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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Jennifer Marston

Peet’s, Eat Just, and Beyond Meat Debut a Fully Plant-Based Breakfast Sandwich

Peet’s Coffee, Beyond Meat, and Eat Just have joined forces to launch a fully plant-based breakfast offering dubbed the Everything Plant-Based Sandwich. The item is available as part of Peet’s Spring 2021 menu.

The product launch makes for one of the first breakfast offerings on a QSR menu to be made entirely of plant-based foods. Up to now, meat, cheese, and egg analogues have been been paired with their  traditional counterparts for these meals. See examples like Impossible’s sausage sandwich at BK and Starbucks or Beyond’s sausage breakfast sandwich at Dunkin’.

This new breakfast sandwich iteration is, by comparison, fully vegan. The sandwich includes a Beyond Sausage patty, a folded egg from Eat Just, and a plant-based cheddar cheese on an everything bagel. According to the press release, the item contains 21 grams of protein.

The product is good news for the vegan crowd or those wanting to replace more of their traditional meat diet with plant-based options. More importantly, it’s another shift in the larger movement towards the plant-based QSR.

Consumer demand for plant-based meat alternatives is only going to get bigger. Restaurants have been incorporating plant-based meat analogues into their products for the last couple years. Now, we appear to be at a point where it’s no longer enough to have one element of a food item plant-based; the whole thing needs to be vegan. Starbucks, for example, hinted at this sort of future with its recent test of a fully plant-based breakfast sandwich with Impossible meat, a JUST egg, and a plant-based cheese from an unnamed manufacturer. Starbucks is also testing a fully plant-based menu at a location in Seattle.

And it’s not only coffeeshops getting onboard. In China, fast-food chain Discos outright replaced their traditional eggs with plant-based counterparts from Eat Just. Meanwhile, last week, Beyond announced deals with both McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell). which will majorly boost plant-based meat’s visibility in QSRs.

Peet’s may be headed in that direction. The company also announced some new beverages made with oat milk to go along with the vegan breakfast sandwich. It seems like only a matter of time before it and other quick-serve coffees chains roll out full menus for plant-based wares.

For now, the Everything Plant-Based Sandwich is available nationwide at Peet’s locations.

Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation Is Taking Applications for Its Innovation Accelerator

Startups, take note. The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation (aka, the “Foundation”) is now taking applications for the second cohort of its Innovation Fund. The program, done in partnership with Village Capital, looks for companies developing new technologies, processes, and other solutions that combat food waste.

The Foundation says this could include rescuing and upcycling “imperfect” food. “Upcycled food is the next frontier in recovering and repurposing food that may otherwise go to landfills,” the Foundation said in a statement this week. In this context, upcycling could mean either using discarded food to create new foods (e.g., upcycled cookies), ingredients, or even meal kits. The program also lumps food rescue — selling surplus food to consumers — as part of the upcycling process, too.

Both areas are becoming more popular in the U.S., with companies like Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Renewal Mill, and Goodfish leading the way. Imperfect was actually a part of the first cohort for the Innovation Fund, along with Food Forest, mobius, Replate, and others. About 400 startups applied for the first cohort, so we can expect as many if not more vying for a spot in this next installment of the program.

The six-month-long Kroger program includes one week of virtual programming followed by monthly cohort sessions. The entire program runs from late May through November 2021.

A total of 10 startups will be selected from the applicant pool. Selected companies each receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, with the chance for an additional $100,000 grant based on “achievement of identified program milestones.” Virtual workshops that cover investment readiness and technical skill development, and also provides networking opportunities with mentors and potential investors.

Two startups of the chosen 10 will be picked at the end of six months to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.

Applications are open until April 1, 2021.

Gotham Greens Heads West, Partners With University of California-Davis to Grow Better Greens

NYC-based Gotham Greens today announced its plans to expand its controlled ag operations to the West Coast with a 10-acre greenhouse in Solano County, California. The forthcoming facility will be located near the University of California-Davis, with whom Gotham will collaborate on future greenhouse research and innovation. 

