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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Crypto

Cow NFT Platform CattlePay Paves the Way for Direct Sales With Heartland Deal

The last time we checked in with Rob Jennings of CattleProof, he was getting his cattle NFT platform off the ground. The idea was to create a permanent record of the life of a cow that followed it along the supply chain so that current and prospective owners all the way to a restaurant down the line that purchased beef would have a record of age, genetics, ranch of origin and more.

The idea is an interesting one, not only because it helps create better transparency into the history of a head of cattle, but also because it opens the door to more efficient way for prospective buyers and sellers to do business. Nowadays, if someone wants to buy a head of cattle, a sales transaction typically involves using a sale barn, an auction marketplace that facilitates the sale between buyer and seller. All well and good, except the resulting transactoin can take a week to ten days to process and often involves marketplace fees and commissions that can reach up to 10% of the total transaction.

Instead of using this slow and costly process, Jennings wants to make buying and selling cows as seamless (and low-fee) as buying or selling a stock – or NFT – through a digital marketplace. To that end, his company CattleProof has done an integration with Heartland, a payment processing company to launch CattlePay, an electronic payment system that allows cattle owners to buy and sell cattle via credit and debit cards and ACH payments.

“The idea is how do you create a more direct buyer to consumer payment system, minus all the fees and blockchain payments?” said Jennings in a interview with The Spoon. “And then, how do you inch your way towards getting real time settlement? Because that’s the other big thing: how do I get my money now?”

According to Jennings, the bigger vision of not only creating a lower-cost way to buy and sell cattle, but to create a friction-free way for buyers and sellers to connect. This means creating something akin to an Openseas for cattle, but without the complexity of having crypto wallets and all of the other blockchain related tech that often intimidates and turns off the uninitiated and non-crypto-pilled among us. To get there, CattleProof system will handle all of the web3 in the background, and offering the benefits of a blockchain proof of record and transaction system to the cattle buyers.

“Our goal is to in order to get cattle producers to participate, there’s got to be a return on investment,” Jennings told The Spoon in a recent interview. “And part of that return on investment is trying to find them ways to reduce these middleman fees.”

Jennings says he expects that the CattleProof system to launch in the first quarter of 2024.

Hack Drains FriesDAO Restaurant Project of $2.3M in What Looks Like Potentially Lethal Blow

Late last month, FriesDAO, the organization that made a splash when it raised over $5 million via a token offering earlier this year, saw its treasury raided and drained by a hacker.

According to a postmortem created by the DAO’s admins, hackers were able to access the DAO’s treasury and take all of the group’s USDC tokens:

On October 27th, 5:58PM UTC, friesDAO contracts were exploited by an attacker taking control of our own deployer address through a profanity attack vector. The hacker was able to drain the treasury of its USDC through the refund contract, drain the FRIES tokens in the staking contract, subsequently selling it all into the Uniswap pool.

The document goes pretty deep into crypto-speak to explain what happened, but the bottom line is a hacker was able to access the DAOs treasury via a crypto exploit called the Profanity flaw. There have been a number of Profanity-exploit related crypto hacks over the past couple of months and, unfortunately for FriesDAO, they are one of the latest.

The news looks like a potentially crippling blow to the DAO, which had been deep in negotiation to buy its first restaurant. Those within the DAO are continuing to try and figure out who stole the funds and figure out next steps, but things are not looking good. The overall tenor in the group’s Discord is one of resignation as they try to figure out if they can salvage the acquisition, start anew by raising new funds, or if they should just take their losses and move on.

It’s a huge bummer for an innovative organization that looked like it would be the first to create the world’s first DAO-owned restaurant. More broadly, this type of news will no doubt potentially plant seeds of doubt among decision makers at bigger brands who had been evaluating moves into the world of Web3.

Founder of Eater & Resy Launches Blackbird, a Web3 Loyalty Platform for Hospitality

Ben Leventhal is at it again.

The founder of Eater and Resy’s new startup is called Blackbird, which he describes as “a new loyalty, membership, and payments technology company.”

The company will work on building software products “that establishes and enhances connectivity between individual restaurants and their guests.” The company says they will use “a mix of web2 and web3 inventions to make it all work.”

The move by Leventhal isn’t all that surprising, in part because he’s struck gold twice already with good timing: first by recognizing the opportunity for hyperlocal food media and later through building a mobile-forward, Airbnb-integrated restaurant reservation platform in Resy.

