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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Michael Wolf

Podcast: Talking Plant-Based Cheese With Grounded Foods’ Veronica Fil

While the plant-based meat and milk space has seen incredible momentum the last couple of years, cheese has been another story.

It’s not that anyone hasn’t tried. Companies like Treeline have been making vegan cheese for a while, and they’ve certainly found their niche among vegans. Still, for those of us non-vegans who want to try some plant-based alternatives for health or sustainability reasons, there hasn’t really been anything out there that’s really close to the real thing.

Until now. Grounded Foods new line up of plant-based cheese, which will start shipping early in 2021, tastes just like the real thing. I had a chance to try some of their early prototypes in February and was blown away. It had the taste, mouth feel and true cheese funkiness that you expect from the real thing.

In short, if what I tried early last year is anything close to the final product, Grounded Foods might do for cheese what Impossible Foods did for beef.

In this episode, I talk with Grounded Foods CEO and cofounder Veronica Fil. who shares the story of how she came up with the idea for a plant-based cheese that appealed to non-vegans. She also shares how she convinced her co-founder and husband, who was running one of the top restaurants in Australia, that making cheese – not running a restaurant – was the big idea they should pursue.

If you haven’t heard Veronica Fil and Grounded Foods’ story, you’ll definitely want to give it a listen. Just click play below, download direct to your device, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here are the Kitchen Robots We Saw at CES & Food Tech Live 2021

One thing I miss most about heading to Vegas every January for CES is walking the basement of the Sands convention center. There, in the startup area known as Eureka Park, I’ll wander for hours and get lost amongst thousands of exhibitors in search of a few undiscovered food tech gems.

I usually find a few and, since we’re talking CES, they sometimes come in the form of a food robot.

From there, I usually head across the street to Treasure Island where The Spoon has its own product showcase during CES week called Food Tech Live, where I can also get my fill of food robots while also doing such things as eating a cookie with my face on it.

While both CES and Food Tech Live didn’t take place in person in Sin City this year, that doesn’t mean there weren’t some cool food robots to check out at their virtual versions last week. Below is our roundup of home food robots I found at virtual CES and The Spoon’s annual first-of-the-year product showcase, Food Tech Live.

Moley Robotic Kitchen

Since 2015, the Moley robotic kitchen has captured the imagination of the tech journalists and robotics industry with its robot chef concept that can that can prepare full meals from prep to cook to clean up with a pair of articulating robot arms.

And while we’ve yet to actually see the Moley cook a full meal from start to finish, the system’s inventor told The Spoon that it’s finally on sale and will find its first home in 2021. The company, which had a virtual booth at CES 2021 and debuted a bunch of new highlight videos, will sell both a home and pro version of its robotic kitchen. Prices for the fully robotic kitchen will be about $335 thousand.

The Moley Robotic Kitchen System at CES 2021

Oliver

Else Labs Oliver is a single-pot cooking robot that dispenses fresh ingredients and automates the cooking process with the help of temperature sensing and machine vision capabilities.

Else Labs, which went on sale via Indiegogo last fall, was on display at Food Tech Live last week. The product’s inventor and company CEO Khalid Aboujassoum says the major difference between Oliver and other guided cooking appliances on the market is Oliver pretty much handles the entire cooking process for you.

“The Oliver can do unattended stovetop cooking,” Aboujassoum told me last fall when the product went on sale.

Oliver, the smart cooking robot

iWonderCook

The iWonderCook is a automated cooking machine that cooks one-pot meals. The meals are provided in the form of the company’s own meal kit service, which the user orders through the device’s touchscreen. From there, as can be seen in the video below, the user inserts a bowl, embeds the food “cartridge”, and then adjusts the amount of oil and water needed.

I haven’t gotten a chance to see the iWondercook in action or taste the food, I will say is the product’s reliance on its own meal kits might be a turn-off for some users.

iWONDERCOOK robotic chef does the cooking for you.

