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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Jennifer Marston

Updated: Whataburger’s Food Truck Set to Tour the U.S. in 2021

Iconic Texas-based QSR chain Whataburger announced this week it has upped its off-premises game with a 36-foot-long food truck that will take a multi-state tour in 2021. 

The forthcoming Whataburger food truck will be a totally mobile kitchen the chain says has “the same kind of burger-making power as a brick-and-mortar restaurant.” Whataburger developed it in partnership with Cruising Kitchens, a well-known food truck manufacturer that has made mobile kitchens for everyone from Hard Rock Cafe to the LA Dodgers. 

Whataburger also says the truck can be used for disaster relief, and honestly in this day and age it isn’t hard to imagine the company reformatting the truck at some point to serve frontline healthcare workers or communities impacted by, say, a hurricane. 

The truck will “tour” U.S. cities where Whataburger already has a presence, as well as those the chain is planning to expand too. That’s in keeping with the general aim of ghost kitchens, which a growing number of QSRs are using to reach customers in new markets or serve more off-premises orders in existing ones. 

While there’s undeniably something fun about a bright orange touring burger truck, it’s also a fairly practical move on the part of Whataburger. Like other chains, it’s had to pivot more of its business to off-premises over the last several months as well as increase its capabilities around mobile ordering. It’s currently operating dining rooms with limited seating, but with the trajectory of the coronavirus still uncertain (and still rising), it’s not unreasonable to think dining rooms might have to shut down in full again before this is all over.

While it’s not technically a ghost kitchen, the forthcoming food truck more or less serves the same purpose, which is to help the chain reach a wider audience and keep operations going even in the face of unprecedented global crises. According to this week’s announcement, Cruising Kitchens founder Cameron Davies has wanted to build a food truck for more than a decade. With the restaurant industry sitting squarely at the crossings of off-premises, ghost kitchens, and more mobility, now seems the perfect time for a test drive.

Note: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that Cameron Davies was CEO of Whataburger.

ShiftPixy Launches Ghost Kitchen Incubator

Gig economy engagement platform ShiftPixy announced today the launch of its Ghost Kitchen Incubator Project, which will provide advice and infrastructure to restaurants wanting to launch and/or improve their off-premises strategies. 

The incubator is part of ShiftPixy’s new Labs offering, which is a suite of marketing and support services designed specifically for QSRs. ShiftPixy says that through it, restaurants can get insights and advice on what exactly they need to operate an off-premises business. Via the Incubator Project, that means access to physical kitchen space as well as ShiftPixy’s technology, which connects restaurants to delivery drivers and couriers.

ShiftPixy differentiates itself from third-party delivery services like DoorDash or Uber Eats by hiring these gig workers (“Shifters”) as W-2 employees and facilitating the connection between them and the restaurant. Meanwhile, ShiftPixy’s tech platform doesn’t act as a consumer-facing marketplace for food delivery. Rather, it powers the back end of restaurants’ native mobile apps.

For those restaurants, the benefits of a system like ShiftPixy’s is avoiding the high commission fees associated with other third-party services and retaining customer data because orders are coming through their own digital properties. 

The benefits of this alternative delivery model are attractive at a time when most restaurants have been forced into doing delivery and other off-premises formats as a means of survival. Ghost kitchens, too, are growing more popular thanks to the pandemic, which has shuttered many restaurants and is now making many rethink how important the dining room is to their overall livelihoods. 

In the QSR realm, ghost kitchens are becoming especially prevalent, with Starbucks, Fat Brands, The Halal Guys, Chick-fil-A, Wendy’s, and an ever-growing list of others either turning their own stores into ghost kitchens or renting space from third-party kitchen providers.

But, as we discussed at length in The Spoon’s recent report on ghost kitchens, not every QSR needs one. And of those that do, the specific requirements for equipment, location, menu items, and other factors will vary from one chain to the next. 

ShiftPixy will undoubtedly address these and other issues through its new Incubator. Company CEO Scott Absher said in today’s press release that “if operators want to survive, they need to re-think their business processes, customer engagement and their approach to real estate.”

ShiftPixy hasn’t yet given full details on the new facility or said if any specific QSRs have yet signed onto the Incubator program. The company says it will “continue to issue updates” in the coming days, so stay tuned. 