As we wrote in August, the efforts by some to onboard restaurants onto web3 were having mixed results. The most high-profile web3 meets restaurant effort so far has been from that of Leventhal’s former Resy cofounder Gary Vaynerchuk, who generated lots of buzz early this year with its NFT restaurant concept. Vaynerchuk, not surprisingly, is participating in Blackbird’s just announced $11 million seed round.

Leventhal’s hint Blackbird will use both web3 and web2 technologies sounds like he doesn’t have any designs to be hard-core crypto purist (part of the problem for some of the earlier efforts), and instead recognizes the need to provide an approachable onramp to most in the industry. And to be sure, the best near-term bet for restaurants to baby-step into Web3 is through enhanced loyalty programs, particularly programs that reward restaurants’ true fans with utility-driven rewards that encourage even more business.

As we discussed last March with Brightloom’s Adam Brotman, it’s not just chains that could benefit; non-chain restaurants also could use an easy-to-use platform that gives them a modern way to build community and make their best customers feel special. For his part, Brotman and Brightloom are probably Blackbird’s most direct competition as a web3 loyalty platform products company, given Brightloom’s already been working with clients like WowBao to develop their web3 products, have been hiring web3 developers, and Brotman’s fascination with the topic himself.

Web3 & Bubble Tea: FriesDAO Closing In On First Restaurant Acquisition

FriesDAO is closing in on its first restaurant purchase.

The group, which managed to raise over $5 million via an initial token offering in the spring of 2022, has identified a boba tea/frozen yogurt store in New York City that it describes as an “absentee store (no daily owner operation needed).” The group says the location is currently profitable.

To make the deal even more interesting, the FriesDAO team says “a very popular NFT collection” has offered to give the group full support with possible partnership implications if the DAO chooses to brand a store with the NFT. In a post on Snapshot, FriesDAO explains that partnering up with the NFT collection (which they do not name) is attractive because, in part, any commercial revenue restrictions from the NFT license would be removed.

“This would potentially allow us to own the store directly, explore and set our own policies, increase community engagement through creative endeavors, and possibly start our own franchise.”

Over the past six months, the group has been sifting through various proposals with mixed success. In a previous announcement, FriesDAO disclosed they had been in discussions with an operator of a Jersey Mike’s franchise to buy its location, but the deal fell through once the operator backed out.

The DAO now looks like it’s found a purchase target. After getting nearly unanimous consent from backers via an online poll, the DAO is planning to send a Letter of Intent (LOI) today, FriesDAO advisor Bill Lee told The Spoon.

If the deal (which will cost about $165 thousand) goes through, I’ll be curious to learn which NFT collection the group has been in discussions with. The success of Bored & Hungry has shown that branding a restaurant with a popular NFT can add buzz and drive customer visits.

The group’s choice of a boba tea spot makes sense, since spin-up costs for new locations are likely to be much lower than that of a traditional fast food joint. Lower capex costs could help accelerate expansion should the DAO move forward with an NFT-branded franchise model.

The Effort to Onboard Restaurants to Web3 Continues, But It’s Going to Take Some Time

Over the past year, we’ve seen a rush of enthusiastic entrepreneurs and restaurant-adjacent operators announce initiatives to help onboard the world of dining into the world of web3.

How’s it going so far? Let’s just say it may take some time.

I decided to check in on some of the early efforts and see how things are going. Here’s what I found.

FriesDAO

FriesDAO flew out of the gate, pooling $5.4 million through an NFT sale that the DAO hoped to use to buy or invest in a fast food restaurant. How are they doing?

Things look to be slow-going. Reviewing some of the announcements made via the DAO’s Discord, the group began exploring potentially working with Bored & Hungry to open a second location in June. Those talks don’t seem to have progressed very far. The group also began exploring potential deals to acquire or start a new franchise with a few franchise operators, including a Jersey Mike’s owner. In early August, the FriesDAO admin team announced that the Jersey Mike’s owner they had been in conversation with is no longer looking to sell.

Bored & Hungry

And what about Bored & Hungry, the crypto-centric restaurant that launched in April of this year after restaurant operator Andy Nguyen decided to create a Bored Apes-themed restaurant using one of his Apes (Bored Ape #6184) as the central character?

