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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Funding

BEERMKR Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign, Will Appear on “Shark Tank” Tonight

If I wasn’t such a professional, impartial journalist, I might shed a small tear of joy for BEERMKR. I’ve been writing about the company since 2018 when it launched on Kickstarter, and continued to follow them through trade shows, COVID-related production delays, and finally with a full product review last fall. And now the company has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, but will also be pitching to the investors on Shark Tank tonight. Li’l BEERMKR is all grown up.

Unlike traditional home brewing, BEERMKR doesn’t require the mess and complications of buckets and bottles and hoses. Instead, it’s a connected, all-in-one countertop beer fermenting, brewing and dispensing system. The accompanying mobile app tells you when to add your ingredients, and the BEERMKR controls all the agitation, temperature control and resting. I had never brewed beer before in my life and was able to make a delicious stout on my very first try, which prompted me to add BEERMKR to our Spoon Holiday Gift Guide.

We obviously don’t know yet if the Sharks will bite upon hearing BEERMKR’s pitch, but the company is hoping everyday investors will. BEERMKR is looking to raise roughly $1 million through equity crowdfunding on the StartEngine platform, and as of this writing has already raised more than $122,000 in its first day. BEERMKR has a good track record when it comes to crowdfunding, having raised nearly $400,000 on Kickstarter to put the BEERMKR into production. (And unlike other beer-related crowdfunded hardware, it actually made it to market.)

Equity crowdfunding is becoming quite a trend in the food tech world. Companies like Piestro, Future Acres, Blendid and GoSun have all conducted equity crowdfunding campaigns. Raising capital from traditional VCs comes with the pressure to scale and deliver a return on the VC’s investment in a relatively timely manner. Startups that choose that equity crowdfunding route mitigate that scaling and time pressure. However, using equity crowdfunding also means companies don’t necessarily get access to the institutional knowledge and connections that could help them run their businesses more efficiently.

I reached out to BEERMKR CEO Aaron Walls this morning to ask him why they opted for equity crowdfunding, and this is what he emailed back:

We’ve done traditional financings and we’ve done kickstarters, but this is our first equity crowdfund. As we began investigating, it became evident that our company was uniquely positioned to execute an equity crowdfunding campaign. First, we have a large install base of happy customers, many of whom have reached out prior to this campaign and asked if they could invest in our company. Second, with as many kickstarters as we’ve done, we have the internal processes in place to work through the crowdfunding dynamics. Lastly, our category of alcoholic beverages does very well with crowdfunding. It’s a category that you don’t need an advanced degree to fully understand the full potential. From our standpoint we felt it was worth the effort to see how well it performs. The worst case scenario? We can always go back to raising capital the old fashioned way, but given the first day success, it looks like we won’t have to!

Walls also said that BEERMKR is only raising $1 million because that is a limit set by the SEC based on the makeup of the company.

I didn’t ask him whether Mark Cuban is now an investor, but I’ll be watching Shark Tank tonight and maybe there there will be one little happy tear for Walls and his team.

Hwy Haul Raises $10M Series A to Modernize Produce Trucking

Hwy Haul, a cloud-based freight platform that connects produce shippers and carriers, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding. Eileses Capital and BluePointe Ventures co-led the round with participation from AgFunder, True Blue Partners, and other angel investors. This brings the total amount raised by Hwy Haul to $15.6 million.

As Syed Aman, cofounder and CEO of Hwy Haul explained to me last year, existing methods and workflows for getting fresh produce shipped from farms to stores around the country is still very manual and complex. It can require phone calls with truck brokers to find a carrier, multiple manual temperature checks to ensure food safety, and paying truckers can still take weeks after a haul is delivered. All of this complexity results in low transparency and food waste from loads not being kept at proper temperatures or being sent to the wrong destination.

Hwy Haul is looking to fix all that by automating the process associated with hiring truckers and shipping produce nationwide. The cloud-based system allows truckers to find instant quotes, book loads and reduce paperwork. Shippers (farms, wholesalers, etc.) can more easily hire carriers, monitor the temperature and humidity of loads, and optimize routes.

