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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Data Insights

Restaurant Too Loud? SoundPrint Has a Ridiculously Simple Fix

As a growing number of headlines will tell you, noise is the next public health crisis. That’s obvious if you’re outside and surrounded by the sounds of sirens, construction, car horns, and, at least in NYC, those infuriating garbage trucks.

But noise levels have risen inside, too, at restaurants, cafes, and bars where we go to socialize. Be it loud music, rowdy crowds, or just poor design of the space, this cacophony of noise is annoying at best and, at worst, a stranglehold for both the business and its guests.

Greg Scott created SoundPrint in response to this problem. The iOS-compatible app lets users measure decibel levels in a public space like a restaurant or bar, then upload that information to a database, which all SoundPrint users can access and use when choosing places to eat, drink, and socialize.

The idea emerged when Scott, who suffers from hearing loss, went on a series of dates and kept running into the same problem: He would search for quiet spots on Google or Yelp, only to arrive at the actual location and find it problematically noisy 95 percent of the time. (As if dating in NYC weren’t challenging enough already.) “In essence, there wasn’t anything useful out there,” Scott says to me over video chat.

So he bought a decibel meter and started keeping a list of quiet spots around the city, which he shared with friends who also suffered from hearing difficulties. The idea of an app that crowdsourced the noise levels of restaurants around the country came to him in California, when he tried to find a restaurant and realized the issue of finding a quieter spot was even harder outside your hometown.

As a SoundPrint user, you can both measure sound and search for quiet (or not-so-quiet) restaurants, cafes, and bars. Theoretically, you could use the app anywhere, though it works best in one of the aforementioned settings. To measure the noise levels, you just hit the “soundcheck” button on the app. The closer the number on the screen gets to 100, the higher the decibel level of the space around you. A decibel level of 70 or less is quiet; 71 to 75 dB is moderate, and 76 dB and over is loud. Once decibel level is determined, you can upload the information to the SoundPrint database, thereby making it available to all users looking for quiet places.

Scott says as of now Manhattan gets a lot of submissions, and there are plans to grow outreach in Brooklyn, too. But SoundPrint isn’t confined to NYC. You can find rated establishments everywhere from from Washington DC and Baltimore to San Francisco and Las Vegas. SoundPrint is also growing in popularity in a slew of mid-size cities like Austin and Nashville, too.

For those who are simply sensitive to noise, SoundPrint is a convenience that can streamline the process of picking a restaurant. For others, it answers a problem that’s long gone without a solution: how to engage in social activities at normal venues when you suffer from hearing loss, sensory disorders, and other disabilities. Even those with conditions like blindness and autism can benefit, since these people tend to rely more on their hearing than the average citizen and therefore need to be able to clearly hear their friends and family. Reaching all these types is his primary purpose, Scott says, though the app is really for anyone. “Most of the people who use the app don’t have hearing loss, they just want good conversation,” he adds.

SoundPrint is similar to the iHEARu app in terms of what it provides to the end user. But Scott has set his company slightly apart by also focusing on how to help the restaurants themselves, many of whom know they have a noise problem but don’t know of a cost-effective way to fix it. He cites one restaurant, in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood, who kept getting noise complaints (from outside sources, not SoundPrint). They contacted Scott, who brought in an acoustic design consultant. A few inexpensive pieces of paneling later, the noise problem was mitigated. “It went from irritatingly loud to pleasantly loud by changing a few decibels,” Scott says.

He sees this work of making restaurants aware of their noise problems (and offering solutions) as a way of helping businesses, not hindering them. “We’re not out to attack loud restaurants at all,” he says. “But if there are places that want to improve their sound acoustics, we want to reward them and promote those restaurants.”

While other types of venues may be on the horizon, for the foreseeable future, SoundPrint is keeping its focus on restaurants, bars, and cafes, since they’re the typical places for socializing. “You don’t go to a football stadium to talk to someone,” he notes.

We’re already living in an age where it’s increasingly difficult to connect with people offline, and noisy bars don’t help. Any effort to minimize the challenges is a win for the average citizen, and potentially a huge opportunity for business.

Diaz & Swahn Are Using Sound to Change the Way Your Food Tastes

Sound: the final frontier, at least when it comes to your food.

While it’s pretty obvious why the other four senses can enhance a meal at a restaurant, there’s less research on the role of sound, probably because its effect on food isn’t immediately apparent.

The folks at Stockholm, Sweden-based Diaz & Swahn want to change that. The company uses a mix of sensory science, business, and marketing expertise to help food companies with product development and growth. And while restaurants aren’t the only focus area, they definitely stand to benefit from this approach to doing business, and some already are.

“Understanding sensation and perception, as well as ‘talking taste’ are vital to the future of food,” co-founder and Creative Director Johan Swahn explained to me.

