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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

FoodTech 25

The 2020 Food Tech 25

Our previous Food Tech 25 lists (2018, 2019) were all about the disruptors. The food tech companies innovating and changing the meal journey.

This year’s list is still about that, but needless to say 2020 has been one big, awful disruption itself thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything got turned upside down. The restaurant industry was decimated. Online grocery shopping experienced record setting sales. And the weaknesses in our supply chain were exposed as people panicked and left store shelves bare.

This year’s Food Tech 25 isn’t an all-pandemic list, but watching how companies navigated this, the darkest timeline, was certainly a factor for us. This list is the culmination of weeks of research and intense debate around The Spoon’s (virtual) offices. And while it’s not exhaustive, we feel this Food Tech 25 represents the best, brightest and most innovative companies in the space right now, pandemic or no.

Think we missed a company, or have a question about how we came up with this list? Drop us a line and let us know!

If you’d like to see the full list on one page, just click here.

AIR PROTEIN
Everything you need to know about Air Protein’s main business is in the company’s name. Air Protein makes edible protein from air — specifically carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen that, when fed to single-cell organisms creates an edible protein. That may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but the process is actually similar to brewing beer or making yogurt, and while still nascent, it’s another sustainable alternative to traditional protein sources. Air Protein, which spun out of Kiverdi, has named meatless meat and protein powder as potential areas for its protein, though it will be a couple of years before any actual products hit the market.

Photo: Apeel

APEEL
With its recent $250 million funding round, Apeel looks to be food waste’s first unicorn. With good reason too. The company’s edible coating extends the life of produce by up to three times its normal life, and is finding traction with both grocers and consumers. Apeel’s coating, which keeps oxygen out and water in, extending produce shelf life, started on avocados and citrus. Now, the company has its eyes set on asparagus and cucumbers. Today you can find Apeel-coated avocados in over 1,100 Krogers and on store shelves in Denmark and Germany. This year, the company also hopes to bring its technology to Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

BIOMILQ
Whether for biological or environmental reasons, breastfeeding is not something that is equally available to every mother. That is why BIOMILQ is creating cultured human breast milk in a lab. It’s patent-pending technology triggers human mammary gland cells kept suspended in a stream of nutrients to lactate. The company says that using this approach to supplement any shortfalls in a mother’s milk is more environmentally friendly and healthier for a baby than other dairy-based formulas. The technology is still very early on, but could change the way babies are fed around the world. BIOMILQ just received $3.5 million in funding to work on production and begin engaging with doctors, families and other organizations focused on breastfeeding.


BLUENALU
Between problems with over-fishing and microplastics, the world’s fish stocks are in peril. Enter BlueNalu, which is creating cell-based cultured fish. It’s starting with finfish like yellowtail and mahi mahi, but the kicker is that the company says its product can cook just like the “real” thing. Seared, steamed or ceviched, BlueNalu’s fish can maintain its integrity. While the product is still years out from hitting your grocery aisle, the company raised $20 million earlier this year and signed a lease on a new facility that will produce between 200 and 500 pounds of commercial cultured fish a week in the second half of 2021.

CHIPOTLE
Chipotle was one of the few major restaurant brands to emerge from nationwide shelter-in-place mandates with stronger digital sales than before. A big reason for this is the company’s unflinching commitment to using tech to build a better restaurant experience both in the restaurant and via off-premises channels. In the last year alone, the chain has expanded its delivery program, tested new store formats that emphasize digital ordering and payments, and basically turned its mobile app into a virtual recreation of the in-house experience. All of this and more has so far gotten the brand through the current upheaval in which the restaurant industry finds itself — and will inevitably provide some blueprints for other smaller chains.

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Kroger’s Q1 Earnings Call Highlights the Growth and Challenges of Supermarket Delivery

There was quite a bit of buzz this week around Kroger. Much of it came from the supermarket giant’s Q1 2029 earnings call, which took place yesterday. While fiscal results were somewhat mixed, right off the bat, Kroger chairman and CEO W. Rodney McMullen highlighted growth of what he called “an omnichannel platform to serve customers with anything, anytime, anywhere.”

In other words, right now is all about doubling down on delivery efforts for Kroger.

On the call, McMullen noted that digital sales grew 42 percent over the quarter, making delivery and/or pickup options available to 93 percent of Kroger’s customers. Online grocery delivery is now available at 2,126 Kroger locations and pickup at 1,685 locations. The company plans to have those options available to “everyone in America” by the end of this year, according to McMullen.