All of this, the company says, results in greater insights into shipments, reduced wait times and a more optimized supply chain. And if it’s one thing Aman knows, it’s the supply chain. Prior to co-founding Hwy Haul, Aman was Director of Supply Chain at Walmart, where he helped build Walmart’s online grocery platform.

We asked a couple weeks ago whether supply chains are sexy now as there are a raft of startups looking to transform how food is moved about the country. RipeLocker creates containers that adjust factors like oxygen levels and air pressure to extend the shelf life of produce. Varcode uses blockchain and IoT to ensure the items in the cold chain remain cold. And Gatik is creating self driving delivery trucks for the middle mile. And now with $10 million in fresh capital, Hwy Haul can keep these supply chains truckin’.

Something Better Foods Receives $500K Investment from ICA

Oakland, California-based Something Better Foods, a producer of various plant-based meat and seafood alternatives, raised $500,000 this week through ICA, a nonprofit venture capital fund. Something Better Foods aims to make plant-based foods more accessible to people of color, and ICA’s goal is to “…accelerate great businesses through mentoring and investments to close the racial and gender wealth gaps.”

Better Chew is Something Better Food’s brand, and its product line includes plant-based chicken patties, meatballs, fried chicken, steak, fried fish, chicken nuggets, breakfast sausage patties, and chicken patties. The company uses an undisclosed proprietary process to replicate the taste, texture, and look of meat. Better Food is focused on distributing its products through direct-to-consumer channels and foodservice outlets. One thing that sets Something Better Foods apart from other plant-based meat companies is that it has chosen to incorporate both equity and representation into its business model.

Healthy food and veganism movements often leave out marginalized communities, and this is a huge issue that both Something Better Foods and ICA are trying to offer solutions to. Low-income neighborhoods in the U.S. often only have immediate access to fast-food chains and convenience stores, and about 2.3 million people in the U.S. live in a food desert. Even if someone living in one of these communities wanted to eat healthy, fresh foods or try a plant-based diet, it would be incredibly challenging to access these foods.

This initial round of funding will be used to expand Something Better Foods’ operations and offer additional employment opportunities in the company’s local community. Something Better Foods’ is ICA’s most recent portfolio company and the venture capital fund has so far placed $1.5 million in growth equity to Bay Area companies, focusing on companies founded by entrepreneurs of color and women.

Irish Drone Delivery Startup Manna Raises $25M Series A

Drone delivery startup Manna announced today that it has raised a $25 million Series A round of funding led by Draper Esprit, with participation from Team Europe, partners of DST Global, as well as returning investors Dynamo Ventures, Atlantic Bridge and Elkstone. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Manna to $30.2 million.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, Manna operates unmanned aerial vehicles for high-speed deliveries over the last mile. Drones fly out of a main hub carrying food orders and can reach a customer’s home in just three minutes. The customer uses something similar to a Google Map image of their home divided up into a grid and select where the drone should fly to. Once at that location, the drone hovers 50 feet above the ground and lowers the order down via tether.

Manna says that a single operator can conduct roughly 20 deliveries per hour. Manna is currently piloting drone delivery in Galway, Ireland, where it is doing up to 100 deliveries a day. In today’s press announcement, Manna said that more than 30 percent of Galway’s 10,000 residents are already using its service.

Drone delivery is quickly becoming a reality around the world as more pilot programs are launched and more companies get funded. Flytrex, which is testing drone deliveries with Walmart in North Carolina, raised $8 million last month. Dragontail Systems and Pizza Hut have partnered for drone delivery in Israel. And iFood and Speedbird Aero are deploying drone delivery in Brazil.

Here in the U.S., government agencies are clarifying rules around commercial drone operation. In December of last year, the FAA announced its final rules around the safety of drone flying. With more clarity will come more innovation and more drone delivery availability.

