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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Jennifer Marston

Up Next for the Astronaut’s Diet: Space Peppers

Two things we love here at The Spoon: space food and indoor farming tech. So I got pretty excited to come across a HoritDaily article today about  Jacob Torres, who works at the Space Crop Production Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and is currently researching how to grow chile peppers in space. 

The idea is to eventually supply astronauts that spend a lot of time in deep space with fresher foods to accompany their packaged items. Torres is starting with peppers, which can add more important vitamins to astronauts’ diets, not to mention bring some much-needed flavor to the food.

For those peppers, Torres uses the Española Improved pepper, which performs especially well in a space environment compared to other breeds. Conducting research inside the NASA-developed Plant Growth Habitat, he is also experimenting with different light “recipes” and finding a solution to watering plants in an environment without gravity. “Existing hydroponic systems are largely inoperable in microgravity,” he told HoritDaily.

He finally settled on the Passive Porous Tube Nutrient Delivery System (PPTNDS), which forces water upwards to water the plants and, he said, could eventually be used on earth for those hard-to-reach upper levels of vertical farms that growers can’t get to as often.

An underlying goal of the project is to create an indoor grow system that needs little input from the astronauts themselves, who wouldn’t have the kind of time to devote to plant cultivation that other indoor growers have.

But back to space. One of the reasons we’re seeing an uptick in food projects beyond planet Earth is what Spoon Publisher Michael Wolf calls “the renewed interest in space travel.” NASA wants to put people on the moon again, and there’s of course interest in Mars. As Mike says, “Whether it’s the actual habitation of Mars or some other place in the galaxy, simply packing up freeze dried food won’t cut it.” And from Japan’s Space Food X initiative to space-friendly bake ovens to tomatoes, there’s a ton of companies and projects out there now figuring out how to feed people in space. Torres’ ongoing research is certainly bringing some new spice to this mix.

If you’re into space food, join us for our free live virtual event on Tuesday June 30th where we’ll talk with the inventors of the Zero G Space Oven.

AppHarvest Partners With the Dutch Government to Make Kentucky an Indoor Farming Powerhouse

Agtech startup AppHarvest this week announced a partnership with the Dutch government, the state of Kentucky, and several other organizations including universities to turn Appalachia into an “ag-tech epicenter,” according to the Louisville Courier Journal. 

The partnership comes just as AppHarvest is building out its massive 2.76-million-square foot indoor farming facility in Morehead, KY that’s scheduled to open in Fall 2020. That facility will grow 45 million pounds of fresh produce each year, with an emphasis on tomatoes. The company says it expects to eventually deliver produce to not just grocery stores in Appalachia but also those in surrounding states that are within a day’s drive.

The AppHarvest facility will use hydroponics to vertically grow produce inside high-tech greenhouses. In addition to supplying more local produce to surrounding regions (as opposed from shipping that produce in from Canada or Mexico), the new facility will also create about 285 jobs encompassing everything from “head growers” all the way down to entry-level positions. The addition of those jobs is especially important to Appalachia — an area of the U.S. ravaged by persistent poverty. 

The goal of the new partnership is to create even more jobs in addition to getting more locally grown food into surrounding regions. The agreement, signed yesterday by the different parties involved, will create a series of research programs as well as a “center of excellence” for agtech innovation. 

Why The Netherlands? According to the Courier Journal, that country has spent decades building its own sustainable food supply chain through a network of more than 10,000 high-tech green houses. “The year-round, temperature-controlled farms have made the Netherlands the world’s second largest agricultural exporter and a leading ag innovator,” AppHarvest founder Jonathan Webb said at a press call cited by the Courier Journal.

The new partnership also includes participation from two higher education institutions in The Netherlands as well as Morehead State University, Berea College and Eastern Kentucky University, University of Kentucky and University of Pikeville. 

AppHarvest closed an $11 million funding round in January, bringing the company’s total funding to $120 million.

Squadle Launches a Thermal Scanner for Restaurants to Better Monitor Employee Health

With restaurant dining rooms now open under new restrictions and precautions, we’re seeing quite a few devices emerge that aim to better monitor the health of workers and customers. The latest of these is from tech company Squadle, which today launched its Sqaudle Sense Thermal Scanner that lets restaurants and other foodservice businesses quickly perform automated health checks on guests and employees, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Cambridge, MA-based Squadle is already known among QSRs for its hardware-software system that automates operational tasks in the restaurant. McDonald’s and Dunkin’ are among the chains that already use the company’s technology.

