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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Data Insights

When It Comes to Cooking Videos, Gen Zers Love TikTok, Millennials Embrace YouTube

As a former industry analyst, I’m a sucker for survey research exploring how we cook, eat, and shop for food. Luckily for me, word of a new research study landed in my inbox this morning from (of all places) Home Run Inn Pizza. Okay, so not exactly Nielsen, but the study used a good sample size (2,000 US respondents) and had a mix of gender and regional representation. In other words, it seemed to be designed well enough to elicit decent results.

The survey focused on food behavior by Gen Z and Millennials. I’d seen studies like this before – heck, we’ve even conducted them here at The Spoon – but what stood out to me about this one was just how vital the dominant video platforms are nowadays when it comes to gaining cooking inspiration. According to the survey, 71% of Gen Z (between ages 9 and 24) and 67% of Millennials watch cooking videos but differ substantially in what platforms they watch the videos on.

Source: Home Run Inn

According to the study, Gen Zers are more than twice as likely (38% compared to 16% of Millennials) to watch cooking videos on TikTok. A more significant percentage of both groups said they watch cooking videos on YouTube, but Millennials usage far outpaced Gen Z respondents (66% of Millennials compared to 47% for Gen Z). Instagram usage was surprisingly low, with only 7% of Millennials and 4% of Gen Z saying they watch cooking videos on the platform. Neither Millennials (9%) nor Gen Z (3%) watched much traditional TV when watching cooking videos. According to the survey, both generations – 56% of Gen Z and 29% of Millennials – use TikTok for recipe discovery and learning cooking techniques.

Source: Home Run Inn

Another surprising data set was the kitchen gear each used to cook food. According to the survey, both generations rely most heavily on the stovetop, with two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennials saying that was their primary appliance. Interestingly, only 10% of Gen Z and 8% of Millennials said air fryers were their go-to, and an even smaller percentage – 6% for Gen Z and 4% for Millennials – said the microwave oven was their primary cooking appliance. For some reason, the survey didn’t ask about pressure cookers, an oversight, in my opinion, despite the struggles of the pioneering Instant Pot.

Finally, a significant percentage of both generations can be scolded for being poor company when using technology while breaking bread with others. According to the survey, 81% of Gen Z admit they have stared at their phone while dining with others, compared to 60% of Millennials.

If you’d like to see the study’s full results, you can find it here.

This Company is Using Baker’s Yeast to Create Invisible Barcodes That Track Food Through the Supply Chain

In a world where food-borne illnesses and food fraud are happening at ever-greater frequencies, tracking food provenance through the supply chain is becoming increasingly critical. The challenge, however, is that the further an ingredient travels from the farm to our plate, the harder it becomes to determine where it came from.

Enter the barcode made from baker’s yeast. A company out of Canada named Index Biosystems has developed a way to use nothing more than the single-cell microorganism and water – combined with its proprietary tracking software – to trace the point of origin for pretty much any type of food product.

According to Index, the company can create a BioTag – the company’s name for its baker’s yeast barcode – by mixing baker’s yeast in extremely trace with water, then spraying or misting it onto a product such as wheat. The spray equipment that applies the water/BioTag mixture varies, but Index says it’s usually just a simple nozzle. The company says that BioTags are incredibly sticky once applied and remain attached to the surface of the grains, withstanding the milling process while remaining detectable in flour. To detect the BioTag, the company or one of its customers uses molecular detection techniques such as PCR and DNA sequencing (because the “bar code” is essentially the unique DNA sequence of the baker’s yeast).

According to Index’s CEO Mike Borg, the company’s technology only needs a small sample of flour – a metric gram – to determine every farm involved in producing the wheat that made that flour. He says that with the company’s BioTags and GS1 standards, they can verify the carbon footprint of a slice of bread.

Borg says that because the BioTag does not involve any genetic modification, the company has already received approval for using the tags in food products from the U.S. FDA and Health Canada. He also says the platform has been proven across various products ranging from commodities to pharmaceuticals.

The challenge of food traceability has been one of the biggest focuses in the food industry in recent years, leading to various approaches, such as NFTs for cattle to digestible food sensors. But by using a DNA-based tracking approach using something as simple as baker’s yeast, Index has essentially taken the bar code concept and integrated it into the food itself.

2023 Restaurant Tech EcoSystem: Nourishing the Bottom Line

In collaboration between TechTable and Vita Vera Ventures, we are pleased to share an updated 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem map.

We all saw that the pandemic brought a wave of experimentation in the restaurant tech space, but we also know that tech-driven change is not always linear. 

In early 2022, we made bold predictions about the restaurant tech environment in 2023, as we anticipated numerous acquihires ahead (acquisitions primarily driven by tech talent vs strategic tech value). This was due to the tight tech labor market (at the time) and the increasingly challenging funding and interest rate conditions. 

However, with the recent wave of macro tech layoffs, the tech labor market is no longer tight, and we believe more restaurant tech companies may be forced to shut down rather than finding a soft landing through acquisition. We’ve already seen a strong reset on requirements for capital efficiency and valuations of startups in the sector. This macro shift may create potential for rollup opportunities, but many early-stage assets across the sector are overfunded single-point solutions and still subscale.

This is ironic as the need for tech-driven solutions has never been stronger, but companies without the right growth metrics will likely struggle to survive. The inflationary environment is also forcing harder decisions for operators, which may further dampen their willingness to engage with new solutions.