Diaz & Swahn provides a number of different services food businesses can take advantage of, from simple talks and workshops to sensory testing and marketing for products. Swahn and his colleague Asgeir Nilsen also run the New Sense Lab, a research initiative that studies sensory experiences within food and health and is part of the University of Örebro’s Department of Culinary Arts & Meal Science.

The kind of work Diaz & Swahn do is helping make sound as important a sense in the overall food experience as, say, the look or feel of a food. For instance, researchers have found that potato chips taste better when they sound crunchier.

Swahn and his company take that idea one step further, however, exploring the ways sound can actually alter the taste of food, or at least the perceived taste. This is sometimes referred to as “sonic seasoning,” and the idea is that by changing one sensory area of the human body, you can change perception in another. So if those potato chips happen to be a little old, playing a crunching sound at a loud volume can actually make the stale chips taste fresher.

Restaurants, of course, are not going to throw the sound of crunching potato chips on the house speakers during the dinner rush, and that’s fortunately not the only way to influence taste. Swahn explains that listening to softer, smoother music can “increase the perceived sweetness of a product,” whereas sharper, edgier sounds or music will increase saltiness or bitterness.

A growing abundance of research out there underscores music’s influence over the perception of taste, from Swahn’s own work at the New Sense Lab to to the findings of Oxford University professor Charles Spence, to British Airways Sound Bites program, which pairs pop music with the different meal courses. Because apparently rock music will enhance the quality and flavor of wine and Madonna’s high-pitched tones will make your dessert taste sweeter.

“It’s of course more complex than that but it gives a general idea of how sound can affect taste without actually changing the content,” Swahn says. “[Sensory science] offers lots of interesting possibilities for the future, such as creating healthier food habits (lowering sugar or salt contents but maintaining an acceptable taste) or improving the meal experience for the sick or elderly, who often lose appetite and who’s tastebuds diminish with age.”

Several restaurants are already implementing these ideas into their overall business. “Today the most advanced sensory plays are found in high-end restaurants,” says Swahn. He cites Enigma in Barcelona, Ultraviolet in Shanghai, and UK restaurant The Fat Duck, which was one of the first places to experiment with sensory science and taste.

However, fast-casual places are now also playing with the senses to alter design, form, function, and color to create what Swahn calls “visual cravings.” And according to him, sound could be a hugely valuable resource to these types of restaurants: “Fast-food chains are the ones that I feel could really benefit from using sound. Imagine if one could reduce sugar or salt but enhance the flavour with the right background music.”

Spotify has already teamed up with McDonalds in Sweden to improve the fast-food chain’s music, and while the sensory and taste elements aren’t yet there, the partnership is, according to Swahn, “the first step in using music to improve the fast-food experience.” Should it prove successful, we can expect to see this kind of thinking applied to restaurants of all sizes and styles.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated The Fat Duck was in Australia. The post has been updated.

Infographic: The 2018 Restaurant Tech Landscape

Infographics are great. When done properly, a single image can give you a wealth of information that a typical blog post just can’t match. That’s why we are so excited The Mixing Bowl and TechTable are letting us share their “Restaurant Tech Ecosystem 2018” infographic.

From an accompanying post on Forbes:

“…our goal in creating this industry map is to help operators visualize the myriad of distinct and overlapping capabilities across the restaurant technology ecosystem. In this iteration of our 2018 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem map we have focused specifically on guest facing technology (outer ring), and B2B operations and systems (inner ring).”

The post goes on to explain that the graphic is not exhaustive — but it’s a pretty darn good overview of the restaurant tech space. Click below to expand the graphic or download it here.

Red Lobster Partners With Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Program

Red Lobster just announced a partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, which should further the seafood restaurant chain’s stated promise of only buying seafood from trusted, sustainable sources.

The Seafood Watch program offers education and recommendations for a growing number of restaurants, food retailers, co-ops, and zoos, among them Whole Foods, Chopt, and the Canyon Ranch Spas. Notable among the program’s offerings are its online database and corresponding app of seafood sourced responsibly and catches to avoid, as well as recommended replacements for the latter.

Searching the data for “tuna,” for example, brings up purchase recommendations based on region and fishing method, as well as what to say “no thanks” to:

You can then drill down into specific recommendations, which are categorized as “Best Choices,” “Good Alternatives,” and “Avoid.” Tuna shows up in all three categories. By comparison, grouper is trickier to source sustainably, with only “Good Alternatives” and “Avoid” categories available.

The Seafood Watch program also includes the Slavery Risk Tool, so buyers can understand not just where their seafood came from, but also the conditions under which it was caught. Because so far as seafood is concerned, being “environmentally responsible” is as much about protecting the workers as it is about protecting the planet.

As one of the largest seafood-buying restaurants in the world, Red Lobster could, through this partnership, become a model for ethical, environmentally friendly seafood purchasing. That’s at least the company’s hope: “Because of our size and scale, we can use our influence to drive positive change in the industry and lead the way in sustainable and responsible seafood sourcing,” said Red Lobster’s CEO, Kim Lopdrup, in a statement.

