Generally speaking, restaurants with drive-thrus have often fared better than most over the last year and a half of shutdowns, dining room restrictions, and overall uncertainty. But even as demand for this format rises and major QSRs say they’ll focus more on it in future store designs, wait times at the drive-thru have gotten longer,…
The summer days are going by fast, but it feels like the rate at which news is breaking in the food tech space is even faster. In this week’s Food Tech News roundup, we have pieces on chocolate being grown in a lab, a tasting room opening in San Franciso for cultured sushi, a new…
After Eat Just gained regulatory approval in Singapore for its cultured meat last year, companies from countries all over the world are racing to bring their cultured meat products to market. We’ve heard news from Asia, the United States, Europe, and Australia regarding cultured meat, but one continent that seems to be left out of…
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For grocery stores, measuring demand and managing orders for fresh foods can be a maddeningly difficult task that more often than not ends in lots of unused food getting thrown out. After all, bananas have a much shorter shelf life than, say, a bag of rice, and a lot of existing supply-chain technologies and processes…
Wicked Kitchen, a UK-based plant-based food and prepared meal brand, announced this week that has closed a Series A round of $14M. This is the company’s first public round and it was led by Unovis Asset Management and NRF Nove Foods. Following this funding, Wicked Kitchen will soon expand into the U.S. with its plant-based…
Astronauts onboard the International Space Station are aiming to grow the first-ever peppers in space via the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment. PH-04 will grow “Espanola Improved” New Mexico Hatch Green Chiles. These are a medium-heat chile peppers NASA says have been suitable for use in controlled growing environments. The pepper seeds were planted in April…
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FreshRealm, a prepared fresh meals company based in Ventura, California, announced this week that it has raised $32 million. The institutional investors were not disclosed, and this brings the company’s total funding to $46.6 million. This most recent round of funding will be used to expand FreshRealm’s production facilities, with the goal of opening additional…
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Nonprofit XPRIZE has announced 28 semifinalists teams that will move forward in the Feed the Next Billion competition. The multi-year competition will support companies developing compelling chicken and fish alternatives that replicate or outperform the real thing in terms of nutrition, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and taste and texture. The competition, first announced at the…
Finland’s Netled has signed a three-year investment agreement with herb grower Oh My Greens, the two companies announced today. The agreement is worth €15 million (~$17 million USD) over three years and will provide Sweden-based Oh My Greens with Netled’s turnkey vertical farm called Vera. Netled’s Vera system comes as a few different forms, the…
CPG giant Nestlé intends to enter the cultured meat market via a partnership with Israel-based alt-protein company Future Meat, according to a report from Bloomberg. Unnamed sources familiar with the matter said Nestlé is working on various products that mix its own plant-based proteins with cultivated meat from Future Meat. More granular details on the…
Israel-based ChickP announced today that it has utilized its chickpea isolate to formulate a plant-based mayonnaise product. The company partnered with food companies to develop several egg-free recipes, including mayonnaise and several salad dressings. The pilot for the mayo product was a success, and a large-scale pilot production of the product is now taking place.…
Restaurant tech company 86 Repairs has raised an additional $5.3 million, bringing its total funding for its seed round to $7.3 million, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Investors in this latest raise include TDF Ventures, Gordon Food Service, MATH Venture Partners, Revolution, and Cleveland Avenue. To date, 86 Repairs has raised…