With that in mind, we are pleased to share our 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem, which serves as a current heat map of the broader ecosystem within the US (and is clearly not exhaustive). 

Click here to enlarge/download image of map. Click here for downloadable PDF.

The Journey from Point Solutions to Comprehensive Tech Stacks

While single-point solutions for things like online ordering, loyalty programs, and delivery were popular during the pandemic, we have reached a moment now with perhaps too many point solutions in the market. 

Tech stacks that require too many logins are now in fact creating a cognitive burden for employees, rather than the intended promise of efficiency and ease of use. As a result, operators are beginning to seek integrated systems and smaller tech stacks that can do more. (See commentary in the previous section about rollup opportunities!) 

Restaurant tech advisor David Drinan succinctly identifies the near-term priority for most operators: “The restaurant industry is thirsty for technology innovation that will deliver high margin, incremental revenue.”

On the operational side, managers are still struggling with certain areas such as scheduling and inventory management. These tasks can be time-consuming, especially for independent restaurant owners who have limited resources. As a result, we have seen a growth category of solutions that can automate these functions and provide real-time data to help operators make informed decisions.

Help *Still* Wanted   

The labor shortage in the restaurant industry has been a major challenge for operators in recent years, and labor optimization is still at the top of every operator’s mind. The pandemic caused many workers to permanently leave the hospitality industry, leaving restaurants short-staffed. 

According to the National Restaurant Association, almost two-thirds of US restaurant operators say they do not have enough employees to support existing demand. Instead of replacing this lost workforce, many operators are turning to tech to automate more functions and reduce the need for human labor. 

From digital menus and ordering kiosks to automated kitchen equipment, there are many ways that technology can help restaurants operate more efficiently with fewer employees. By automating basic tasks such as taking orders and processing payments, operators can free up their staff to focus on more complex tasks that require human expertise, such as customer service and food preparation.

Another trend the restaurant industry is grappling with is the changing expectations of younger workers when it comes to the employer/employee relationship. With more emphasis on work-life balance, career development, and job satisfaction, younger workers are looking for more than just a paycheck. 

To meet these expectations, operators are looking for workforce management solutions that can help to improve engagement, development, and rewards for their employees. This includes tools for tracking and managing schedules, as well as innovative solutions for tip outs and other compensation mechanisms. By investing in these solutions, operators can not only attract and retain top talent but also improve the overall efficiency and productivity of their workforce.

Finally, it is worth noting that basic scheduling and labor management tools can have a significant impact on profitability by reducing labor costs and improving operational efficiency. By automating scheduling and timekeeping, for example, restaurants can reduce the likelihood of overstaffing or understaffing, which can be costly in terms of wasted labor or lost sales opportunities. 

In the end, the ability to leverage technology to optimize labor is critical for restaurants to remain competitive in a challenging operating environment. While kiosks and text ordering have shown promise in the QSR space, there are many other opportunities for technology to make a positive impact on the industry as a whole.

Ghost Kitchens: It’s Even More Complicated

In our 2021 restaurant tech retrospective, we had a lot to say about this growing subsector, including the challenges for success (a.k.a. profitability) within the confines of a ghost kitchen business model.  

Now, as the concept of virtual and ghost kitchens continues to evolve even further, it’s important for operators to understand the complexities involved and navigate these challenges to build successful ghost kitchen operations.

One major obstacle has been the potential for tension between virtual brands and existing businesses, where adding virtual brands can lead to direct competition with their own existing businesses. Finding the right tech and operational partner to balance between these two is key.

Additionally, ensuring food safety and maintaining quality standards across multiple brands can be a challenge. Many of the generic virtual brands have lacked distinct value or clear taste standards, leading to underwhelming food quality issues and removal from the major third-party delivery platforms.

Last Mile Magic

Making the economics work for restaurant delivery is a growing priority for the industry. This includes better interoperability between POS/Kitchen systems and delivery providers, better routing and batching systems, localized kitchens, and of course even the mode of transportation for delivery.

We are tracking over 20 companies in the North American unattended last mile category, but it is still early days with most (all?) of the solutions operating in limited geographies and customer trials. So we have left this slice off the infographic for 2023, but don’t forget to keep your eyes on the sky, as we’ve seen recent growth of backyard drone delivery companies which are proving to be faster and better for the environment (if they can outweigh the noise and regulatory concerns).

GenAI on the Menu

Tech entrepreneurs have long dreamed of personalized food recommendations, but few have succeeded in creating true personalization beyond dietary concerns, allergens, or ingredient likes/dislikes. 

However, we have now reached a unique moment where new technologies like ChatGPT will be able to create meaningful and personalized interactions with guests. This has always been the premise of a variety of AI-driven restaurant tech startups, but the ability to leverage the underlying data to engage and interact with guests in a truly personal and conversational manner is game-changing. 

By using data from previous orders and interactions alone, ChatGPT can help to create a more tailored experience for guests, from recommending menu items to offering personalized promotions. ChatGPT can become a critical part of a restaurant’s marketing team by creating content, with the ability to easily translate to different languages as well. This could give operators a crucial competitive advantage as consumers demand more personalized experiences. We have only begun to see the capabilities of ChatGPT with free templates being offered to restaurant operators already.

Moreover, conversational AI like ChatGPT can also be a valuable tool for restaurant operators seeking to understand their own operating metrics. By integrating ChatGPT into their tech stack, operators can ask natural language questions and receive real-time responses, empowering them to make informed decisions about their operations.

