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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Halla Raises $4.5M for Its Food Recommendation Platform

Halla, the AI-powered production recommendation service for grocery retail, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in Series A1 funding, led by Food Retail Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Halla to $8.5 million.

Halla’s platform integrates with a grocer’s existing digital commerce solution to provide customized product recommendations and substitutions for out of stock items to consumers. But Halla’s platform doesn’t just rely on previous purchases to make its recommendations. The company says it uses more than 100 billion shopper and product data points to predict what a shopper is looking for. Halla’s product video embedded below illustrates how Halla’s the system looks at all kinds of data about a shopper as it makes a recommendation in real time.

Grocery has been the beneficiary of a ton of funding this year, with $10 billion going into the sector as of July this year. Most of of the funding and attention has been around speedy grocery delivery services, but money has been doled out to startups working up and down the grocery stack. Hungryroot, and online grocer that uses machine learning for predictive recommendations, raised $40 million last month. In April, Trax raised $640 million for its computer vision-based inventory management system, and Shelf Engine raised $41 million for its perishable inventory management platform.

A big reason for all this money flowing into grocery is the pandemic. Fears around COVID-19 sent record amounts of people into online grocery shopping last year, creating new logistical and fulfillment issues for retailers. But the pandemic also highlighted flaws in our existing grocery supply chain, as evidenced by the panic hoarding and empty shelves that happened at the beginning of the outbreak. All of this is to say there are a bunch of new issues for grocery retailers to solve post-pandemic, which means plenty of opportunities for startups.

Halla said that a “top-5 U.S. grocer” is currently running Halla in more than 1,100 e-commerce storefronts. Halla will use the new funding to double the number of stores it’s in, and double its headcount by 2022.

Uber Expands Grocery Delivery to 400 US Cities, Adds Albertsons Brands as Partners

Uber’s grocery delivery service is now available in more than 400 cities across the U.S., according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The company has also added Albertsons retail brands to its delivery platform.

The move marks a big jump for Uber, which started its grocery delivery business in the U.S. a little more than a year ago, growing it to 100 cities. With today’s expansion, Uber’s grocery delivery will be available in major markets such as Miami, Dallas, New York City, Washington D.C. and for the first time in California by way of San Francisco.

At the same time, Uber also bulked up its retail partnerships with the addition of Albertsons stores to its platforms. Over the course of this year, Uber will roll out delivery to 1,200 Albertsons stores including Albertsons, Safeway, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Tom Thumb, Randalls and more.

Uber got into the grocery delivery game in July of 2020 following its purchase of a majority stake in Latin American online grocery delivery marketplace Cornershop in 2019. Since that time, grocery delivery has seen an explosion in usage, thanks in large part to the pandemic, which makes it an attractive market for a logistics company like Uber. Last month, SEC filings showed that Uber was acquiring the remaining 47 percent of Cornershop.

Unlike the modern ride sharing-business, which Uber basically invented, the company will be facing a lot of competition for your grocery delivery dollar. DoorDash, which started out in restaurant delivery has made its own aggressive moves into grocery delivery and announced its own partnership with Albertsons last month. And of course Uber will be going up against Instacart, the 800-pound gorilla in third-party grocery delivery.

But perhaps the more interesting competition in major cities for Uber will come from the rapidly expanding speedy grocery delivery startups, which promise to get you your groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Services like JOKR and Fridge No More are expanding across New York City. Gorillas is hopping beyond New York and into San Francisco, where Food Rocket also operates.

These services all operate small, delivery-only grocery stores with a limited delivery radius. They are also vertically integrated, controlling their inventory and employing their own drivers. As Food Rocket CEO, Vitaly Alexandrov recently told me, having their own fleet of delivery people gives his company an advantage over services like Uber and Instacart. When an order is placed by the customer, the network doesn’t have to spend time finding a driver who will take the job. There is already a dedicated staffer on hand to make deliveries go out faster.

DoorDash operates its own line of DashMart delivery-only convenience stores, and Instacart is reportedly looking to build out its own automated fulfillment centers. With all this competition, will Uber, which has famously built its empire by emphatically not owning parts of its business like its driver network, need to cave and develop a more owned and operated stack?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we’ll have to see if Uber customers will even use Uber for grocery delivery on a massive scale.