After garnering lots of early buzz, the restaurant continues to plug along even after the late spring/early summer crypto crash. While there were some reports that the restaurant had stopped accepting crypto as payments, Nguyen called the reports ‘fake news’ and the restaurant continues to do brisk business (with even the occasional Snoop Dog sighting).

BurgerDAO

Late last year, BurgerDAO launched with the hopes of starting a completely Web3-centric burger franchise from scratch. The idea was to raise funds via an NFT drop and partner with a ghost kitchen operator to launch the BurgerDAO initially as a virtual restaurant, with long-term plans to create an IRL physical BurgerDAO location.

Big plans, but according to BurgerDAO founder Al Chen, real life has gotten in the way. On April 1st, Chen sent a message on Discord letting the community know the founders have run into more roadblocks than expected and are also pretty busy with their regular lives.

“…life just got in the way. We both have full-time jobs, families, and all the same shit you all deal with on a day-to-day basis. Long story short, we haven’t had as much time as earlier in the year to devote to pushing things forward on the project.”

Chen made it clear that they haven’t given up on the idea and are optimistic about BurgerDAO, but at this point, hasn’t made any additional announcements.

Devour

Devour isn’t a restaurant concept itself but instead a collection of different platforms that aim to help bring the world of restaurants into Web3. The group is creating its own blockchain token called DevourPAY, which it hopes will become the preferred token of the restaurant industry, and has launched a series of membership NFTs called the Industry Collection. They’ve launched their initial token offering through an ILO (initial liquidity offering) this week and are planning to launch a web3 food marketplace called DevourGO in September.

At this point, it’s too soon to tell how things are going with Devour, but they certainly look busy as they ramp up a bunch of different interlocking components of what they call an ecosystem. The group has something like 5 or 6 different websites, and for a restaurant operator not really accustomed to the world of web3, I have to wonder if the sheer amount of various offerings Devour is throwing out there is a bit overwhelming and confusing.

Brightloom’s Web3 Services

Adam Brotman, CEO of Brightloom, brings some digital payment street cred to the table as the guy who’s credited as the driving force behind Starbucks’ digital ordering initiative. So it wasn’t all that surprising when the company announced they were creating a web3 consulting business to help restaurant operators ease into the world of web3, especially after Brotman started making the rounds early this year talking about the potential of web3 for restaurants.

The announcement came after The Spoon had uncovered that Starbucks had brought Brotman in to advise on their move into NFTs (Brightloom has been careful not to make any announcements about being involved with Starbucks’ effort). At this point, it isn’t clear how much of the web3 push from Brightloom is simply Brotman pushing his own consulting services (he has a separate consulting group called Forum3 on his Linkedin) vs Brightloom trying to become a key player for restaurant web3.

So what do I think after checking in on some web3 restaurant initiatives? Mainly that things are going kinda slow. The crypto crash no doubt took some steam out of web3’s food service sails, but I also think that the world of dining just isn’t quite ready for this transition.

Everyday diners just want to eat and probably are confused by any mention of NFTs or a DAO. The same can probably be said for the vast majority of restaurant operators. And while platform-builders like Devour and Brightloom (and others who have made noise like Lunchbox and Nextbite) are building tools to make things easier for everyone, the reality is infrastructure building is arduous and time-consuming.

Bottom line: The world of web3 may eventually merge with restaurant dining, but don’t expect it to happen quickly.

Come With Me as I Walk Around a CPG Farmers Market in the Metaverse

Last night I walked around a farmers market. I spent about an hour walking from stand to stand, having conversations, and learning about new CPG products. Someone even offered me free candy. It was a blast!

And all of it happened in the metaverse. I attended a virtual pop-up farmers market put on by an organization called The Metamarket. The event featured over a dozen different CPG brands, each of which had a virtual exhibit stand in a virtual 2D Sims-like world that allowed me to interact with both the products and the people.

The platform The Metamarket used for the event is Gather, a virtual world/metaverse startup that started during the pandemic and has since raised $76 million in funding. Gather has some interesting features, including one called ‘proximity chatting’ in which a video pop window emerges for chats with people in the space (see below), making it a nice mashup of video game meets professional networking tool.

Each booth had someone from the company hanging around and chatting with anyone who stopped by. Most of the booths had lots of activity, whether it was company representatives describing the product or people checking out the interactive objects embedded in each booth. To interact with the objects and maneuver around the space, I used the same keyboard controls you’d use in any 2D open-world video game. The elements often included a unique discount code for a product, a link to a website, or a sign-up sheet for a newsletter. Commerce was made possible by links at the various booths to a special shopify website that allowed me to purchase products.