Emerging Restaurant Tech Concepts to Watch

  • Chat/AI across marketing and operations
  • Tech-enabled employee support and training (for example, personalized perks, tip-out options, or language choices) 
  • AI for scheduling to free up managers
  • Dynamic pricing
  • Reusable containers + tech-driven circular economy for foodservice 

Looking ahead –  As always, we welcome your thoughts and reactions, and look forward to continuing to follow this sector together in the coming years. Reach out to us: Brita@vitavc.com and hello@techtablesummit.com. 

Breadwinner Launches Presale for Its Sensor-Powered Sourdough Starter Monitoring Tool

If you thought sourdough mania ended when the pandemic wound down, it’s worth scanning social media to realize nothing is further from the truth. The groups and rosters of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram overflow with topics as diverse as “Sourdough Starters – Sourdough Support Group,” “Sourdough Geeks,” and “Sourdough Bread Bakers India.”

Sourdough is about community; no one knows that better than Fred Benenson, the man behind Breadwinner, a sensor-driven tool that helps home bakers manage their sourdough starters. Breadwinner, a high-tech jar lid, launches its crowdfunding campaign today, hoping to hit $35,000 in pledges. This new entry to the crowd-funding arena is a data drive device that uses battery-powered sensors to measure a starter’s height and temperature; Breadwinner and its companion app seamlessly sync with the cloud to record the starter’s behavior over 36 hours. The crowdfunding campaign even includes an option for an add-on where Benenson and company will send you Benenson’s own Breadberry starter.

Once your starter hits its peak fermentation, Breadwinner lets you know it’s time to start making your dough and gives you a precise measurement of how long it took (e.g., “Your starter took 9 hours and 32 minutes to reach its peak.”)

Benenson’s interest in sourdough blossomed when he happened upon a cooking class where the guy teaching it “has a Ph.D. in yeast biology.” It became a learning experience for the tech veteran starting around 2010 when his journey began into the finer aspects of working with a starter. After immersing himself in his work at Kickstarter, Benenson took a break around 2018 and 2019 and dug into the social media sourdough world. Tickled when he learned that people named their starter cultures, Benenson was ready to make an impact in the space.

“It was really a little bit of a mystery when it behaved well and when it didn’t,” Benenson told The Spoon in a recent interview. “I knew if I kept on it, (the starter) would get into shape.” Deploying his refined data skills, he made a spreadsheet to help him track his starter’s behavior and learn its optimal time for baking.

Success with an early prototype of Breadwinner led to some positive feedback which encouraged Benenson to enlist the help of some hardware experts and build the product he brings to market on Kickstarter.

“I thought, okay, if I could make (the initial version) work, and people would spend $150 on it, there’s a market here,” Benenson said. “I thought I would sell a dozen, which would’ve been a successful beta. But we ended up selling three or four dozen of them, got some nice writeups, and got on people’s radar. And I was like, oh, okay. This is, there’s enough of a market for me to take it to the next phase.”

While other products manage or facilitate manipulation of sourdough starters, Benenson knew building a community around his Breadwinner would give it an edge. The role of community with Breadwinner is for users to share recipes, provide each other tips and tricks, and even if need be, offer tech support.

“There’s a couple of reasons I’ve decided to start with a community,” he explained. “First is it’s kind of just my intuition, and I spent a lot of time in that kind of open source and Wikipedia and Creative Commons world before I worked at Kickstarter. And when I worked at Kickstarter, I think one of the defining features of running Kickstarter projects was that you get a really great community at the end of it. And those people follow you, and if you treat them well and you’re honest and straightforward with them, they’re fans for life.”

You can check out the Breadwinner crowdfunding campaign here.

Introducing Breadwinner

Shiru’s Partnership With Puratos Adds Further Credibility to its Protein Discovery Platform

In the world of food tech, decisions made on viable data are good, and a lot of data is even better. But with Shiru, a functional ingredient discovery company, with a dataset of more than 450 million known proteins, you are in rarified air and a welcome partner to forward-thinking companies.

With that in mind, Shiru has announced a new partnership with Puratos, a Belgium-based company that supplies food ingredients for bakeries. Shiru’s Flourish platform will evaluate naturally occurring proteins that could serve as a next-generation egg replacement.

“At Puratos, we truly believe that collaborations can fuel innovation within the food ecosystem,” stated Paul Baisier, Chief R&D Officer at Puratos. “As a company rooted in biology and science, Shiru is the perfect partner in the Puratos’s journey to finding novel uses for proteins discovered by Shiru’s Flourish platform as functional food ingredients that are sustainable, healthy, and delicious. Together with Shiru, we will be able to accelerate our plant-based product innovation pipeline for the benefit of our customers and consumers.”

Julian Lewis, Shiru’s Vice President of Business Development, told The Spoon why his company is excited about this partnership. “(Puratos) will help us scale up these (egg replacement) proteins using their fermentation facilities to a large kind of food grade sample, where we can then do more extensive food application testing. And through this partnership, we have a clear path to fully scaling these ingredients and bringing them to market.”

At this stage of its life cycle, Alameda, Calif.-based Shiru lives for such a partnership. Its database Flourish Flourish uses AI and machine learning to analyze its database of nearly 450 million proteins found in nature. Each application—for example, a plant-based meat company that wants to add taste to its burgers—identifies ingredients that will solve that specific functional ingredient challenge. This business model, Lewis explains, might expand to his company by commercializing some of its discoveries.