Nor is this the company’s first foray into sustainable seafood. As part of its 50th Anniversary celebrations, Red Lobster announced in January its Seafood with Standards commitment, which supports fishing and farming practices with eco-certification. They even ran a Superbowl ad highlighting their new stance on sustainable seafood.

As of summer 2016, 90 percent of the world’s seafood stocks were overfished. Of late, we’ve seen efforts to address this, from programs like Monterey Bay’s to the rise of plant-based seafood companies like Good Catch Foods. And though they don’t yet, I imagine larger corporations like Red Lobster, who have significant reach with mainstream consumers, will eventually offer a combination of sustainably sourced and plant-based seafood on their menus. At any rate, the two things combined would make for a good catch of the day.

Big Data and a Mathematical Formula for Great Chocolate Chip Cookies

The thing about baking is that the precise instructions can be off-putting for freewheeling cooks who like to improvise. The strict amounts, proper technique and exact temperatures may feel too restrictive or daunting to newcomers. Author Michael Ohene wants to change all that — and has spent years gathering data to free people from the tyranny of the set-in-stone cookie recipe.

Through his extensive research (and many, many spreadsheets), Ohene has come up with the formula, and written the book Big Data, Yummy Cookies, which he says can help take some of the fear out of baking. The book “allows people to customize recipes without risk of failure,” Ohene told me.

Ohene, who is an electrical engineer by day, began this journey by trying out lots of different chocolate chip cookie recipes. He kept precise records detailing the amounts and types of ingredients, and how those factors impacted the final result. Based on those numbers, Ohene would determine if the recipe “succeeded” or “failed” (by his estimation) in creating a delicious cookie.

With a broad understanding of what ingredient combinations work best, Ohene set out to make his grand unifying cooking equation. Just a heads up: This gets complicated and may transport you back to high school algebra class, but stay with me.

The building blocks of Ohene’s formula are values and quantities. Through his experimentation, Ohene assigned numerical values to each ingredient: the wetter the ingredient, the lower its value. It’s odd at first to think of egg = (number), but Dohene came to his numerical equivalents through lots of trial and error. “I had a bunch of recipes in a spreadsheet, and I used interpolation. I tested for a few points to show a pattern,” Ohene said.

Here are a few examples of the values he’s assigned:

Flour = 1
Butter = .5
Egg = .16

Once you have the value for your ingredients, you need to factor in the quantities you will use. Continuing with our example:

2 cups of flour
2 eggs
.75 cups of butter

Now you assemble everything. The formula for making great chocolate chip cookies is adding up all the quantities of wet ingredients times their value, divided by the dry ingredients to get your wet over dry ratio. So for our limited example, that is:

(1 egg (.16) + 1 egg (.16) + (.75 cups x butter (.5))) ÷ (1 cup of flour (1) + 1 cup of flour (1))

or

(.16 + .16 + .375 )÷ (1 + 1)

Which then boils down to:

.695/2 = .3475

That final answer, .3475, is what Ohene calls the “moistness value.” And through his years of tests, he concludes that as long as you get a value between .273 and .35, you’ll get a good cookie. Anything outside that range is too wet or too dry, and not acceptable to Ohene.

With his formula and the acceptable end result range established, Ohene wrote the book Big Data, Yummy Cookies. In it, he provides basic recipes for various chocolate chip cookies (classic, oatmeal, etc.), but like any good mathematician, goes on to provide constants and the variables you can alter and experiment with.

Ohene has done all the math for people if they want to change up the recipe as well. For example: if you use 2.5 cups of flour, what are the minimum, moderate and maximum amounts of white sugar you can use to still achieve a result in that perfect cookie range. He’s basically creating bowling alley guardrails for your baking, giving readers a wide path to experiment — but still achieve a good result.

“I want to change the way people think about baking,” Ohene said. “It’s like when you had your standard music, and then there was jazz. It took the standard format and then would swing the melody and the tempo based off their feeling. That’s what I want to do with baking.” He continued “You don’t have to read a (recipe) book and be locked in to it.”

When asked if he still likes cookies after all these years of research, Ohene responded “That’s a good question,” and then he paused for a long time. “Right now, since exploring all different types, I would just enjoy a bittersweet chocolate chip cookie.”

You can check Ohene’s math for yourself to see if you would enjoy his work by either buying his book or checking out his free recipe report card calculator online.

On a final, more self-promotional note, I learned about Ohene at our last Spoon Meetup, where we discussed the future of recipes, which goes to show you that good things can happen when you attend! Our next meet up is on The Future of Meat in Seattle on May 24th. If you come, make sure to find me and talk to me about your interesting project.

