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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Waste

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.

Plan, Store, Redistribute: Tech Tools to Keep Your Thanksgiving Leftovers Out of the Landfill

Roughly 200 million pounds of turkey in the U.S. gets tossed out annually after Thanksgiving. And though dinners might be smaller this year, since massive family gatherings are a no-no, it’s inevitable that a lot of food is going to get wasted. That’s a tough fact to digest, given the long lines at food banks this year because of the economic consequences of the pandemic, to say nothing of food waste’s impact on the environment.

Much of food waste happens because it’s built into our food system, and fighting the problem at scale will require a massive effort from governments, businesses, and consumers alike. But you can still play your part during the 2020 holidays by taking steps to address your food waste or, better yet, prevent it from happening in the first place. Here are some useful tech tools that may come in handy.

Plan It. 

Thorough meal planning that actually reduces food waste goes beyond deciding which side dishes to serve with the bird. The first step is to “think beyond the recipe,” as NRDC puts it. If you’re buying onions to add to a stuffing dish, research recipes that also call for onions you could make in the days following the holiday. Ditto for something like parsley, which few folks tend to eat in bulk. Also scan the pantry before you ever set foot in a grocery store (or open a grocery app) to see what you already have, so you don’t buy repeats of, say, baking soda.

Fortunately, there are a lot of apps and online tools out there nowadays that can help consumers with this planning. While we at The Spoon have mixed feelings about these apps (most still require quite a bit of manual inventory entry), they can at the very least make the food planning and buying process more organized. 

For example, Meal Prep Mate, made by the Save the Food Campaign, has a bunch of planning features, including a calculator that estimates how much food you need based on your guest list, a tool to help you create your shopping list, and a recipe guide. Similarly, the Meal Hero app, from the Kraft-Heinz Evolv group, includes an interactive shopping list feature the app generates based on the recipes you give it and can even arrange to get your groceries delivered via AmazonFresh and Instacart. No Waste’s app, which also helps users create meal plans and shopping lists comes with a built-in food waste tracker and can be shared across multiple users — a bonus if there are multiple cooks in the kitchen.

As mentioned above, the big downside to most meal planning apps right now is that they can’t automatically scan your fridge or pantry to tell you what you already have; the user has to manually input that information. No, that’s not a real problem to have compared to everything else going on this year, but it is something to think about as you choose your food waste tools for the holidays.

Store It.

My crystal ball tells me that despite planning, a lot of us will still wind up with leftover food come Thursday night. If you plan to store it, place the food in clear containers marked with the contents inside and the date you first stored them. The USDA notes that doing this “can increase the chances that the leftovers in the fridge will be remembered and actually eaten.”

There are some options for smart food storage systems available that can simplify the process of keeping leftovers and remind you when food is about to go bad. A company called Lasting Freshness uses a vacuum-seal container system and is available in the lower 48. At the moment, though, systems from the likes of Ovie and Silo are still only available for pre-order. 

For tips on how to best store certain types of food, check Save The Food’s comprehensive guide on the topic.

Redistribute It. 

You could also donate leftover ingredients to those in need. A food-sharing app such as OLIO lets neighbors and communities share excess food. Users can list pretty much anything that is edible, such as a leftover carton of eggs or an extra loaf of bread. For restaurants and grocery stores, apps like Too Good To Go and Imperfect Foods offer a way to donate excess ingredients that are then sold to customers at a discount price. 

At the moment, those apps have no options for the average U.S. household to donate excess food. They do, however, let you order a box of “imperfect” groceries, which means you could craft a Thanksgiving meal out of rescued food items and contribute to the food redistribution concept in that way. Imperfect Foods, for example, lets you pick groceries online and get them delivered to your doorstep.

Phood Raises $2M in Seed Funding to Fight Food Waste

Phood, the New York City-based startup that uses a combination of weight scales, computer vision and AI to help foodservice operators reduce food waste, announced today that it has raised a $2 million Seed round of financing. The round was led by New Stack Ventures and Story Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Phood to $2.1 million.

Phood’s technology helps foodservice companies better understand and optimize how their food is being used. As we wrote earlier this year about the company:

There are three parts to the Phood system: a scale, a camera and a software backend. Food is placed on the scale either before going into a dish (to see how much is being used to make meals) or afterwards (to see how much waste is being generated). There’s a camera mounted above the scale that uses AI to automatically identify what each food item is.

The company’s system also connects with a restaurant’s POS and inventory management software to track what particular items are being used and who supplied them. So, if a cafeteria ends up with a lot of extra brussel sprouts, Phood tells the manager to adjust the business’s purchasing.

On its face, food waste is a huge problem because it means food has been, well, wasted instead of consumed, especially during a time when there are so many in need. Food waste is also an acute problem for restaurants, which already operated under thin margins coming into the pandemic. Now with dining rooms going through a second round of closures, restaurants need to get the most out of every dollar spent and literally can’t afford to let food go to waste.

Thankfully, there are a host of companies fighting the good fight against food waste all along the supply chain. Both Winnow and LeanPath offer similar services like Phood’s to help restaurants manage their food usage and inventory. Restaurant supplier Choco recently held a pop-up event in L.A. challenging chefs to come up with foods based on by-products. And earlier this month the nonprofit ReFed launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to help fund projects that reduce waste in the supply chain.

If you want to learn more about the problem of food waste, and what companies are doing to combat it, check The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report over at our Spoon Plus membership service.

Afresh Raises Another $13M to Help Grocers Manage Produce Inventory

Afresh announced today it has raised $13 million in new funding for its grocery retail management platform. The round, which is a Series A extension, was led by Food Retail Ventures with participation from existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Maersk Growth, and BaselineVentures. This brings Afresh’s total funding to $32.8 million.

San Francisco-based Afresh’s technology uses machine learning to analyze customer buying data for fresh produce and help grocery retailers forecast demand, which is harder to predict when it comes to perishable foods like fruits, vegetables, and breads. Grocery stores must order enough to meet customer demand, but not so much they are throwing out excessive amounts of unsold items and wasting both food and money in the process. Afresh’s technology helps grocery retailers forecast more precisely and order accordingly.

Right now there is a major need for this level of precision when it comes to grocery inventory. Panic-buying sprees at the beginning of the pandemic underscored some of the supply-and-demand shortcomings with grocery inventory systems. Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz told The Spoon earlier this year that “COVID was a test case” for the company’s overall structure. “Ultimately, we’re building the system for edge cases and supply interruptions,” he said.

At the same time, the world’s 1.3-billion-ton food waste problem grows more urgent each year. In the U.S. 40 percent of that waste happens in consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants. In addition to helping grocers better manage supply and demand, Afresh’s platform can also help them cut the amount of waste they throw out (and save more money). 

The pandemic, the record levels of online grocery shopping, and the food waste problem are collectively making inventory optimization a big business for the grocery sector. Afresh’s funding comes the same week Farmstead, another AI-powered platform, raised $7.9 million. Crisp, based in NYC, offers retailers a similar platform.

Afresh’s latest funding round follows another Series A follow-on from July, that one for $12 million. The company said today it will expand its product to new markets and add new features in the coming months.