Yo-Kai Express Takumi

Technically the new Yo-Kai Express Takumi home ramen machine is something closer to a Keurig for food than a food robot, it’s worth looking at this machine given the company’s smart vending roots.

The Takumi, which debuted at Food Tech Live last week, follows Yo-Kai’s move into the home market with its home delivery service. The Takumi takes the frozen ramen bowls, which are centrally produced in Yo-Kai’s California facilities, and steams and reconstitutes the ramen in just a few minutes.

The company has plans to not only to start selling ramen to users in the office and home, but on the go with an autonomous ramen delivery cart.

Day With Yo Kai Final

Samsung Bot Handy

Samsung announced a trio of home robots aimed at helping humans around the house. The one that was most interesting when it comes to lending a hand in the kitchen was Bot Handy, a mobile bot with large articulating hand that can help with anything from pouring a glass of wine to doing the dishes.

It’s worth noting that Samsung -- like many big consumer electronics brands -- has a history of showing off cool new product prototypes at CES that are more conceptual than anything close to actually coming to market, including last year’s they showed off a Moley-kitchen style robot system. Let’s hope the Bot Handy is something the company delivers on.

[CES 2021] Next Generation Robotics | Samsung

Julia

The Julia is another single-pot home cooking robot that allows the user to set it and forget it for pretty much an entire meal. The Julia is made by a Nymble, an Indian-based startup with plans to start selling the product in 2021. Nymble CEO Raghav Gupta showed off the product at Food Tech Live, told us that they are expanding their alpha trial program in the United States in February.

ColdSnap

Like the Takumi, the ColdSnap isn’t quite a full-fledged food robot, but something closer to a Bartesian style automated appliance that makes cold ice cream (as well as frozen margaritas and smoothies). While we weren’t able to get our hands on the ColdSnap, the company gave CNET a hands-on preview of the appliance and the editors were impressed. The appliance, which is going to a fairly spending $500-1,000, reminds me of the Wim fro-yo appliance that never made it to market after an acqui-hire of the founding by Walmart.

Barilla Acquires Pasta Evangelists, a UK-Based Fresh Pasta Delivery Startup

The world’s largest pasta maker is getting into home delivery via acquisition.

According to a report in Reuters, Barilla has acquired Pasta Evangelists, a London based startup that delivers fresh pasta meal kits to homes around the UK. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Reuters writes that two sources close to Barilla put the deal value at around 40 million pounds (~$54 million).

Here’s how Pasta Evangelists works. The company, which was founded in 2016, ships fresh pasta, sauces and aromatics in pre-portioned meal sizes to homes with next-day delivery. Users can choose from a selection of 10 different pasta menus per week, each serving typically priced around £7.00. Users can order individual meals or subscribe and save 15%.

Pasta Evangelists delivered over 1 million pasta dishes in 2020. The company’s already strong growth accelerated over the last year as more consumers stayed home during the pandemic and looked for ways to add quality meals to the meal plan. Barilla, which acquired the company through its venture arm Blu1877, said it plans to create a digital hub in London and work to integrate with Barilla headquarters.

Could this deal be a sign Barilla might expand into fresh pasta delivery beyond the UK? Maybe, but such a move would require significant investment in the form of regional fresh pasta production facilities and distribution capabilities.

No matter what, it will be interesting to watch what Barilla does next in a consumer market drastically reshaped by the pandemic.

Podcast: The CES & Food Tech Live 2021 Review

On this week’s episode of Food Tech Show, the Spoon editorial team talks about what they found walking the virtual exhibit halls of CES 2021 (answer: not much).

The good news is we also had Food Tech Live, the Spoon’s annual food tech showcase that happens during CES week. Normally we’re in Vegas for FTL, eating cookies with our faces on it and checking out the latest in food tech gadgets, but this year we took things online and had a bunch of cool product demos, interviews and breakout sessions.