Tripleseat and SevenRooms Team Up to Sync Private Events and Online Reservations for Restaurants

Tripleseat and SevenRooms just announced a partnership that will integrate the former’s event sales and management platform with the latter’s reservation and guest management software. That means restaurants wanting to book extra-large parties won’t have to deal with the confusion that historically occurs when you put private events and regular diners in the same restaurant.

Such turbulence is frequent. The classic example is a manager booking an event and not telling the host, who then overbooks the rest of the dining room(s). Having worked in restaurants for years, I can remember many instances where this mix-up happened. And that was in the late 90s, before you could book a reservation from your pocket. Now, regular reservations come in via many disparate sources — phone, website, third-party apps — which makes the process even more confusing, and the number of disappointed or pissed off diners greater.

Tripleseat and SevenRooms aim to do away with such mishaps by integrating their two systems, which would allow information about table reservations and private events to sync in real time via the cloud. Restaurant front-of-house staff and event managers share relevant information directly with one another. So, for example, if a corporation wants to hold a VIP dinner for 30 of its best clients, it can book a restaurant via Tripleseat. That information is then delivered to the restaurant via SevenRooms to alert hosts and other staff of the event.

Apart, these two companies operate pretty sophisticated, tech-driven systems. Tripleseat has made a name for itself managing events for restaurants, hotels, and nightclubs, many of them fairly high profile (see below). The cloud-based, cross-device platform centralizes leads, bookings, calendars, communications, and pretty much everything else involved in the event management process.

Sevenrooms, meanwhile, calls its product “CRM Driven Reservation Management.” It’s another “all-in-one” platform, featuring guest profiles (e.g., Jon Smith. is allergic to shellfish), VIP alerts (table 17 just spent $300 on wine), POS integration, and a digital assistant named Ava who uses natural language processing to book reservations.

Integrated, the two systems have the potential to do some major streamlining where event bookings are concerned, and help all parties involved avoid overbooking and under-communicating. There’s no word yet on who the first clients of this partnership will be, but Tripleseat and SevenRooms do share some existing ones, including Asian bistro chain Tao, The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Hakkasan, and LDV Hospitality.

“Private dining is a massive growth opportunity for restaurants providing over 30% of the revenue, and through this integration with SevenRooms restaurants will be able to ensure that they can provide 100% occupancy within the four walls of the restaurant,” Tripleseat CEO, Jonathan Morse, said in a press release.

Other sources not connected to the partnership note that private dining can bring 5 to 20 times the amount of revenue a regular table brings in on an average night. That’s a lot of extra money. Let’s see if the Tripleseat-SevenRooms partnership can accommodate that opportunity and still ensure a good experience for the rest of the clientele.

Finedine Menu Joins 500 Startups’ to Accelerate Its Restaurant Tech Platform

VC firm and seed accelerator 500 Startups just announced the list of companies that made the cut for its 23rd accelerator class. Among them is Finedine Menu, a company which is reinventing the concept of the restaurant menu.

Finedine Menu bills itself as “a digital menu management platform.” Restauranteurs can use it to create digital menus and display them on iOS and Android tablets via the Finedine Menu app. Customers interact with the menu, clicking on items to browse available dishes and order their favorites. The app tracks this sort of behavior, so businesses can view the data and make changes to the menu based on what customers prefer.

The system has two parts: a web-based control panel and a tablet-compatible app. (The app doesn’t work with phones right now.) Once a restaurant signs up for the service, they are directed to the control panel and prompted to design their menu.

Restaurants can choose from three different Finedine Menu plans, which are based on the number of tablets the business plans to use: small is for five tablets; medium for 25; and large for 50.

Since everything is digital, there’s a huge range of info the restauranteurs can put on their menus. They can upload videos and images, change the currency, display the menu in different languages, and add deals and pairing recommendations. The system even has built-in allergen warnings they can select and display. And the beauty of digital menus is that they can be updated in real time, so anything that’s changed on the control panel will immediately change on the app, too. The platform is compatible with most POS systems.

Behind the scenes, the Finedine Menu system gathers and displays data the restaurant can use to improve both the menu itself and the food offered. That includes things like most viewed items, average ticket size, daily sales, and which items sell the most. All of this info can be viewed by restauranteurs on a dashboard in their control panel.

Finedine Menu is hardly alone here. Uncorkd‘s platform is a good example; it’s similar to Finedine Menu, only specifically for wine, beer, and other drink menus. Using the system’s analytics, a business could see things like which red wines are most popular, and how that popularity changes from night to night — and change their menus accordingly. Uncorkd’s system has over 200,000 descriptions for various beverages, which streamlines the order process, and, like Finedine Menu, Uncorkd menus can be updated in real time.

Apito is an iOS-compatible app where guests can view, order, and pay for a meal from an iPad, and even do things like request a server’s attention. The company claims it can help restaurants increase the average ticket size by 15 to 20 percent. A company called eTouch Menu also promises increased profits through upsell opportunities, and is used by the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts, Hard Rock Cafe, and various casinos and airports.