Gotham, which currently operates greenhouses in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Rhode Island, and Maryland, raised $87 million at the end of 2020, part of which the company said would go towards expansion.

The California greenhouse is expected to open in 2021 and, like other Gotham facilities, will grow leafy greens that will then be sold to retailers and foodservice businesses. Having a facility on the West Coast will increase the number of potential customer for Gotham, which supplies its greens to local markets rather than shipping them across the country. Not including the California facility, Gotham’s farms serve about 40 states. Within those, the company has partnerships with Albertsons, Whole Foods, Target, and other major grocery retailers, as well as e-commerce deals with AmazonFresh, FreshDirect, and Peapod.

Gotham also uses a good deal of tech to control the various growing environments of its greenhouses (light, temperature, humidity), and to automate certain repetitive tasks. The partnership with UC Davis is partially meant to advance research and development in this area. “The new greenhouse facility enables opportunities for Gotham Greens and the University of California system to collaborate on research and innovation focused on advancing the science, workforce, technology and profitability of indoor agriculture globally,” Gotham said in a statement.

The company’s expansion comes at a time when tech-powered greenhouses are increasing in both size and numbers. Earlier this year, AppHarvest went public and Little Leaf Farms raised $90 million to expand its number of greenhouse. Revol Greens did the same in September of 2020 with a $68 million fundraise. Not all of these greenhouse operations share territory yet, but at the rate of these expansions, they may well do so in the near future.

Gotham Greens has raised a total of $130 million to date. 

Ocean Hugger Will Re-enter the Plant-Based Seafood Space Via a Partnership With Nove Foods

Plant-based seafood maker Ocean Hugger is relaunching via a partnership with Thailand-based Nove Foods, according to a statement on the Ocean Hugger website.

The venture comes after after the pandemic forced Ocean Hugger, which previously sold products primarily to foodservice businesses, to cease operations.

Part of Ocean Hugger’s plight in 2020 was the fact that the company’s plant-based tuna and eel products were primarily used for sushi. But in the U.S., most consumers get sushi either at restaurants or at prepared foods counters. The pandemic devastated both those avenues, leaving Ocean Hugger with little choice but to close up shop for a while. 

However, the company came back in September 2020 with an announcement that it planned to re-enter the plant-based protein market, though no further details were given at the time.

Now, the plan is to launch “an expanded portfolio” of plant-based seafood products via a joint venture with Nove Foods, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of sustainable food manufacturer NRF. New York-based Ocean Hugger’s mission to produce a more ethical, environmentally friendly seafood is in line with NRF’s overall business, which has extended in recent years to include plant-based foods and functional foods.

The plant-based seafood market is still fairly wide open in terms of opportunity for companies. While New Wave Foods makes a plant-based shrimp analog and Good Catch has a “tuna” product on the market, there are not yet plant-based seafood companies that have the status that, say, Beyond or Impossible do with with beef analogs.

Ocean Hugger’s re-entry into the market gives the company another shot at becoming such a company. The company plans to release its expanded portfolio into retail and foodservice businesses later in 2021. Whether that will be in the U.S., Asia, or Europe is still to be determined. 

Walmart in Canada Is Getting a Virtual Food Court Thanks to Ghost Kitchens

Ghost Kitchens, a Canadian company that operates, uh, ghost kitchens, this morning announced a new partnership to bring its concept to Walmart stores in Canada. The first location, in St. Catherines, Ontario, is open now. Additional locations are slated to open across Ontario and Quebec “in the coming months.”

Ghost Kitchens’ concept is part grocery store, part QSR, part mall food court in terms of what it offers. The company carries a variety of items from well-known QSRs and CPGs, among them Ben&Jerry’s, Saladworks The Cheesecake Factory’s Bakery chain, Cinnabon, Beyond Meat, and Jamba Juice. All items are prepped and fulfilled at Ghost Kitchens’ facilities.

Customers can bundle items from any of these brands into a single order, which can be placed either in-person or via a third-party delivery service. (Ghost Kitchens lists partnerships with Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Skip the Dishes on its website.) The company operates several of these facilities in Canada, with some standalone locations and some inside malls and big-box retailers like Walmart.