Finally, we also talk about the June oven acquisition by Weber and what that means for the smart oven space.

So listen in on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, download direct to your computer or just click play below. And, if you’re a regular listener, we’d appreciate it if you throw us a review to start the year!

Food Tech Live 2021: Meet The Companies

Usually this time of year we’re in Vegas for CES, weaving through crowded casino floors, hailing cabs and throwing a party for a thousand of our favorite kitchen and food tech fans in the ballroom of Treasure Island.

But since CES has gone virtual this year, so has Food Tech Live!

Today we’ll be doing live interviews all day with food tech innovators creating products ranging from food robots to 3D food printing companies to a Keurig for home ramen.

We also have virtual exhibition booths you can visit and check out the latest innovations and talk to the creators.

We still have a limited amount of free tickets available so head on over and grab one before they run out.

Below is a sneak preview of the companies exhibiting at Food Tech Live. Descriptions of products were provided by the companies.

Anova – The newly introduced Anova Precision Oven is the world’s first steam-enabled combi-oven designed for the home cook.

BBot – Bbot is a web-based contactless order and pay solution that allows guests to order food and drinks from their phone to their location.

BIOMILQ – is a women-owned, science-led, and mother centered start-up that is on a mission to provide the next generation every opportunity to thrive by producing cultured breastmilk that offers supplemental nutrition to mother’s milk with the convenience of formula.

BonBowl – Bonbowl is an induction cooktop paired with patent-pending cookware, designed to allow you to cook for one. The bowl is designed so that you can cook and eat from the same dish. Bonbowl also offers single serving recipes that are specifically designed to be cooked in 15 minutes or less.

Botrista – The Botrista DrinkBot is the next generation drink dispenser for restaurants. The patented technology can dispense more natural ingredients which tend to have higher fiber or pulp levels, like juice concentrates or even as thick as honey.

Breville/Polyscience – Breville|PolyScience is a manufacturer of cutting-edge equipment for chefs and mixologists, including sous vide immersion circulators, the Control ºFreak, the Smoking Gun Pro, Anti-Griddle, Sonicprep, Rotary Vacuum Evaporator, and other culinary technologies. The company has just released the HydroPro and HydroPro Plus sous vide immersion circulators.

CHEF iQ – The CHEF iQ Smart Cooker is an electric pressure cooker with unique features like a built-in scale, OTA firmware updates, and a connected app with over 200 included guided recipes.

CocoTerra – CocoTerra has developed the world’s first tabletop chocolate maker. CocoTerra lets you create custom chocolate from scratch in just two hours. You get to choose your chocolate flavorings, ingredients, designs, and decorations. Make chocolate your way, anytime you want.

Cuzen Matcha – An innovative at-home matcha system consisting of Matcha Maker and Matcha Leaf.

Drop – Drop is a smart kitchen platform with its KitchenOS serving over 100 different appliance models from brands like Bosch, Instant Brands, Panasonic, LG Electronics and Thermomix. The company specializes in recipe and kitchen appliance technology, connecting the whole cooking journey, effortlessly.

Edamam – Edamam licenses and provides via API nutrition data to food, health and wellness businesses. We have built the largest, broadest and deepest dataset of nutrition data with over 5 million recipes and 800K+ foods all analyzed and tagged for every nutrient, allergen, lifestyle diet and chronic condition.

Else Labs – Else Labs is the maker of Oliver, an expert chef, recipe library, meal planner and shopping assistant all in one. This robot chef replicates the timing, patience and skill of a chef at the stovetop leading to the creation of dynamic and delicious meals cooked to perfection, every time.

Ember – Ember Travel Mug² and Ember Mug² are the most advanced coffee mugs on the market, allowing individuals to set and maintain their preferred drinking temperature for hot beverages.

Grubtech – Grubtech’s product suite encompasses the entire end to end operations from demand generation, food aggregator integration, in-kitchen operations and last mile delivery integration.