What all these companies have in common is that they’re not so much menus as they are full-on foodtech platforms. So there’s a good reason Finedine Menu also bills itself as “a technology company that serves the hospitality industry.” Digital menus are increasingly becoming sophisticated technology platforms, and it will be interesting to see how the company can further evolve this concept during its time in the 500 Startups program.

How Different Are Different Generations’ Eating Habits, Really? We Investigate.

Chances are you, you’ve heard some buzz about millennials’ eating habits. Maybe from this very site! The Spoon research indicates that younger millennials are the generation that cooks at home the most frequently: 95 percent prepare meals at home at least once a week, compared to 92 percent of those aged 30-44 and 93 percent of those aged 45-59. And when millennials do cook, over a quarter of them choose to make elaborate meals that take more than 30 minutes to prepare.

But what do millennial cooking habits look like in real life? And what about the eating habits of older generations; are their dining practices changed by evolving technologies like meal and grocery delivery, or new trends like plant-based meats and local, sustainable ingredients?

We decided to investigate, using our own team. Three of us — me, a millennial; Jenn Marston, an older millennial (milleXial?); and Chris Albrecht, a Gen X-er — kept track of what we ate, and where we ate it, over one weekend. The goal was to compare our food “journals” and try to tease out similarities and differences in our eating habits. Here’s what happened:

Catherine, Millennial:

Friday: For breakfast I ate a few spoonfuls of an olive oil chocolate cake—straight from the pan—that I’d made the day before. I found the recipe online, which is where I find most of my recipes, though I still have cookbooks for fun/aesthetics/hoarding purposes.

Lunch was leftover cauliflower pasta eaten out of a microwaved tupperware at my coworking space. Sometimes I get $9 salads from the vegan shop around the corner but other times it is too taxing on me mentally to justify paying that much for nut cheese and a few sprigs of kale.

Friday night I went to a friend’s birthday party and ate a meal of guacamole, cheese cubes leftover from someone’s art gallery opening, and risotto scooped up with crackers.

Saturday: I had also consumed a healthy amount of wine on Friday, which is why, for breakfast, I made pasta carbonara with peas and ate it on my sofa. (Eggs + carbs = surefire hangover cure.) I usually get most of my fridge fixings from my Imperfect Produce membership, which comes biweekly.

I know I should be making coffee at home, but there are so many amazing coffee shops close to my house it’s hard to justify. So I went to one of those coffee shops (no robot baristas, sadly).

Before dinner I went to a brewery, then headed to a dinner party. This meal was unusually sophisticated: fresh crab flown over from Alaska (where two of my friends fish in the summers), lemony pasta, and a big board of bread from a local bakery and butter. Wine, of course.

Sunday: I indulged in the hallowed millennial tradition which is Brunch, at a hip spot which is not Southern but serves “Southern-style” food (shrimp, grits, etc.), has very long lines, and doesn’t give coffee refills. Still very good.

That afternoon I prepped my lunch for the week which involved roasting a large salmon filet I had forgotten about in my freezer alongside some limp broccoli that was past its prime.

Dinner was another dinner party (I am usually not this popular), with more crab, salad, and chicken thighs. Dessert was a smorgasbord of items from Trader Joe’s. 

 

Jenn, Older Millennial:

Friday
Latte for breakfast, as usual. I’ve made them at home, on the stovetop, for years.

Lunch on weekdays is kind of ridiculous, since it’s just me, working from home, alone. It usually consists of sporadic handfuls of whatever’s in the fridge. Today it’s leftover rice, cheese cube, spinach right out of the box. Handful of tortilla chips later on. More lattes.

Headed to a friend’s place for dinner, where there was enough Mediterranean food to feed the block. Nothing too outside the ordinary fare you’d expect. I took a little of everything, including beets. I’ve been trying to like beets for year. As of this writing, my attempts have been unsuccessful.

Saturday
I’m terrible at eating breakfast and almost never do, unless a glass of Filmjölk counts.

Went to Whole Foods in the morning looking for taro root, because making Poi is on the list of things to do soon. No taro root. I did, however, get some Beyond Burgers, which we cooked for lunch, along with salad, pineapple, and plantains.

Ate dinner w/ friends, at the only “Mexican” restaurant I’ve found in NYC that’s remotely comparable to the west coast. Tore into a plate of enchiladas like nobody’s business.

Sunday
Filmjolk. Coffee. Leftover plantains.

Did my busy (lazy?) person’s lunch, which is to just pick at a bunch of stuff in the fridge, including this thing my family constantly makes fun of me for, which is literally just chicken that’s been boiled then put in the fridge. More plantains.

No meat for dinner b/c I try to eat it only a few times per week, and never twice in a day. Had salad and yams instead. Felt pretty good about overall food this weekend, then proceeded to ruin that feeling with four pieces of shortbread. I regret nothing.

