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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Crypto

You Can Now Buy Brave Robot’s Ice Cream with Crypto

Brave Robot is entering into the brave new world of cryptocurrencies. The company announced today that consumers can now by its ice cream made from fermented flora with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, DAI, Ethereum, Litecoin, or USD Coin. Crypto payment is available on Brave Robot’s direct-to-consumer website and was made possible through a partnership with Coinbase Commerce.

Brave Robot’s ice cream is made using Perfect Day’s technology, which ferments micro-flora organisms to recreate dairy proteins. The result is animal-free milk, ice cream and other dairy products that closely mimic “the real thing.”

In its press announcement, Brave Robot explained the crypto move by writing:

With millennials and Gen Z adopting decentralized currencies and blockchain technology becoming one of the most significant technological innovations, Brave Robot is thrilled to integrate cryptocurrency payment options for consumers to facilitate secure online transactions through Coinbase Commerce. 

Cryptocurrencies have made headlines throughout the year because of a combination of sky-high values (one bitcoin was worth as much as almost $65,000 in April of this year) and its volatility (bitcoin fell to $29,000 per coin in July before rebounding back up to $46,000 as of this writing). This creates a bit of a dicey proposition for Brave Robot. The crypto people use to pay for ice cream today could be worth a lot more or a lot less in the coming weeks depending on the markets (excluding USD Coin, which stays at $1).

But raging volatility aside, cryptocurrencies represent a totally new way of thinking about money, just as Brave Robot/Perfect Day represent new ways of thinking about dairy. And at the very least, this stunt could help establish crypto as a legitimate payment method. So the marriage of the two actually makes sense.

A Virtual Restaurant Brand to Support Bitcoin, ‘Take On’ Big Pizza

Bitcoin Pizza Day is coming up, which makes it an apt time to launch a bitcoin-themed virtual pizza restaurant. Anthony Pompliano, an entrepreneur and investor, announced today he is launching Bitcoin Pizza, a pop-up restaurant brand that will partner with independent pizza shops to deliver pies from May 22–29. (May 22 is the official Bitcoin Pizza Day.)

May 22, otherwise known as Bitcoin Pizza Day, will mark the 11-year anniversary of the world’s first commercial transaction done with digital currency — for two pizzas, as it happens. Papa John’s provided the pies at the time, but don’t expect it or any other major chains to be a part of Pompliano’s pop-up shop this weekend. The brand’s website flatly states that “Bitcoin Pizza is the first decentralized pizza brand uniting our favorite neighborhood pizzerias under one roof to take on Big Pizza.”

To do that, the brand has partnered with indie shops around the country, which will make and deliver a special menu of five different pies. Sides and drinks will also be available. Customers can order for delivery or pickup from the Bitcoin Pizza website. So far, participating cities include San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, Houston, Miami, Washington, D.C., NYC, Boston, and Chicago. More are slated to be announced.

Proceeds go to the participating restaurants, and some to the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund. “Every pizza benefits open-source developers working to make the Bitcoin network more private, decentralized, and resilient,” states the Bitcoin Pizza website. 

There’s just one thing Bitcoin Pizza doesn’t do: accept crypto for currency. Right now, customers that order pizzas can pay with a credit card or Google Pay. According to an interview with Restaurant Business, Bitcoin Pizza is looking into adding crypto as a payment option. Which would make sense, given all of the above.

Bitcoin Pizza is a temporary brand for now. According to Popchew, with whom Pompliano worked to launch Bitcoin Pizza, the brand will relaunch as a permanent operation in the near future.

Should Food Tech Cos Fuel Bitcoin Adoption?

For those following the cryptocurrency markets, this weekend saw a big milestone as Ethereum passed the $3,000 mark. That still pales in comparison to Bitcoin’s price tag of nearly $58,000 per coin (at the time of this writing), but it reinforces that there is growing interest in digital currencies among the general public.