In addition to its pilot delivery program in Galway, Manna has also kept busy on the business development front. The company has signed partnerships with JustEat, Samsung, Ben & Jerrys and Tesco.

If you want to learn more about the future of drone delivery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. Manna CEO Bobby Healy will be speaking, along with a host of other executives across the robotics, restaurant and retail landscape. Get your ticket today!

Portugal: Sensei Raises $6.5M for its Cashierless Checkout Tech

Sensei, a Lisbon, Portugal-based cashierless checkout startup, announced today that it has raised a $6.5 million Seed round of funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news, writing that the round was led by Seaya Ventures and Iberis Capital, with participation from 200M Fund.

Sensei’s approach to cashierless checkout retrofits existing stores with a combination of cameras, computer vision, AI and sensors to keep track of what shoppers pick out. Shoppers are then automatically charged upon leaving the store.

Sensei’s technology sounds similar to the way Zippin and Amazon handle cashierless checkout as all three use a combination of cameras and sensors. Other solutions on the market like Grabango rely solely on cameras, or Supersmart, which combines computer vision with a scale that weighs the cart at checkout.

Cashierless checkout has been on a tear so far in 2021. The sector has seen new players like Imagr and Nomitri emerge around the world, continued funding such as Standard Cognition’s $150 million fundraise, and big partnerships like the one between AiFi and Wundermart to build out 1,000 autonomous stores.

The big driving force behind all this activity is, of course, the pandemic, as cashierless checkout is a pretty good solution for these COVID times. With no cashiers, it reduces the amount of human-to-human interaction and potential vectors of viral transmission. No checkout lines means that customers are not congregating together as they wait to pay, and customers spend less time inside the store, keeping fewer people inside a store at any given time

Cashierless checkout can also be beneficial to retailers as it provides insight into how customers shop and move about the store, what they pick up (and put back), and real-time inventory management.

Europe in particular is turning into a hotbed of cashierless checkout. Sensei, AiFi, Nomitri, Imagr, Trigo and Supersmart are all operating on the continent. For its part, Sensei told TechCrunch that it will use the new funds to scale up its R&D and launch in new stores.

If you want to learn more about the future of autonomous checkout, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit on May 18th! We’ll have speakers from both Zippin and Nomitri talking about the state of industry and cashierless checkout technology. Get your ticket today!

Minnow Picks Up $3M in Seed Funding for its Pickup Pods

Minnow Technologies, which creates smart lockers for food delivery and pickup, announced today that it has raised an additional $3 million in Seed funding. Branded Strategic Hospitality led the round, which also saw participation from Elevate Capital and Portland Seed Fund. This brings Minnow’s total funding to date to $6.4 million.

Seattle, Washington-based Minnow has certainly had a twisty-turny startup journey . The company started out in Portland, Maine in 2017 as Veebie and made a mobile lunch pickup locker system. In 2018, the company moved to to the West Coast, changed its name to Kadabra and pivoted to making stationary pickup lockers. In 2020 the company, now called Minnow, launched its first pickup pods in Portland, Oregon.

Minnow’s smart lockers can be installed in residential buildings, office buildings, college campuses and other locations. The units are like an Amazon locker for restaurant delivery. Instead of needing to be home when a delivery driver arrives (or come downstairs if you live in a tall building), orders are placed inside a Minnow pod cubby. When the customer is ready, they go to the locker, enter a code and retrieve their food.

Minnow’s pod system took on greater importance last year because it provides a contactless method of delivery. Customers and delivery people don’t have to interact with one another, and food can be securely stowed until pickup. Solving these issues around convenience and safety helped Minnow win the Startup Showcase at our Smart Kitchen Summit last year.

Minnow says that is has installations across the U.S. and in Japan, and that the first batch of Pickup Pods is already sold out. (The company is accepting pre-orders for batch two.) With its new funding, the company is accelerating the production of its first commercial model, the M8.

