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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Waste

Just Salad Debuts Meal Kit Brand to Fight Food Waste, Plastic Packaging

Fast-casual chain Just Salad has launched a meal kit brand it is calling the “next generation of meal kits.” Dubbed Housemade, the line is available now exclusively via Grubhub, according to a blog post from Just Salad.

The standout feature of the new meal kit line (which launched very, very quietly this month), is its purportedly waste-free packaging. Anyone who has ever ordered a traditional meal kit knows that you’re typically left with a mound of plastic, cardboard, and dry ice after the food is prepped.

In contrast, Just Salad says the Housemade line uses “zero plastic packaging.” Instead, meals arrive in curbside recyclable or compostable packaging, and labels on the packages are water soluble. Recipe cards contain disposal instructions for the packaging.

In terms of what actually arrives in a kit, it’s a bit of a cross between a prepared meal delivery and a more traditional kit. For example, the Housemade Mediterranean Chicken Salad comes with uncooked chicken, rice, vegetables, and other ingredients. Items are pre-portioned out, so that the customer just has to put them into single pan and cook for 15 minutes. Since Just Salad won’t be using dry ice or other cold storage materials for its packages, meals are meant to be delivered within an hour. There is no subscription to purchase the Housemade kits, which start at $10.49 for a single serving. Users can simply head over to Just Salad’s page on the Grubhub app or website.

Meal kits as a category has long been championed as a potential avenue for fighting food waste because ingredients are pre-portioned and users get exactly what they need for each meal. The tradeoff for that convenience up to now has been excess amounts of packaging waste, which rather nullifies any other sustainable aspects of the meal kit.

Just Salad said in its blog post that its Housemade kits have “91 percent less packaging by weight than the average meal kit.” Again, the reason that is possible is because kits are have few ingredients, are available in single-serving sizes, and are meant to be delivered within an hour. Traditional meal kits, on the other hand, serve entire families, usually require a subscription, and are shipped across the country. All of those factors require more protective packaging (insulating, shipping, etc.) for any given order. Just Salad’s tactic of using its own locations to fulfill orders and delivering those orders within an hour automatically removes some of the packaging problem from the process.

In its blog post, Just Salad said meal kits “have a crucial redeeming feature,” which is fighting food waste, but that the industry must “rethink the meal kit concept” in order to effectively cut down on packaging waste.

Impact Investor Norrsken Is Taking Applications for Its Food-Tech-Focused Accelerator Program

Stockholm, Sweden-based Norrsken Foundation announced this week it will launch an eight-week accelerator program this summer for startups, including those working in the food tech realm. 

The Norrsken Impact Accelerator will, as its name suggests, look for companies enacting positive change across all areas of sustainability that encompass the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. While Norskken says on the program’s website that it supports startups “across all verticals,” food tech is a particular focus this year. Norskken did not name exact areas of food tech, but given its alignment with the UN SDGs, it’s safe to assume the program is looking for companies that work in areas like health and wellness, food waste, food insecurity, alternative protein sources, and other areas with a sustainability angle. 

Companies should ideally be at early (pre-seed) stage. While geographically they can be based anywhere in the world, applicants should plan to relocate to Stockholm for the duration of the program if accepted. Norrsken will choose 20 companies from the pool of applicants to participate in the eight-week program, which begins on July 5, 2021. 

Chosen companies won’t follow a set curriculum. Rather, they will focus on the issues most pressing to their specific company’s journey, whether that’s product development, regulatory issues, marketing, or strategy. Mentorship is also a big part of Norrsken’s program. Companies participating will get access to a range of executive mentors from Oatly, Voi, Klarna, Wild Earth, and many others.

Participants will also receive a $100,0000 investment (with 5 percent equity) at the start of the program and a chance to pitch to potential investors via a demo day near the program’s end. 

Applications are open until February 28.

Surplus Food Marketplace Too Good to Go Raises $31M to Expand in the U.S.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Too Good to Go announced today it has raised €25.7 million (~$31 million) to expand its surplus food marketplace that fights food waste. The investment was led by /blisce, with participation from existing investors and employees. 