Multus Media Raises $2.2M for Cultured Meat Serum Replacement

Multus Media, a startup working on a replacement for animal serum used in cultivating meat, announced today that it has raised a £1.6 milliion (~$2.2M USD) Seed round of funding. Investors in the round include SOSV, Zero Carbon Capital, Marinya Capital and angel investor Sake Bosch. The round also includes an equity-free grant of £106,000 (~$146,000 USD) from the UK Research and Innovation Council.

Founded in 2019, Multus Media was spun out of SOSV’s IndieBio program and is developing a new type of growth medium for use in creating cultured meat that is more economical that current solutions. Serum is what cultivated animal cells are placed in, allowing them to grow and form cultured meat. Serum is also an expensive part of the cultivation process with the controversial fetal bovine serum costing $200 per liter. But it’s not just the cost of the serum itself, it’s how much is used to culture meat.

As Cai Linton, Multus Media CEO explained to me last week, part of the issue is how quickly existing serum formulations deplete. Linton said that because of this depletion, serums need to be replaced every two to three days in order to keep the meat cells growing. Multus is developing a formulation that will last twice that, saving cultured meat companies money because they don’t need to buy as much of it.

Right now, Multus has identified the formulation of proteins, compounds and other ingredients it needs to make its serum. The next phase will be producing the serum, dubbed Proliferum M. Linton said that the company is looking to bring its first product to market by the end of this year, and ramp up production by the end of 2022. Multus’ formulation is not animal free at this point, though Linton said it will be as they scale up production. By 2026, the company projects that Proliferum M will cost less than $1 per liter.

There are a number of startups working on novel replacements for animal-based growth serums. In South Korea, Seawith is using algae to create both growth serum and scaffolding in cultured meat. In Canada, Future Fields is developing an animal-free serum designed to cultivate chicken.

Bringing the cost of cultured meat into parity with animal meat is a critical part of the market gaining widespread adoption. We’ve already seen companies like Mosa Meat and Future Meat both slash the production costs of their cultured meat over the past year. Perhaps Multus Media can help them, and other players in the space, bring those costs down even further.

CookingPal’s Multo Now Available for Commercial Sale for $999

CookingPal announced today that its Multo multi-function countertop cooking device is now available for purchase.

Similar to a Thermomix, the Multo is a standalone unit capable of performing a number of different cooking related tasks. The Multo is a scale, it blends, kneads, cooks, steams, stirs and more. It’s comprised of two main parts, the actual hardware device and an accompanying tablet computer that guides the user through a recipe and controls the device.

CookingPal sent me a review unit to test out, and it’s a pretty slick device. The hardware is attractive, solidly built and easy to set up. The tablet offers up a number of recipes users can choose from, and once selected, it tells you how to prep your ingredients based on the number of servings you want and then walks you through each step of making that meal.

As you work your way through the recipe, the Multo acts like a scale, so you weigh ingredients as you add them, and turns on the necessary function needed at the time. So when I made mac-and-cheese, for example, after I added water and pasta (and secured the lid for safety), I would hit start on the tablet and the Multo would stir and heat the pasta for the proper amount of time. It also told me when to affix the steam tray to cook the chicken, and mixed the sauce ingredients. At each step of the way, I just tapped a button and the Multo would do its thing.

I also used the Multo to make almond milk, and knead bread dough. And while the bread required that I still proof the dough and cook it in an oven, the Multo lived up to its promise. I could do just about everything with the device itself — no extra pots or pans needed. Clean up was also easy as the mixing bowl comes apart easily for hand washing.

The Multo seems best suited for people who live in small spaces with less kitchen space. While the device takes up less room than a large microwave, it really can replace a number of different appliances that could take up precious counter and cabinet space (cooktop, blender, food processor, steamer, etc.). The Multo’s software is also, thankfully, easy to connect to WiFi and pair with the device, and the UI is straightforward enough to where you don’t get lost.

All that functionality doesn’t come cheap, however. The Multo sells for an MSRP of $999, and will come with 100 recipes built-in right out of the gate (5 recipes will be added each week). For those in the market for such a multi-function device, the Multo could be a multo bene purchase.