Liberty Produce Gets Grant to Further Develop CEA in Singapore

A team led by UK-based vertical farming company Liberty Produce has won £420,000 (~$588,000 USD) from the Innovate UK fund to help advance controlled-environment farming in Singapore, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Liberty Produce and Singapore-based LivFresh will jointly lead the Hybrid Advanced Research Vertical Farming Environment Systems and Technology (HARVEST) consortium, which will also include research partners Republic Polytechnic Singapore and the James Hutton Institute.

Liberty Produce will install its Liberator farming system, developed in the UK, at the LivFresh hydroponic farm in Singapore, where it will be integrated with existing greenhouse technology. The HARVEST team will then run trials of this combined system, with the goal being to eventually release a turn-key product for Singapore food growers to use domestically. 

Because of limited land, Singapore currently imports about 90 percent of its food. This dependence on outside sources, however, has proven itself problematic at certain times — like during a pandemic, when the global food supply chain gets disrupted. 

The Singaporean government’s 30×30 initiative aims to get 30 percent of the city-state’s food produced domestically by 2030. Controlled-environment farming, such as greenhouses and vertical farms, is a major part of that plan.  

Liberty Produce develops vertical farms that are modular and can therefore be customized to a specific farming operation’s needs. They are also smaller than the massive “plant factories” a la Plenty or AeroFarms. For instance, the Liberator 5000 is roughly the size of a shipping container, according to the company, while two other models are even smaller. This smaller geographic footprint is well-suited to a place like Singapore, which is mostly urban and, as mentioned above, is already dealing with very limited land.

Liberty Produce systems are 100 percent controlled, from the amount of water and nutrients fed to crops to humidity levels to the “recipes” of LED lights. The system can grow standard leafy greens but has also grown more challenging crops, like blueberries.

The project with LivFresh will last two years and support Singapore’s national strategy around the 30×30 goal.

Misfits Market Raises $200M Series C, Will Expand into Proteins

Misfits Market, an online marketplace that sells imperfect foods at a discount, announced today that it has raised a $200 million Series C round of funding. According to a press release shared with The Spoon, the round was co-led by Accel and D1 Capital, with participation by existing investors including Valor Equity Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Sound Ventures, and Third Kind Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Misfits to $301.5 million.

Misfits Market started out selling subscriptions to boxes of “ugly” produce back in 2018. This allowed customers to buy misshapen but perfectly edible fruits and vegetables at a discount while rescuing food from going to waste. Since then, Misfits has expanded to offer a wide range of other imperfect pantry and packaged items that might otherwise be discarded. These include products with misprinted labels and products that are shipped to the wrong location.

The global pandemic actually created a number of new opportunities for Misftits Market last year. With stadiums, schools, restaurants and more shut down, existing supply chains needed to re-direct their products to new customers. For example, with movie theaters closed, there was a glut of corn for popcorn that Misfits could purchase and sell at a discount to its customers.

Additionally, Misfits has benefited from the pandemic-induced boom in online grocery shopping as customers limited their trips to physical stores. Abhi Ramesh, Founder & CEO of Misfits Market told me by phone last week that his company grew 5x in scale last year.

With its new funding, Ramesh is hitting the gas to accelerate Misfits’ growth. The company opened a new 250,000 sq. ft. headquarters in New Jersey and was able to double its order capacity. And while Misfits is predominantly available in the Eastern U.S. right now, it will be expanding to the West Coast with a new facility in Utah. One in the Pacific Northwest will follow after that.

Misfits is also expanding its grocery categories with the addition of protein. Most customers might blanche at the thought of “imperfect meat,” but Ramesh explained to me that there is a lot of excess in the protein supply chain as well. With something like salmon, for instance, there are often 3 oz portions leftover from trimming fillets. Misfits can bundle those leftovers and sell them at a discount.

Misfits Market’s funding is also coming during a time of big investment in grocery related startups that are aiming to upend our traditional notions of food retail. A number of smaller, delivery-only grocery stores like Fridge no More and Gorillas are popping up around the world, making groceries something more akin to a utility. Online grocer Weee! is leading the way by focusing on selling Asian and Hispanic foods. And retail infrastructure startups like Shelf Engine and Trax are developing tech to re-invent how store inventory is managed.