Below is a short video clip of me walking around the market and interacting with different elements.

A Walk Around a Farmer's Market in the Metaverse

Each company representative I chatted with told me that this was the first time they’d tried out a metaverse farmer’s market activation.

“This is this is the first one,” said Gina Shi, founder of mushroom-based jerky company Munchrooms. “I kind of like came in without really any expectations and kind of just like see what’s possible.”

Kasey Stewart, the CEO and cofounder of candy company Suckerz, said he’d been interested in web3 and has invested in NFTs, but this was the first time his company had participated in a virtual farmers market.

“I see this as the future of where people will shop,” Stewart told me. (Stewart offered to send me free candy as one of the first ten people in this booth. I happily accepted his offer).

The Metamarket organization is a collaboration between CPGD, a CPG curation and community platform, and Parade, a CPG commerce software startup. Last night’s event, which was the second farmer’s market put on by Metamarket, included 16 CPG brands, the bulk of which were food and beverage startups.

While it’s too soon to say if this is the future of CPG commerce or farmers markets, I was pleasantly surprised by how fun and easy it was to navigate around, find out about new products, and talk to the people behind those products. Sure, the Sims-style virtual world of Gather isn’t exactly the type of 3D virtual world you often hear about when folks like Zuck talk about the metaverse, but I found the simplicity of the experience to be much more approachable and less effort than what I imagine it would be like navigating a VR-centric shopping experience.

If you want to attend the next Metamarket, you can sign up here. I’ll probably see you there.

From the Paneraverse to the Wendyverse, the Food Web3 Trademark Gold Rush is On

While it’s uncertain at this point just how profitable the food industry’s efforts to build out a presence in the metaverse will be, what we do know is those sure to make out in the near term around all these food web3 initiatives are trademark attorneys.

All anyone has to do is make a casual search of the USPTO’s trademark database or check out trademark Twitter (there’s a Twitter for everything) to see that there’s been a rush by food brands to file web3-related trademarks to ensure they have their place reserved in the metaverse for whenever they’re ready to make a trip.

Coverage of these filings in the crypto-press is often templatized, usually featuring tweets from one of a couple of trademark attorneys making a name for themselves on crypto twitter by talking about different trademark filings. Whether it’s Snickers or Chuck E. Cheese or Panda Express or you name it, the stories generally tell us these brands are set to enter or headed to or already have entered the metaverse.

And the reality is that many – if not most – of the food brands aren’t heading anywhere right away but are more than likely hedging their bets by filing trademarks to make sure they stake a claim for their brand in the metaverse and have some form of trademark protection for whatever their eventual plans are.

And these hedges often take the form of an exhaustive list of different ways the company may use an NFT. Take, for example, Panera’s filing, which not only hints at Panera’s virtual world called the Paneraverse or presence in a third-party virtual world with the same name, but goes into extensive detail about every which way a restaurant could connect with their consumers via an NFT: virtual goods, tokens for real-world food, NFTs as a foundation for loyalty and incentive programs for discounts on Panera’s food, virtual food, virtual beverages, etc., etc. It’s like Panera’s legal team took a web3 word list, put it in a blender with food terms, and listed the first 200 word combinations on their trademark filing.

But not all brands are just filing long trademark applications. Some, like Wendy’s, are already building out their presence in the metaverse. On April 2nd, they opened their virtual restaurant in Horizon Worlds, a virtual destination called Wendysverse that features a restaurant, town square, and more. Last week, they announced Sunrise City, which is, believe it or not, a breakfast-oriented expansion of the Wendysverse that features gameplay complete with bacon bridges and flying biscuits. Those that enter Sunrise City can get a complimentary breakfast sandwich with purchase.

No matter what stage the effort, food-related brands of all types seem to be reserving their spot in the metaverse for whenever they decide what they want to do, including big beer companies like Miller and Budweiser, CPG brands like Mars and Kraft, and even home appliance companies like Instant Brands.

Just how seriously many of these are remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: the filings – and the buzz around them – will continue for some time.

SimulATE Spring Video Sessions: The Food Web3 Summit

Earlier this month, SimulATE Spring convened the leaders pioneering in food & web3. Now you can watch all the sessions here!

The second installment of the SimulATE event series, we explore how the world of web3 will impact restaurants, CPG, ag, community building, and more.