“Our customers don’t distinguish between an in-store and online experience. Rather they typically have a food-related need or a problem to solve and want the easiest, most seamless solution,” said McMullen.

Pieces of that solution include a growing list of companies Kroger partners with to not just expand shopping options for customers but also improve the logistics around doing so. To that end, Kroger has been leveraging a number of partnerships with companies over the last quarter, including Nuro, Microsoft, meal kit company Home Chef, Walgreens, and Ocado, with whom Kroger is piloting smart sheds that use robots to fulfill grocery orders.

The Kroger/Ocado partnership just broke ground on the first of 20 of these automated warehouses that the supermarket chain plans to open over the next couple years. McMullen said that this initial warehouse, located in the grocery store’s hometown of Cincinnati, OH, “introduced transformative format of e-commerce fulfillment and logistics technology in America. This in turn means Kroger customers will get fresher food faster than ever before.”

Speaking of faster than ever before: Kroger made good on that promise a few days before the call, when it started quietly testing 30-minute grocery delivery in Cincinnati via a new program called Kroger Rush. Users download a specific app, also called Kroger Rush, to order items and have them delivered. As The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht pointed out, that service seems to be aimed more at delivering last-minute lunch or dinner, though it’s not hard to imagine a point where Kroger might digitally replicate the “express lane” concept at brick-and-mortar stores, which speed up the checkout process for customers getting just a few last-minute items.

Kroger’s delivery-centric Q1 underscores something else Chris highlighted in his post from earlier this week: grocery retailers across the board are pushing the innovation envelope harder than ever as they compete with one another to deliver the fastest, most frictionless shopping experience to the customer. The race for the virtual grocery store aisle has really just begun.

Newsletter: The Spoon’s Food Tech 25 Is Here. So Is the Battle for the Drive-Thru.

This the post edition of our newsletter. To get the Weekly Spoon delivered to your inbox, subscribe here. 

One of my favorite things about tech is that it starts a lot of debate. Even within our small team here at The Spoon, we’re constantly on different pages about what’s groundbreaking and what’s just hype, whether something’s progressive or just invasive, how to spell the phrase “food tech.”

So when it came time to put together our annual Food Tech 25 list, which dropped yesterday, you can bet it took a whole lot of discussion to whittle the entire food industry down to just 25 companies.

As we always do, though, the Spoon team — Mike Wolf, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb, and myself — managed to compile a list of companies we individually and collectively, believe are truly impacting the human relationship to food. That impact takes many forms, from the way Creator makes it possible for humans and robots to coexist in the kitchen to Yo-Kai’s vending machine of the future to Goodr’s efforts to use tech to keep food out of the trash and redistribute it to those in need.

I’m hoping readers enjoy this list, but I’m also hoping it sparks some healthy dispute, too. Who else should be on the list? For that matter, who shouldn’t, and why? We encourage you to email us with any additions, subtractions, rants and raves on the matter.

And, most important, congratulations to the companies who made it on this list!

Image via Unsplash.

Drive-Thru Tech Moves Into the Fast Lane

One area of food tech that’s going to raise many more questions over the next few years is the QSR drive-thru. Specifically, how AI is changing the drive-thru and what that means for both restaurant operators and customers.

We’ve been following closely the story behind McDonald’s acquisition of Dynamic Yield, a New Zealand-based AI company whose tech has already been rolled out to almost 1,000 Mickey D’s drive-thru lanes. Then, this week, Clinc, best known for its work in the financial sector, announced a new funding round that will allow the company to expand into other markets with QSR drive-thrus at the top of the list.

Clinc’s using AI-powered voice controls to facilitate more natural conversation between the customer and the ordering system in the hopes of making the drive-thru experience smoother and faster. Drive-thru order times are much longer than they used to be, and companies are betting AI will speed up the order process by making it more accurate and also making more personalized recommendations, like immediately suggesting a pastry to someone when they place their morning coffee order. There are even companies working on making those recommendations not just in real time but also based on existing customer data. One such company is 5thru, which does away with voice altogether by scanning your license plate number, which is attached to a profile stored with the restaurant and can make real-time recommendations based on your existing preferences and order history attached to that license plate number. Cue progressive-versus-creepy debate.

Join the Conversation at The Spoon’s New Food Tech Fireside Event

As much as we value the sound of our own voices over here, though, we actually want to hear more from readers on their thoughts around tech. That’s why we started a new online event, The Spoon’s Food Tech Firesides. Every month, we’ll hold a virtual sit down with one or two food industry innovators and invite the audience to join in the talk via written questions.