Most relevant to Misfits, however, is its main rival, Imperfect Foods, which has also expanded from ugly produce to become more of a full online grocer that taps into existing supply chain deficiencies. Imperfect raised a $110 million Series D round in February, which means we can probably expect a marketing blitz from both companies this year.

The question over both Misfits and Imperfect at this point however is what happens post-pandemic? Will people still want to order groceries online when they can just go to their local store? Ramesh said he isn’t too concerned about that. “Yes, there will be some sort of reversion to the mean,” Ramesh told me. But because his company is offering discounts and value on products people already buy, his customers will continue to shop with Misfits.

Big Idea Ventures Unveils the Third Cohort for Alt-Protein Accelerator

Food tech investment firm Big Idea Ventures (BIV) this week unveiled the companies chosen for Cohort 3 of its alt-protein-focused accelerator program. Fifteen early-stage startups will participate in the five-month-long program, either in NYC or Singapore, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

BIV looks for companies developing both plant-based and cultured protein products and ingredients. Food tech companies related to the alt-protein space are also considered. Past program participants include companies from the plant-based protein space, cultured protein, and corresponding technologies. Evo, MeliBio, and WTH Foods have all taken part in the program.

BIV says its third cohort is focused on sustainably feeding a growing world population.To that end, chosen companies include:

NYC Program:

  • AquaCultured Foods: A seafood alternative using microbial fermentation
  • The Frauxmagerie: A plant-based cheese using cultures without dairy
  • Innocent Meat: A B2B cell-based meat production system
  • incrEDIBLE: An edible cutlery to reduce single-use plastics
  • Blue Ridge Bantam: A cell-based ground and whole-cut turkey
  • New Breed Meats: Plant-based burgers, grounds and sausages
  • Plant Ranch: Plant-based Mexican meats

Singapore Program:

  • Angie’s Tempeh: Tempeh fermentation technology to create protein-rich foods
  • Animal Alternative Technologies: Cell-based meat services including bioreactors and software
  • Farmsow: A B2B ingredients company developing sustainable alternatives to tropical oils and animal fats
  • GreenGourmet Foods: Plant-based dairy 
  • Haofood: Alternative chicken protein from peanut focused on the Asian market
  • MAD Foods: A plant-based beverage 

Two companies — plant-based yogurt maker Wellme and a food tech startup called Meat. The End — will participate in both NYC and Singapore.

Beside $125,000 in cash investment and $75,000 on in-kind investment, chosen companies also get access to co-working space, including test kitchens, for the duration of the program, as well as mentorship and networking opportunities.

BIV is also currently taking applications for Cohort IV, which will take place during summer 2021. Applications are taken on a rolling basis.

Egypt: Grocery Delivery Service Appetito Raises $450K Seed Round

Cairo-based grocery delivery service Appetito has raised a $450,000 Seed round of funding, reports Business Africa Online. Ahmed Al Alola and a group of Saudi Angel investors led the round along with Afropreneurs Fund, with participation from Jeda Capital.

Formed in March of 2020, Appetito originally started out with a chain of delivery-only (or “dark”) grocery stores that offered next-day and pre-scheduled grocery delivery service. The company recently pivoted to a more on-demand model, offering delivery of 1,000 SKUs in 60 minutes or less to certain parts of Cairo.

Appetito’s funding is the first we’ve covered for an Africa-based grocery startup this year, but it is certainly part of a larger trend we’ve been following. Grocery-related startups (grocery delivery in particular) are hot with investors all over the world right now.

In Europe, Gorillas, Getir, and Glovo have each raised nine-digit funding rounds for their particular fast grocery delivery services. In the U.S. goPuff raised $1.5 billion to scale out its chain of dark convenience stores. And in China, grocery app Xingsheng Youxuan raised $2 billion and Nice Tuan raised $750 million

A big reason for the boost in grocery app funding is the global pandemic, which pushed a record number of people into grocery e-commerce. With various lockdowns enforced in different parts of the world throughout 2020, people limited trips outside their homes. Grocery apps and delivery services became a way to help cut down on human-to-human interaction when getting food.