“There’ll be other food categories where we might collaborate, or we might do it ourselves,” Lewis said of opportunities down the road. “We might end up in a hybrid where we’re doing some stuff ourselves and collaborating with experts in other fields just to accelerate its market path.”

Functionality is Shiru’s secret sauce, which is the ability to target a specific property of a particular food product. Lewis explains:

“There are three categories we can play in. There’s replace in which we substitute an ingredient for one that, for example, doesn’t work properly. A second is taste. And what we mean by that is some plant-based foods are not that good, and I have yet to find a vegan cheese that works. Lastly, it is to transform. What new foods could be generated in the future that is not replacing traditional products, which are just new things? And maybe we can do that by discovering new functional protein.”

One of the side benefits of working with a complex database is the ability to help food manufacturers get away from using relatively unhealthy ingredients in some plant-based products that give the impression of being a clean alternative. “We’re aiming to provide a much better toolkit of ingredients to the food developers trying to create plant-based foods,” Lewis said.

Lewis adds that while Shiru is currently generally focused on the plant-based world, there’s no reason it will not be a player as the cultured food business develops. “All food has, I would say, taste and texture challenges, so with cultured meats, some additional ingredients may be required. And we’re already working on the early stage with players in that space as well. Our goal is to create more sustainable food ingredients that are both required and interesting.”

The Digital Twin Emerges as Tool For Rapid FoodTech Product Iteration

Changing eating habits and preferences, accelerated by a pandemic, demand different product designs and SKUs. Start-up food companies are increasing their market share with innovative new products. Added up, all of this continual competition in the food space is causing pressure for brands of all sizes for the rapid iteration of food products and their processes.

A new application is emerging that helps food companies deal with all this change, something that at once tracks consumer demand and product details to provide actionable insights for brands in their operations and with their supply chain partners. This new tool is the digital twin.

IBM is one company investing in the digital twin application as software for food companies and manufacturers. From their perspective, a digital twin is a virtual model designed to accurately reflect a physical object. Informed by data, the virtual model can be used to run simulations, study performance issues and generate possible improvement scenarios, all with the goal of developing valuable insights – which can then be applied back to the original physical object.

Transparency becomes increasingly important as consumers seek healthier ingredients and knowledge of food origins. Some brands provide details on their working conditions, plans for a smaller carbon footprint, sustainable packaging design, or community benefits as reasons to purchase their products. The digital twin improves the responsiveness of food brands by gaining deeper insights via consumer- and market- feedback data from multiple sources. Organized data helps food companies reformulate recipes, formats, or product designs in response to those signals.

At BMO’s 15th annual Global Farm-to-Market conference in 2020, Mike Duffy, CEO of New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers noted how the ongoing pandemic made it clear that technology will play a key role in efficient and flexible supply chains. Duffy added ‘it is important how you increase collaboration with all your [supply chain] partners. How do you get to better connectivity, forecasting, and faster decision-making? [There has been] a lack of visibility of products moving through the supply chain. There is a big disconnect from demand signal to production [response]. How do you shorten the cycle time to make manufacturing more responsive to shifts in consumer demand so that there isn’t obsolete or excess inventory?’. It is the goal of digital twin software to provide actionable and product-specific information responding to changing demands from consumers or supply chain partners.

Leading food companies (and rising start-ups) are building a framework with their suppliers and end-customers in an integrated response system facilitated by the digital twin. It allows them to gain the insights to produce products or modify them. For example, the digital twin can estimate modifications with IoT feedback from retail, foodservice, or digital consumer surveys. Digital threads incorporate a range of information and benchmark performance to identify potential opportunities. It simulates the impact of changing raw materials or packaging, factors that may see rising market preference. As part of the support function for the food company, the digital twin more accurately validates production with real-world supply chain and operations information.

For automation leader Siemens, the digital twin helps the food sector become more flexible to drive sustained innovation through the timely use of information. The physical and digital are integrated for continual improvement of products through process updates. Siemens’ software manages data security, protection, and privacy as required, along with transparency where regulated or expected by governments or consumers. As a long-time leader in manufacturing innovation and operations design, Siemens supports how brands respond to change. Combined with lifecycle management techniques, digital twinning accelerates ‘on-point’ production, and ensures faster responsiveness.

Siemens’ Simcenter digital twin software relies on continual feedback supporting the testing and iteration of production lines, from supply chain logistics with partners at the source, to grocery retail or foodservice. Simulations in the digital twin help validate product prototyping with internal operations tests. The cost of failure is significantly less for a virtual prototype compared to a physical, in-market version. For example, UK-based TrakRap works with Siemens digital twinning software to reduce the costs of operations modifications such as packaging. The transparency of the application builds trust across the value chain.

New companies, such as Twinthread use digital twin applications to make it easier for small and medium-sized food companies to model their factory and in turn gain insights that optimize production. Utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning, Twinthread provides rapid value via operations cost savings, such as greater energy efficiency, and quality control.

Companies such as Twinthread and Siemens are supporting a revolution in food tech with the digital twin serving as the end-to-end applied tool in both the supply chain and for product management. Digital twins are timely in their ability to quickly respond to and improve product design, one day potentially anticipating pandemic impacts, or climate-, social-, trade- and geopolitical- related implications to food product development and innovation. Digital twins are design thinking in action, placing emphasis on consumer- and market-centric innovation ecosystems which remove the silos between demand signal and production response.