HakkoBako – Fermentation Chambers for professional flavor developers

Hestan Cue – Hestan Smart Cooking provides the latest in temperature sensing cookware and leading connectivity solutions. Hestan Smart Cooking has pioneered precise temperature control for the stovetop and offers a variety of services ranging from hardware manufacturing, app development, to content creation, and more.

Minnow – Contact-free Pickup Pods take the worry out of food pickup and delivery by keeping food secure and people safe. Amazon Locker for food.

MyAir – MyAir develops plant-based nutrition bars with a personalized edge. The company’s plant-based formulations (infused in nutrition bars) are tailored to the consumer’s unique stress profile and cognitive needs.

Nymble – Home food robot. Julia, a home robot that helps you treat yourself to world food everyday, without having to spend time in the kitchen cooking it yourself. The food is cooked using ingredients you trust, all from the comfort of your home at the press of a button.

Pantri – An online platform that enables your smart appliances to shop automatically for the items they consume.

PantryChic – Simplify recipe preparation and ingredient organization with the PantryChic Smart Storage System. This multifunctional appliance stores, measures, auto-converts, dispenses and weighs ingredients.

SamsungNext/Whisk – Whisk powers the creation, discovery, personalization and monetization of food content online, in-store and at home. Whisk was acquired by Samsung in 2019.

Satis.AI – Satis.AI is an AI powered operational platform for restaurant kitchens aimed at improving decision making and reducing mistakes. The core of the platform uses computer vision to do object detection, object tracking and action recognition, enabling real time feedback to staff and connected devices

SIGMADESIGN – SIGMADESIGN supports food tech industries what it calls ‘Protoduction’. The company bridges the middle ground between prototyping and full-scale manufacturing.

Sojourn – Technology for last meter meal and grocery delivery. Computer vision platform and supply chain technology that can integrate with existing navigation techniques of delivery services and applications.

SpoonShot – Spoonshot delivers food & beverage innovation intelligence by leveraging AI and food science.

Tasteboosters – Tasteboosters makes SpoonTEK, a new tongue sensory utensil that adds a mild electric current to food (which excites the taste buds) to enhance flavor, heighten taste and improve after-taste.

The Weapon – Your beverage cans dedicated home entertainment – dispensed ice cold or hot from you mobile app.

Yo-Kai Express – Autonomous Restaurant Solutions using highly advanced technology to freshly serve a gourmet bowl in under 60 seconds 24 hours a day.

Zymmo – Zymmo gives independent chefs the power to market and manage every aspect of their careers, while providing foodies with amazing food experiences through their chef-meal marketplace.

Four Predictions for the Future of Food in 2021

It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year for the food industry. A worldwide pandemic that wreaked havoc on food supply chains, forced the permanent closure of thousands of restaurants worldwide, and pushed millions of people deeper into food insecurity showed us just how fragile the systems that keep us nourished and fed are.

But it’s also the recognition of this fragility that’s led to an increasing sense of urgency to invest in the future of food. The good news is the timing couldn’t be better. We are at a culmination point in the fields of bioengineering, chemistry and food science where decades of hard work and progress have allowed ideas that once seemed the domain of science fiction to leap into the labs and, now and in the not-to-distant future, onto our plates.

And while 2020 was a year of unprecedented progress across our food system, I expect 2021 to be even more impactful. Below are four predictions for some of what we could see this year.

Cultured Meat Milestones Will Accelerate

Throughout 2020, announcements of milestones for cultured meat flowed with increasing regularity. New prototypes of practically every type of meat ranging from chicken to beef to kangaroo debuted, heads of state and other famous folks got their first tastes of lab-grown meat, and at the end Eat Just announced the first regulatory approval and retail sale of cultured chicken in Singapore.

