Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Comet Bio Raises $22M Series C for its Upcycled Ingredients

Comet Bio, which manufactures various ingredients through upcycling, announced today that it has completed its Series C with an initial close of $22 million. The round was led by Open Prairie, the Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), BDC Capital, as well as existing investor Sofinnova Partners.

With headquarters in London, Ontario and Schaumberg, Illinois Comet Bio takes agricultural leftovers from farms and upcycles them through a proprietary process to turn them into a number of different ingredient products including a prebiotic dietary fiber called Arrabina, sugar syrup alternatives called Sweeterra, as well as animal and bionutrition industrial products.

Upcycling is a trend we follow closely here at The Spoon, and it’s one that thankfully seems to be catching on with a number of startups. ReGrained upcycles grain from beer brewing into bread and even ice cream. Kern Tec upcycles stone fruit pits into oils and and alternative dairy products. And Rind produces upcycled dried fruit snacks.

In fact, there’s been so much momentum going into upcycled foods that the field now has its own certification label. As my colleague, Mike Wolf wrote recently:

The interest in upcycled food is also a part of a broader interest in companies up and down the food system in tackling the problem of food waste. The pandemic helped accelerate this interest as everyone saw entire crops go to waste, but the reality is rising costs of food products has made reducing food waste not only appealing to sustainability-oriented organizations, but also to the bottom-line focused types in big corporates at CPG, retail and restaurants.

In the press announcement, Comet Bio said it will use the new funds to invest in its product innovation and health claims development.

 

Researchers Create Simulator to Help Robots Wield Knives

Robotics researchers from NVIDIA and the University of Southern California (USC) announced today the first differentiable simulator for robotic cutting, or DiSECt for short. This new simulator can predict forces that will act on the knife as it pushes and slices through soft materials like fruits and vegetables.

Your first reaction might be, why do they need all that simulator science when you can just install a sharp blade on a robotic arm and smash it down? That’s certainly one solution, but part of the reason robot researchers like NVIDIA, and Sony and Panasonic all work with food is because food is oddly-shaped, has different textures and is delicate. If a robot can successfully work with soft objects like food, it can carry those techniques over to other applications like surgery (where plunging knives down is frowned upon).

Cutting through food with precision and care is actually quite complex. It requires feedback, adaptation, motion control and parameter setting as the knife makes its way through the object. Additionally, since each piece of fruit or vegetable is unique, the robot needs to adjust its cutting with each new object.

NVIDIA shared with us an advanced look at an article explaining the DiSECt research that was recently presented at 2021 Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference. I’m not going to lie, it is dense and jargon heavy with paragraphs like this:

DiSECt implements the commonly used Finite Element Method (FEM) to simulate deformable materials, such as foodstuffs. The object to be cut is represented by a 3D mesh which consists of tetrahedral elements. Along the cutting surface we slice the mesh following the Virtual Node Algorithm [4]. This algorithm duplicates the mesh elements that intersect the cutting surface, and adds additional, so-called “virtual” vertices on the edges where these elements are cut. The virtual nodes add extra degrees of freedom to accurately simulate the contact dynamics of the knife when it presses and slices through the mesh.

But rather than focusing on the specifics of the research, there are some broader takeaways anyone in food tech can appreciate. First, DiSECt illustrates the continued importance of simulation and synthetic data in training robots. NVIDIA has actually built a kitchen as a training ground for its robots where it uses synthetic data and computerized simulation to virtually teach a robot tasks like identifying and picking up a box of Cheeze-Its. Similarly, DiSECt trains a robot to use a knife through simulation first, which can then be applied to the cutting object in the real world.

Additionally, giving robots added abilities will make them more useful in taking over dangerous tasks like repetitive cutting. Right now, robots in restaurants are frying foods and even making pizzas, but they aren’t doing more highly skilled, precision tasks such as cutting and slicing. A robot can’t get injured while cutting and could bring more safety to restaurant kitchens.

The good news for those interested in this type of cutting-edge research is that NVIDIA and USC are not the only companies doing work in this field. In 2019, researchers from Iowa State University published a similar paper on the intricacies of robot slicing.