BentoBox Survey: Restaurants & Their Customers Embrace Direct Online Ordering

It’s clear that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way restaurants do business. As a purveyor of online marketing and commerce solutions for the hospitality industry, New York-based company BentoBox recently decided to quantify some of those changes.

BentoBox saw a jump in business during the pandemic, with more restaurants seeking the online tools that the company offers. The team used data from that growing customer base to understand how the pandemic has reshaped the food industry since March 2020—and what might be next for restaurants.

“We mined all our data to see what it says about what’s going on in the market,” BentoBox’s Chief Marketing Officer Darcy Kurtz told The Spoon in a recent Zoom interview. “That’s been especially important these last couple of years, because things are shifting so quickly, and so dramatically.”

One of the biggest themes in the data was a rise in costs for restaurants, reflected in price increases on restaurants’ online menus. “The food itself is costing more, labor is costing significantly more when you can even get it, and real estate costs are significantly higher,” Kurtz said. And for restaurants, which operated on thin margins even before the pandemic, those price increases can sting.

One way to combat rising costs is by switching to the ghost kitchen model–and BentoBox saw a 100% increase in the number of ghost kitchens using its software platform this year, according to the company’s recently published report. The ghost kitchen model also has a relatively low cost of entry, allowing new restaurants to launch more easily without the need for heavy investment.

BentoBox’s pool of restaurant customers has grown by almost 60% since March 2020. Kurtz attributed that boom in business to a new emphasis on the importance of restaurants’ virtual experiences. “Today, your digital presence is really your front door,” Kurtz said. That’s especially true for ghost kitchens, which rely completely on their online presences to get discovered.

The majority of the company’s growth was driven by increased sales of online ordering tools. Before the pandemic, many restaurants didn’t have direct online ordering functions on their own websites, instead relying on third-party platforms like GrubHub and Uber Eats.

“But when COVID hit and there was only one way of getting revenue, restaurants added their own online ordering paths in droves,” Kurtz said. And diners have responded: According to the report, BentoBox found a 54% year-over-year increase in direct online order volume. The company also noted a 200% increase in restaurants’ monthly revenue through digital loyalty programs.

Kurtz said that loyalty to local restaurants drove these trends: “People have learned that third party ordering apps take a lot of money from their favorite restaurants. So once their favorite restaurants got online ordering, customers said ‘oh, I’ll just go direct because I know that’s best for my local restaurants.’”

With the Omicron variant rearing its head, there’s no way to be certain of how in-person restaurant business will recover in the near future. But BentoBox’s data is clear on one thing: Online ordering is here to stay.

“What we’re finding is that people are just eating out more. They’re still doing online ordering—and they’re doing it all week, not just on the weekends,” Kurtz said. “They found out how convenient it is, and they found out that delivery food can still taste great. So I think for restaurants, the great news is that there are new revenue streams and the total available market of diners has grown.”

But Kurtz predicted that restaurants may struggle to support that expanded business model in an ecosystem where labor is scarcer and inputs cost more.

Because the pandemic has shifted the rhythm of delivery demand, restaurants will also have to adapt to a new schedule. “The fact that Fridays haven’t rebounded is a signal that the hybrid work model is going to have an effect on the operational cadence of these restaurants,” Kurtz said. “Especially with restaurants that are in business districts, they’re really going to have to figure out how to shift their operations, because it’s not going to be a steady five-day-a-week sort of operation.”

With restaurants’ online presence growing in importance, we’re likely to see more growth for commerce and marketing solutions companies like BentoBox. And in turn, that growth should provide more consolidated data on the new shape that the industry is taking.

With New Funding in Hand, TrusTrace Looks To Make Supply Chains More Sustainable

Supply chain is the buzz phrase filling daily news headlines related to empty supermarket shelves and this year’s hottest toys being in short supply. Specifically, one longer-term issue is the traceability of products—especially food and other perishables—as consumers become increasingly conscious of their health and the environment.

Companies such as Stockholm-based TrusTrace are among those who are applying a combination of technologies to empower suppliers and consumers in the flow of information from field or processing plant to table. To further its growth in this space, the company recently received a $6 million investment from Industrifonden and Fairpoint Capital. The funds will be used for product development, global expansion, and building out the company’s management team.


“TrusTrace enables product-level traceability and supply chain transparency to drive better, more sustainably-conscious and socially responsible sourcing decisions,” said Shameek Ghosh, CEO, and Co-Founder of TrusTrace said in an interview with The Spoon. “With this latest funding round, we will continue leveraging cutting-edge technology and the best minds in the industry to achieve positive, restorative change for people and the planet.”

Consumer interest in the details about the origins of their various foods is becoming more than just a nice-to-have. According to research by ADM, the trend had been growing for several years with the pandemic, and it’s the associated concerns about health and safety, acting as a catalyst for a greater understanding of what is in everything from farm-fresh tomatoes to canned string beans. Global supplier ADM discovered 58% of global consumers would be more concerned with locality claims because of COVID-19. In addition, ADM reports that 38% of global consumers will back their interest in sustainability with their wallets and pay more for verified products.

Among the details of sustainability, tracing include place of origin, ingredients, the use of chemicals, processing stops along the route, and other factors related to the environment.