First up will be Tessa Price of WeWork Food Labs and Peter Bodenheimer from Food-X talking about food accelerators: what they are, what they’re not, and which companies and entrepreneurs should consider them as a path towards growth.

The event takes place May 30 at 10:00 a.m. PDT/1:00 p.m. EDT. Catch the full details here, and be sure to register early, as there’s limited space available.

May your week be filled with lively debate.

Onwards,

Jenn

The Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Creating the Future of Food in 2019

(Editor’s Note: The 2020 Food Tech 25 is out! You can see our latest list of the most innovative companies in food tech here). 

Almost exactly a year ago, we published our first Food Tech 25 list to highlight the companies we thought were making the biggest impact on the overall meal journey.

That list blew up and became popular in ways we hadn’t expected and was such a hit that we knew immediately it would become an annual tradition. So over the past year we’ve been watching to see which startups and established companies are doing the most interesting and innovative work and helping transform the entire food stack in the process.

With that in mind, we are proud to announce The Spoon’s 2019 Food Tech 25. These twenty-five companies are creating the future of food right now.

By no means was this an easy list to make. If you’re an avid reader of The Spoon (thank you!), you know that there has been a ton of news and developments in the space over the last year and this list could be twice as long. But over the past couple of months, myself, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and Jenn Marston have suggested, debated and edited the selections to make the Food Tech 25 what it is today.

Congratulations to everyone on this list! They’ve worked hard and earned it.

As a reminder, the Food Tech 25 is not ranked, and companies listed are done so in no particular order. We also know your top 25 food tech companies may differ from ours. That’s great! If you have thoughts on this list (and we’re sure you do), feel free to drop us line to tell us who you think should be on (or off) it.

Enough preamble. Here’s the Spoon’s Food Tech 25.

Note: If you prefer to see all companies on one single page, you can click over to the full list.


AMAZON
It would be tough to do a list about foodtech and not mention Amazon, as whatever the Bezos Behemoth does invariably influences others. And the company is putting its hands in a growing number of areas of the food sector. Besides entertaining the possibility of its own grocery store chain (which would be Amazon branded, not Whole Foods), Amazon placed its own meal kits into high-end retail stores, released its own delivery robot, and received a patent for a different robot that lives in your home and will fetch your groceries and other deliveries for you. But beyond the individual aspects of Amazon’s business, the company is setting the pace of innovation and forcing rivals in retail, logistics, and delivery to respond.


APEEL
Apeel Sciences’ approach to fighting food waste tackles the pre-sale side of the food supply chain. Rather focus on sustainable packaging the food comes in, Apeel, as its name suggests, is making the food itself more sustainable. The company’s eponymous product is a plant-based powder that, when mixed with water, creates a tasteless, edible coating for the produce that extends the shelf life of things like lemons and avocados. Taking a preventative approach to food waste will be crucial for fighting it effectively in the future, and Apeel sets an example — and a quality bar — many will soon follow.


IMPOSSIBLE FOODS
When choosing which plant-based meat company to feature in the Food Tech 25, it was almost a toss-up between Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. However, Impossible eked out into the lead for two reasons: its super-speedy pace of expansion and its new recipe, which tastes a heckuva lot like ground beef. The former means its “bleeding” patties will soon be in over 12,000 restaurants, including all Burger Kings nationwide, while the latter gives the company a real shot at attracting enough flexitarians to disrupt the meat industry, especially as it moves into grocery stores this year. Oh yeah, it also just raised another $300 million in funding. Next up: IPO?

Photo: McCormick’s.

MCCORMICK & Co.
McCormick is one of the oldest brands on the list, the company being well over a century old. Age hasn’t slowed it down, however, in terms of both improving existing flavors for food and creating new ones. Earlier this year, the company announced it had partnered with IBM Research AI to use data to predict new flavor combinations and improve upon old ones. The company’s new ONE platform does this by drawing on both new consumer preferences and decades’ worth of McCormick recipes, proving that, at least where flavor optimization is concerned, sometimes you have to look forwards and backwards at the same time to innovate.


TRACETRUST
Nowadays you can’t turn a corner without running into a sign advertising for CBD edibles, and between CBD jelly beans, the usual assortment of baked goods, and Willie Nelson’s coffee, it can actually be hard for any one company to stand out. TraceTrust sidesteps that problem because it doesn’t actually create CBD products. Rather, it offers a certification program for cannabis goods that puts them through a rigorous set of protocols to ensure they’re not only safe to use but also of consistent quality and come with clear instructions for consumers on how to best use them. As the excitement over CBD keeps growing, we need companies like this out there who can do the kind of background check every consumer needs for new sectors like CBD.