And we’ll see even more milestones this year. Investment will grow and excitement will build as more companies move out of the labs and into early pilot production facilities for their cultured meat products. Other countries will follow Singapore’s lead and give regulatory green light for the sale of cultured meat. And finally, we’ll see the debut of more cultured meat products in high-end cuisine as chefs look to achieve similar firsts for their restaurants. We may even see the rollout of cultured meat in some select experiential, high-end retail.

Fermentation Powers Growth in Exciting New Consumer-Facing Products

One of the of most exciting areas in the future of food is microbial fermentation. High-volume production of interesting new biomass proteins such as mycelium-based meat replacements and the arrival of animal-free proteins, fats and other compounds created using precision fermentation helped illustrate why the Good Food Institute called fermentation the third leg of the alternative protein market.

Looking forward, you can expect lots of new products to debut powered by precision fermentation in 2021. MeliBio, a maker of bee-free honey, expects to debut their first product in 2021, while Clara Foods plans to release its animal-free egg this year as well, and I expect to see more companies like Brave Robot rise up and offer new products built around precision fermented food platforms created by companies like Perfect Day.

CRISPR and Gene-Edited Food See Accelerated Product Pipelines

There was big news in the CRISPR and gene-edited food realm in December when the USDA proposed a change in the regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals for human consumption. The organization proposed that they take over oversight responsibility for approving gene-edited animal products from the FDA which, in 2018, famously declared that gene-edited animals should be regulated in the same manner as drugs.

Under a new USDA regulatory framework, the organization is proposing a fairly light regulatory approach to animals compared to the previous oversight of the FDA, which in turn could speed up time to market for new products. While there has been lots of focus on CRISPR-derived future food innovation, I expect changes to US regulatory oversight of gene-edited animal products to create a wave of new interest in developing CRISPR-based product lines from both startups and established food product companies.

Finally, the US may not be the only market to see a change in oversight for gene-edited food. The UK is looking to extract itself from the heavier-handed oversight of the EU post-Brexit, and some in Europe are suggesting that the EU’s classification of all gene-edited food as GMO might be overbroad and need adjusting.

3D Food Printing Moves Beyond the Cake

While 3D food printing has largely been relegated to the world of confections and cake decorating, a world with food replicators from the pages of science fiction novels seems to be inching closer to reality.

Companies like Redefine Meat are making high-volume plant-based meat printers and plan to have meat in supermarkets in a year, while others like Meat-Tech are showing off prototypes of cultured meat printers. One of the challenges for food printing will be scaling the technology to make it quicker, something Novameat is working on as it begins to enter commercial rollout phase of its plant-based meat printing technology. On the consumer front, while I don’t expect the food printers to start printing out Jamie Oliver recipes this year, companies like Savoreat are working on commercializing products for the professional space with the end-goal of eventually creating a home consumer food printer like the one you might see in a show like Upload.

Finally, these advances and technologies do not happen in a vacuum. The future of food is reliant on a multitude of new innovations and technologies. CRISPR, precision fermentation and 3D food printing are just some of the tools being interwoven and utilized together to help bring innovative new products to cultured, plant-based and other emerging food markets.

While we don’t know what 2021 will hold for us with any certainty, what we can be certain of is that progress in these important building blocks for the future of food will continue to march forward.

Novameat Gets €250,000 From Spanish Govt, Partners With Culinary Gastronomy All-Star Team From Disfrutar

Novameat, a Spanish startup that uses 3D printing technology to create whole-cuts of plant-based meat such as beef steak or pork fillets, has received €250,000 (~ $307,500 USD) from the government of Spain, according to an announcement sent to the Spoon. The funding comes via a Spanish government technology development organization called the NEOTEC Program of the Spanish Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI).

Novameat plans to use the funding to help to ramp up production of 3D printed meat through the integration of its microextrusion-technology into higher-output industrial printing machines. The company’s microextrusion technology, which intricately prints plant-based proteins at microscopic levels, was developed by Novameat CEO Giuseppe Scionti when he was a professor of bioengineering at the University of Catalunya.