TrusTrace hopes to expand beyond its current client base, including Coop, a Swedish retail chain. As Ghosh explains, one of TrusTrace’s signature advantages is that it fully integrates with a client’s ERP system using blockchain and its own proprietary technology. Being connected to Coop’s inventory management system allows TrusTrace to collect accurate information to document sustainability, which measures ten different parameters across 10,000 food products. In simple terms, TrusTrace creates a mapping of a product’s supply chain, which allows a customer to know essential details about a given product.


In the case of Coop, consumers can use an application that deploys a scanner to investigate the sustainability of a product and manifest that information in an easy-to-read diagram. The parameters used by Coop via its TrusTace implementation are based on an agreement by the county’s leading companies in conjunction with The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).


Ghosh hopes to bring TrusTrace to major retailers across Europe in the coming months and is even eyeing the United States as a potential target. At issue, he explains, is the need for national consensus on specific areas to measure to create a helpful mapping. The lack of a universal agreement in sustainability will be a hindrance to educating consumers worldwide.


TrusTrace is not alone in looking to cash in on this trend. Other companies in this space include Alpharetta, GA-based Aptean, IBM with its Food Trust product, and New York-based ripe.io

4.5 Million Thermomix Owners are Using the Cookidoo Online Recipe Platform

While a number of companies are trying to build cooking robots for the home, the closest thing to a do-everything cooking appliance on the market today is the Thermomix.

And nowadays, it seems a lot of homes have a Thermomix, at least according to a recent post by the company.

According to the post, Thermomix sold one TM6, the latest generation multicooker, every 23 seconds in 2020, which translates to about 1.37 million for the year. While that may seem like a drop in the bucket for an industry that moves almost 700 million units annually, it translates to big numbers when you consider the price of the product. At $1,500 per unit, topline revenue for the TM6 pencils out to about a little over $2 billion, which would be a significant market for any countertop cooking appliance. In fact, compare that to the estimated total pressure cooker market size of $5.5 billion, which puts the TM6 market alone at almost 40% of the market for Instant Pot and all its various copycats.

And that’s not even the most interesting part of the update. According to Thermomix, there are now 4.5 million total Thermomixes connected to the company’s digital cooking platform, Cookidoo. That number includes both TM6 models and the previous generation TM5s. That’s up from about 1 million total users for the appliance’s digital cooking platform since 2017.

Engagement is also pretty high. According to Thermomix, Thermomix users make about 750 thousand meals a day using Cookidoo, which translates to about one in six Thermomix users each day.

As regular Spoon readers know, the company’s recipe platform has come a long way since four years ago. The company has enabled the platform to connect to other appliances for coordinated cooking and last year added the ability to shop for food via the Cookidoo platform. And this year, the company rolled out a new companion appliance in the Thermomix Friend in select markets (the Thermomix Friend is not yet available in North America), which coordinates cooking with the TM6 from one screen.

Q&A: Tools for the Data-Driven Restaurant, According to Sevenrooms Founder Allison Page

The restaurant industry faces a lot of question marks right now, but one certainty is that future dining room and off-premises experiences will generate and include a lot more data.

Founder and Chief Product Office Allison Page created Sevenrooms on the idea that restaurants need to be able to better understand their customers through this data. In doing so, businesses can ultimately provide a better, more efficient and enjoyable restaurant experience for everyone. The company’s front-of-house-focused software gives restaurants insights about these customers by providing data collected throughout the guest journey: from reservations and waitlists to online ordering and review aggregation, to name just a few areas.

Allison will be discussing data with other panelists at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, a day-log virtual event that will discuss the state, present and future, of restaurant tech. As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from her around the future of the data-driven restaurant. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the show here.

1. What problem does SevenRooms solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

When we started SevenRooms, our goal was to provide hospitality operators with better access to their guest data. Before SevenRooms, if you asked an operator who their biggest spenders, best tippers or brand advocates were, they would have no idea. Ten years later, access to actionable data has changed the way operators think about data (hint: it’s no longer a dirty word) and the role it plays in their day-to-day operations. 

Since the onset of the pandemic, our solution has provided even greater benefits for operators, especially in light of staff shortages across the world. We give them a platform that helps them punch above their weight class and do more with less. Over the past 18 months, we have continued to help them automate so many of the manual processes that enabled them to add headcount, without having to hire more staff. This includes guest profiles that build themselves, marketing automation to leverage that data, and, subsequently, the insight needed to provide personalized, unmatched experiences whether a guest is on- or off-premise. 

Now, as the world and restaurant industry reopens, operators realize the importance of owning their direct channels instead of solely relying on third-party platforms. With a fully integrated guest experience and retention platform like SevenRooms, they now have the tools they need to acquire, engage and retain more guests. 

2. What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic? 

At the start of the pandemic, we saw many restaurants rush to tech as a solution to many of the challenges they had to face. This led to quick, not always great, decisions, and many lessons learned over the past 18 months. The biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that operators now understand the importance of a direct relationship with their customers. 

Before COVID, restaurants were leveraging third-parties for reservations and online ordering. But when the pandemic started, restaurants began to understand the impact of outsourcing all of their customer relationships to third-party brands. For many restaurants, this meant that when they were mandated to close they didn’t have access to guest data that would allow them to email their customers and let them know they were now available for takeout only. Many months and negative press articles later, it’s been proven that the economics of a third-party-only strategy are not sustainable. 