Want to meet the innovators from the FoodTech 25? Make sure to connect with them at North America’s leading foodtech summit, SKS 2019, on Oct 7-8th in Seattle.

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Pyrex Parent Company and Instant Pot to Merge

Corelle Brands announced Monday that it plans to merge with Instant Brands, the decade-old startup best known for turning the Instant Pot into a consumer favorite in the world of cookware. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although the Wall Street Journal estimates it could be worth $2 billion.

That’s not too surprising, given the popularity of the Instant Pot, a hybrid product that acts as a slow cooker and a pressure cooker in one device. It regularly tops holiday shopping sales lists, and since launching the original product in 2010, the company has released multiple other products and amassed an online fanbase with a jaw-dropping level of enthusiasm for the company’s wares.

As we wrote last year, when including the company in our FoodTech 25 list: The Instant Pot is not the highest-tech gadget around, but its affordability, versatility, and speed have made this new take on the pressure cooker a countertop cooking phenomenon.

Besides making dishes that don’t break when you throw them, Corelle also owns ktichenware brand Pyrex, food-storage product maker Snapware, and Japanese knife manufacturer OLFA, among others. Cornell Capital bought Corelle back in 2017 for an undisclosed sum; once the deal with Instant Pot is finalized, both companies will be owned by Cornell Capital.

Instant Brands will keep its Ottawa, Canada headquarters. Meanwhile, Robert Wang, who invented the Instant Pot with $350,000 of his own money, will become the CIO of the combined business.

The deal will give Instant Pot access to new markets, particularly on the international front. From Corelle’s perspective, it’s a chance to refurbish a century-old brand and pair it with an Internet age startup that’s, according to Corelle CEO Ken Wilkes, “fundamentally changing how consumers think about cooking.” Indeed, the almost 2 million users in Instant Pot’s public Facebook group are constantly slinging new recipes at one another, along with cooking tips and problem-solving advice. I’m not so sure a Pyrex Facebook group will pop up anytime soon, but association with that kind of internet-centric kitchen activity will no doubt get Corelle’s family tree a more solid place in today’s connected kitchen.

Analytical Flavor Systems Raises $4M for its AI-Powered Flavor Prediction Platform

Analytical Flavor Systems (AFS), which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies predict and personalize flavor for new food products, announced today that it has raised $4 million in Series A funding led Leawood Venture Capital and Global Brain. VentureBeat was first to report the news. AFS had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding through Better Food Ventures and Techstars.

Food personalization, powered by advancements in AI and machine learning, is a big trend we’re following at The Spoon. Earlier this year we named AFS as one of our FoodTech 25 companies changing the way we eat, writing the following:

Analytical Flavor Systems’ AI-driven Gastrograph platform helps packaged food companies achieve greater success in a saturated food industry that has an over 80% failure rate. Gastograph moves CPG brands’ development process beyond traditional tasting panels; it surveys each product with a flavor profile engine that is predictive, anticipating how new foods will perform in different markets, over a long time horizon, and against various demographic archetypes. Food companies are struggling to launch new products in an era of rapidly shifting consumer tastes, and an AI-driven platform like Gastrograph gives big food a more accurate map with which to navigate into the future.

Think of Gastrograph almost like Flavor as a Service. Using data from “regular” people and professional tasters to power its analytical engine, Gastrograph can help food companies determine which flavors will be popular with different people or in different regions etc.

AFS Co-Founder and CEO, Jason Cohen spoke at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle last month, and gave a presentation where he talked about personalization of food versus customization, and also provided a nice walkthrough of how AFS and Gastrograph works.

AI and Personalized Flavor

AFS told VentureBeat that it will use the money to build out the team and further develop its technology. The company’s fundraise comes at a good time, as it is among a raft of startups using AI to power flavor and food recommendations. Other players in the space include Spoonshot (formerly Dishq), Plantjammer, FoodPairing, and Flavorwiki.

A Plant-based Diet Could Save the Planet — and Your Life

When Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams realized he was headed towards blindness caused by diabetes, he turned to a treatment you buy from a grocery store, not a pharmacy: his food. He switched from the typical “American” diet, heavy on the meat, to a plant-based one, and within the span of just a few weeks he regained his eyesight and had effectively reversed Type 2 diabetes. Better yet, not much later, he convinced his mom to do the same thing, to similar results.