Impossible Foods Unveiling Plant-Based Chicken Nugget Next Week

Impossible Foods will unveil a new plant-based chicken nugget product next week, with plans to launch to launch it at restaurants in the fall, according to a story on Bloomberg this morning. The nugget will be made from soy protein and sunflower oil, but will not include heme, an ingredient used in its plant-based burgers to make them “bleed.”

Honestly, it would be more surprising if Impossible didn’t make a plant-based chicken nugget because everyone is getting into that game nowadays. In addition to the smaller upstarts like Rebellyous, Daring, SIMULATE and Nowadays, Impossible’s big plant-based burger rival, Beyond Meat, just announced its own chicken tenders for restaurants last week. With two well-known brands in Impossible and Beyond now getting into plant-based nuggets, what will that mean for those other companies just starting out?

Chicken is the most consumed meat in the U.S., and the Good Food Institute reports that sales of plant-based meat have grown 72 percent over the past two years, with the market now worth $1.4 billion. Combine those two data points and it’s no wonder so many companies are vying for your dollar. The opportunity in plant-based nuggets is also slightly different than plant-based burgers. Kids eat a lot of chicken nuggets and are (at least in my experience) less likely to notice a plant-based substitute. Burgers, however, are enjoyed by kids and adults alike, and adults are less likely to be “fooled” by a plant-based burger analog (or may even be hesitant to try them out at all). Nuggets could also be the tip of the spear for both Impossible and Beyond to get into other breaded chicken products like patties.

Of course all of that hinges on these nuggets reaching price parity with traditional animal based ones. Though the price of Impossible’s burger has come down over the years, it’s still more expensive than actual beef.

An Impossible rep told Bloomberg that unlike with its burgers, the company isn’t using heme for its nuggets because they are a white meat product. Also worth noting in the Bloomberg story is that Beyond’s new chicken tender uses titanium dioxide as an additive, which the In May, the European Food Safety Authority no longer considers safe.

Bloomberg writes that Impossible will be showing off its new nuggets to potential customers next week at a trade show. Like it did with its Impossible burgers, the plant-based nuggets will then first appear in restaurants this fall before heading to retail. One big difference this time around is that Impossible now has an extensive retail network already in place that will make the launch of its nuggets that much easier and faster.

Impossible CEO Doubles Down on Doubting Cultured Meat: “Complete Vaporware”

You can’t say Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown is a flip-flopper when it comes to downplaying the future of cell-based meat. At our Smart Kitchen Summit in October of last year, Brown declared that cultured meat was “never going to be a thing,” and based on a Washington Post interview that ran this morning, he’s only strengthened his resolve over the past nine months.

In a Q&A, Post reporter Laura Reilly asked Brown whether he thought the labeling battles currently being fought over plant-based meat will repeat with cell-based meat. Brown responded:

Cultivated meat is complete vaporware. Don’t hold your breath. The fact is that the economics of animal cell cultures as a food production system in no conceivable way can compete with the current industry. If you could use cultured cells to make any reasonable replica of an animal tissue, which would you do: Sell it for $5 a pound as meat, or sell it for $1 million a pound to treat people with muscle-wasting diseases?

It’s actually hard to make a reasonable facsimile of an animal tissue from cultured cells. Theoretically it’s doable, and there’s no question that it will be done at some point. But it will never be done with anything remotely like the economics you need for food.

He went on to make an analogy about transportation and recreating a horse instead of building a car. His point being, trying to recreate existing animal meat means your stuck with the same limitations of those animals. Both points are pretty much the same arguments he made at SKS last year, but what’s interesting is that so many advances have happened in the cultured meat space since that time.

Perhaps the biggest milestone hit was that cultured meat is being sold to consumers. Sure, right now it’s just one company (GOOD Meat) selling it in one country (Singapore), but people are actually consuming cultivated meat right now. They’re even getting it delivered to their homes.

We’ve also seen a ton of investment in the cultured meat space, funding a range of startups tackling a variety of issues. The aforementioned GOOD Meat raised $170 million, Aleph Farms just raised $105 million, Misson Barns raised $24 million, and Meatable raised $47 million, just to name a few.

At the same time we’ve seen some companies drastically bring down the costs of their cultured products. Mosa Meat generated more than a 65x cost reduction in the creation of its cultured fat. Future Meat has reduced the production price of its cultured chicken breast twice this year, bringing it down to $4 per 110g serving. And Avant Meats said it has achieved a 90 percent reduction in the cost of producing its cultured functional proteins.