DiSECt: A Differentiable Simulation Enginefor Autonomous Robotic Cutting

Shopic Raises $10M for its Clip-On Smart Cart Cashierless Checkout Solution

Smart shopping cart startup Shopic announced today that it has raised $10 million in equity funding. The round was led by Claridge Israel, with participation from existing investors Entrée Capital, IBI Tech Fund, and Tal Capital. This brings the total amount raised by Shopic to $21 million.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based Shopic creates cashierless checkout retail experiences through its a device that clips on to the handles of existing shopping carts. The Shopic device has cameras and a touchscreen, and uses computer vision to recognize products placed inside the cart. The Shopic system keeps tally of everything in the cart and ties in with a store’s POS so customers can skip the checkout line and get charged automatically upon leaving.

Shopic also promotes its smart carts as advertising vehicles and real-time inventory management systems. In addition to presenting an ongoing receipt as people shop, the touchscreen can also display customized digital promotions and ads based on data such as a customer’s shopping history. Because Shopic’s system is keeping track of what items are placed in the cart (and taken out) and when, it also provides real-time inventory insight as well as information about how customers shop.

The cashierless checkout space has seen a ton of funding and installation activity around the world so far this year. There are a number of solutions coming to market including retrofitting stores with cameras (Trigo, Grabango) and smart shopping carts (Caper, Veeve). Even Shopic’s very specific sub-section of turning existing shopping carts into smart carts is getting crowded, with other players such as SAI, WalkOut and Nomitri vying for grocery retailer dollars as well.

All of this action illustrates how adoption of cashierless checkout is certainly accelerating, thanks in part to its contactless nature and fears stirred by the pandemic. But despite all the funding and the momentum, it will still be awhile before it crosses over into the mainstream. I recently spoke with the CEOs of cashierless checkout startups Trigo and AiFi. The Trigo CEO believes we’ll see cahierless checkout options in every major city of the world as early as next year. That could mean there’s just one store offering it, however. AiFi’s CEO said we’re about a decade away from cashierless checkout becoming mainstream.

In its press announcement today, Shopic said that it is already deploying solutions with major grocery chains around the world, and will use its new funding to accelerate commercial activities and expand its team.

You Can Now Buy a Juicero and the Coolest Cooler (as Toys)

The food tech landscape is littered with devices that coulda been and companies that had great aspirations but for various reasons failed spectacularly. Now, two of the most infamous hardware failures, the Juicero and the Coolest Cooler, are being resurrected — as toys.

Internet collective MSCHF has dropped its collection of Dead Startup Toys (hat tip to The Verge), featuring five famous tech hardware flameouts: One Laptop Per Child, Theranos Minilab, Jibo, Juicero and Coolest Cooler. Each toy is a mini version of its real-life (well, real dead) counterpart made out of PVC, costing $40 a piece.

Along with the tiny collectibles, MSCHF has also released some deep satire explaining its move, writing on its website:

Behold these beautiful mutants, hoisted on petards of their own solid-aluminum-unibody construction. We salute these voyagers, flown too close to the blood-red suns of their own fever dreams, on wings made of oh-so-flammable dollar bills, whose inexplicably sincere hopes became our most surreal entertainment…

That sharp tongue isn’t spared when it comes to either the Juicero or the Coolest Cooler. Juicero, of course, was the company that raised $120 million and sold a $400 juice machine that squeezed juice from proprietary packets of fruits and veggies. The company died almost overnight when Bloomberg reported that your hands basically worked as well as the machine. Juicero had actually set up a pretty sophisticated supply chain and packaging process that could justify some of its fundraising, but most people only remember the hardware, which, as MSCHF points out, is pretty easy to make fun of:

A teardown of the Juicero machine revealed massive overengineering and production spend clearly approved without input from either a businessperson or production manager. The machine was full of specialized custom-tooled parts, all in service to a fundamentally flawed general operating concept that involved applying force by means of a flat plate with 0 mechanical advantage. This contributed to both its massive cost and remarkable non-utility.