Speed appears to be the motivating force here. Ghost Kitchens’ food offerings are all simple, easy-to-fulfill items that don’t require Michelin-star chefs to create or special packaging to transport. “Our goal is to open a Ghost Kitchen every 12 kms across Canada, and be able to reach every Canadian, in every urban market within 30 minutes, 24/7,” said company President Marc Choy, President. That seems entirely possible when cheesecake, salad, and ice cream are the main staples on your menu.

It’s yet-another take on the ever-evolving concept of the ghost kitchen, which continues to evolve both as a format and with the types of food served. Nowadays, there seems to be a ghost kitchen for everything, from  burgers and cocktails to caviar and stoner food. 

Future Ghost Kitchens locations in Walmart stores are planned for 2021, including those in Woodstock, Lachenaie, Saint-Constant, and more in Toronto.

McDonald’s May Sell Part of Tech Company Dynamic Yield

McDonald’s is considering selling part of AI startup Dynamic Yield, which it acquired in 2019, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. 

The original intention behind the $300 million Dynamic Yield acquisition was to install the company’s AI tech into self-service kiosks and drive-thru menu boards at McDonald’s locations. With the implementation, menus would become more technologically sophisticated, able to offer things like more personalized recommendations for customers. McDonald’s currently has Dynamic Yield implementations in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

But as WSJ reports, after analyzing the Dynamic Yield platform, McDonald’s has found that the tech “hasn’t delivered the promised sales boost” originally hoped for at the time of the deal. The QSR mega-chain aimed for Dynamic Yield order suggestions to boost drive-thru sales by 1 percent in the U.S. Sources told WSJ that sales have fallen short of that target, and one franchisee said that “the return on investment is just not there.”

The Dynamic Yield platform is just one piece of technology McDonald’s franchisees have called into question recently. Despite the chain’s aggressive push towards digital ordering and all the accompanying technological changes, franchisees have pushed back on how much they must pay for all this tech. Ernst & Young is currently conducting an audit of these technology fees, while franchisees have paused all non-essential communication with McDonald’s corporate.

Still, missed sales targets and franchisee tensions don’t spell the end of Dynamic Yield’s platform as part of Mickey D’s operations. McDonald’s said it would keep parts of the company, including those that service the chain’s drive-thrus and kiosks. While details are few and far between, McDonald’s shift towards stores with more drive-thru lanes and less dining room space suggest Dynamic Yield’s tech will continue to provide at least some value going forward. 

McDonald’s is currently “exploring” the sale of a portion of Dynamic Yield. There is no set timeframe for a deal, and it is entirely possible that no deal at all will happen.

The Restaurant Trash Problem Is Actually a Major Opportunity

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Here’s a small silver lining alert. The restaurant industry’s urgent shift to off-premises meal formats has created an urgent need to combat packaging waste. And people are finally starting to do something about it.

Let’s not sugar-coat the issue too much. Packaging waste is a major problem, one to which restaurants contribute greatly. Prior to the pandemic, some cities were taking steps to reduce or ban single-use plastics, and materials like polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) were out of vogue. All that changed when the pandemic forced the entire restaurant industry to rely on to-go orders for sales and regulations and company policies began banning the use of reusable containers for health and safety reasons.

In fairness to many restaurants, alternative forms of packaging (compostable, reusable, etc.) are expensive, and can even require operational changes for the staff. It should not be expected that these businesses suddenly come up with strategies for more eco-friendly packaging, particularly not at a time when many still struggle to keep the lights on and many more have shut down forever.