And finally, just this month, it was reported that CPG giant Nestlé has partnered with Future Meat to develop some type of plant-based/cultivated meat hybrid product. If this bears out, having a massive company like Nestlé involved could definitely push the cultivated meat sector forward and closer to a reality for consumers.

As the CEO of Impossible Foods, which has raised $1.6 billion in funding and is in the plant-based meat business, Brown obviously has a horse in this race. Part of his poo-pooing cultured meat is protecting his company, and part of it is generating headlines and discussion. He’s right to have some skepticism, cultivated meat still needs to reach price parity with animal meat, regulations need to be created in markets around the world, and we need to see if consumers will even want “lab-grown” meat. But doubling down on the exact same arguments against cultivated meat year after year, when so many obvious advances have been made, seems to just deny the reality of an evolving situation.

Food Rocket’s CEO About the Nuts and Bolts of Speedy Grocery Delivery

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Earlier this week, I did a post on speedy grocery delivery service Food Rocket’s big plans to add ghost kitchens and eventually open up its platform to other retailers. But as I was going over my notes, there was a bunch of great insight from my conversation with Food Rocket Co-Founder and CEO Vitaly Alexandrov about building this new type of grocery model, that I wanted to highlight some of it in this week’s newsletter.

For the uninitiated, Food Rocket is among a new cohort of upstart grocery delivery services that promise to deliver your groceries in as little as ten minutes. Gopuff, Gorillas, JOKR and Fridge No More are other players in the space, and while most of the action has been in New York City so far, California is getting in on the fast grocery action as Food Rocket expands from San Francisco to LA, and Gorillas announced it was heading out west as well.

All these companies basically work the same. They open small, dark stores that carry a small number of items and offer a limited delivery radius. In the case of Food Rocket, Alexandrov said their stores are around 3,000 sq. ft., holding 2,000 – 2,500 SKUs. “We are mostly about daily needs,” Alexandrov said. This means milk, eggs, toothpaste, napkins. “We cannot store an item for a month,” he said, “That is why we focus on items that are repeatable.”

But as I noted earlier this week, Food Rocket is also getting into the ghost kitchen game, to offer its own line of fresh, ready to eat meals. “People like to buy something already prepared for them instead of just buying cucumbers and cheese,” Alexandrov said.

In order for these stores to generate enough deliveries to justify their presence, Alexandrov said they need to set up in locations where there are 50,000 households in that 1 – 1.5 mile delivery radius. Hence, these speedy delivery services starting out in dense cities like New York and San Francisco.

Food Rocket has only been operating since the end of May this year, and the whole concept of on-demand, ten minute grocery delivery is novel to most people, so as a result, Alexandrov doesn’t have a ton of customer data to develop broad trends yet. However, there are some customer patterns that the company has noticed, such as the average Food Rocket customer places 6 – 7 orders a month. “The first order is small in terms of value,” he said, “Several avocados or bananas, just to try. Then they start to buy more and more and more. Then they start to buy ready to eat [meals].”

This consumer dabbling at first and then going back for bigger baskets is something we’ve heard before from JOKR in New York City. It makes sense since Food Rocket currently has no minimum order and no delivery fee (though they will be adding such a fee at some point). Once you see that the service works, why not order a bunch of stuff you and have it show up at your door ten minutes later?

Interestingly, Alexandrov doesn’t consider JOKR or Gorillas or Gopuff to be his main competition. “We compete with Amazon,” he said. This may seem contradictory at first, given that Amazon wants to sell you everything and Food Rocket stores intentionally carry very few items. But again, Food Rocket is focused on your daily needs, not your every need. And its fighting Amazon on the very battleground Amazon invented — speedy delivery.

Will this Food Rocket take off? If you’re in San Francisco (or soon LA), try it out and let us know!

Image via Afresh.

More Headlines

Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz Explains How AI Can Help Grocery Retailers Place “the Perfect” Order – The system uses AI to analyze store-level data around customer demand, shipments of fresh food, sales of it, pricing and other factors.