Image via MSCHF

For its part, the Coolest Cooler was an early example of hardware crowdfunding that goes nowhere. The multi-function device (it had a blender and a speaker!) raised $13 million on Kickstarter, but the company behind it was woefully unprepared for the realities of mass production and eventually wound up in hot water with the Oregon Department of Justice. MSCHF sums the whole situation up pretty well, writing:

The Coolest Cooler stands as a cautionary tale for crowdfunding as a whole, and possibly the landmark event in the crowdfunding paradigm’s fall from grace. For that at least we salute it in memoriam.

I’m not sure whom would purchase these toys, but they are a playful reminder that not everything that glitters in food tech is gold. And that even good ideas, when poorly executed, can wind up remaining famous for all the wrong reasons.

Gorillas is Hiring Up to Expand its 10-Minute Grocery to San Francisco, LA and Chicago

As of now, New Yorkers have just about all the fun when it comes to super speedy grocery delivery in the U.S. Companies like Fridge No More, JOKR, Gorillas and, starting next month, Buyk are all building out a network of small, delivery-only grocery stores that promise to deliver your food in as few as ten minutes

But based on its current job listings, Gorillas is prepping to make a move out west. The company is currently hiring the following positions:

Germany-based Gorillas certainly has the cash to fuel such expansion. The company just raised $290 million in March, and has raised $335 million in total. There also currently isn’t that much competition in terms of speedy delivery grocery services on the West Coast. Food Rocket launched 15-minute grocery delivery in San Francisco at the end of May. Gopuff has a number of locations across California (and Chicago), though its delivery times are a comparatively “sluggish” 30 minutes.

Gorillas, like its rivals, operates dark stores in neighborhoods that have a limited delivery radius of typically one to one and a half miles. The economics of that certainly works in densely packed urban areas like New York, Chicago or even San Francisco, but Los Angeles is sprawling (though it does have a ton of people). I’m curious to see which neighborhoods Gorillas will start with and how it will expand.

As I’ve said before, I believe this new crop of speedy delivery services are not the next Kozmo.com’s. and they have the potential to turn grocery shopping into an on-demand utility. There is power in the idea of ordering a pint of ice cream and having it arrive at your doorstep 10 minutes later, and it could upend traditional notions of going to the grocery store in person (moreso than the pandemic did).

We’ll have to wait and see on that front, but in the meantime, one good thing about the Gorillas job openings is that they are all full-time with benefits, even the delivery driver position.

Try Brave Robot’s Animal-Free Ice Cream During Its Live Tour This Summer

Nothing hits the spot quite like cold ice cream on a hot summer day. And if you want to throw in a little food tech futurism with your frozen treats, you can get free taste of Brave Robot as its ice cream truck continues its live taste tour on both coasts this weekend.

Brave Robot’s ice cream is animal free, as it uses Perfect Day’s technology that re-creates dairy proteins from microflora. The result is real dairy ice cream (so those with dairy sensitivities should take heed!) with no animal inputs.

We (and our families) tasted Brave Robot ice cream last year and enjoyed it. At the time, I found it to be just ever-so-slightly chalkier than animal-based ice cream, but that certainly didn’t stop me from polishing off the variety pack I bought.

Though Brave Robot ice cream is available at select retail outlets nationwide right now, the company has hit the road with ice cream truck to hand out free samples and merch this summer.

But most of all, who doesn’t want free ice cream — especially when it’s so futuristic? Here’s where Brave Robot’s tour will be this weekend, check out the website to see where they will head to next.