But those that can explore alternative packing options should, and of late we have seen some encouraging developments in this direction:

  • Last week, Just Salad announced its famed reusable bowl program would be available for digital orders. The company also highlighted, in its latest sustainability report, its Zero Waste delivery program, which integrates reusable packaging into the delivery order process.
  • Sweetgreen last week announced its plans to go carbon neutral by 2027. Details were pretty high-level, but the company already uses compostable packaging for its to-go orders, so it would not be surprising to see some additional developments in this area in the future. 
  • Just Salad was also in the news last month for the launch of its new meal kit service that’s free of both extraneous portion sizes and plastic packaging.
  • At the end of 2020, Burger King announced a partnership with circular packaging service Loop to pilot reusable food and beverage containers this year.
  • Ditto for McDonald’s, which struck a similar deal with Loop in the second half of 2020. The mega-chain has other circular solutions in place, too, like its Recup system in Germany.
  • There are plenty of other notable efforts being made here, from individual restaurants, like Zuni in California, to companies like NYC-based DeliverZero, which partners with restaurants to fulfill delivery meals with reusable containers. Additionally, Dishcraft Robotics lends some automation to the process of collecting and cleaning reusables at restaurants.

The bigger point here is that while we have a massive packaging problem on our hands right now, we also have a massive opportunity to change that and introduce new innovations in the process. Those innovations could simultaneously curb our single-use plastics problem while also addressing things like food quality, tamper-resistant packaging, and other elements that have surfaced over the last year. The public’s appetite for to-go orders is not going away. That means the opportunity to change our relationship to packaging is around for the long-haul, too.

Innovation won’t come as a one-takeout-box-to-rule-them-all format. Instead, what we’re more likely to see is collaboration among restaurants, material scientists, package designers, and many others. Nor will the issue be solved next week. Weaning an entire industry off single-use plastics will be a complex, costly undertaking that will probably meet a lot of resistance and a lot of failures.

None of that is a reason to ignore the packaging problem and opportunity. Based on developments from the above companies, many are already willing to start changing the system for everyone.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

White Castle’s recent ghost kitchen effort in Orlando generated so much demand the location had to close will not reopen until spring, when the chain finds a location better suited to meet that demand.

Food delivery search engine MealMe has closed a $900,000 pre-seed round led by Palm Drive Capital. Slow Ventures and CP Ventures also participated in the round.

For the second year in a row, the National Restaurant Association’s annual conference is cancelled due to COVID-19. Instead, the Association will host a series of virtual events throughout the rest of 2021.

Just Salad’s Reusable Bowls Are Going Off-Premises, Too

New York-based restaurant chain Just Salad plans to pilot its popular reusable bowl program for digital orders in the near future. The announcement comes as part of the fast-casual chain’s annual sustainability report, which was just released, and tracks company progress on making its business more eco-friendly.

If you’ve ever set foot inside a Just Salad, you’ll know the company’s line of colorful bowls made from heavy plastic resin that can be washed and reused on a regular basis. Just Salad started its reusable bowl program back in 2006 with the aim to cut down on single-use packaging for to-go orders. Customers could purchase a reusable bowl (mine cost $1 when I bought it in 2012), take it home, wash it, and bring it back for a refill each time they bought a meal from the restaurant.

In its most recent sustainability report, Just Salad said that sales of its reusable bowls grew more than 100 percent year-over-year in 2019 — then were abruptly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In New York City and elsewhere, reusable containers were banned from restaurants in an effort to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. Simultaneously, homebound customers switched to digital ordering and delivery formats, neither of which lend themselves to reusable packaging.

Now, in 2021, Just Salad said it plans to expand its reusable bowl program to serve off-premises channels like delivery. Under the new phase of the program, customers can order digitally for delivery and pickup. Food arrives in a Just Salad reusable bowl, which can be returned to any Just Salad location for cleaning and sanitizing afterwards. The phase is currently in beta and only available at one location, at the chain’s 3rd Avenue spot in Manhattan.

Just Salad told Nation’s Restaurant News this week that without any extra marketing done, roughly 30 percent of customers have already used the program since it launched earlier this year. 

The expanded reusable program is one item on a growing list of initiatives Just Salad has around sustainability — an area the company was championing long before the pandemic. Another notable item this week’s report mentions is Zero Waste delivery pilot. In partnership with NYC-based company DeliverZero, the Just Salad location in Park Slope, Brooklyn offers delivery items in reusable containers. Customers have six weeks to return the containers to either a delivery person or at a Just Salad location. Multiple other NYC restaurants work with DeliverZero, many of them local businesses. 