Updated: California Judge Orders Uber and Lyft to Reclassify Drivers as Employees

UPDATE: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company would probably shut down operations in California temporarily if this week’s ruling is not overturned. However, that would only apply to the company’s rideshare business. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to Eater that the company “has no plans to cease California operations of Uber Eats.”

PREVIOUSLY:

A California judge late Monday ordered that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their drivers as employees. This preliminary injunction is stayed for 10 days, during which time Uber and Lyft can file an appeal. Both companies have said they will do so.

This week’s order comes after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and city attorneys in California sued Uber and Lyft in May for allegedly treating their workers as contractors. The suit alleged that these companies were in violation of AB5, which went into effect in January of this year. Under the law, gig economy workers (including food delivery couriers and drivers) must be classified as employees and given access to benefits like sick leave, unemployment, and workers comp.

Uber, Lyft, and other gig worker companies have already funneled substantial resources into challenging AB5. In December of 2019, Uber and Postmates filed a complaint (which was later rejected) alleging the law violates constitutional rights. DoorDash, along with Uber and Lyft, has vowed to spend millions to get a ballot measure in 2020 that would counteract AB5. And these tech companies have argued ad nauseam that their workers want to be independent contractors and that their services are exempt from the law on the grounds that they are platforms, not transportation companies. 

California Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman wrote in this week’s ruling that such logic “flies in the face of economic reality and common sense… To state the obvious, drivers are central, not tangential, to Uber and Lyft’s entire ride-hailing business.”

That third-party food delivery services stand on the same side of the AB5 argument as rideshare companies is no surprise. The third-party delivery model relies on workers to transport food from restaurants to customers’ homes. Having to pay workers things like health benefits and paid sick leave would undercut the entire third-party delivery model, adding extra costs for the likes of Uber and DoorDash, and ultimately slowing their still-elusive path to profitability. 

Uber went as far as to say that if this week’s injunction stands, it may have to exit California. Assuming that would apply to both its rideshare business and its Eats operation, that would erode the company’s recent deal to acquire Postmates, a service that’s most popular on the west coast. 

No other state has yet moved so aggressively to get gig workers reclassified. But thanks to COVID-19, much light has been shed on workers’ access to things like health benefits or even paid sick leave and unemployment during a global crisis. In March, a New York Court ruled that Postmates couriers are employees and therefore eligible for unemployment. In the same month, Instacart revamped its benefits for drivers after workers threatened to strike.

You can read this week’s ruling in full here. If it stands, and Uber and Lyft are unsuccessful in their appeals, the order could have a ripple effect across other states in the U.S.

Plant-Based Meat Company THIS Has Surpassed Its £2M Crowdfunding Goal — With Time to Spare

Plant-based meat company THIS has more than surpassed its £2 million (~$2.6 million USD) target goal on crowdfunding platform Seedrs. So far, the London, U.K.-based company has raised over £3 million — and has 40 days left to go on its campaign (h/t Plant Based News). 

THIS, which raised £4.7 in March of this year, calls itself a plant-based meat company for meat lovers. It only launched in 2019, but already has its plant-based chicken nugget and bacon products in stores at 2,000 retailers across the U.K., including those of Tesco, Waitros, and Ocado. The company has some presence in restaurants, too. Its products are made from soy bean protein, water, and pea protein. The inclusion of other ingredients, such as vegetable extracts, food additive Maltodextrin, and potato starch, varies from one product to the next. 

With the money it’s raising via its Seedr campaign, THIS hopes to expand further into supermarkets and across more restaurant chains, though the campaign does not list specific names. The company noted that it is also “building a formidable innovation engine within the company” to develop more plant-based meat products. 

THIS says it’s on a mission to make “hyper-realistic plant-based food that mimics meat in taste, texture, and appearance.” But while the company may have picked a good time to launch their campaign, it’s also a highly competitive year for plant-based protein. Thanks in no small part to the pandemic, investment in plant-based proteins is up: $1.1 billion up, according to investor network FAIRR’s recent report. Over $907 million of that figure has been invested in plant-based protein alternatives so far in 2020.

And where the alt-protein space was once the territory of mostly burgers, more and more companies have lately come to market with other meat substitute products. Simulate, which raised $4.1 million in July, also makes chicken nuggets. In the bacon realm, THIS will compete with Hooray Foods and Prime Roots, and possibly Beyond, if rumors are to be believed. 