 

Chris, Generation X:

Friday
Friday nights are always pizza + movie night at the Albrecht house. Always. While we usually have it delivered (my 7 year old likes to tip the drivers), this past Friday we opted to make our own. We used store fresh dough and sauce, and baked up a delicious lamb sausage and spinach pizza (plain cheese for the kiddo).

Saturday
Had a swim lesson at 8 a.m. My son eats the same breakfast every day: a toasted “round” (flatbread with raisins), Fage yogurt with some kind of jelly mixed in, a hard boiled egg (no yolk), and some sliced mango. My wife’s not a big breakfast eater, preferring to stick with coffee. I blended up a smoothie with frozen berries, soy milk, and protein powder.

Saturday lunch was reheated pizza from the night before all around.

Saturday dinner was… complicated. I spent the day blowing new insulation into our attic, so I was more tired than hungry. I think all I had was a chocolate shake from Sonic. More leftover pizza for the rest of the family.

Sunday
Sunday morning is usually for waffles, but we were out of the ingredients. The kiddo had his normal breakfast. I had some Ellenos yogurt and a piece of bread with bulk peanut butter and honey.

Sunday lunch for me was prepared Chicken Tikka Masala from the local grocer while my wife brought home a salad bar salad for her. The kiddo was on a playdate and we were told he ate some mac-n-cheese and apple slices there.

Sunday dinner was at the table, the wife made delicious homemade beef burgers from scratch with a side salad.

Conclusions

Keeping in mind that this was a very limited time window with a very small sample size, the general millennial eating trends — convenience, lots of dining out, involved home cooking — still proved mostly true. I spent a lot of time cooking elaborate recipes, ordered groceries through a delivery service for optimized convenience, ate out more than anyone else, and prioritized eating (and drinking) local, “artisanal” food and beverages. For me, eating is not a means to an end — rather it’s an experience, one that is very social.

Though Jenn is also a millennial, she’s a slightly older millennial. The fact that there were distinct differences between her weekend eating and mine — she ate out less often and prepared simpler meals — suggests that even within generations, there can be significant differences. That isn’t surprising; millennials span an age range of 15 years, and a lot of them are now at the age where they’re starting to get married, have kids, and stop blowing all their money on craft beer and tasting menus.

However, she did highlight a focus on eating plant-based foods (Beyond Burger!), which is distinctly millennial. And anyone who goes out seeking taro root to make Hawaiian poi at home is at least a semi-adventurous eater who wants to experiment in the kitchen.

Chris also cooked pizza, a semi-involved meal, though he admitted that he usually gets it delivered (maybe soon it will made by a robot?). Compared to Jenn and I, he also ate at home more, or brought food home.

All in all, nothing from our food journal bucked the trends: the younger generations ate out more, spent more time preparing elaborate meals, and prioritized local and sustainable food. Now if I could just start getting more food delivery and using meal kits on the reg, I would be the ultimate millennial.

 

Restaurant Marketing Platform Punchh Raises $20 M in Series B Funding

Marketing software and data analytics platform Punchh — who counts the likes of Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, and Del Taco amongst its customers — just closed a $20 million Series B round of funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $31 million. This most recent round is led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from previous investor Cervin Ventures.

The new funds will allow the company to further build out its AI and machine learning components that help a growing number of restaurants power their marketing channels and analyze their data.

The company also announced, alongside the funding news, the release of Punchh Acquire, an all-in-on platform that integrates with a restaurant’s existing channels for customer engagement. That includes anything from email campaigns to text messages to self-serve kiosks and POS systems. While Punchh doesn’t build the actual app for the restaurant, the Acquire product does streamline marketing to all those different channels, while also pulling and analyzing the data afterward.

So, for example, a consumer won’t see anything about Punchh when they open their Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf app. They’ll navigate the coffee chain’s own app experience, probably unaware it’s Punchh’s system offering them a two-for-one deal on lattes or 20 percent off their next purchase.

Punchh promises to make it a lot easier for restaurants to collect data on their customers and tailor their channels and campaigns to meet preferences (everything is opt-in for the consumer).

“We’re trying to bring to brick and mortar the same level of data-driven marketing and customer relationship management software that is really prevalent in the e-commerce realm,” says founder and CEO Shyam Rao.

Those in charge of customer relationships at restaurants use Punchh to track customer behavior — in real time — and adjust digital offers as that behavior changes. A low spender, for example, might receive an up-sell campaign. Meanwhile, a mom stuck at home in Pittsburgh on a rainy winter day might get an offer for soup and tea. It works the other way, too: vegetarians will not get an offer for a Meat Lover’s pizza.

“All we’re trying to do is go back to the time 50 years ago where shops had this personal relationship with every single customer,” says Rao. “We’re trying to go back to that at scale, and the first step is to get to know the customer.”

