dairy, beverages an more. Collectiv’s marketplace allows restaurants, hotels, caterers, meal kits companies, ghost kitchens and more buy food directly from the producers, cutting out the wholesaler middle man and their markup.

In addition to promising cheaper prices for food, Collectiv says it has developed a greener, more sustainable approach to last-mile delivery. Collectiv operates a number of “Points of Delivery” (PODS), which are like chilled shipping containers placed in underutilized parts of a city. Instead of big delivery trucks all coming from a centralized distribution center and driving long delivery routes through a city, Collectiv’s system intelligently routes smaller delivery vehicles from this network of PODS for last mile delivery. The company says this decentralized distribution results in 50 percent less CO2 emissions than traditional last mile shipping methods.

Collectiv is among a number of B2B startups looking to improve our food supply chain. Other players include IFoodDS, which offers a cloud based system that provides more transparency into fresh food supply chains, as well as Shelf Engine and Afresh, which help food buyers better predict inventory needs.

In a press announcement sent to The Spoon, Collectiv said it will use its new funding to further develop its delivery and sourcing models, hire out its team and continue its expansion across Europe.

No Foolin’, JOKR Raises $170M Series A for Speedy Grocery Delivery

JOKR is the latest speedy grocery delivery startup to have raised a nine-figure round of funding. The company announced today that it has raised a $170 million a Series A round led by GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and Tiger Global Management. Activant Capital, Greycrot, FJ Labs, Kaszek, Monashees and HV Capital also participated.

Like other startups in the space, JOKR operates a network of small, delivery-only grocery stores that carry a limited number of items and have a small delivery radius. With this model, JOKR can tailor inventory to a specific neighborhood, sell local products (i.e., bakery goods), and deliver within 10 to 15 minutes of the customer placing an order.

JOKR’s big fundraise comes just three months after it started operations and a month and half after it launched its grocery delivery services in New York City. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, JOKR said that since it started operations it has opened up a new hub roughly every day and now operates 10 hubs in New York, and 100 hubs across nine cities including São Paolo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; Bogota, Colombia; Lima, Peru; Warsaw, Poland; and Vienna, Austria.

Of course, JOKR isn’t the only speedy grocery delivery service bringing in big funding. In fact, it would be odd if JOKR hadn’t raised more than $100 million. Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March to grow its delivery service. Last month Germany’s Flink raised $240 million, and Turkey’s Getir raised $550 million (after raising $300 million in March). Germany-based Gorillas raised $290 million in March, launched its own U.S. operations in NYC at the end of May, and is already expanding to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Vitaly Alexandrov, CEO of the San Francisco-based Food Rocket speedy grocery service, recently told me that in order for his business to work, one hub needs to be able to service 50,000 households. That means that at some point not too far off, all of these services are going to be vying for the same markets. Alexandrov said that eventually 10-minute grocery delivery will become a commodity, which is why Food Rocket is looking to differentiate itself with ready to eat meals, ghost kitchens and will eventually open up its logistics and delivery platform to other retailers. Gopuff too, is diversifying by getting into the ghost kitchen business as well.

Despite all this funding, we don’t yet know if or how consumers will take to this new, utility-style model of grocery shopping. Many of these services don’t have order minimums or delivery fees, but will that be sustainable as they scale? Will consumers place large enough orders to keep these businesses going or will these services burn out a la Kozmo.com?

We’ll learn the answers to these questions over the coming months but one thing we know already: Most of these startups won’t fail because of a lack of funding.

Nature’s Fynd Raises $350M Series C for its Microbial Protein

Nature’s Fynd, which makes protein from microbes that originated in geothermal springs of Yellowstone National Park, announced today that it has raised a $350 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, with participcation from new investors including Blackstone Strategic Partners, Balyasny Asset Management, Hillhouse Investment, EDBI, SK Inc. and Hongkou, as well as other existing investors. This brings the total amount raised by Nature’s Fynd to more than $500 million.

The company’s protein is called Fy, and it’s a fermented fungi protein derived from the Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis microbe. Because Fy is grown through fermentation, the cultivation of the protein requires less land, water and energy than traditional agriculture. Fy is a complete protein with 9 essential amino acids, and it can be used to make alternative meat and dairy products. In February of this year, Nature’s Fynd announced its first two Fy-based products: a dairy-free cream cheese and a meatless breakfast patty. The company also makes a dairy-free yogurt that was eaten on camera by Bill Gates (a Nature’s Fynd investor) and Anderson Cooper during a segment on 60 Minutes earlier this year.

Fermentation has been dubbed the third pillar of alternative protein, alongside cell-based and plant-based protein. We have seen a wave of startups using fermentation technology to bring variety of animal-free products to market. Perfect Day and Remilk use fermentation to create dairy proteins. Nourish Ingredients ferments yeast to make plant-based fats. SuperBrewed ferments microbes to create a vegan protein powder than can be used in plant-based cheese and milks. And Better Meat Co. recently launched its own fermentation production facility to create its mycoprotein-based Rhiza ingredient.

All of this activity has also helped attract plenty of funding over the past year and a half. According to data from the Good Food Institute and Pitchbook, fermentation startups received $590 million in funding in 2020. In addition to Nature’s Fynd’s haul announced today, last month Motif Foodworks, which uses microbial engineering and precision fermentation to create novel food ingredients, raised $226 million.

Nature’s Fynd said it will use its new funding to expand its production capacity, add new products to its lineup, and set the stage for its international growth.