THIS’s fundraising campaign on Seedr is still in private phase and will go public in the coming days.

iKcon Raises a $5M Pre-Seed Round for Its Ghost Kitchen Network

Cloud kitchen startup iKcon announced today it has raised a $5 million pre-seed round led by Arzan VC, AlTouq Group and Nazer Group. This brings iKcon’s total funding to $10 million. 

The Dubai-based company, founded in 2019 by CEO Khalid Baareh and COO Kareem Abughazaleh (pictured above), operates a network of 10 cloud kitchens across the United Arab Emirates.

The company says it “acts as a franchisee” on behalf of restaurant brands, catering to both chains with existing brick-and-mortar operations as well as delivery-only virtual restaurants. iKcon’s kitchens also provide space for some CPG brands. 

Besides expanding its kitchen network, iKcon notes it will also use the new funds to further develop its proprietary technology platform, which it says uses AI and data analytics to improve operations in the kitchen. 

That tech will be an important differentiator for cloud kitchen companies across the board to improve as time goes on. For all their promises of low overhead costs and streamlined setups, cloud kitchens are still operationally intensive businesses that rely on lots of humans to cook, package, and deliver the food. With many restaurants around the world in danger of shuttering permanently because of the pandemic, delivery-only brands look more promising every week for some businesses. And as we discussed in our recent Spoon Plus Guide to Ghost Kitchens, the industry as a whole is moving towards more tech and automation to bring down costs, whether they’re time, money, or resources.

The cloud kitchen market itself is inching towards $1 trillion by 2030. iKcon’s fundraise is just the latest, following Zuul’s $9 million round and Kitopi’s $60 million fundraise.

For its part, iKcon says says it plans to expand to Saudi Arabia in the fourth quarter of 2020 and to other countries in 2021. 

I, Restaurant

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This week’s virtual Spoon event was a goldmine of information for restaurants and restaurant tech companies, or really anyone who wonders what the word “digitization” actually looks like in action in a restaurant.

Once an industry reticent to adopt any new technology, the restaurant biz has been forced into using all manner of digital tools — from delivery apps to contactless ordering platforms — to stay afloat in the troubled waters brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As one of the event’s panelists, Ian Christopher of Galley Solutions, put it, there is now a “survive or die” mentality when it comes to digitization for restaurants.

Front-of-house technologies get the bulk of the investment money right now. But as Christopher, along with Martin Flusberg of Powerhouse Dynamics, SousZen’s Stephen King, and The Spoon’s Mike Wolf discussed, the reinvention of the back of house is arguably more important. 

As the panelists noted, 75 percent of a restaurant’s costs are in the back of house. If restaurants can’t address those, they’ll never get a good handle on their margins. Meanwhile, the pandemic has made those margins even thinner, intensified the labor shortage issue, and accelerated the widespread rise of ghost kitchens, which consist of nothing but the back of house.

How can more technology in the back of house assist in those areas and others? Here are a few takeaways from this week’s event:

More automation. Back of house automation isn’t just about robots making burgers. It has much more to do with digitizing operational processes to make them more efficient. That could mean a robotic arm doing manual tasks. But it could also mean using tech to replace paper-and-pen accounting books or taking a better, more granular analysis of food inventory to cut down costs.

More operational efficiency. Related to automation, the back of house will become more about making operational processes faster and more efficient. One of the panelists went as far as to say efficiency is the biggest thing for restaurants to get right. That’s especially true with fewer people eating in dining rooms and instead ordering takeout or delivery meals that are constantly evaluated for convenience and speed in addition to quality.

More transparency. The pandemic has arguably brought a greater desire for transparency when it comes to our restaurant food, and tech-savvy companies will respond with a variety of solutions. That could include installing software in a restaurant that can tell a customer exactly where their order is at any given moment (e.g., “on the grill,” “out for delivery”) or a tool that better informs them of a restaurant system’s security measures.

Will everyone in the restaurant industry welcome these changes with open arms? Absolutely not. Panelists said we can expect some pushback at the individual level from different folks in the restaurant industry, and one can hardly blame them. After all, what I just laid out above sounds more like a manufacturing facility than a restaurant. 