Cape Cod, MA:
7/9 Boston’s Vanderbilt Hall, 11a-2:30p
7/9 Stop & Shop Quincy, 4:30p – 7p
7/10 Falmouth Heights Beach, 10a-2p
7/10 Horseneck Beach, 3p-7p
7/11 Reggae On The Beach, New Bedford MA, 3p-7p

LA & Orange County:
7/9 Ralphs Tustin, 13321 Jamboree Rd, 11a – 4p
7/10 Gelson’s Laguna, 30922 South Coast Hwy, 11a-3p
7/10 Emerald Bay Community, Laguna Beach, 5p-9p
7/11 Gelson’s Newport Beach, 1660 San Miguel Dr, 11a-2p
7/11 Gelson’s Rancho Mission Viejo, 30731 Gateway Pl, 3p-7p

Gopuff is Hiring to Get Into Ghost Kitchens

It looks like Gopuff, which is best known for ’round the clock, half-hour grocery delivery, is expanding into the ghost kitchen business. According to HNGRY (subscription required), Gopuff is hiring more than 100 cooks, managers in states across the country including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania to be a part of its new ghost kitchen endeavor (hat tip to Grocery Dive).

A job description for a Kitchen Associate in Chandler, Arizona on Gopuff’s site reads:

As a member of Gopuff’s new Fresh Food & Local team, the Kitchen Lead role is crucial to contributing to the success of Gopuff Fresh & Local by leading and managing a vertically integrated ghost kitchen.

Ghost kitchens are commercial kitchen facilities without dining rooms that restaurant brands can rent out to create delivery-only concepts. Meal delivery and takeout, of course, have risen in prominence over the past year as the pandemic forced the closure of dining rooms across the country.

Gopuff, which has micro-fulfillment centers in 650 cities in the U.S., raised a whopping $1.5 billion in funding earlier this year and acquired fleet management company RideOS last month. The general thinking at the time of that acquisition was that RideOS would be used as part of its core grocery delivery operations. But as Grocery Dive points out, that same feet management technology could also be used for routing restaurant meal deliveries.

The ghost kitchen space has certainly been a hotbed of activity over the past year with a number of players launching and expanding services. But perhaps what is more interesting about Gopuff’s hiring spree is the latest example of the lines between restaurant, grocery retail and ghost kitchen blurring. DoorDash, which started out as a restaurant delivery service, launched its own ghost kitchen and is expanding further into grocery delivery and expanding it own dark delivery only Dash Mart stores. Walmart is doing virtual food courts via ghost kitchens. And ghost kitchen operator C3 is running ghost kitchens out of hotels and residential spaces.

For Gopuff, adding hot meals to its existing grocery delivery business makes sense, given that it aims to complete deliveries in a half-hour. In that short amount of time your restaurant food arrives hot, while your pint of ice cream stays cool. Now the onus is on Gopuff to communicate clearly what it’s brand proposition is, so people will order both from the company.

South Korea: Online Grocer Kurly Raises $200M Series F

Kurly, the South Korean startup behind online grocery service Market Kurly, announced today that it has raised a $200 million Series F round of funding. The Korea JoongAng Daily reports that this latest round was led by existing investors such as Aspex Management, DST Global, Sequoia Capital China, along with new investors like Millennium Management and CJ Logistics. This brings the total amount of money raised by Kurly to $428 million and gives the company a $2.2 billion valuation.

At the same time, Kurly also said that it would no longer seek to go public on U.S. stock exchanges and will instead IPO on a Korean stock exchange. For more on that, The Korea Economic Daily has some good background and context as to why Kurly may have made its stock market switch.

Here at The Spoon, we are more interested in the food tech angle, and Kurly is just the latest example of an online grocery startup raising big money. According to PitchBook data released last week, investors have poured more than $10 billion into grocery startups in 2021. Kurly’s $200M Series F is downright quaint compared to the $3 billion raised by Xingsheng Youxuan, or the $1.5 billion raised by Gopuff, or the $850 million raised by Getir.

Kurly’s business is also a little more traditional than many of the grocery startups raising money right now. Unlike Gopuff and Getir and the raft of smaller companies promising grocery delivery in just 10 minutes, Kurly offers its customers next-day delivery. What it lacks in speed however, it more than makes up for in size as it provides its service across South Korea.

The pandemic has driven a good deal of interest and investment in the online grocery sector. Fears of COVID-19 drove people into online grocery last year. And while online grocery sales have come down (at least in the U.S.) as vaccinations have rolled out, there is some market research showing this new e-grocery behavior will stick with consumers. Now we’ll have to see what post-pandemic reactions to online grocery are around the globe (and if it was worth all the investment).