The past year has also highlighted the importance of working with technology providers who seamlessly integrate across a restaurant’s existing tech stack. This helps create operational efficiencies, versus slowing them down and creating extra work. With restaurants more short-staffed than ever before, it no longer makes sense to use 10 different systems to do 10 different things in your restaurant. Operators want one system, one vendor, one support team and one invoice. They don’t have the bandwidth to have inefficiencies in their tech stack, especially when they’re putting out fires, navigating government regulations and keeping guests and staff safe.  

3. In your eyes, how has the emphasis on takeout and delivery formats impacted the front of house? 

Speaking from the SevenRooms perspective, we saw an opportunity to combine the data collected during takeout and delivery with in-person dining data to get a holistic 360-degree view of the customer. This has created an incredibly powerful data set for restaurant operators to provide exceptional experiences to their guests across both on- and off-premise. 

The shift to off-premise dining during the pandemic meant that operators could no longer have the face-to-face hospitality interactions they were accustomed to. This meant that they had to completely adjust their operations to provide that same level of service and hospitality via delivery and takeout instead. For some of our restaurant partners, many who had never offered takeout, this meant reimagining their operations, physical spaces and menus for delivery and pickup. 

The biggest impact to the front of house has been being able to capture and leverage more data on their customers. For the first time, operators now have a single source of truth on their guests — across both on- and off-premise. This includes who their regular or big spender online ordering customers are, whether they have any specific preferences and allergies and so much more. Data enables operators to not only personalize the experience for guests when they order delivery, but also understand the types of experiences they want when they dine in person. Most importantly, this data can be used to ‘surprise and delight’ guests and to create personalized marketing campaigns that will boost revenue and retention. 

For example, take an NYC diner that only orders from their neighborhood Italian restaurant for delivery, even though they live on the same block as the restaurant. With access to this data, the restaurant knows the customer’s address and can create specific, personalized promotions for that guest. Perhaps a Wine Wednesday experience featuring the wine they order the most, a complimentary appetizer or special treat in their bag, or a handwritten note from the general manager inviting them into the restaurant to try a new pasta dish. Data helps operators build long-lasting relationships with guests that keep them coming back for years to come. 

4. What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

Right now, the biggest challenge for restaurants when it comes to digitization is working with vendors who are on their side. In other words, working with technology vendors who are aligned with their success and 100% focused on building solutions that help them run their businesses more effectively. When business priorities are misaligned, what’s best for the restaurant falls to the wayside. Restaurant operators need to learn to ask the hard questions of their tech vendors to ensure they have their best interests in mind. 

Another challenge falls in the realm of the platforms and integrations restaurants choose to use within their tech stacks. Oftentimes, restaurants are using systems that don’t speak to each other – making it almost impossible to put together a seamless experience for guests, let alone a consistent one. The key to a good digital guest experience is in a seamlessly integrated tech stack.

5. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

When thinking about SevenRooms, I’m most excited about how we can help restaurants stay in business longer and generate more revenue. Also, how operators can use restaurant technology to impact the way someone feels and the experiences they have both in a dining room and at home.  

I’m also incredibly excited about all of the different ways data is starting to be used throughout the industry. It now touches so many areas of hospitality businesses — helping operators to be more efficient in everything they do, from inventory and menu planning, to employee scheduling and marketing, to reservations and online ordering. At SevenRooms, we are continuing to talk about the importance of data, especially from a 360-degree perspective, and how it can contribute to a restaurant’s bottom line for years to come. Today, it’s so much easier to really understand the ROI of every tech platform because the data is available and becoming more actionable and easier to digest for operators. It’s wonderful to see technology leading the charge when it comes to innovation in these areas. 

6. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years? 

Data-enabled with a human touch. Over the next five years, we’re going to see more data-powered experiences, more personalization and deeper relationships between restaurants and customers than ever before. 

On-premise operators have no choice but to think about data and the role it plays in bringing hyper-personalized experiences to the table. This largely stems from the fact that guest expectations are higher than ever coming out of the pandemic. Over the course of the past year, consumers have learned how to make gourmet meals at home, the ins and outs of baking the perfect sourdough bread, even turning to meal kits for date nights. They have more options available to them than ever before. When they dine out, they want the experience and hospitality that comes with the food, not just the food itself. If they aren’t getting the experience they need or want, there’s another option waiting right next door. 

We’re at the early innings of a data revolution for the hospitality industry. Over the next five years, hospitality experiences are only going to become more personalized and tailored to the wants and needs of guests – to the levels we see on an everyday basis from the likes of Amazon and Spotify today. The restaurant industry has been through a lot over the past year, but it’s one of the most inspiring industries to work in and be a part of every day and I’m excited to see what the next five years hold. 

Data: Restaurant Tech’s Biggest Opportunity

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As online ordering becomes more the norm, the next step in on the path to digitization is all about data. More specifically, it is about making sense of the mountains of customer data brought about by the uptick in digital ordering. Think customer order history, dietary preferences, as well as external data like weather, nearby events, and other factors that could impact restaurant traffic.

A company that wants to help restaurants make sense of all this is Brightloom. 

Until relatively recently, Brightloom went by the name Eatsa, and for a time was a restaurant itself, pushing whole hyper-digitized, automated-dining concept long before major QSRs started adopting cubbies and kiosks. The Eatsa restaurant itself didn’t last terribly long. In fact, the company started shuttering these locations in 2017 and by the end of that year was licensing its automated-restaurant technology out to others instead of trying to own the whole stack.