The funding follows what was a fairly eventful 2020 for the company. In October, Scionti announced at the Smart Kitchen Summit that Novameat had developed a prototype to create hybrid products that combined 3D printed plant-based scaffolding with cultured meat cells. In May, the company announced it had developed a realistic plant-based pork product. Prior to that, the company announced it had developed a second generation of its plant-based steak.

As part of the news, Novameat also announced a collaboration with Disfrutar, a two-Michelin star restaurant that one list ranks as the 9th best restaurant in the world. The chefs behind Disfrutar are a part of the same culinary creative team from early molecular gastronomy pioneering restaurant El Bulli.

I asked Scionti what the collaboration with Disfrutar will look like.

“Disfrutar will have full-access to Novameat’s patented micro-extrusion technology through 3D printing.” said Scionti. “Disfrutar’s creativity lab now already has Novameat’s first 3D printer located outside Novameat’s Innovation Lab. The three chefs have been working 2 decades as El Bulli chefs and two of them (Oriol Castro and Eduard Xatruch) were part of the legendary creativity Lab of El Bulli, ElBullitaller. This group of chefs is the same that invented spherification technique of molecular gastronomy.”

Today’s funding follows a 2019 investment by New Crop Capital (sum undisclosed). Scionti told the Spoon that Novameat is planning to raise additional funding in 2021, which he expects to be a big year for the company.

“3D printing is a very fast technology to iterate and test new formulations and textures everyday, and it can be the enabler to unlock the future of personalized nutrition,” said Scionti. “2021 will be the most important year so far at Novameat as we’ll launch in restaurants, launch our scaffold as a service business model for cell-based industry, and what I care most, we’ll scale up with bigger machines to ensure we contribute to the future of planet’s health.”

If you want to see Novameat’s 3D meat printer in action you can watch the video of the printing demo at Smart Kitchen Summit below. You can also watch the company demo their scaffolding printing technology live at Food Tech Live next week (get your free ticket here).

Novameat 3D Prints Plant-Based Meat at Smart Kitchen Summit 2020

Talking The Future of Biomanufacturing With Culture Biosciences’ Will Patrick

Will Patrick has spent much of his career thinking about how to build things. During his stints at places like Google[x] where he worked on projects such Project Wing, Google’s drone delivery service, he’d gained an appreciation for the toolsets that helped innovators in the world of hardware and software rapidly innovate and accelerate their products into the market.

Over time, Patrick eventually became interested in the world of biomanufacturing. As his interest in biotech grew, one of the things he realized was that many tools he’d grown accustomed to in the world of mechanical and software engineering to help makers rapidly iterate were not there in the world of synthetic biology.

And so he decided to build them. Out of this Culture Biosciences was born, which offers a digital biomanfacturing platform in the form of cloud bioreactors as a service. Before long, some of the industry’s more interesting future food startups as well as CPGs and big pharma companies were running experiments in Culture’s bioreactors and monitoring them on the company’s data dashboards.

I talked to Patrick about this journey and where he sees Culture going in the future. To learn more about Patrick and his vision for the future of Culture, just click play below or head over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

CRISPR’d Cows: Proposed Rule Change By USDA Could Accelerate Gene-Edited Animal Production

CRISPR had quite a 2020. Not only did the cutting edge genetic engineering technique give us hope for better and faster COVID-19 tests and help advance new treatments for diseases like cancer, but its creators also received the world’s most prestigious award in science when they received the Nobel prize for chemistry for their pioneering work.

CRISPR’s also been marching forward in the food world. Pairwise, for example, made regulatory headway this year in advancing gene-edited produce in the form of a mustard green that actually tastes good and has a strong nutrition profile.

However, while we’ve seen some limited momentum when it comes to animals and CRISPR, such as making chickens more resistant to avian leukosis virus, regulatory approval for gene-edited animals has been slower ever since the FDA declared that molecularly manipulated animals needed to be regulated like drugs.