With New Smart Grills, Next Summer Will Be Smokin’

This is the web version of our Weekly Spoon newsletter. Subscribe today to get the best food tech news delivered to your inbox each week.

My wife always tells me to be in the moment. To be present. But even though I am enjoying my summer so far, I really can’t help but get excited for next summer. In particular, I’m excited for backyard barbecues next year because grills are about to get smarter and more connected, so I can spend more time socializing and less time with a spatula in hand babysitting those burgers.

Spurring this excitement for the 2022 grill season is news this week that Traeger Grills bought connected thermometer company MEATER. Terms of that deal were not disclosed but it is the second acquisition we’ve seen in the grilling space this year following Weber’s acquisition of smart oven maker June back in January.

I should say that while I’m a suburban dad, I’m not a big grill guy. I’m not good at it and don’t really enjoy it, so I like the idea of a smart grill taking over the work for me. I’ve used the Traeger WiFire smart pellet grill on more than one occasion, and it allowed me to make delicious ribs and briskets, thanks to its mobile app with remote monitoring and temperature control.

Now that Traeger bought MEATER, I look forward to seeing how the grill maker will implement that technology in future products. In particular, I’m curious to see what MEATER’s design team can do for Traeger. Traeger’s app is… fine. But MEATER’s is more visually appealing, more robust, offers more data and in my previous experience, is more stable. Marrying MEATER’s user experience with Traeger’s hardware will elevate the connected grilling experience even further.

But I’m also looking forward to early 2022 to see what Weber will do with the JuneOS. We got a taste of what’s to come earlier this year when Weber released its first grills that incorporated June’s technology. Those grills provided more precise temperature control and some guided cooking. But what those grills lacked was the automated cooking that you get with the June Oven.

I own a June and love it. My family literally uses it multiple times a day, every day. The reason we cook with it so often is because you can just load food into it and tap a button. The automated cook programs cycle through the various heating elements, adjusting the temperatures.

I would love to extend that automation to the outdoor grill, though that might be a tough ask. Part of the allure of grilling is cooking with an open flame, and precise control over fiery charcoal briquettes doesn’t seem possible. I’m hoping/betting that there is something Weber and June can do through a combination of electric heating elements and perhaps wood pellet control. If they can, we’ll most likely see something along those lines in grills early next year.

Perhaps I am alone in these smart grill dreams. Shifting burgers and hot dogs around on a grill (perhaps with a beer in one hand) is a longstanding tradition that many people probably wouldn’t want to give up. But if we can get smart grills to market next summer, well, those barbecues will be something that I will definitely be able to enjoy in the moment.

More Headlines

Instacart Appoints Fidji Simo as its New CEO – Simo was previously Vice President and Head of the Facebook app at Facebook.

Wells Fargo Picks 5 Indoor Ag Companies for Its Latest Innovation Incubator Program – Companies chosen for the program include Atlas Sensor Technologies, GrowFlux, and Motorleaf.

Instawork Raises $60M to Connect Local Businesses with Hourly Workers – The company says its platform finds professionals work in less than 24 hours with shifts paying an average of $18 an hour.

Beyond Meat Launches Plant-Based Chicken Tenders at Restaurants Nationwide – The new chicken tenders are made from faba beans and pea protein.

Instacart Appoints Fidji Simo as its New CEO

Grocery delivery company Instacart announced today that it is appointing Fidji Simo as its new CEO effective August 2. Simo has been on Instacart’s board since January of this year. She has spent the past decade at Facebook where she was most recently Vice President and Head of the Facebook app. Instacart Founder and soon-to-be-former CEO Apoorva Mehta will move into a new role as Executive Chairman of the Board and will also report to Instacart’s Board of Directors.

According to the press announcement, Simo oversaw development at strategy for the Facebook app, and helped drive Facebook’s mobile monetization strategy. She was also responsible for “rolling out videos that autoplay in News Feed,” which may or may not be a plus, depending on your point of view.