As vaccinations continue to roll out in different countries, We will have to wait and see if consumers keep up with the online grocery or return once again to stores in-person. One thing is for sure, post-pandemic, there will be a lot more grocery delivery options for people than ever before.

For its part, Appetito said it will use its new funding to expand across Egypt and beyond.

Ocado Invests £10M in Oxbotica to Develop Self-Driving Vehicles

UK-based grocer Ocado announced today that it has invested £10 million (~$13.8M USD) in autonomous vehicle (and fellow UK) company Oxbotica. The investment is part of an broader, multi-year deal to develop self-driving hardware and software.

For Ocado, autonomous vehicle tech could have a number of uses, from self-driving warehouse vehicles to delivery vans to smaller autonomous robots.

That Ocado bought Oxbotica to bring autonomy further up and down its tech stack makes a lot of sense. The grocer already makes autonomous smart warehouses filled with robots zipping along grids assembling items for grocery orders. It’s natural to extend that autonomy throughout its warehouses and into delivery vehicles. It’s easy to envision robots picking and packing grocery orders, which are then handed off to warehouse robot that places it in a self-driving delivery van that drives off to a customer’s house.

Ocado has also shown that it’s not shy about spending money on autonomous systems. Last year purchased Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics to enhance its robotics capabilities. And prior to that it led the $9 million Seed round in cafeteria robot company Karakuri.

Ocado’s investment in Oxbotica actually caps off what has been a big week for autonomous vehicles. Udelv announced its new self-driving Transporter platform. Domino’s tapped Nuro to make autonomous pizza deliveries in Houston, Texas. And Walmart announced it had invested in self-driving startup, Cruise.

It’s also been a big news week for Ocado. The company’s technology powers Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Centers, the first of which opened up in Monroe, Ohio this week. For its part, Kroger has dabbled in self-driving delivery before through a partnership with Nuro.

If you want to learn more about robotics in grocery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit happening on May 18. There will be a number of autonomous vehicle companies as well as Karakuri speaking!

Les Nouvelles Fermes Raises €2M to Expand Its Aquaponics Farms

Bordeaux, France-based indoor farming company Les Nouvelles Fermes announced today it has raised €2 million (~$2.4 million USD) to build what it’s calling the largest aquaponic farm in Europe. EU Startups was first to write about the news. The round included participation from IRDI, the Banque des Territoires, Crédit Agricole Aquitaine and the CIC. This is Les Nouvelles Fermes first round of funding.

The new farm, dubbed “Odette,” will launch at the end of 2021 in the Bordeaux Metropolitan area. Like Les Nouvelles Fermes’ current farm, also in Bordeaux, Odette will use a closed-circuit aquaponics system to grow both vegetables and fish. 

Aquaponics combines raising fish in tanks with growing produce via hydroponics. Nutrient-rich discharge from the fish is fed to the plants, which then can clean the water that goes back to the fish, creating an entirely closed-loop system. 

“Pauline,” Les Nouvelles Fermes’ current farm, grows a mixture of leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables, in addition to raising rainbow trout. The forthcoming Odette will do the same. EU Startups noted that the company’s object in opening a new farm is to “to validate an operating model and then reproduce it in the immediate vicinity of the major urban centres in France and Europe, with the possibility to restore abandoned land, while creating agricultural occupations.”

Closed-loop systems like Pauline and Odette aren’t yet widespread in the indoor farming community yet. However, given the many sustainability issues around both fishing and farming, that may change as technologies get cheaper and a little more standardized. Upward Farms, based in Brooklyn, New York, is another company producing fish and leafy greens via a closed-loop system.

Along those lines, Les Nousvelles Fermes plans to duplicate its model and technology on a much larger scale in future. The company has already signed a partnership with the company Orange to further develop its technological solution.