To do so on such a granular level, Punchh separates customers into three “buckets” and tailors campaigns towards each: Anonymous customers are the ones who simply walk into a restaurant; the Known ones have given an email address or phone number; and the Loyalists dine regularly, have downloaded the restaurant’s app, order through it, and redeem offers on a regular basis. The goal, of course, is to get Anonymous customers to become Known, and Known to become Loyalists.

For many brick-and-mortar brands, restaurants or otherwise, creating this kind of digital counterpart to the main business is such a challenge many don’t even try. Starbucks may have a robust digital strategy, but Starbucks also serves 90 million customers per week. The local pizzeria around the corner presumably does not have the kind of footprint that makes it possible to throw thousands of dollars and people at a mobile strategy. Even larger brands, like, say Pizza Hut, may not have the resources — monetary or otherwise — to invest in a homegrown mobile platform that builds powerful relationships with customers. “Relationships drive revenue,” says Rao. “We help [restaurants] establish these relationships.”

Punchh currently has over 115 customers and 34,000 locations worldwide. With this latest round of funding, as well as the release of Punchh Acquire, the company also plans to branch out into health and beauty brands, as well as convenience stores.

 

This Startup Is Using AI to Bring “Post-Organic” Farming to the (Urban) Masses

Kale: great for your health, not so great for the tastebuds. Sometimes I wonder if people eat it because they actually like the taste or because it’s so trendy.

That issue may soon become irrelevant, however, thanks a company called Bowery, which is using artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak crops’ color, texture, and even taste.

Billing itself as “The Modern Farming Company,” the New Jersey-based indoor-farming startup will soon open a second facility it says will be the most technologically sophisticated in the world. Sounds like a brazen claim, until you look at what Bowery actually has cooking, er, farming, at its forthcoming facility.

Bowery’s “brains” are found in its propriety system called FarmOS. Using vision systems and machine learning, FarmOS monitors the crops 24/7, collecting data about water flow, light levels, temperature, and humidity. Bowery growers can then use the data to make adjustments to the environment, which will impact color, texture, and taste. The system also alerts growers when plants are ready for harvest.

All of those elements and more roll up into what Bowery founder Irving Fain recently called “post-organic produce”—Bowery commands the entire process of raising produce, from seed to store, and grows crops in a fully controlled environment that doesn’t have to rely on chemicals, pesticide, or human intuition to ensure quality of crops. Sure, the name’s a little much, but the concept grows more promising each year, thanks to factors like cheaper LED lighting, better data analytics, and concepts like vertical farming, which is predicted to be worth $13 billion by 2024.

And while they’re not all using the “post-organic” label, there are plenty of others exploring the possibilities of farming in fully controlled, indoor environments.

Also in New Jersey, AeroFarms has a 70,000-square-foot facility, where it grows bok choi, arugula, watercress, and other greens, including kale. The company closed a $40 million Series D funding round at the end of 2017, bringing in IKEA Group and Momofuku’s David Chang as additional backers.

Meanwhile, indoor farming startups abound in Alaska, where growing produce outside is pretty much impossible in the depths of winter and anything shipped is often close to spoiled upon delivery. Alaska Natural Organics operates a 5,000-square-foot farm that grows butter lettuce and basil. Vertical Harvest Hydroponics designs systems that can be grown inside shipping containers and distributed across the state, including hard-to-reach areas. Both companies are based in Anchorage.

And in Kyoto, Japan, a “vegetable factory” is run by robots and grows 30,000 heads of lettuce per day. The company, Spread, says that it recycles 98 percent of its water and, because the factory is sealed, doesn’t have to rely on pesticides or chemicals.

What sets Bowery somewhat apart—for now, at least—is that it has gone beyond simply monitoring water supply and temperature with its ability to adjust things like taste, texture, and even blemishes on produce. With the U.S. alone throwing out about 50 percent of produce grown annually, a proprietary system like Bowery’s could seriously be leading the way in terms of indoor farming’s impact on overall agriculture.

 

When Is Peak Coffee Drinking Time? 10:51 AM, According To Ember CEO

If you’ve ever wondered what time of day most people drink coffee — and who hasn’t, after all? — we now have a very specific answer: According to Ember CEO Clay Alexander, peak coffee-drinking time across the country is 10:51 AM.

“Nobody knew that before,” said Alexander. “That data didn’t exist.”

So how did Alexander and Ember figure out when most people down their morning cup of joe? By looking at the data from all the Ember mugs, which are connected via phone app, in the wild. The mugs, which come in both travel and ceramic varieties, launched in fall of 2016 (travel mug) and last fall (ceramic mug). They now number roughly two hundred thousand.

I sat down with Alexander, a long time inventor who created the world’s first twist-lock LED lightbulb that he eventually sold to GE before he started working on Ember’s tech in 2010, at last week’s Housewares show. I asked him about the idea of adding precision heating to drinkware, what other markets and applications he sees for the technology, and where sees Ember fitting in as part of the broader smart home. You can watch my full interview with Alexander below.