However, Simo was also at Facebook as it moved from a private company to a public one and will most likely be leading Instacart as it does the same. Founded in 2012, Instacart has since raised $2.7 billion in funding and is preparing for an IPO. The company was thrust into the national spotlight last year as the pandemic pushed record numbers of people into online grocery shopping.

Simo is also joining Instacart at a time when it is facing competition on many fronts. Big players like Amazon and Walmart are ramping up their own grocery delivery efforts, a new wave of smaller grocery stores offer grocery delivery in as few as 10 minutes, and other third-party delivery services such as DoorDash and Uber are moving further into grocery. In response, Instacart has been forced to add half-hour express delivery in select cities. The service is also reportedly looking to create automated fulfillment centers.

Then there is the question looming around Instacart’s grocery delivery business in general. During the pandemic, it was an easy way for retailers to quickly add delivery infrastrcuture to their business. But given Instacart’s fees and concerns about who owns the customer relationship, not all retailers are finding the same value with the service.

Given all that, Simo is taking over Instacart at a critical point in the company’s existence and will certainly have her hands full the moment she starts.

Instawork Raises $60M to Connect Local Businesses with Hourly Workers

Instawork, an online marketplace that connects local businesses across the U.S. with available workers, announced today that it has raised a $60 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Grelock, Corner Ventures, Four River Group, WndrCo and Tilman Fertitta (owner of Landry’s and the Houston Rockets). Existing investors Benchmark, Spark Capital, GV, Burst Capital, and SV Angel also participated. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Instawork to $100 million.

Instawork’s platform supports a number of industries, including food and beverage and hospitality, where qualified workers like servers and chefs can post their services. Instawork checks references and makes sure each worker is indeed qualified, then connects them with open shifts available at different companies such as Marriott, Sodexo, and Sun Basket. After a shift, the worker gets paid within hours of completion and can rate their experience.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it has grown dramactically over the past 15 months and now has more than 1 million workers across the U.S. on its network. Instawork said the number of available shifts on its platform has grown 8x in less than two years, with professionals finding work in less than 24 hours with shifts paying an average of $18 an hour.

Labor remains a hot button issue in the food a beverage sector. Though restaurants and bars have been fully re-opened as the pandemic recedes, they are having a tough time filling open positions as the industry grapples with issues around worker safety and fair pay. As those issues get resolved, platforms like Instawork, ShiftPixy, Shyft, and Jobletics can help fill in short-term workforce gaps.

Beyond Meat Launches Plant-Based Chicken Tenders at Restaurants Nationwide

Beyond Meat announced today that it is launching its new Beyond Chicken Tenders at select restaurants across the country. The plant-based chicken tenders are made from faba beans and peas and have 14g of protein per serving.

That Beyond Meat is expanding the availability of its chicken products is no surprise, since poultry is the most consumed meat in the U.S. It certainly wasn’t going to be a category that Beyond ignored. The company had an earlier chicken strip product that it pulled back in 2012 to focus on its alternative beef and pork. In 2019, Beyond piloted a Beyond fried chicken product with KFC in Atlanta before expanding that program to more states including North Carolina, Tennessee and California. In April of this year, Bloomberg reported that Beyond was telling its customers to expect a chicken product this summer.

Beyond is launching at a time when demand for chicken is soaring, thanks in part to the chicken sandwich wars that restaurants are duking out with one another. As a result, The Wall Street Journal wrote in May that chicken supply is limited and prices are steep. Introducing a plant-based chicken could help restaurants fill in any supply gaps for certain demographics — kids, for instance, probably wouldn’t know if they were eating plant-based tenders vs. animal-based ones.

On the flip side, however, Beyond is entering into an increasingly crowded plant-based chicken tender/nugget space that already includes products from startups such as Daring, Rebellyous, Nowadays, and SIMULATE, as well as giant retailers like Target, which launched its own line of plant-based foods. However, given Beyond’s size, market cap, and extensive retail and restaurant relationships, it towers above its competition and could wind up squeezing out some of these smaller startups before they have the chance to fully mature.

Beyond Chicken Tenders will be available at roughly 400 restaurants across the country starting today. To see if and where they are being offered close to you, visit this restaurant locator.