Squadle Sense is a 6”x6” device that mounts to the wall and uses Squadle’s patented ZeroTouch sensor technology. That tech has until now been used by restaurants to monitor equipment like coolers or refrigerators. As part of Squadle Sense, it can now be used to monitor humans’ temperature. 

Employees “sign in” with an app or keycard, then simply stand in front of the device while it performs a quick scan. When the system detects an above-normal temperature, it automatically alerts a manager via the accompanying app. The system can also be used in the front of house for restaurants that want to check guest health before customers enter the premises. Restaurant owners and managers can configure settings (e.g., define “above normal” temperatures) remotely via the app.

According to today’s press release, the device is available for pre-order and will ship in Fall 2020. A monthly fee (determined according to the restaurant’s needs) covers both the hardware and software.

Squadle joins the likes of PathSpot, Fujitsu, POPid, and ResQ in releasing devices and software that monitors employee and guest health and provides better tracking of restaurants’ efforts around sanitization.

One of the challenges restaurants have encountered during this reopening phase is that there is no one single set of standards when it comes to sanitization practices and employee health and safety. That gets especially tricky as regulations vary from state to state. While Squadle isn’t claiming to set any kind of industry standard with its new device, the remote monitoring aspect of the system at least allows multi-unit chains to adhere to the same standards across borders and locations. 

Sevenrooms Raises $50M Series B Funding for Its Data-Driven Restaurant Tech Platform

Restaurant tech company Sevenrooms has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Providence Strategic Growth and brings Sevenrooms’ total funding to $71.5 million. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Sevenrooms will use the new funds to “further enhance” its restaurant guest-management platform as well as continue expanding globally. 

Sevenrooms, which was founded in 2011, has over time evolved from a reservations platform to a full suite of front-of-house tools that nowadays includes some pandemic-friendly features like contactless ordering and payments. The company continues to offer its reservations system, as well as waitlist and table management tools, marketing automation, and online ordering. Pre-pandemic, Sevenrooms was exploring voice-enabled restaurant tech as well as data-driven personalization.  

Like other front-of-house-focused restaurant tech companies, Sevenrooms quickly reacted to the COVID-19 crisis and the dining room shutdowns that followed. At no extra cost, it launched its DirectDelivery feature, which gives restaurants more ownership over their customers data on delivery order. The company also recently released its version of the contactless dining kit, meant to equip freshly reopened restaurant dining rooms with more contactless solutions, from order and pay technologies to digital menus. 

Others have made similar moves recently. In fact most restaurant tech companies — Presto, Zuppler, Paytronix, etc. — are offering enhancements to their platforms that emphasize contactless tools for the restaurant dining room.

Standing out from the masses will be the biggest challenge for all of these companies. Sevenrooms’ previous work around voice tech and personalization would give it a push in a somewhat unique direction. Its continued focus on giving restaurants more control over customer data will also be an important asset for the company going forward as digital properties become the restaurant experience, rather than an add-on sales channel.

U.K. Regulators Grant Provisional Clearance to Amazon’s Highly Scrutinized Deliveroo Investment

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally cleared Amazon’s 16 percent investment in Deliveroo on the basis that the deal would not likely “damage competition in either restaurant delivery or online convenience grocery delivery,” according to a statement from the CMA.

Amazon was set to be the largest contributor to a $575 million investment announced in May 2019. By July of the same year, British regulators were scrutinizing the deal, claiming there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect that Amazon and Deliveroo would “cease to be distinct” were it to go through. Many months and a pandemic later, the CMA provisionally approved the deal in April 2020. Grounds for approval were that, thanks to the pandemic decimating the restaurant industry, Deliveroo would have had to exit the food delivery market without Amazon’s investment.

Though it seems the stakes are actually less dire for Deliveroo. The CMA said today that it has revised its provisional findings from April and found that “Deliveroo would no longer be likely to exit the market in the absence of this transaction.”

Even so, a lot has changed in the third-party since Amazon first announced its plans to invest in Deliveroo. The biggest development (besides COVID-19) has been Takeaway.com’s acquisition of Just Eat that was approved in April and created one of the largest food delivery companies in the world. That deal alone makes the U.K. food delivery market more competitive, and renders Amazon (a little) less of a behemoth come to gobble up marketshare. Uber Eats also operates in the U.K., as do a handful of smaller players. 