Too Good to Go’s main mission is fighting food waste. The company partners with hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, and other businesses that have surplus food items at the end of each day. Those businesses can list food on Too Good to Go’s B2C marketplace at discounted prices. Consumers then simply browse the marketplace via the Too Good to Go app or website, place an order, and retrieve their food from the merchant at a designated time.

Too Good to Go already operates in 15 countries around the world, including several in Europe, including the U.K., Spain, and Italy. The expansion enabled by this new funding will focus mainly on the U.S., where the company has a smaller presence. It launched in New York City and Boston in September 2020, and has since also moved into parts of New Jersey. Specific cities and locations for this latest expansion were not named, though Too Good to Go’s roster of partners includes everyone from local grocers to massive chains like Hilton, Coop, Le Pain Quotidien, Yo! Sushi, and many others.

Surplus food marketplaces are not as prevalent in the U.S. as they are in other countries, despite the fact that the majority of food waste in this country happens at consumer-facing levels. Flashfood, a Canada-based company that offers a similar surplus food business, operates in some parts of the U.S. Karma is another Scandinavia-based surplus food app, but as yet it does not have a presence in the U.S.

All of which is to say, the opportunity is still wide open for Too Good to Go and other companies bringing the surplus food concept Stateside. 

China’s New Food Waste Tactic: Fining Restaurant Customers Who Order Too Much Food

Food waste is a global problem not limited to any country in particular, and it is estimated that around half the fruits and vegetables produced annually go to waste. In China alone, 35 million tons of food is wasted every year, with half of that occurring at retail and other consumer-facing places like restaurants. This week, news surfaced that the country has developed its own particular way of combatting that waste via new law that fines customers for leaving food on their plates at restaurants.

Xi Jinping, a politician and the paramount leader of China, recently submitted a law to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress that aims to reduce food waste in restaurants. The law would allow restaurants to charge customers who order too much food and leave leftovers on their plates (However, customers would still be able to take home leftovers).

It is currently unclear how much a restaurant could charge a customer. On the other hand, restaurants could be charged up to 10,000 yuan (roughly $1,500 USD) for offering deals that encourage customers to order excessive food. A third part of the law would impose the largest fee of 100,000 yuan (15,000 USD) for T.V. ads or shows and radio or online commercials that promote overeating (like “all you can eat” buffets, for example).

Xi Jinping has been targeting the issues of food waste for months now, with Operation Empty Plate launching this past summer. This operation banned the streaming of online videos of famous Chinese mukbangers, who are online performers that eat excessive amounts of food in one sitting. It also encouraged customers to order one less plate than the number of people in their party at family-style restaurant meals.

The most recent law submitted by Xi Jinping is still a draft, but it is deemed likely to pass. There are a handful of other countries using laws to prevent food waste. For example, in 2016, France banned supermarkets from throwing out edible food, and those who break this law can be charged  €3,750 ($4,500 USD) per infraction. A law passed in Italy in 2016 made it easier for food retailers to donate to food banks, even if the food was past its “best by” date. Five states in the U.S. have passed laws that helped keep food waste out of landfills by improving compost infrastructure and rescuing edible waste for consumption.

China’s potential new law cracks down harder than its original Operation Empty Plate, and the food waste fines are a new concept for the country. With our supersized everything, massive restaurant serving sizes, and the beloved all-you-can-eat buffets, it makes me wonder if the U.S. would ever be able to adopt any type of food waste laws countrywide. Food waste laws being implemented by countries are a recent development in the past few years, and it will be fascinating to see if other countries begin adopting laws in the upcoming years.

Goodfish Raises $4M for Upcycled Salmon Snacks

Goodfish, a company that upcycles salmon skin by turning it into snack foods, announced today it has closed a $4 million Series A investment round. The round was led by AF Ventures and Siddhi Capital. In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it will use the new funds to “support the surging demand for its products, deepen R&D capability and accelerate product innovation.”