Subscribers to Spoon Plus can get access to all of the sessions below.

Fatburger Dropping 500 NFTs Good for a Free Burger on National Hamburger Day

Another burger joint has joined the NFT boom.

This time it’s Fatburger, who has partnered up with Supper Club, a Web3 focused food club, to create the burger chain’s first NFT drop.

Unlike some of the early moves by fast-food chains into NFTs, Fatburger is making it worth your while by adding some real-world utility to their token. Those who sign up early enough to get one of the 500 limited edition NFTs will get a coupon to redeem for a free Fatburger.

Unfortunately, however, to get access to the NFT and coupon they have to jump through a few technical hoops. From the release: Guests can access their specialty NFTs through their Solana blockchain wallet and will be able to redeem a coupon for a free Original Fatburger on their online purchase, starting June 1 through the end of the month. Once a user links their wallet to their browser, the Fatburger online ordering website will register if a user has an NFT in their Solana wallet and the coupon can be applied. Coupons will be redeemable once per NFT owner and will not include add-ons.

Maybe it’s no big deal for anyone who’s already fluent in NFTs and web3. I’m also sure there are enough Fatburger fanboys out there who will spend the time venturing into the world of web3 for the first time to learn how to install a wallet plugin on their browser, save their recovery phrase, and then connect to the Fatburger website to redeem the coupon.

But like we’ve said before (and others like Adam Brotman have been evangelizing), the consumer user experience needs to be much easier than it is now when it comes to using NFTs. My guess is it will get there- someday – where it will be as easy as tapping your phone or scanning a QR code to buy and use NFTs. Unfortunately, that point is definitely not now.

If you’d like to scoop up a Fatburger NFT on National Burger day, head on over to the Fatburger mint page early on May 28th.

Front Of House Takes an NFT Program to Smaller Restaurants

If you’ve ever taken home a souvenir menu or ashtray from your favorite restaurant, you will understand the role NFTs play in the hospitality industry. The same goes for attending a restaurant theme night or local pop-up of a new dining establishment. As Front of House (FOH) co-founder Phil Toronto eloquently puts it, a restaurant establishing a successful NFT strategy is “a beautiful merging of the digital and physical experience.”

Launching on May 18, Front of House (FOH) is a marketplace for NFTs of digital collectibles and experiences for independent restaurants. Co-founders Phil Toronto (VaynerFund), Colin Camac (former restaurateur), and Alex Ostroff (Saint Urbain) represent a mix of people with backgrounds in digital technology, advertising, and the hospitality industries. Initial clients include Wildair and Dame, with upcoming partners such as Rosella, Niche Niche, and Tokyo Record Bar.

The company’s business model is for the restaurant to keep 80% of the sale of digital collectibles. If an establishment uses a collectible as an invite to a unique dining experience, the restaurant will keep all the money from the food event.

Toronto stresses that FOH’s digital collectibles will be the digital analog to buying swag (such as a sweatshirt or tote bag) from your go-to dining establishment. Over time, he adds, the digital representations can grow to become interactive experiences that can be shared and/or enjoyed as a personal keepsake. “It’s a passport of sorts from your favorite restaurant,” the FOH co-founder told The Spoon in a recent interview.

The early adopters of using NFT as a marketing and sales tool are “scrappy entrepreneurs,” Toronto added, who had to get creative to stay afloat during the pandemic. “The commonality is that every restaurant owner interested in our program is entrepreneurial and looking to go outside the box,” he said.

Marketing and being on the cutting edge are only part of it. The impetus for jumping on board the growing NFT trend is about money. In addition to their regular dining business, an owner can collect revenue from digital collectibles, but the aspect with the most upside is creating memorable dining experiences. A key to all the possibilities is to make it simple for the customer to engage. A key to FOH’s success will be what the co-founder calls creating a frictionless experience, making it a little more than a typical eCommerce check-out experience.

“One of the avenues we’d like to explore is ticketed experiences where Front of House will work with a restaurant to buy it out for the night and have a special ticketed experience,” Toronto said. “That experience is sold through a digital collectible that lives on as a memory and a digital ticket stub you can take.”