But that may soon change. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pushed out a proposed rule change suggesting that they take over the regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals from the FDA.

According to the proposed rule change, regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals for human consumption would be transitioned almost entirely to the USDA. From the release:

USDA would in most instances serve as a single point of entry for amenable species modified or developed using genetic engineering that are intended for agricultural purposes and would provide coordinated end-to-end regulatory oversight from pre-market animal pest and disease risk and human food safety reviews through post-market human food safety reviews for amenable species modified or developed using genetic engineering intended for use as human food.

First flagged by Wired, the news is an important potential development as the USDA – which has had oversight of CRISPR regulation for plant-based food – has taken a fairly laissez-faire approach relative to other US agencies. In 2018, the agency declared that CRISPR-edited crops would not require additional regulation.

With the proposed rule change, the USDA now wants to take an accelerated approach when it comes to gene-edited animals, a change that would also expand the scope to include oversight on whether the bio-engineered animals are safe for human consumption.

According to the proposed rule change, if the genetically modified animal was intended for human food consumption, the animal would undergo a risk-based and science-based review focused on food safety (in addition to animal health).

During this review, the proposed rules state that if the “USDA finds that the modification made using genetic engineering is equivalent to what can be accomplished through conventional breeding practices, the animal would not be subject to further regulation under the contemplated regulatory framework.”

If there were are resulting changes to the molecular structure of the animal outside of what would happen during traditional animal breeding – such as unintended DNA insertions – the agency would then notify the party responsible and a permit would be required to import, sell or release such an animal into a wider population.

The proposed rule change would cover pretty much all the same animal species the USDA currently regulates, from cattle and sheep to fish and poultry. The notice of proposed rule change is currently in the public comment period, which will last through February 26, 2021.

While the U.S. was the early leader in CRISPR-based intellectual property, China’s actually taken the lead when it comes to CRISPR-based agriculture innovation. This move by the U.S.’s primary food and agriculture regulatory agency to relax its oversight could help the country regain momentum as the world’s two largest economies continue to battle it out in this important future food battleground.

Whisk Creates Slack App to Help You Shop For Groceries At Work

Like many, I use Slack for a good chunk of the day as a way to communicate and collaborate with coworkers.

But now thanks to Whisk, I can start using the ubiquitous work communication platform as a way to manage grocery shopping lists and access recipes.

Announced via a blog post by Samsung NEXT (the company which acquired Whisk last year) head of product Travis Bogard, the Whisk app is available to anyone with Slack.

Interestingly, while there are plenty of food-related apps available to use on Slack, most of them are for things like ordering from food trucks or managing a work-group catering order. The Whisk app, from what I can tell, is the first one for recipe sharing or grocery lists.

This lack of personal meal journey management apps for Slack probably shouldn’t be surprising since it is, after all, a work tool. That said, the line between work and personal time has become blurry in these work-from-home pandemic times, and nowadays many of us are seamlessly switching back and forth between work projects and personal stuff like meal planning or grocery shopping.

So why not do it in Slack?

I decided to try the app out and added Whisk to our workplace Slack.

For anyone not familiar with Slack apps, using them means typing in command prompts reminiscent of DOS or, for anyone under 40, like those you might tap into an app like Terminal to run scripts or basic web prompts.

Once I had the app running, I used the register prompt to log into Whisk and authorize it to work with Slack. I then used the add item command to add a couple things to my grocery list. I then hopped over to my Whisk browser tab and there were the milk and eggs I had just added to the list.

I also used Whisk Slack app commands to bring up recipes and check out the items on my shopping list.

Would I use it in the future? Maybe. Since I use Slack all day, I like how easily accessible it is. That said, I’ve always found Slack apps a little annoying since every app has a different set of commands and I usually have to look them up when I use them. I also use voice assistants like Alexa to add items to my list (Whisk also has an Alexa integration), so I’m not sure this would replace that.