And to be honest, part of me balks at this new restaurant “experience” where speed and convenience rule and the majority of meals are flung together in ghost kitchens and delivered to me in a cardboard box. But listening to today’s panelists, it’s also clear that digitizing the restaurant biz could mean more businesses being able to stay open (in some fashion), more entrepreneurship, less waste (food and money), and safer procedures for everyone. At a time when the entire industry hangs in the balance, those factors provide some welcome sense of optimism.

80% of Restaurant Jobs Could Go to Robots

On the subject of digitization, this week, the Spoon’s Chris Albrecht wrote about some new numbers that claim 80 percent of restaurant jobs could be taken over by automation. That includes cooking, serving, and prepping jobs.

While the 80 percent figure is high, it doesn’t feel all that surprising. Automation was already coming for the restaurant industry, and robots specifically have been in use for the consumer-facing side of the business for some time (see Starship’s delivery bots or Chowbotics’ Sally).

The pandemic has obviously accelerated that. Reduced dining room capacity, full-on restaurant closures, and a move towards the so-called “contactless” experience has amplified the labor shortage. Throw in the above discussion about efficiency being the number one priority for many restaurants, and it’s easy to see why the industry’s automated future seems a foregone conclusion at this point.   

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Pacific Northwest chain Duke’s Seafood has installed a pathogen-filtering system in all of its restaurants “to kill COVID-19 particles.” The filtration process uses needlepoint bipolar ionization (NPBI) to reduce airborne pathogens, and is the same system installed in the White House, the Mayo Clinic, and some airports.

Hospitality platform BentoBox this week launched its own take on the contactless dining experience, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The company’s Dine-In Ordering product features customized QR codes and digital menus, as well as complimentary tabletop signs with a restaurant’s branding.

Adobe Spark this week released a guide that, according to a press release, “covers everything small business owners and marketers need in order to implement QR and other touchless efficiencies right now.” Restaurants that sign up for a free Spark trial can access templates for in-store signage, mobile menus, and other graphical elements needed to communicate social distancing and contactless ordering.

 

Food Tech News: Kroger Pilots Contactless Pay, How QSRs Could Change the Whole Food System

Had your fill of food tech news for the week? Of course you haven’t. With that in mind, here are a few more bits and bites to carry your appetite for food tech through the weekend.

Kroger Launches Contactless Payments

Kroger launched a pilot for contactless payments in Seattle, WA this week. The test will take place in the grocery retailer’s QFC division, and allow customers to use their mobile phones to pay for groceries. The system accepts a number of payment types: Apple, Google, Samsung, Fitbit, and mobile banking apps. 

Microsoft and Land O’Lakes Bringing More Tech to Rural Areas

Farming technology is all well and good, but farms first need to have access to broadband. As AgFunder points out, 18 to 40 million Americans do not have that connectivity, especially those in rural areas. To address that issue, Microsoft and Land O’Lakes said this week they are working together to bring more connectivity to farms and rural areas.

Hostess Opens Innovation Lab

Hostess Brands has opened a new innovation lab in Kansas that employs researchers, product testers, and bakers creating new kinds of snack cakes. The lab will test and develop new prototypes for food products, which means we could well have a new kind of Twinkie in our hands in the future.

How about now no cow?

If QSRs swapped beef with alternative proteins in their products, they could completely alter the food system. That’s the premises of an excellent new article from Wired, which outlines the problems with our over-reliance on beef and how fast-food chains can use their wide availability and low prices to change consumer attitudes about meat.

DouxMatok To Bring Its More-Efficient Sugar to North American Food Products

Israeli food tech company DouxMatok has entered into a deal with a North American sugar refiner to manufacture commercial quantities of its “more efficient” sugar, according to Food Navigator. The first products containing this sugar are expected to hit the market early in 2021. 

DouxMatok’s Sugar Reduction Solution uses the food additive silica to carry sugar molecules and make a food taste sweeter than it would using a comparable amount of plain sugar. Using this method, food companies could use less sugar in their products, since the sugar-infused silica diffuses the sweet taste more efficiently. DouxMatox says food companies can typically use about 40 percent less sugar in their products and still get the same sweet taste.

The company told Food Navigator this week that it is currently working on a second-generation version of its product that will use a more “clean label” fiber than silica (which passes through the body once the sugar is metabolized). While he couldn’t name specifics, DouxMatok founder Eran Baniel said this new carrier for the sugar molecules is definitely a fiber and that it is “slightly more effective than silica in certain applications.”