“When it comes to chronic disease, it’s not our lineage, it’s our lunch,” Alexis Fox, CEO of Lighter, explained onstage this morning at Smart Kitchen Summit.

Fox, whose company provides a B2B meal-planning tool to the healthcare industry and to athletes (among others), used Eric Adams’ story as a way to illustrate the impact the right foods can have on our health — and how devastating the wrong ones can be for our bodies. Among the facts Fox cited onstage were: 33.9 percent of adults in the U.S. have pre-diabetes, heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country, and childhood obesity has nearly tripled.

But she, along with her co-founder Micah Risk, believe there’s a way out, and it’s by helping people rethink the way they choose and eat food. Their tool shows users which foods they should be buying, based on each individual user, and how to prepare and shop for a recipe. It’s a personalized food service built around the idea of plant-based eating and sustainability — two things we’re going to see a lot more of, if today’s SKS talks and panels are any indicator.

Given that, you won’t find any recommendations for meat-based dishes with Lighter. The service is about providing 100 percent vegan meal recommendations; something that’s as important for the environment as it is for the human body.

“Most of the energy we put into animals does not get converted into energy [for] humans,” Fox said onstage, as a way of underscoring how unsustainable current practices around animal agriculture are.

And Lighter’s not the only company aware of this. During her talk, Fox cited WeWork — a company currently valued at more than $20 billion — and its recent decision to ban all meat onsite and at company events.

“Our medical community and every entity concerned with sustainability is encouraging us to decrease our meat consumption,” said Fox. And with companies like WeWork also onboard, we may be able to include the startup and tech communities on that list of entities, too.

Check back for more posts throughout the day, and follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

What is the Future of Food Delivery? Dan Warne of Deliveroo Has Some Thoughts

At the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe a few weeks ago (miss you, Dublin!), disrupting the meal journey was a big theme. And one of the biggest things changing the way we eat is food delivery to our homes.

I had a chance to discuss this shift with Dan Warne, Managing Director of Deliveroo in the U.K. and Ireland, during a Fireside Chat entitled “New Possibilities in Home Food Delivery.”

I was especially excited to talk with him about Deliveroo’s Editions project, a concept that helps to distinguish the company in an uber-crowded food delivery market (pun intended), and one reason we chose Deliveroo as one of our Food Tech 25.

If you didn’t already know, Editions is essentially a curated hub of cloud kitchens. Deliveroo uses customer data to place delivery-only restaurants in areas with unfulfilled demand. People get a larger swath of delivery options, and food entrepreneurs can open up establishments with significantly reduced overhead and less risk.

Editions is so successful, according to Warne, because it has been able to optimize both the hardware and software of running a delivery-based food establishment. “The restaurant can dedicate everything to the food,” he said. Which means that the food has to be really good, since there’s nothing else to hide behind.

“We [also] see it as an opportunity for us to aid the industry by bringing down costs,” he continued. For example, Deliveroo is working with an eco-friendly utility producer as well as a London-based app called Placed, which helps cut labor costs.

The topic of food delivery came up a few times throughout the day at SKS Europe — though not always in a favorable light. After all, companies working to get people cooking at home more often (connected kitchen appliances, guided cooking apps, etc.) should be diametrically opposed to a service that just brings food right to the door. Right?

Warne doesn’t see it that way. “Food delivery . . . has become a compliment to eating at home,” he said onstage. “We see ourselves as very much supporting the eat-at-home experience.”

“The use case of getting food delivery at home is fundamentally different than the social experience of going out to a restaurant,” he continued. Or, presumably, than the experience of cooking at home with your family, or the satisfaction of making a meal from scratch.

Deliveroo now works with around 10,000 restaurants across the U.K., has 25,000 delivery drivers, and operates in 12 different markets. “We are continually surprised with the appetite in every consumer set,” said Warne. “At first, we saw Deliveroo becoming a billion dollar business… now we now seeing it being much, much bigger.”

So what’s next for Editions, and Deliveroo on the whole? Robots — maybe. “We have a few engineers working on robotics,” said Warne. “There’s a bigger opportunity there since there won’t be the same regulatory challenges that there are with, say, drones.” Which some unnamed food delivery companies are currently piloting.

Watch the video below to see Warne’s full fireside chat on the future of home food delivery.

There’s only four days left to get your Early Bird tickets to SKS! Join us for more conversations on the future of food and cooking (or not cooking) — register here.

The Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

Here at The Spoon, we spend most days writing and thinking about those who are transforming what we eat. No matter whether a startup, big company, inventor, or a cook working on new approaches in the kitchen, we love learning the stories of people changing the future of food. So much so, in fact, that we wanted to share those companies that most excite us with our readers.

And so here it is, The Spoon’s Food Tech 25: Twenty Five Companies Changing the Way We Eat

What exactly is the Food Tech 25? In short, it’s our list of the twenty five companies we think are doing the most interesting things changing the way we create, buy, store, cook and think about food.

As with any list, there are bound to be a few questions about how we got here and why we chose the companies we did. Here are some answers:

How did we create this list?

The editors of the Spoon — myself, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and Jenn Marston — got together in a room, poured some kombucha (ed note: except for Chris), and listed all the companies we thought were doing interesting and important work in changing food and cooking. From there, we had numerous calls, face-to-face meetings and more glasses of kombucha until we narrowed the list down to those you see here.

Is this an annual list?

No, this is a list of the companies we think are the most interesting people and companies right now, in mid-2018. Things could definitely look different six months from now.

Is this list in a particular order or are the companies ranked?

No, the list is in no particular order and we did not rank the 25 companies.

Why isn’t company X on the list?

If this was your list, company X or Y would most likely be on the list (and that’s ok with us). But this is the Spoon’s list and we’re sticking to it (for now – see above).

And of course, making this list wasn’t easy. There are lots of companies doing interesting things in this space. If we had enough room to create runners-up or honorable mentions, we would. But we don’t (and you don’t have enough time to read a list like that).

So, without further ado, here is the Spoon’s Food Tech 25. If you’re the type that likes your lists all on one page, click here.


EMBER
Ember bills itself as “the world’s first temperature control mug,” which basically means you can dictate a specific temperature for your brew via the corresponding app and keep your coffee (or tea or whatever) hot for as long as you need to. The significance here isn’t so much about coffee as it is about where else we could implement the technology and relatively simple concept powering the Ember mug. The company currently has patents out on other kinds of heated or cooled dishware, and Ember has cited baby bottles and medicine as two areas in which it might apply its technology. And yes, it allows you to finally stop microwaving all that leftover morning coffee.

 


INSTANT POT
The Instant Pot is not the highest-tech gadget around, but its affordability, versatility, and speed have made this new take on the pressure cooker a countertop cooking phenomenon. It also has a large and fanatical community, where enthusiastic users share and reshare their favorite Instant Pot recipes across Facebook groups and online forums. By becoming the first new breakout appliance category of the millennial generation, the Instant Pot has achieved that highly desirable (and rare) position of having its brand synonymous with the name of the category; people don’t go looking for pressure cookers, they go looking for an Instant Pot.

 


DELIVEROO
We chose Deliveroo out of the myriad of food delivery services because of their Editions project, which uses customer data to curate restaurant hubs in areas which have unfulfilled demands for certain chain establishments or cuisine types. This model allows food establishments to set up locations with zero start-up costs, and also gives customers in more restaurant-dry areas a wide variety of delivery food options. Essentially, it’s cloud kitchens meets a food hall, with some heavy analysis to help determine which restaurants or cuisines customers want, and where. These “Rooboxes” (hubs of shipping containers in which the food is prepared) show that Deliveroo is a pioneer in the dark kitchen space, and are doing serious work to shake up the food delivery market.

 

AMAZON GO
There are any number of ways that Amazon could have been included in this list, but its Amazon Go stores are what we think will be the real game changer. The cashierless corner store uses a high-tech combination of cameras and computing power, allowing you to walk in grab what you want — and leave. That’s it. At its first location in Seattle, we were struck by how seamless the experience was. As the locations broaden, this type of quick convenience has the potential to change the way we shop for snacks, (some) groceries and even prepared meal kits.

 


INGEST.AI
Restaurants have more pieces of software to deal with than ever. In addition to all the delivery platforms they are now plugged into, there have to deal with payments systems, HR software, and inventory management software. And right now, none of those applications talk to each other. Created by a former IBM Watson engineer, Ingest.ai promises to extract and connect the data from ALL of those disparate software pieces and tie them together to give restaurant owners a holistic, data-powered view of their business. It also helps them have more precise control over their business and automate tasks like food ordering and staff scheduling.

Want to meet the innovators from the FoodTech 25? Make sure to connect with them at North America’s leading foodtech summit, SKS 2019, on Oct 7-8th in Seattle.

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