Another concern of the CMA’s was that through its investment, Amazon would cease to be competitive with Deliveroo. Thanks in large part to the Just Eat-Takeaway.com deal, that appears to no longer be the case.

“Looking closely at the size of the shareholding and how it will affect Amazon’s incentives, as well as the competition that the businesses will continue to face in food delivery and convenience groceries, we’ve found that the investment should not have a negative impact on customers,” Stuart McIntosh, Inquiry Chair for the CMA, said in a statement.

The CMA will now ask for views on the new findings by July 10. From there, it will make its final decision, which is due by August 6, 2020.

Singapore’s TiffinLabs Will Launch Its Tech-Driven Virtual Restaurant Network in the U.S. in 2020

Singapore-based food tech company TiffinLabs announced this week it has acquired access to kitchen space in 1,000 locations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to create a global network of virtual restaurant brands.

The company, which was founded in 2019, is known for the nine different virtual restaurant brands it operates out of its kitchens in Singapore. According to a press release, TiffinLabs will bring five of these brands to the U.S., starting in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Austin in the fourth quarter of 2020. It also has plans to bring its restaurants to London, Manchester, and Birmingham in the U.K.

TiffinLabs uses what it calls an “AI-driven kitchen operating and management system” to “identify food trends and consumer preferences.” In other words, the company identifies food trends and demands in specific areas and plans its locations and cuisine types around those factors. The company also uses this data-driven model to improve improve its ingredient supply chain and research and develop the best packaging for delivery meals. 

It is one of several restaurant chains that is currently focused on creating global virtual brands and ghost kitchens. Fat Brands recently partnered with Epic Kitchens to open 20 ghost kitchens across the U.S. And Phillipenes-based Jollibee just opened its first ghost kitchen in Chicago. Other big-name brands — Chick-fil-A and the Halal Guys among them — have partnered with the likes of Kitchen United and DoorDash to get their food into areas where they do not necessarily have standalone locations.

TiffinLabs’ founder and chairman Kishin RK said in a statement that over the next three years, we’ll see two types of winners in the ghost kitchen/virtual restaurant space: local niche players creating specialty cuisine and global delivery players that serve all parts of the globe. TiffinLabs looks to be aiming for the latter category with its forthcoming expansion.

Moe’s Southwest Grill Opens Kiosk-Only Restaurant

Atlanta, GA-headquarterd Moe’s Southwest Grill is best known for its fast-casual take on Mexican food. It could also soon be known for the tech it uses to get said Mexican food to customers in a more contactless format. Today, the chain announced that its new kiosk-only location is open for business in Pittsburgh, PA.

This is the first of what will be multiple kiosk-only locations for Moe’s. The chain had originally planned to launch its Pittsburg location as well as one in Charlottesville, VA in the first quarter of 2020. It’s unclear if the pandemic was the reason for the delay.

The kiosk-only Moe’s is exactly as it sounds. The restaurant, owned and operated by Moe’s multi-unit franchisee, Mike Geiger, features multiple kiosks from which customers can directly order and pay for food, skipping the need for human-to-human interaction. 

One POS terminal and cashier will be available for customers that prefer ordering and paying for their meals via another human being.

The role kiosks play in the future of ordering and paying for restaurant food is still being determined. These standalone machines that require you to touch a screen could be seen by more wary customers as germ repositories. However, keying items in on a screen still requires less human-to-human interaction than talking to a cashier, and there’s also indications that facial recognition and gesture tech could soon become part of kiosk design. Others, like this restaurant in Sweden, are placing kiosks behind glass walls and in doing so making them accessible to outside foot traffic. 

For now, the Moe’s in Pittsburgh will feature regular old kiosks that accept Apple Pay, university cards (for college students in the surrounding area), and cash. Cash, in particular, is important, since one of the issues with digital payments at restaurants is that they exclude millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals in the U.S. While cashless payments are the norm in some countries (see: Sweden), it’s unlikely restaurants across the U.S. will go full-on cashless anytime soon. Self-order kiosks and other contactless restaurant tech coming out of the pandemic will need to account for that fact. 

Digital Meal Voucher Company Swile Raised $78.7M to Expand Internationally

French startup Swile, previously known as Lunchr, announced today it has raised a $78.7 million (€70 million) Series C round, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance and Idinvest. This brings Swile’s total funding to €115 million.