Goodfish was started by the founders of beverage company Harmless Harvest, and products became available for online purchase this year. The snacks resemble crunchy chips in texture and are made from the reclaimed skins of Wild Alaskan Sockeye that would normally go to waste. The idea is to create a chip-like snack with far more health benefits (clean protein and marine collagen among them) and far fewer calories. The skins are sourced from well-regulated fisheries in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Cofounder Justin Guilbert, said in today’s press release that Goodfish’s online-only distribution strategy “paid off well above expectations” and led to an earlier fundraised than expected. Hence the close of the Series A round today. 

Given that folks have been snacking their way through this pandemic, it’s no surprise companies offering healthier alternatives are getting noticed (and receiving funding). Others include Renewal Mill, which uses upcycled okara flour to make cookies, plant-based pork rind-maker Pig Out, and jerky made from jackfruit by a company called Jack and Tom.

Goodfish did not say whether it plans to eventually expand to brick-and-mortar stores for distribution. For now, products are available via the company’s own direct-to-consumer website. 

Food Tech News: A New Potato Preserving Technology, Zomato Closes $660M Round

If you need a break from COVID-19 and vaccine-related news, you’re in the right place. In this week’s Food Tech News, we rounded up pieces on a new technology that helps preserve potatoes, Zomato’s latest funding round, a holiday Pepsi flavor, and carbon-neutral oat milk.

Funding for potato preserving technology

Hazel Technologies received an undisclosed amount in grant money this week from the USDA for its new potato preserving technology. The technology is called Hazel Root, which looks like a small package and is placed in a bin of potatoes after harvesting. The small package emits an undisclosed active ingredient that prevents potatoes from prematurely sprouting. Prior to this new development, Hazel Technologies focused on preserving fresh fruits for longer and has received a total of $900,000 in grant money. Last year, the company also raised $13 million in funding in an oversubscribed series B round.

Zomato closes $660M series J funding round

Indian delivery service Zomato closed its series J funding round this week, totaling $660 million USD. The recent round saw participation from Kora, Tiger Global, Luxor, Fidelity, D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview. Zomato is currently valued at $3.9 billion USD, and Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of Zomato, shared that the company may launch its IPO sometime in the first half of next year.

Cocoa Cola for Christmas

On Twitter this week, PepsiCo announced that a new flavor is in the works: “Cocoa Cola.” Pepsi said if its tweet reached 2,021 reposts, the company would begin production of the new flavor. As of now, that tweet has been reposted 4,400 times so far, so it’s safe to say the new drink will go into production. It will have tasting notes of chocolate, marshmallow, and the classic cola flavor, and is expected to reach stores sometime this winter. Near Thanksgiving this year, PepsiCo also released a holiday flavor: a limited batch of apple pie-flavored soda.

Carbon neutral oat milk

Minor Figures, a London-based company that produces oat milk, announced this week it has become carbon neutral. The company partnered with EcoFye, a firm that helps companies lower their carbon footprint and purchase carbon credit for carbon offsetting projects. Becoming carbon-neutral has been quite the buzzword this year, with major companies like Starbucks, Amazon, and Microsoft also making the pledge.

Capital One Ventures Makes First Impact Investment in Food Waste Specialist Goodr

Capital One Ventures, the venture arm of financial services giant Capital One, has invested in food waste specialist Goodr. The investment, the amount of which was not disclosed, was announced via a Medium post by partner Adam Boutin.

From the post:

Jasmine and her team are tackling one of the most baffling paradoxes — 80 billion pounds of food is ending up in our landfills every year, meanwhile 40 million Americans are food insecure. While most of us are aware that food waste and hunger are massive problems (with both environmental and societal implications), the scale & complexity of the issues is astonishing….

The investment marks the first move by Capital One Ventures into impact investing. According to Boutin, who is leading the impact investing efforts for the venture arm, they plan on making more in coming months in the areas of financial inclusion, environmental sustainability and future of work.

We’ve been writing about Goodr here at The Spoon for some time, in part because the company is one of the first startups to utilize blockchain as a way to better track food and help reduce waste. Here’s how company CEO Jasmine Crowe described the company’s platform back in a 2018 interview:

Goodr is a sustainable waste management platform that leverages technology to reduce food waste and combat hunger. We provide an end-to-end solution for businesses seeking to reduce their overall waste, save money and empower their local community.