FirstBuild is Making a Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber for the Home – With sensors, a web dashboard and closed-loop humidity control, the appliance has all the bells and whistles to help the aspiring fungiculurist create a high-tech fruiting chamber on their kitchen countertop.

Verve Motion Hauls in $15M for its Exosuit, Which Ahold Delhaize Piloted – The SafeLift suit doesn’t give the wearer super strength, but it can help prevent strains.

Wicked Kitchen, UK Plant-Based Food Brand, Raises $14M Series A Round – Wicked Kitchen will soon expand into the U.S. with its plant-based offerings, and will build out its teams in London, Austin, and Minneapolis.

Food Rocket Going Beyond Speedy Grocery Through Ghost Kitchens and an Open Platform

The sudden proliferation of speedy grocery delivery startups like San Francisco’s Food Rocket has been one of the bigger food tech stories of 2021. But for Vitaly Alexandrov, Co-Founder, and CEO of Food Rocket, fast grocery delivery is just a step to a much larger play.

“In a year or two years, it will be like a commodity,” Alexandrov said of fast grocery delivery during a video chat this week, “Everyone will deliver in ten minutes.”

And he’s probably right. Throughout this year we’ve seen a number of players pop up offering on-demand, ten-minute style grocery delivery through a network of small, dark stores with a limited delivery radius. Most of the activity has been in Europe so far with companies like Getir, Glovo and Gorillas all raising big money and expanding rapidly. But we are starting to see more startups show up here in the U.S., especially in New York City. Fridge No More, JOKR and Gorillas all operate in the Big Apple, and Gorillas recently announced its jumping across the country to open up stores in Food Rocket’s hometown of San Francisco.

But Alexandrov isn’t worried about Gorillas, or any of the other competitors that will undoubtedly come to his hometown, in fact he welcomes them. “When there are many competitors, the market grows faster,” he said. The idea of ten minute grocery delivery is very new, and customers need to learn a whole new way of treating grocery shopping more like a utility. Alexandrov said that more competitors in a market vying for customers means there are more companies educating customers about this new type of service. The result is a larger pool of knowledgeable customers and that rising tide should lift all (speedy) boats.

If that does play out, and that’s a big IF as we still need to see if these speedy grocery startups can scale, how will each service differentiate themselves? For Food Rocket there are two phases to its future growth. Alexandrov said in the near term, one of the ways Food Rocket will stand out is by offering its own line of ready to eat meals. To do this, the company will add ghost kitchens to its operational network. So in addition to staples like milk and eggs, you could also get your lunch or dinner delivered, and menus can be tailored to tastes of the specific neighborhood served.

The second phase of its future involves opening up its platform to other retailers. Over the next three years, Food Rocket will continue to build out its network and fine-tune its inventory management, fulfillment and delivery routing systems. At that point, Food Rocket could allow a more traditional retailer like Albertsons or Kroger to use its platform for fast delivery, and it’s easy to see why retailers could be interested.

If Food Rocket’s type of fast delivery catches on with consumers, two-hour or even half-hour delivery of groceries could be considered too slow. Instead of building out their own speedy delivery infrastructure, retailers could just use Food Rocket’s and launch immediately wherever Food Rocket is operating. It’s similar to the way retailers partnered with Instacart to establish delivery (and it could carry the same pitfalls). Though Alexandrov says it beats existing third party services because Food Rocket delivery people are employees — not contractors. So when an order comes in, the system doesn’t have to take the time to find a driver willing to fulfill the order (of course, having employees also drives Food Rocket’s costs up).

But that vision of Food Rocket’s future is still a ways off, and a lot needs to happen before that vision can pan out. More immediately for Food Rocket, Alexandrov told me that the company’s next move is expanding to cover roughly 95 percent of San Francisco by September and then it’s on to Los Angeles, where Food Rocket has already signed leases in West Hollywood and Santa Monica. Alexandrov said that in order for the business to work, stores need to be set up in locations where its limited delivery radius can cover 50,000 homes. That means Food Rocket won’t be coming to my rural neck of the woods anytime soon, but it, along with the other speedy delivery startups, may be taking off in a city near you soon.