But if you are a Slack or Whisk user, you can try it out for yourself.

HakkoBako is Making Connected Fermentation Chambers for Pros and Home Foodies

While fermented food has long made up an important and tasty part of our diets, this food powered by healthy microorganisms is finding newfound interest nowadays everywhere from the high-end restaurant to the home hobbyist to the food science lab.

However, even as this century old process enters the modern day zeitgeist, there hasn’t been much innovation in the tools in recent decades that help chefs or home cooks try their hand at fermentation. Oftentimes, chefs just use a variety of mason jars and crocks to ferment their food, or just repurpose other equipment, like combi-ovens or dehydrators, to act as makeshift fermenters.

All of which got Hong Kong-based food entrepreneur Tommy Leung asking why there wasn’t more modern equipment to empower the professional or home chef when it came to fermentation. Leung saw an opportunity to create a modern piece of equipment that would enable chefs to have multiple fermentation projects in process at once, where they could manage their fermented food with precise monitoring tools while not turning their kitchens into something resembling an eighteenth-century apothecary’s lab.

The result is HakkoBako, an IoT-connected fermentation chamber for professional food producers. The HakkoBako will have both an app as well as a touchscreen on the front of the device where users can start projects, control temperature and humidity for their fermentation food, and monitor their food with precise data logs of temperature via the app. The chamber, which will have both warming and refrigeration modes, will also have an internal camera to monitor the state of projects. Users will be able to enter and save recipes on the system.

Tommy Leung in front of a HakkoBako chamber

“HakkoBako is building a fermentation chamber that lets chefs create unique and proprietary foods and flavours,” Leung told The Spoon via email. “We are using technology to make the fermentation process easier, faster and with more consistent results.”

According to Leung, the company has developed multiple prototypes that are currently being used by chefs and food developers. They’ve also started to work with a contract manufacturer in China, but the pandemic has made in-person visits to the manufacturer difficult and has put them a little behind schedule on production of the professional unit.

He also told The Spoon via email that they have plans for a home fermentation chamber that they are hoping to launch in the spring of 2021. Targeted at a price point of roughly $200 (versus around $5,000 for the commercial version), the home HakkoBako will allow users to make things like yogurt or kimchi.

Long term, the company also has plans for a fermentation lab that would be a destination for other food innovators. According to a deck Leung provided to the Spoon, the lab will “will provide support, novel ingredients and techniques with on-going testing, recording and development of the chefs recipes.”

Making Honey Without The Bee: A Conversation With Darko Mandich

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that bee colonies are collapsing around the world due to a number of persistent threats such as global warming, pesticides and yes, murder hornets.

And while that may present a challenge to the $7 billion honey industry, the focus on honey production is itself problematic for the broader bee ecosystem, since farmed honeybees compete with wild bees for food and ultimately can hurt biodiversity.

All of which is why a Serbian bee industry executive by the name of Darko Mandich became fascinated with the idea of making honey without the bees. If this sounds crazy to you, don’t worry: Darko’s soon-to-be cofounder, Aaron Schaller, initially thought it was crazy too when they first discussed the idea.

But eventually, Schaller (a molecular scientist from the University of Cal Berkeley) saw the potential in bee-less honey and soon after, MeliBio was born. From there, the nascent startup pitched their concept to Big Idea Ventures and was accepted into the future food accelerator.

Now the company is busy developing its technology to create a honey that replicates the taste, texture and mouthful of real honey, all without bees. As Darko tells me on this podcast, MeliBio is using fermentation to essentially recreate the process through which bees convert nectar to honey. The startup hopes to have its first product on the market by late 2021.

You can listen to the full conversation with Darko Mandich by clicking play below or by subscribing to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and leave a review if you like the show). You can also download the episode directly to your computer by clicking here. And, as always, you can always find more food tech news and podcasts at The Spoon.