Hopefully that number grows, and quickly. If delivery and off-premises restaurant formats aren’t going away, nor is the mounting packaging waste problem, not if we don’t do anything to stop it. Restaurants account for 78 percent of all disposable packaging, much of it plastic. And plastic production has increased 200-fold since 1950, growing at a rate of 4 percent per year since 2000, with most plastic winding up in the landfill or ocean. Needless to say, our appetites for off-premises aren’t helping this problem.

In response, circular-economy-style delivery is slowly but surely making its way into the restaurant industry. Reusables are by no means the norm yet. However, major chains like Burger King and McDonald’s have various tests underway, which is encouraging for the industry as a whole.

Just Salad, meanwhile, has a number of other sustainability initiatives on the table, including its meal kit program aimed at combating both packaging food waste and a partnership with food “rescue” company Too Good to Go.

Domino’s: ‘In 60 Years, We’ve Never Made a Dollar Delivering Pizza’

Pizza chain Domino’s announced its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings this week and simultaneously reiterated its stance on using third-party delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub.

Short answer: It won’t.

Speaking on an earnings call Thursday, Domino’s CEO Ritch Allison said his company has struggled to understand “the long-term economics in some of the aggregator business.”

“Every time we look at it here in the U.S., it just doesn’t make sense for us or our franchisees economically,” he said. “And if it doesn’t make sense economically, it certainly doesn’t make sense to take the risk of sharing all of our customer data with these third parties.”

Domino’s has never used nor planned to use third-party delivery apps to serve its customers, choosing instead to process digital orders through its in-house app and use its own employees to handle the last mile. Allison told the Wall Street Journal in 2019 that “the profit hit and reputational risk” of working with DoorDash et al. wasn’t worth the extra revenue that might come from such partnerships.

One pandemic and an industry-wide shift to delivery later, and Domino’s hasn’t changed its stance.

“In 60 years, we’ve never made a dollar delivering pizza,” he said. “We make money on the product, but we don’t make money on the delivery. So we’re just not sure how others do it.”

Allison went on to explain that third-party delivery services’ money has to come from either the restaurant or the customer. Both of those areas are problematic right now. The high commission fees these services charge restaurants is a well-documented and increasingly hated practice. At the same time, services have hiked prices for customers, and when restaurant dining rooms finally get to reopen, it’s uncertain how popular delivery will remain among consumers.

DoorDash as good as admitted this in its own earnings call this week, saying it expects “declines in customer engagement and average order values” as markets open back up. The company beat analyst expectations for revenue during the fourth quarter, but also more than doubled its losses. 

Those points underscore Allison’s hesitations around making money via delivery. Domino’s appears to be moving in the opposite direction. On this week’s call, Allison said the company was shrinking its delivery area “to get closer to our customer for better service.” This fortressing strategy, as Domino’s calls it, will continue to drive store growth in 2021.

Same-store sales for Dominos grew 11.2 percent during the fourth quarter. In addition to keeping its delivery business in-house, the chain will focus on its carryout service, including its recently launched “carside service,” and making investments in new technologies. 

DoorDash Exceeded Revenue Estimates but More Than Doubled its Losses in Q4 2020

DoorDash exceeded analyst estimates with its 2020 fourth-quarter revenues. However, the third-party delivery service also more than doubled its losses during that time period, and DoorDash stock took a dip this afternoon, after trading. Total revenue for the quarter represented a 226 percent year-over-year growth. 

The company went public in December 2020 after experiencing a boom fueled largely by the COVID-19 pandemic and the restaurant industry’s shift to off-premises formats like delivery. In its first financial report since that time, DoorDash said its sales increased 225 percent from 2019 during the fourth quarter 2020. Sales for Q4 totaled $970 million, beating analyst expectations of $926.7 million. However, the company also posted a net loss of $312 million, up from $134 million the previous year. 

DoorDash told shareholders it expects “declines in consumer engagement and average order values” as markets open back up and restaurants are able to open their dining rooms once more. How sharp that decline is remains unclear, the company said. 