Since 2018, Paris-based Swile has been on a mission to disrupt the meal voucher market. In France, employers typically pay part of the value of these tickets, which can be used at most restaurants. And nowadays, more companies are adopting digital replacements to the old paper meal voucher. 

Swile provides one such version of this digital meal voucher via a prepaid card and app. Companies top up employees’ cards each month, and cards can be associated with a person’s bank account. Roughly 200,000 employees across 7,500 companies use Swile right now.

Part of Swile’s new funds will go towards expanding its service internationally. The company says it is looking at Brazil as well as other European countries. Additionally, new funds will go towards offering other non-food benefits to employees, such as reimbursements, gift cards, and events.

Changing up the corporate meal game is something we’re seeing a lot of these days — and with good reason. Thanks to the pandemic, a huge number of employees still working from home, and traditional forms of office lunches, whether vouchers, or catering, have been thrown into uncertainty. Companies have responded with everything from direct-to-consumer meal delivery services for employees to customizable meal plans for virtual sales meetings and events.

As the workforce gets more disparate in terms of location and the state of corporate lunches remains in flux, Swile may be wise to try and diversify its offerings right now.

Run a Restaurant From Your Phone, Thanks to This Latin American Tech Startup

Click through any restaurant industry publication in these pandemic-stricken days and you’ll likely assume that to run an off-premises restaurant, you need to load up on as much tech as you can. But as we’re fond of saying here at The Spoon, when it comes to restaurant tech, quality matters way more than bells and whistles. For all the contactless dining kits, delivery integrators, and AI-enabled tools out there, it’s the simpler solutions often create more value for the restaurant.

A Mexico City-based startup called remotekitchen appears to be betting on that idea with its new restaurant tech platform that essentially lets restaurant operators run a business directly from their mobile phones. That includes everything from promoting their restaurant to taking orders and processing payments. And for independent restaurants in Latin America — many of whom are not even online — that’s all they need.

“We are mobile and this [solution] is working for a smartphone-first operation,” David Peña, remotekitchen’s founder and CEO told me over the phone last week. With fellow cofounder and company COO Diego Vielma, he walked me through the technology and how it can get restaurants up and running with their off-premises strategies.

The company started as a delivery-only kitchen in 2019 and quickly pivoted to software in response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. As has been well-documented, worldwide shutdowns have decimated restaurants as we know them, and there’s been much ado over the prohibitive cost of doing delivery via third parties like Grubhub and Uber Eats. So it’s perhaps not surprising that when remotekitchen started tinkering with its own software, others took note.

As restaurant tech goes, the remotekitchen platform is an extremely simple setup. A Basic plan gets you a website (those already online can simply add an “order” button), an app for receiving orders, coupon/promotion management. Those who opt for the Plus plan also get their own branded iOS and Android apps and the ability to process payments online. Either takes about a day to set up, and restaurants can also sell meals via a Facebook integration.

There’s a good reason for the simplicity here. Peña says that unlike the U.S., Latin America’s restaurant tech is “far from being developed.” Tech solutions are hard to come by, and even when they’re available, they’re overly complex.

“This is an industry that is working with almost no resources, almost no labor, so the whole industry is running on the smartphone of the owner,” he explained, adding that he’s seen many restaurants simply taking orders through WhatsApp. 

On top of that, roughly 96 percent of independent restaurants in Latin America are not online at all. There are no menus to peruse via the web, and third-party services like Uber Eats are out of the question, given the high commission fees associated with those companies.

The crew at remotekitchen bundled all of these factors together and have built a solution to address them that works on any device and is most appropriately suited to mobile devices. “We believe we can unlock a new market by giving access to a technology,” said Peña.

It’s very early days for the company, which is still in testing phase. They are currently working with just 10 restaurants, though Vielma said that over 50 are on a waiting list and will be able to use the software once remotekitchen “really understands how we are adding value to this small group of restaurants.”

One thing that may help that progress along is the company’s recent participation in food business accelerator Food-X. When remotekitchen joined the cohort back in March, they had no product on the market. Without any technology to back it up, they quickly launched a landing page and started signing up restaurants and figuring out how their product could add actual value to the Latin American restaurant industry.