Our technology coordinates the collection and distribution of food donations. Unlike our competitors, Goodr’s platform also provides an IRS audit-friendly donation record, real-time food waste analytics, and community impact reports thanks to blockchain.

In addition to providing a technology forward platform for helping corporations reduce how much food they throw out, Goodr’s also extremely active on activating partnerships in communities of need to make sure the food ends up in the right place. It’s been inspiring to watch Crowe and her team spring into action over the past year to help those hit hard by COVID-19 with efforts like their pop up stores and emergency meal kits.

Goodr is one of a number of startups in the food waste and sustainability space that are getting extra attention nowadays from investors. While food waste reduction and innovation hasn’t always gotten as much investor attention some of the other food tech spaces, COVID-19 shined a light on the fragility of the food system and made it even more clear how reducing waste made good economic sense.

Food Tech News: Fake Meat Capital of Europe, Plastic Made From Citrus Peels

It’s your weekend food tech news wrapup!

Plant & Bean Ltd. opens massive plant-based meat factory in Europe

Plant-based meat makers Plant & Bean opened a new factory in Boston, England. The factory is capable of producing 55,000 tons of alternative protein products, which will make Boston the faux-meat capital of Europe. The company uses soy as its main ingredient to produce a variety of different plant-based meats such as sausages, burgers, nuggets, and more. Plant & Bean is looking to continue to expand and open more factories, with potential factory locations opening in the next few years in the US, China, Thailand, and Brazil.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland creates plastic from produce

A new technology was developed at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland that uses agricultural waste to produce a more sustainable plastic, PEF (polyethylene furanoate). Agricultural waste such as citrus peels, sugar beet pulp, or other produce containing pectin can be used to develop the plastic. Fossil fuel-based plastic PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly used for food and beverage packaging; according to the press release, replacing packaging with PEF would reduce the packaging’s carbon footprint by 50%.

Photo from Nestlé Japan

Whiskey barrel-aged Kit Kat bars to be released in Japan

Japan has released the most exciting flavors of Kit Kat bars over the years, with 400 different flavors like matcha, ube, yuzu, adzuki bean, and purple sweet potato to name a few. The newest flavor, a whiskey barrel-aged Kit Kat bar, will be released on December 15th in Japan. This new flavor was developed by Yasumasa Takagi, a pastry chef and former Iron Chef competitor The bar is made from Ghanaian cacao nibs that have been aged in Scotch whiskey barrels for 180 days, and will cost ¥300 ($2.88 USD).

Michael Jordan’s beer and snack- delivering drones

The Grove XXIII, Michael Jordan’s golf course that opened last year, now has drones that deliver boxes of beer and snacks to players. The drones bring beers in a box, while snacks come delivered in a brown paper bag. This new addition to the golf course allows golfers to avoid additional interactions with cashiers or employees.

Full Harvest Partners With Danone to Launch Yogurt Made From ‘Rescued’ Produce

Full Harvest, a B2B service that rescues imperfect produce, announced this week it has teamed up with Danone to launch a yogurt made from food that would otherwise end up in the landfill. Called Two Good ‘Good Save,’ the yogurt will be part of Danone’s Two Good line. Full Harvest said in a press release sent to The Spoon that this is the first dairy product to use 100 percent rescued produce.

Full Harvest is best known for its online marketplace that sells imperfect and surplus produce rescued from farms. The company works directly with farmers to identify the fruits and vegetables that will go to waste, then connects those farmers with food producers via its marketplace. Food producers creating products from Full Harvest-rescued goods come with a seal of verification. As yet, the marketplace is a business-to-business operation.

The initial product from the Full Harvest-Danone partnership will use California-grown Meyer lemons that would have otherwise gone to waste due to cosmetic imperfections, overproduction, or a lack of secondary markets for the farmer.

The sources of food waste and loss varies by region. While the bulk of waste in the U.S. happens at consumer-facing levels, the Full Harvest-Danone partnership nonetheless shows that there is also work to be done in curbing waste long before food reaches stores, restaurants, and homes. 