As such, I thought it was worth re-surfacing a small bit my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote about Bitcoin in her most recent restaurant tech newsletter over the weekend:

Landry’s a restaurant group that owns Morton’s The Steakhouse and Bubba Gump’s Shrimp, said in a recent interview that most of the company’s restaurant brands will start accepting bitcoin as payment in the coming months. CEO Tilman Fertitta cited “the next 90 days” as a timeframe.

Cryptocurrencies actually have a long history with food. Pizza, of all things, was one of the first things “purchased” with Bitcoin. In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 Bitcoins with someone in exchange for them ordering him Papa Johns.

We’ve seen crypto gain acceptance in fits and starts since then. Other restaurant chains have dabbled in accepting Bitcoin, though these are more one-offs in various regions: Burger Kings and Pizza Huts in Venezuela, KFC Canada (for a limited time), some Subway stores, for example. Ramen vending machine, Yo-Kai Express accepted Bitcoin at one point.

But we’re starting to see more acceptance of crypto from big, established companies. Whole Foods started accepting cryptocurrency back in 2019. In April of this year, you could start buying Starbucks with Bitcoin through the Bakkt digital wallet. Chipotle used Bitcoin as the backbone of a promotional stunt. Landry’s jumping into crypto is another big company pushing acceptance of Bitcoin forward.

This is not a financial blog, so this post should not be construed as advice. But as more retail investors start buying crypto, and well established companies like PayPal and Tesla begin to adopt Bitcoin, is there a bigger opportunity for food tech?

At first, adopting cryptocurrencies might seem like a natural fit for many of the companies we cover. Restaurants, grocery retailers, vending machine companies are all looking to streamline and automate much of their operations. Adding a universal digital currency available anywhere in the world could, in theory, could remove some friction from the transaction process, and generate more sales.

But there are definite pitfalls to adopting a cryptocurrency. The whole process is still very complex. Not only are there are ton of cryptocurrencies with various utilities and values (and there are some shady players out there), just the act of buying and spending cryptocurrency is still complicated for the average consumer. Cryptocurrencies are also still volatile. Yes, the overall trend for Bitcoin over the past year has been a hockey stick, but it still has wild valuation swings, so the money you take in today could be worth a lot less an hour later. And then there are tax and regulatory issues around crypto currencies that haven’t been fully figured out yet.

We appear to be at some kind of public perception inflection point for cryptocurrencies. While this bull run could be interrupted with a severe downturn, there are more people than ever learning about, buying and spending Bitcoin. That’s an opportunity for sure, but one with no small amount of risk.

The Creators Behind Rare Pizzas Want to Use Pizza Art NFTs to Fund a Global Real-World Pizza Party

If there was ever a way to mix the white-hot concept of NFT (non-fungible tokens) with food — outside of opportunistic taco chain promotions that is — making and selling unique digital pieces of pizza art as a way to raise money for real-world pizza purchases is a logical place to start.

And that’s exactly what a collective of creators behind the Rare Pizzas NFT project plan to do.

The collective, which details their plans via a “Pizza Manifesto” in a publicly available “Cheesepaper,” plans to use artwork from 300 or so digital “toppings” artists to “algorithmically” create digital pizza NFTs. These unique pieces of digital art will then be sold via NFT marketplaces such as Opensea and Rarible.

Using the funds from the pizza art NFTs and community donations, Rare Pizzas plans to give away up to 10,000 pizzas on May 22, which is national Bitcoin Pizza Day.

What’s Bitcoin Pizza Day? It’s the annual anniversary of the first recorded commercial transaction using bitcoin, when computer programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. And now every year on the anniversary of that sale, the community celebrates this now very expensive pizza transaction and publications like Business Insider writes stories about how much ₿10 million is worth in today’s dollars (which is a lot).

The first NFTs of pizza art have already started to drop (on Pi day, of course), so if you want to get in on the NFT-pizza party early, you can load up your Blockchain wallet and head over and start shopping.

If you’re a pizza shop or restaurant and want to get in on the action, you can sign up here. Better hurry: the first 314 participating shops will get a Rare Pizza NFT.