“They actively seek out feedback and iterate as quickly as any team we’ve worked with so the product gets better and better, not because of guessing, but because they are engaged with their customers, their advisors, and their investors to understand what works and what doesn’t,” Peter Bodenheimer, Partner and Director at Food-X, added over email.

That this past Food-X cohort was entirely remote actually helped. Vielma noted that staying in Mexico City and doing a virtual cohort let the company stay focused on their core market and in communication with the restaurants surrounding them.

At the moment, remotekitchen is developing the final part of its product before they officially go to market. From there, the company plans to start raising its seed round.

The overarching goal is to empower any restaurant to get online — no small feat when the majority of your target region is currently offline and a pandemic is currently wrecking havoc on the entire industry. A huge part of the restaurant industry’s evolution will be the shift towards more and more off-premises orders, for which an online component is pretty much mandatory these days.

Peña says that remotekitchen’s long-term goal “is to enable universal access to healthy delicious and affordable food by democratizing the marketplace.” In other words, anyone can be a restaurant, thanks to mobile-first restaurant technology. 

ResQ Launches Checklists to Help Restaurants Manage COVID-19 Cleaning Guidelines

ResQ, a software platform that lets restaurants manage repair and maintenance tasks, announced today the launch of its Checklists feature. With it, the company aims to help restaurants better handle “the exhaustive list of health and safety guidelines for reopening to reduce the spread of COVID-19,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

The new feature is available for free to restaurants in the U.S. and Canada, and joins ResQ’s growing collection of tools, which also includes maintenance management and invoicing, asset management, and workflow management for maintenance tasks. ResQ counts Pizza Hut, Tim Horton’s, and other well-known chains among its restaurant clients. 

Checklists digitizes the old pen-and-paper process of assigning daily upkeep tasks to restaurant staff. In a pandemic era, that list of tasks is considerably longer and might include things like disinfecting high-touch surfaces much more frequently, wiping down all screens (POS, kiosks, etc.), cleaning the lobby more frequently . . . the list goes on and on.

The problem is that there is no industry standard for that list. Back when restaurants first started to reopen, the National Restaurant Association released some suggestions around cleaning and sanitizing, but those are more guidelines than detailed instructions. Nowhere is there a definitive guide to sanitizing a restaurant during a pandemic.

ResQ’s Checklists doesn’t claim to be the definitive guide, but it does go pretty far in addressing the many tasks restaurants must do on a daily basis in order to meet the new standards for sanitization. With the feature, managers can create customized checklists specific to their business and space, and also take advantage of pre-loaded “COVID-19 prevention” checklists:

Via the ResQ app or website, a restaurant manager can create a new checklist or edit an existing one. Each checklist can be assigned to a specific staff person and given a frequency (e.g., “hourly”). For restaurants with multiple locations, checklists can be assigned to specific stores, ensuring standardized cleaning and sanitization processes across a brand’s locations.

Managers can track the progress of each task and, because the entire system exists in the ResQ app, pretty much anything except the cleaning itself can be done remotely. 

ResQ joins a number of companies using tech to help restaurants keep up with new expectations around cleaning and sanitization. PathSpot’s scanner uses visible fluorescent spectroscopy to monitor how well employees have washed their hands. Fujitsu’s AI-enabled sinks can also closely monitor hand washing. Elsewhere in the restaurant, some businesses are putting their touchscreen kiosks behind glass, which is easier to clean and doesn’t disrupt operations.

Keeping a restaurant extra-sanitized is paramount at a time when many consumers are still wary about going out to eat and COVID-19 cases are on the rise in some states. Like I said above, there’s no one set of rules every restaurant in the country must follow, which makes the proper sanitization something of a juggling act these days. Software like ResQ’s can at least standardize the process for restaurants across their own locations, not to mention help track how well their staff adhering to their tasks.

Paytronix Puts a New Spin on Contactless Tech in Restaurant Dining Rooms

Guest management platform Paytronix Systems today announced its version of the contactless dining kit for restaurants, simply called Paytronix Contactless Dining. With it, restaurants can offer guests touch-free ways to browse menus, order, and pay for meals while in the restaurant dining room, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

While the motivation behind Paytronix’ new offering is similar to other contactless dining kits out there — minimize human-to-human contact in the restaurant — the tech itself offers some features we haven’t yet seen on other platforms.

Most notably, Paytronix’ system allows guests to keep their virtual “tab” — that is, ticket — throughout the entire meal.