Full Harvest, meanwhile, is one of a growing number of companies rescuing so-called imperfect foods from going to the landfill. Incorporating those items into food production is one tactic. Other food-rescue companies, like Imperfect Foods and Too Good to Go, work further down the supply chain, collecting surplus food from grocery stores and restaurants and selling it at discounted prices to consumers. Imperfect went as far as to release a holiday snack box this year featuring treats that taste great but just happen to look a little less than conventionally perfect.

Danone’s Two Good ‘Good Save’ lemon product is available now. Additional flavors are slated for 2021. 

Google Takes on Food Waste With Food Tech Innovations Built by X

X, the “moonshot factory” of Google parent company Alphabet, announced today that two prototypes developed as part of a project called Project Delta have graduated and are now being transferred to Google for scaling and commercialization.

Project Delta, which has been incubating within X for the past two and a half years, was led by Emily Ma, who announced the transition to Google today in a blog post.

From the post:

Our team’s mission was to create a smarter food system — one that knows where the food is, what state it’s in, and where best to direct it to ensure it doesn’t end up in a landfill and instead goes to the people who need it most. After two and a half years of prototyping and testing a range of technologies to help reduce food waste and food insecurity, I’m pleased to share that some of our prototypes and team are moving to Google so we can scale up our work.

In her post, Ma highlights two prototypes developed as part of Project Delta. The first is an “intelligent food distribution network” nicknamed “dana-bot.” To build dana-bot, the X team took a dataset donated by the Southwest Produce Cooperative, categorized and standardized each entry, and then used it to match food in food banks and pantries based on “real-time needs in the Feeding America network.” Grocery chain Kroger also leveraged dana-bot to manage excess deli products, which allowed it to open up “millions more meals to communities that need it.”

Above: Project Delta’s prototype food identification and categorization system uses machine learning to automatically identify different types of food.

The second prototype utilized computer vision and machine learning to capture images of food thrown out in Alphabet kitchens. After running it in 20 different units across Alphabet cafes over a period of six months, the system was “able to automatically collect two times as much information about the kitchen’s food waste as the manual system.”

And now these two systems are graduating to Google proper, where Ma says her team hopes to “start tackling food waste and food insecurity on a larger scale.” The team plans to roll out its computer vision system to more Alphabet kitchens and utilize Google’s resources to expand the food distribution network and eventually offer it to other organizations.

As more and more venture funding pours into the future of food, it looks like big tech is starting to also wake up to the possibilities of applying their technology innovation to creating a new food system. Google is no exception. This news is just the latest development from Google and its parent company Alphabet that could have larger-scale implications on the broader food system.

Last week Alphabet announced that its DeepMind group had used AI to help solve a grand challenge around protein structure prediction that the scientific community had been working on for half a century. In August, Google Lookout added food label reading to help the visually impaired, and back in 2017 the company unveiled that its Lens visual discovery technology could serve up recipe suggestions based on images of food.

Apeel’s James Rogers on Fixing Our Perishability Problem to Fight Food Waste

“Perishability is so fundamental to the food system it’s almost unchallenged,” James Rogers, founder and CEO of Apeel, said to me this week during a virtual event for The Spoon.

Specifically, he meant that perishability is built into the global food system, whether that means accepting it as a cost of doing business or making sacrifices around quality and nutrition in order to avoid it. Either way, perishability is linked closely to the world’s $2.6 trillion food waste problem, which happens in many different forms up and down the food supply chain.

To get a deeper understanding of both the perishability issue and its relationship to food waste, Rogers and I took some time at this week’s event to walk through the different steps of the food system

As Rogers sees it, there are four main categories of the food system to examine: grower, suppler, retailer, and consumer.

The grower stage involves the actual cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and other perishable items. It’s a point in the supply chain where those involved have to make sacrifices in order to avoid excessive food waste. By way of an example, Rogers described how tomatoes are normally picked when they are still hard and green. The decision about when to harvest the food is based not on when it’s in peak eating condition but on making it last longer as it travels to suppliers and eventually to the grocery store. That works — for the grower. But by disconnecting the fruit from the plant early on, we’re sacrificing flavor and nutritional content, and it means that a consumer could very well buy a tomato from the grocery store and wind up chucking it because of its mediocre taste.