Verve Motion Hauls in $15M for its Exosuit, Which Ahold Delhaize Piloted

For workers who spend their days moving heavy things, the refrain “lift with your legs and not with your back,” could soon become “lift with your legs while wearing the high-tech exosuit.” Verve Motion, which makes just such an exosuit that assists people when picking up objects, has raised $15 million, TechCrunch was first to report today. This Series A round was led by Construct Capital with participation from existing investors, such as Founder Collective, Pillar VC, Safar Partners and OUP.

Verve Motion’s SafeLift suit sounds like something straight out of a Marvel movie. From the product description on the company’s website:

The technology behind SafeLift has been developed at Harvard over the past decade, and is based on the latest advances in robotics, apparel design, and movement science. The suit applies assistance in parallel with the user’s muscles and responds to their movement in milliseconds. It combines state-of-the-art motion tracking technology with powerful robotic actuators and integrates it all into a lightweight and easily wearable device that doesn’t restrict normal activities.

As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, Verve Motion’s suit was piloted by Ahold Delhaize last year to help warehouse workers who assembled goods for retail outlets and e-commerce orders. The suit doesn’t grant superhuman strength like the power loader from Aliens. Instead, it reduces strain associated with doing the literal heavy lifting at work. Verve Motion says that the SafeLift can reduce strain by 30 percent when performing strenuous tasks, resulting in fewer injuries and lower fatigue rates.

The technology is still new and as the WSJ points out, exosuits like this should be studied for any long-term impacts on workers. But should exosuits prove to be a safe and effective way for workers to move boxes of groceries around in a fulfillment center, we could see increased adoption of the technology. Online grocery sales were $7 billion in May of this year, and e-commerce is expected to a be a pandemic-borne habit that sticks with consumers going forward. As a result, grocery retailers will need ways to fulfill all those orders. Some retailers are adopting robotic fulfillment solutions a la Ocado or Takeoff, but exosuits could prove to be another great fit as well.

Will LG Make a Meal Out of its new Outdoor/Indoor Delivery Robot?

Consumer electronics giant LG unveiled a new indoor/outdoor rover robot at the Ubiquitous Robot 2021 conference yesterday in South Korea. The company aims to test the new robotic platform at the end of this year.

Though a number of Korean news outlets reported the story, there weren’t a ton of details available about the new robot. We know it was developed in conjunction with MIT Associate Professor Sangbae Kim at LG Boston Robotics Lab, and that the four-wheeled robot can adjust the gap between its wheels to adapt quickly to uneven terrain for a smoother ride.

But there are still plenty of questions unanswered questions. We don’t know what level of autonomy the robot has. For example, is it completely self-driving or is it teleguided? Will it be available outside of Korea, and if so, when? What industries is LG looking to sell this robot to? Given the robot’s ability to minimize jostling as it travels, food and meal delivery seems like a no-brainer. Additionally, the Aju Business Daily reported that LG released the following statement along with its new robot: “The integrated next-generation delivery robot is the result of our preemptive response to customers’ increased demands for non-face-to-face services.” Meal delivery was among the first services to go contactless during the pandemic last year, so it makes sense that such delivery would be on LG’s roadmap.

This isn’t LG’s first foray into robotics. In January of this year the company debuted its BaristaBot to serve coffee to workers at LG’s headquarters in Seoul. Last December, the company began using its CLOi robots to make deliveries from convenience stores to people inside its LG Science Park in Seoul. And in July of 2020, LG partnered with Woowa Brothers and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement to develop robot waiters.

What makes this latest robot more interesting than its previous robo-plays, however, is how it could alter the existing robot delivery market. Startups such as Starship, Serve and Kiwibot have been making robo-deliveries for years at this point, but what neither of those companies have is scale. LG is a giant electronics company that is better equipped to mass produce these rovers and bring their costs down. With its global reach, LG could then sell or lease robots more cheaply than existing robot companies to third-party delivery services (Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc.). You can kind of see a blueprint for such a deal in the recent Grubhub/Yandex partnership. Additionally, a company with the brand recognition and reputation of LG could also help spur adoption from reluctant potential partners and get more robots making deliveries.

NOTE: The LG image featured in this post is via The Korea Bizwire.

Are Robots and Drones the Next Residential Community Perk?

The New Haven in Ontario Ranch residential community boasts 12 acres of private amenities such as parks, a pool, a clubhouse and… robots and drones. That’s right, residents of this “Connected and Convenient Community,” in Ontario, California are getting some sci-fi upgrades that further illustrate how technology is driving a new wave of premium perks for those who can afford it.