Right now with most mobile apps, a customer has to order and pay to complete the transaction and get that order sent to the restaurant kitchen. That works fine for takeout or delivery orders, which are inherently meant to be one-off transactions. For dine-in service, however, a customer might want to order a second drink partway through their meal. Or they may decide at last minute to get dessert. For each of those extra items, a new transaction, or “tab,” would have to be made, which means more transaction fees for restaurants that they may or may not pass on to the customer via higher menu prices. It’s also just a messy scenario to have to pay multiple transactions for each course at a single meal.

That mess and expense is what Paytronix is trying to eliminate with this Contactless Dining kit. The platform connects directly to the restaurant’s POS system. Customers then use their mobile devices to browse the menu, order items, and make a single payment (the virtual equivalent of “closing the tab”) at the end of the meal. 

Tim Ridgely, head of development for Contactless Dining, got to the heart of the matter when he noted in today’s press release that, “When it comes to on-premises dining, guests want the freedom to peruse a menu, order what they want when they want it, open tabs, and ultimately, pay for that experience at the end.”

Offering more flexibility in terms of this open tab feature also means restaurants could potentially sell more per ticket, whether that’s a second martini or a slice of cake at the end of the meal. That boost in sales will be much needed for most restaurants, since dining rooms across the U.S. are still operating at reduced capacity and, depending on how the pandemic wave falls, will be doing so for quite some time.

Paytronix joins Presto, Sevenrooms, Zuppler, and other others offering systems that try to minimize contact between guests and restaurant staff.

Of course, to make the most of Paytronix new system, restaurants will actually need a lot of customers. As we learned recently, the general population remains pretty divided about going out to eat. Some refuse to set foot in restaurants. Others were ready weeks before they reopened. Between those two extremes is a swath of folks who, while wary, are slowly but surely becoming open to the idea of going out to eat once more. Restaurant tech companies that can help sway more people towards that idea will be the ones businesses find most valuable going forward.

Planterra’s Plant-based Meat Brand Ozo Hits Retail Store Shelves, E-Commerce

JBS-owned Planterra Foods announced this week it will launch its first Ozo product on grocery stores shelves in June, and will also make them available direct to consumers via its e-commerce site. To start, the brand will launch its burgers (two-4 oz patties), its Ground product (12 oz), and Mexican-Seasoned Ground (12 oz).

Colorado-based Planterra first announced Ozo in March of this year, saying the new line of plant-based products would include burgers, grounds, and meatballs. All Ozo products are a mix of pea protein and rice protein fermented with shiitake mycelia (root). 

According this week’s press release, Ozo products will hit store shelves in several different states:

Albertsons and Safeway locations in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming; Kroger* stores in 12 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee) and, as well as military bases across the country.

Customers will also be able to order Ozo’s meatless meat through the brand’s website and through Wild Fork Foods for customers in Florida.

And for those looking to try before they buy, Planterra is also sending out its own fleet of vans to offer curbside-pickup samples of its products during the rest of June. Those vans will make stops in Denver, Boulder, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Additional cities are planned for the next 12 months, including Seattle, San Francisco, and Nashville, among others. Finally, “special deliveries will be made to fire stations, hospitals and other locations to serve frontline workers this summer,” according to the company press release.

Selling meatless meat directly to consumers is fast becoming a standard trend for companies, particularly with the restaurant industry — formerly a key channel for plant-based products — still in the throes of its pandemic-induced upheaval. Earlier this month, Impossible launched a direct-to-consumer channel for its “bleeding” meat products that’s available to anyone in the lower 48 states. Its chief competitor Beyond followed with an announcement of its own forthcoming D2C store, which is slated to launch at some point this summer. 

Meanwhile, demand for plant-based meat keeps rising, thanks in no small part to panic buying sprees and meat shortage scares, and online grocery shopping has hit record numbers in the last couple months. That makes now an ideal time to launch direct-to-consumer stores, and also to get new meat alternatives onto store shelves across the country.

It’s unclear if the demand for online grocery shopping will keep now that economies are reopening, so Planterra’s Ozo shop, not to mention those of other plant-based retailers, may or may not be a hit. That said, Ozo’s website says products can be stored frozen for up to 60 days, so flexitarians wanting to stock up may find a D2C e-commerce site a convenient addition to their online shopping.