Nor did Baniel say which North American sugar refiner his company has teamed up with to get its first products in the market. The company struck a deal with Südzucker in Europe in 2018. The North American partner will be announced in October.

While it doesn’t exactly take science to understand the harmful effects of sugar on the human body, many companies are leveraging science to create alternatives. Joywell Foods uses protein found in the “miracle berry” to create an alternative sweetener. Alluose is another sugar alternative, and one Magic Spoon uses to sweeten its kids-cereal-for-adults product.

DouxMatok’s silica product currently works with baked goods, confections, chocolates, and a few other products. According to Food Navigator, the company hopes to find a similar sugar-reduction method and technology for “high-water activity products” like sodas and juices.

Catering Startup Platterz Raises $43.8M CAD, Rebrands as Thriver

Corporate catering startup Platterz announced today it has rebranded as Thriver and raised a $43.8 million CAD (~$33 million USD) Series B funding round. The round was led by Viola Growth, with participation from Vertex Ventures Israel, Union Tech Ventures, Journey Ventures, and FJ Labs, as well as existing investors Aleph and Altair Capital. This brings Thriver’s total funding to $54.7 million (USD).

Since its inception in 2015, Thriver has operated primarily as a corporate catering program offering both group and individual meals as well as perks like the Treat Card, which employers could use to subsidize employees meals. Over time, however, the platform has broadened into what Thriver calls a “food and culture platform.” That means offering not just meals and meal plans to companies, but also community-building activities meant to bring employees — especially remote ones — together.

Thriver has the pandemic to thank for some of its motivation to expand into corporate culture beyond food. Scores of employees that once trekked to the office each day are now working from home. That’s an obvious dent in any corporate catering business that relies on employees working in offices. 

Thriver is addressing this by offering remote “experiences” for workplace teams that are meant to be culture-building activities employees can do together from their own homes. Thriver lists cooking classes, cocktail making, yoga, language lessons, virtual escape rooms (?!!), and many other activities as part of its remote activities. 

It’s a unique approach in terms of catering companies addressing the sudden effect of the pandemic on their business. Others, like Ox Verte and Freshly, now focus on home delivery for employee meals. Uber for Business says it can feed anyone from an individual working from home to a 1,000-person virtual event.

For its part, Thriver said in today’s release it will continue to offer its food platform along with these new remote activities. New funds will go towards expanding into new markets, building more capabilities into its platform, and growing the Thriver team. 

Vertical Field to Launch a Geoponic Vertical Farm Inside New York’s Evergreen Market

More vertically grown greens are coming to the grocery store. The Evergreen Kosher Market, a well-known food retailer in Monsey, New York, announced this week it will soon debut a vertical farm from Israeli ag tech company Vertical Field. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the farm will use technology and geoponics to provide shoppers with onsite greens at the grocery store.

Vertical Field’s farming indoor solution consists of “living walls” where plants grow vertically inside controlled environments and sensors regulate temperature and humidity levels to create ideal grow conditions for each type of plant. Since the environment is sealed off from the outside world, it is free of the usual pests that can infiltrate crops and therefore free of pesticides. And Evergreen being a Kosher market, a partnership with Vertical Field makes sense, as the company’s greens are all Star-K Kosher Certified.

The company’s use of geoponics is unusual in today’s world of vertical farming, where the majority of companies use hydroponics or aeroponics to grow plants. Vertical Field’s system is proprietary, and the company claims on its website that its use of geoponics means lower initial and operating costs, better quality plants, and more crop variety than one would get using hydroponics.

All that said, Vertical Field is, like most others, still focused on leafy greens, which would likely be the only plant type to fit on the company’s wall-like garden structure (see image above). Still, leafy greens are delicate, and more likely to be damaged in shipping than, say, heartier fruit or root vegetable. Placing the farms inside grocery stores removes the distribution portion and therefore several steps from the process between harvesting greens and getting them to consumers. 

While the concept of in-store vertical farms is relatively new, Vertical Fields’ new installation at Evergreen isn’t alone. Berlin, Germany-based InFarm has its pod farms at grocery stores in Canada, Denmark, and at Kroger stores in the U.S. Orlando, Florida-based Kalera works with Publix in the Southeastern U.S. to place farms in stores.