Last week New Haven celebrated its grand opening with an event that featured the mayor of Ontario receiving a drone delivery of beer and other goodies from the New Haven Marketplace and the Brew Haven brewery, both of which are located at the community. But this wasn’t a one-off thing. Drone delivery is being baked into the growth of New Haven and will be offered as an ongoing service.

Brookfield Residential, the developer of New Haven, is in the process of building 59,000 news homes and has partnered with the City of Ontario and Airspace link to create a drone-safe and drone-friendly community. An Airspace Link rep emailed The Spoon explaining:

The next phase is to permit a designated take-off and secured landing location with access control for drone delivery operators to provide the services for the local retailers to the community. Final phase will include the deployment of some physical infrastructure to support these operations at scale (surveillance, deconfliction, communications).

But New Haven’s tech ambitions aren’t solely in the sky. In April, the community rolled out Gita, a small robot on wheels that paired with and followed a person around, acting as another set of hands to carry drinks/snacks/whatever. That program seems to have ended in June and we’ve reached out to New Haven to see if Gita will make a comeback.

It’s not too hard to see how perks like drone delivery or a robot assistant could sway people to buy a home in a residential community. Drone deliveries take just minutes so restaurant meals arrive piping hot, which would be a nice option to have on hand. And having a robot carry stuff for you isn’t just convenient, it seems like you could bundle in a robot with the purchase of each home so everyone got their own li’l mobile assistant.

New Haven’s drones and robots are part of a larger movement to include high-tech amenities in high-end residential communities. Cashierless checkout convenience stores in apartment complexes is another perk we’ve seen pop up over the past year, with Aramark and AWM Smart Shelf opening such a store at the Nineteen01 complex in Santa Ana, CA, and Accel Robotics opening up one at the Vantage Pointe high-rise in San Diego, CA. Ghost kitchens could be another amenity if the recent deal between C3 and Akera Living catches on with residents of Kenect communities.

The goal with all these perks to to place them on-site so people don’t really need to leave their community. They can access whatever they need in the comfort of their own compound. In the case of Accel Robotics, offers “last step” delivery so residents don’t even have to leave their apartments to get goods.

Of course, the only way to access these perks is to have enough money to afford a house in a high-end development. New Haven homes range from the $500,000s for townhomes to the high $600,000s for a single family home. It’s certainly nothing new that those with money get first access to modern conveniences, but hopefully tech companies will find a way to be more equitable in distributing their innovations to communities that can actually use such conveniences, rather than just those that can afford it.

Next Gen Foods Raises $20M, Will Bring its Plant-Based Chicken in the U.S.

Next Gen Foods, which makes a plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE, announced yesterday that it has raised a $20 million extension of its seed round. This extension includes new investors such as Global Fund GGV Capital, Bits x Bites, Yeo Hiap Seng, as well as existing investors Temasek and K3 Ventures. This latest round follows Next Gen’s $10 million raise in March of this year and brings the company’s total amount of funding to $30 million.

Singapore-based Next Gen Foods first launched its TiNDLE brand through restaurants in the spring of this year. TiNDLE is made from soy protein, wheat gluten, wheat starch, and sunflower and coconut oils, and contains 17 grams of protein per serving. The company says TiNDLE is now sold in more than 70 restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau.

With its new money, Next Gen says it will expand into the U.S. market and hire more than 50 employees that will primarily be based in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, Next Gen will continue its expansion across the APAC and Middle East, and establish a research and development center in Singapore.

Next Gen Foods is entering the U.S. market at a time when there are more plant-based chicken options than ever. Other startups making forays into the plant-based chicken space include SIMULATE, Rebellyous, Daring, and Nowadays. Not to mention Beyond Meat, the publicly traded plant-based giant, which just launched its own plant-based chicken tenders for restaurants this week.

That so many companies are vying to create a plant-based chicken alternative isn’t surprising given that chicken is the most consumed meat in the U.S., Next Gen’s product could help it stand out in that competitive field however, because its chicken isn’t a nugget or a tender. It’s more of a meat analog that the company says can be prepared using a number of different techniques (grilling, frying, etc.) across a range of cuisines.