The Perfect Drinking Temperature

According to Alexander, everyone has an optimal temperature.

“For me, I like my coffee at 135 °F and my tea at 138 °F,” said Alexander.

It’s this thinking about optimal drinking temperature that led the longtime inventor to create Ember’s technology in the first place.

“I strongly believe that temperature affects taste,” said Alexander. “Let’s say you spend $10 on an amazing cup of coffee. It’s too hot in the beginning, you hit that perfect temperature and it’s right on, and then it depletes from there. So I thought, ‘what if I could hold that exact temperature that you like.'”

So that’s what he did.  He started applying for patents and was awarded his first for precision controlled drinkware in 2013 and eventually launched his first product in fall of 2016.

Precision Plates 

In 2009, Alexander was having breakfast with his wife when his eggs got cold.

“I remember looking down at my plate and thought, ‘It’s the 21st century; at a bare minimum my plate should be able to keep my meal at a nice temperature.'”

Before long, Alexander started strapping batteries to his plate and tinkering with a precision heated plate.  Soon, he was eating salmon that he was able to keep at a consistent temperature all the way through the meal.

Now his company has a working prototype and plans to release their smart plates in high-end restaurants.

“It just looks like a dinner plate, but it’s magically keeping your hot food hot and your cold food cold,” said Alexander. The plate would have heating zones, that would allow cold potato salad to stay cold and heat food like steak.  According to Alexander, if you move your steak, the heat will track under the plate.

In a way, this makes lots of sense. Precision heating has entered the kitchen in a big way through techniques like sous vide, and more advanced ovens; extending this precision to the front of house experience seems like a natural, next-step for precision temperature control.

Medical Applications

Alexander also envisions his technology in medical care applications.

“I thought, ‘what if we could use our technology to save lives?'”

According to Alexander, the spoilage rate for vaccines is over 40% in developing countries. Because of this, the company has been looking at using Ember’s temperature control technology to help get vaccines to doctors and reduce spoilage.  The company has already built a prototype that uses the company’s semiconductor powered refrigeration technology to keep up to forty vials refrigerated at a constant temperature. The “box” would be battery powered, controllable via a smartphone, and portable.

“You could strap that thing on the back of a moped and send into a village in Haiti and save lives,” said Alexander.

Baby Bottles, Too

The company also sees its tech working in baby bottles. Alexander realized this would be a good application when taking care of his own daughter and he had to manually put baby bottles in hot water to warm them up.

“With an Ember bottle, you pull it out of the fridge, and there’s a little base you couple to the bottle. When you couple it, it heats the milk and formula to 98.5 degrees, which is body temperature.”

He also sees data from applications like the baby bottle that could be useful.

When Alexander’s daughter was young, he’d go to the doctor, and the doctor would ask for feeding reports. “What if the bottle could track all the feeding for you, the ounces, the times of day, all that good stuff. I’m all about putting useful features into our apps.”

Smart Home Integration

Last but not least, Alexander also thinks his products could benefit from integration with the smart home.

“What if with the baby bottle, the baby starts crying, and you say: “‘Alexa, warm up my baby bottle’?”

If you want to hear my full conversation with Clay Alexander, you can watch the video below:

The Future of Portable Food Containers

BruVue Nabs $1 Million In Seed Funding For IoT-Powered Beer Tracking System

Ask any pub owner, and they’ll tell you one of the biggest challenges of running a bar is inventory management. Between friendly pours, foaming and flat beer, approximately 20% of each keg is wasted.

So wouldn’t it be great if bar managers could track where all those lost suds are going? That’s exactly what BruVue, a startup with an IoT tracking system for beer, wants to help them do. BruVue’s beer tracking platform, which includes a sensor system installed at each tap, allows bar managers to track keg levels, foaming, and actual vs. paid pours. The system also enables bars to move to digital beer menus instead of printing them on paper.

You can watch the BruVue system in action below:

The company, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, announced a $1 million seed funding this week, which they plan on using to scale distribution of their product. And while BruVue’s technology is primarily targeted at the pro market, they also announced they won the Heineken Innovator’s Brewhouse Challenge, a competition by Heineken to find innovations that enhance the home draft experience.  BruVue walked away with first prize by applying their beer tracking technology to Heineken’s home pour system, the SUB.

BruVue isn’t the only startup applying IoT technology to beer. Pubbino, a startup from Istanbul, says its Taptronics automated system’s “smart foam” algorithm can create a perfect pour. Unlike the BruVue system which allows bar owners to use existing taps, the Taptronics system requires the bar to install their smart taps.

Once signed up,  BruVue customers pay a monthly subscription fee for each tap sensor, which gives them access to the company’s analytics dashboard and app.  Pricing ranges from $10-$20 per tap per month depending on the length of the contract.