The pandemic forced pretty much every restaurant that managed to stay open to adjust their focus towards delivery and takeout orders. Needless to say, this created a lot of business for companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub as homebound customers ordered in. 

Off-premises orders are likely to remain popular for the foreseeable future. At the same time, third-party delivery services remain steeped in controversies (hello, Prop. 22) and many restaurants are fed up with them. There has of late been a push to bring more of the digital ordering process back under restaurants’ own roofs, promote pickup orders, and, in some cases, build native delivery platforms that cut out the need for a third-party aggregator like DoorDash.

That might be one reason DoorDash has in the last year expanded its services to include grocery and convenience store delivery. By diversifying the types of goods it can get to customers’ doorsteps, the company may have a better chance of staying relevant long term, regardless of what happens in the restaurant biz.

Kalera Acquires Vindara to Optimize Seed Breeding for Indoor Vertical Farming

Vertical farming company Kalera announced this week it has acquired Vindara, a company developing seeds specifically for the indoor vertical farming environment and other controlled environment agriculture methods. With this acquisition, Kalera says it can increase both crop yield and the speed of growth cycles in its current and future facilities.

Kalera currently has two commercial-scale vertical farms in operation, both in Orlando, Florida. The company is also expanding rapidly, with new locations across the U.S. in the works. Facilities in Atlanta, Denver, and Houston are slated to open in 2021.

Typically, seeds for outdoor farming are bred to resist things like disease and pests. The drawback of that method is that plant flavor, texture, and nutritional profile is often sacrificed in the process. But in a fully controlled indoor grow environment like a vertical farm, pests are nonexistent and growers and systems have better control over monitoring the danger of plant diseases. 

That gives companies like Vindara an opportunity to produce seeds bred for flavor, color, nutritional content, and better overall quality. The company combines genomics, machine learning and computational biology with traditional breeding techniques to get its seeds, which are non-GMO and which Vindara says take 12 to 18 months to develop, rather than the standard five to seven years.

With the acquisition, Vindara will become a “fully owned subsidiary” of Kalera and operate out of the latter’s headquarters in Orlando. For Kalera, the acquisition brings the potential to develop its own plant varieties and increase the output of existing ones. Right now those are just leafy greens, though Kalera hinted at spinach and strawberries for the future. 

Singapore’s Next Gen Raises $10M Seed Round for Plant-Based Chicken

Next Gen, a Singapore-headquartered food tech company, announced today it has raised $10 million in seed funding. The round was led by Temasek, K3 Ventures, the New Ventures arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and NX Food. Funding follows an earlier $2 million investment from Next Gen’s founder, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The company will use the funds to launch Next Gen’s plant-based products brand, TiNDLE, to consumers in Singapore in March 2021. To start, the product line, which will debut with a chicken item, will be available in select restaurants. Other Asian cities will follow. Funding will also go towards further research and development around future plant-based products. 

TiNDLE chicken is made with soy protein, wheat gluten, wheat starch, as well as sunflower and coconut oils. On its website, the company says each each serving contains 17 grams of protein. The first application of the product will be TiNDLE Thy, a plant-based take on chicken thighs the company says can be used in a variety of dishes and cuisine types.

The forthcoming launch is arriving at a time when global demand for alternative protein is higher than it’s ever been before. The plant-based protein segment is expected to reach $85 billion by 2030, according to UBS. Asia is an important market in this growth, and one that is catching up to growth in the U.S. Demand in Asia for plant-based products is expected to jump to over 200 percent within the next five years.  

There is also a growing number of companies bringing products to market in the APAC region now. Some of those companies, like Green Monday in Hong Kong and HERO in China, as well as U.S.-based brands that have recently moved in, notably Impossible and Eat Just. Also, Beyond Meat is building two production facilities in Asia, both in China.

For its part, Next Gen is now looking towards a Series A funding round as well as diversifying its product portfolio and expanding into Europe and the U.S. The company said today it is already “laying the groundwork” for the latter.