Building more time into the supply chain is a point Rogers has emphasized again and again during our conversations. He is, of course, invested in this idea through his company Apeel, which makes an edible coating for fruits and vegetables that extends their shelf life, in some cases by weeks. His goal, and the goal of others in the food industry, is to build more time into our supply chain so that crops can be picked when nature dictates and not before.

Suppliers feel the time crunch perhaps most acutely of anyone on the food supply chain. These are the people that receive produce from the grower, sort it, box it, and ship it to grocery stores and other buyers. 

“Suppliers have a clock that’s ticking,” Rogers explained. Using another example, he referenced a small farm growing caviar limes, which only last for a couple days. Fruit had to be sorted, packed, and shipped on the same day to avoid spoilage, an issue that was solved once the farm started using Apeel’s coating on the limes.

But while growers and suppliers race to avoid perishability, retailers and other buyers, such as foodservice operations, have it built right into their business model. The typical grocery store builds large fruit and vegetable displays so they can sell more and sell it faster. However, Rogers said the rate at which food ages speeds up by a factor of four once it leaves the walk-in cooler and goes on display.  

“If you want to maximize your sales, you will always want to have a full shelf which leads to waste,” he said, adding that grocers without a waste problem have missed sales opportunities, since demand has outpaced supply.

Apeel is one such solution helping retailers combat the problem of perishability. Others, including Hazel Technologies and StixFresh are also bringing their technologies to retailers with the goal of extending the life of produce.

The last stop on the food supply chain also happens to be the one where the majority of food, at least in the U.S. and Europe, gets wasted. Rogers was quick to point out that “no one wants to waste food.” However, despite the growing number of potential solutions available to consumers to curb food waste, expecting massive shifts in behavior is next to impossible. “Just telling them they shouldn’t waste food doesn’t get to the crux of the issue,” Rogers said during the event. Rather, the strategy should be about helping people create an abundance of food in their homes. Once again, building more time into the life of produce and therefore into the supply chain is what would enable consumers to keep more fresh food at home without the fear of it going to waste.

At the end of the day, he said, “we have to make the most environmentally beneficially solution the cheapest, easiest solution.”

Food Tech News: Food Waste For Solar Energy, DoorDash Announces New Gifting Feature

Food waste used to produce solar energy

A recent winner of the Sustainability 2020 James Dyson Award, Carvey Maigue (a student at Mapúa University in the Philippines) created a technology that converts food waste into UV light-capturing windows and walls. The system, called AuReus, traps luminescent particles from certain fruits and vegetables (which would otherwise be wasted) in a resin substrate. The particles then absorb and reflect the light, and PV cells along the side of the walls and windows absorb this light. Lastly, the captured light is converted to DC electricity.

DoorDash announces new gifting feature

This week, DoorDash announced its new gifting feature for the holiday season. Users can now send favorite food items to friends and family located anywhere in the country through the app. To send a food gift, a user simply needs to enter the recipient’s address on the app, and then customize the order with a digital card. Not sure what to send? According to DoorDash, the most popular requests include french fries, burrito bowls, and cookies.

Ikea pledges to make 50% of menu items vegan

By 2025, Ikea’s goal is to make half of its menu items and 80 percent of its packaged meals vegan. The multinational chain already carries vegan items like meatballs, soft-serve, and hot dogs. After reading scientific reports and consumer research studies, the company aims to do its part in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions through providing foods with a lower carbon footprint.

UK Pizza Huts adds Christmas Pizza

Do you think that pineapple on a pizza is a weird topping? I personally think traditional Christmas dishes as pizza toppings might triumph over pineapple for being even stranger. Pizza Hut locations in the UK are now carrying a Christmas pizza, which includes shredded chicken, bacon, sage & onion stuffing, and a red wine gravy. The pizza is available now and until supplies last.