Toronto said he is surprised that 65% of the customers he approaches get the idea and understand its value but might have a wait-and-see attitude. Once the pioneers prove NFTs successful and more than a “get rich quick” concept, he believes any reluctance will disappear. Also, Toronto commented that the NFT opportunity for restaurants isn’t limited to New York, Los Angeles, and other coastal towns. Given the hospitality business’s everyday issues, the concept will work just as well for Des Moines or any eatery wanting to explore a new business opportunity.

Yep, It Looks Like Brightloom is Powering Starbucks’ NFT Initiative

Back when we first heard that Starbucks was heading into the NFT business, I suspected a company helping them get there was a startup called Brightloom.

The reasons were pretty straightforward: Not only is Brightloom effectively a carveout of Starbucks former digital business AND Brightloom’s CEO Adam Brotman is the former of head Starbucks digital, but there’s also the fact that Howard Schultz namechecked Brotman at the employee town hall where the subject first came up.

But if there’s any remaining doubt, I think it was put to rest this week when Starbucks published a memo co-authored by Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Brady Brewer and Adam Brotman (who, on the piece, is titled a “consultant”) about NFTs last week in which the company detailed its plans. Titled We’re creating the digital Third Place, the memo describes how Starbucks sees NFTs as ushering in a “shared ownership model” for loyalty and sees them as digital “access passes” for experiences and rewards.

In some ways, Brotman and Weber’s memo echoes many of the same ideas we’ve heard Brotman speak about when asked about his thoughts on Web3. When I interviewed him in March, Brotman talked about how NFTs can be tickets to unique experiences for a restaurant’s most loyal customers.

Restaurants “know who their best customers are, either by name or some loyalty program,’” Brotman said. “And they give them an NFT. Say, ‘here’s a code to claim your free NFT. And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the NFT.”

And at last week’s SimulATE Food Web3 summit, Brotman talked about why he became fascinated with Web3. “Why I’m so turned on by the Web3 space is the idea that there’s this concept of owning a digital collectible that also doubles as an access pass.”

Brotman also discussed how the Web3-powered ownership could be a gamechanger for loyalty programs. “If you don’t understand NFTs or you don’t understand crypto, you don’t need to,” Brotman said. “If any of you ever either invested in a company, or had your own company, or had a stamp collection or a card collection, what they all have in common is that you have some skin in the game and you feel like you’re a co-owner.”

All of this may seem a bit inside baseball. Still, I think it’s newsworthy since there is a small but growing cohort of digital restaurant platformers like Brightloom, NextBite, and Lunchbox jockeying to position themselves as the restaurant onramp to Web3. And so, if Brightloom has indeed locked up the bluest of blue-chip customers (and it looks like they have), they will have established themselves as the early leader in Web3 platform horserace.

If you’d like to watch Adam Brotman talk Web3 (along with Chef Spike Mendelsohn and LA Eats’ Perrin Davidson), you can watch their session on Web3 and restaurants below.

SimulATE Spring: Web3 and Restaurants

OneRare and Honeybee Burger Partner to Bring Plant-Based Food to the Metaverse

OneRare, the first dedicated food metaverse platform just announced a collaboration with LA-based Honeybee Burger to make plant-based food “more desirable, accessible and available everywhere.”

The vegan burger, founded by former Wall Street execs, is considered a mini-chain in Southern California but has grown in popularity alongside the plant-based movement and is planning to open locations in NYC and Chicago. Honeybee plans to leverage OneRare to enter the metaverse and create a virtual location accessible to anyone around the world.

It’s a good move and one that smaller restaurant groups should watch carefully; as giants like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Chipotle unveil their proprietary “metaverse” environments that will act like virtual storefronts and communities (Wendyverse, anyone?), taking advantage of already established platforms like OneRare will be important to compete in the fast-casual dining space in the future.

Adam Weiss, CEO of Honeybee commented, “we like to think of Honeybee as an innovator, redefining the potential of vegan food in order to increase the appeal of plant-based dining globally. On the food side, that means bringing new and exciting plant-based products to our customers, including things like Nowadays chick’n nuggets…and also Akua kelp patties, which we were the first QSR to serve. This innovation extends to our business and marketing, where we were one of the first to use Regulation CF to raise funds, and now we want to be one of the first to market in the metaverse.”

For now, Honeybee will use the OneRare “foodverse” to promote plant-based food and sustainable dining and feature an NFT menu created by the vegan chain. OneRare has been busy since raising its first funding round in November 2021, announcing dozens of partnerships with food and restaurant brands along with partnerships with NFT and cryptocurrency platforms.