For its part, Vertical Field serves a variety of organizations around the world, including the campuses of Big Tech companies like Apple, Intel, and Microsoft. 

TouchBistro Acquires Loyalty and CRM Company TableUp

Restaurant management platform TouchBistro today announced its acquisition of TableUp, a company that makes loyalty and marketing software for the restaurant biz. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

TouchBistro said in a press release sent to The Spoon that it will fully integrate TableUp’s CRM and loyalty capabilities into its existing platform. Dubbed TouchBistro Loyalty, the new product will be released in phases, with an introductory product hitting North American markets “in the coming weeks,.” Through it, TouchBistro’s restaurant customers will be able to use the software to power loyalty programs, create more personalized marketing campaigns for guests, and offer more promotions. 

Once a simple POS system, TouchBistro has been steadily adding features to its platform to transform it into the kind of all-in-one front-of-house management tool most restaurant tech companies are peddling these days. In 2019, TouchBistro launched its own reservations and guest-management features. Its system works for both in-house orders and those for off-premises.

That ability to serve to-go customers is a must nowadays for restaurant tech systems. With many dining rooms still shuttered because of the pandemic, restaurants have little choice but to focus on their off-premises strategies. Restaurant tech companies in turn must broaden their systems’ capabilities to meet those new requirements. We’ve seen the likes of Sevenrooms, Presto, Toast, and others do just that over the last few months in an attempt to stay relevant in world where the restaurant front of house is becoming alarmingly less relevant. 

At the moment, loyalty programs and personalized marketing don’t rank as high on the list of customer concerns as things like cleanliness or ease of use with new off-premises-focused tools. However, loyalty and marketing features themselves aren’t going by the wayside anytime soon, even if a lot of restaurant dining rooms are. That makes TouchBistro’s acquisition of TableUp a worthy long-term play as restaurant tech companies continue to redefine themselves.

The Real California Milk ‘Snackcelerator’ Opens Applications for Dairy Startups

You’ve heard about the uptick in snacking thanks to the pandemic. But perhaps no one is taking the rise of snacks more seriously than the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB). Today, the organization announced the return of its product innovation competition dubbed the Real California Milk Snackcelerator. 

The competition looks for food producers that integrate the flavor and functionality of California dairy products into snacks. A blog post outlining the contest lists several products that “speak to the type of innovation” CMAB “is looking for.” Those products include a Keto- and diabetes-friendly ice cream treat, probiotic snack bars, Kombucha yogurt, and something called “cheese wraps.”

“The goal of this competition is to tap into our global obsession with snacking to inspire new ideas and help clear the hurdles to bringing these products to market,” CMAB CEO John Talbot said in today’s press release. 

As of the end of June, snack consumption was up 8 percent, according to NPD. And in today’s press release, CMAB cites Mondelez International, which recently found that 59 percent of adults worldwide prefer snacking to meals.

Companies interested in CMAB’s competition should have products that use cow’s milk as their first ingredient and making up 50 percent or more of their formula. Companies that win must commit to producing their products in California, using California dairy farms for milk. 

Up to eight companies will get “up to $10,000 of support” to develop a prototype as well as mentorship and guidance around packaging, distribution, marketing, and other areas of running a food business. They also receive an all-expenses-paid “business development trip” where they will tour dairy farms and meet individuals in that industry. The overall winner gets “up to $200,000 worth of support to get their new product to market.”

While the snacks market is thriving, the dairy industry has had a rougher time of it lately. U.S. milk sales have been declining for decades, especially with the rise of plant-based alternatives. Two major milk producers so far, Dean Foods and Borden Dairy, have filed for bankruptcy.

However, sales of dairy rose thanks to the pandemic: From January through July 18, U.S. milk retail sales were up 8.3% to $6.4 billion, according to Nielsen. And the sector definitely has its pockets of innovation, with a notable example being the Dairy Farmers of America’s startup accelerator, which has a similar mission statement to that of CMAB: to bring more agility and innovation into the dairy sector.

Still, dairy companies have a long haul ahead of them. Finding nimble, innovative startups with new approaches to dairy products could help the industry stay relevant at a time when alternative protein is steadily on the rise. Feeding into the highly popular market for snacks doesn’t hurt, either. 

Applications for the Snackcelerator are open until August 28, 2020.