In 2019, rebranded as Brightloom and pivoted sharply away from automated ordering tech to what CEO Adam Brotman refers to as a “data driven personalization service.” Instead of providing cubbies and online order systems for the restaurant front of house, Eatsa now provides a “customer growth” platform through which restaurants can access and analyze their data.

Brotman told me this past spring that the reason for the shift was that digital ordering “was becoming some[thing] of a commodity.” Even before the pandemic shut dining rooms down and forced more restaurants to rely on off-premises channels like pickup and delivery, businesses were incorporating more ways for customers to order digitally. All those order channels — apps, websites, even SMS — produce data that, with the right tools, can be extremely valuable to restaurants in terms of being able to offer customers relevant experiences and upsells.

Boston Consulting Group notes that one-third of restaurants’ digital customers ordered online for the first time during the pandemic. That number is expected to go up, and restaurants will have to meet that demand. “Going digital” nowadays means being able to message and connect with restaurant customers directly, knowing what they buy from how, how often they’re buying it, and through which channels. 

“Even just having a great looking website or mobile app is not easy. Organizing your data and doing data driven, personalized marketing, on your email and push notifications, that is even harder,” Brotman said. 

Brightloom addresses those types of areas for restaurants, and the company has recently seen its popularity among restaurants grow. The company claimed in a press release this month that restaurants using the Brightloom platform “experienced lifts in revenue per guest of 5.7% or more across 23 million guests.” The company has also added larger-name chains, such as Ruby Tuesday and El Pollo Loco, to its roster of customers. Finally, Brightloom also recently launched Brightloom Pro, which includes more customization capabilities for individual restaurant brands. 

Food tech investor Brita Rosenheim recently noted that it’s “dizzying” for restaurant operators to make decisions around how to use their data. Because of that, there is a tremendous opportunity for restaurant tech companies that can partner with these restaurants  to help them “utilize customer data to better uphold their brand, funnel customers into more profitable channels, and make better decisions about merchandising, pricing, and promotions.”

If you want to learn more about this brave new data-centric restaurant world, join The Spoon and guests on August 17 for a virtual Restaurant Tech Summit. Brightloom and Adam Brotman will join the likes of Olo, Delivery Hero, Wow Bao, and many other restaurants and restaurant tech companies. Grab a ticket here, and come ready to ask some questions. 

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Retailers: Don’t Fret Over Online Grocery’s Downward Trend

In looking at Brick Meets Click/Mercatus online grocery sales data since March of this year, you might start to worry. After matching a record high of $9.3 billion in total U.S. grocery e-commerce in March, the numbers have steadily come down. April’s tally was $8.4 billion. May fell to $7.0 billion. And just this week, the latest data showed total U.S. online grocery sales dropped again to $6.8 billion.

But as Brick Meets Click Partner and Research Lead David Bishop explained to me by phone this week, there’s no need to panic.

“We’ve expected and predicted that 2021 would be a very choppy year,” Bishop said, adding the the pandemic, the subsequent delta and lambda variants and government relief like the child tax credits coming out will make for a very up and down year. But, he added, “Keep an eye on the big picture. We are still at significantly higher levels than prior to the pandemic.” More importantly, Bishop reassured me, online grocery shopping isn’t going anywhere. “We’re still at 70 percent of the peak, and we’re going to keep more than 50 percent of incremental gains.”

A closer look at Brick Meets Click’s numbers shows that almost the entirety of the drop in online grocery sales came from ship-to-home services (think mail order services like Imperfect Produce, Crowd Cow, etc.). Store delivery and home pickup options remained flat from May to June at $5.3 billion, and this, Bishop said, is where retailers should be paying attention — especially when it comes to curbside pickup.

Brick Meets Click’s June data showed that 33 percent of monthly active users received online grocery orders only via pickup, compared with 16 percent receiving their online groceries only via delivery. “The customer is signaling that pickup is the preferred method when given the option between home delivery and store pickup,” Bishop said.

Bishop also said that in the broader landscape, especially in the media, the message has been about delivery, and the need for faster delivery. (We at The Spoon are certainly guilty of adding to that narrative.) “The fact of the matter is that more households use pickup than delivery,” said Bishop, “And the sales gap is widening.”

Bishop doesn’t think retailers should abandon delivery, but more emphasis and resources should be put towards adding and improving curbside pickup options for customers. This in turn will create a virtuous cycle with customers. Adding more curbside pickup options with faster, more convenient pull-up options will get more people to use curbside pickup services.

Adding those pickup options, however isn’t as simple as a CEO snapping their fingers. Operational plans need to be put into place as to how the customer orders, who does the order packing, where that order is staged before pickup and who takes it out to the car. Additionally, larger chains need to order signage that directs people to pickup spots for all their store locations, and there may be city regulations that need to be met before traditional parking spots can be reserved for pickup. All that takes time.

Now that we have data around how consumer behavior is evolving with online grocery shopping, retailers can take action and adjust. Yes, there will be continued month-to-month fluctuations in the numbers, but the overall trend remains the same. “We’re trying to reinforce the underlying point, which is, we have had the acceleration [of grocery e-commerce] thanks to the pandemic,” Bishop said. “This is the year of reconciliation. Retailers and customers will re-jig how they operate and behave.” And The Spoon will be here to cover how stores and customers change with the times — so don’t worry.

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