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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Funding

Instawork Raises $60M to Connect Local Businesses with Hourly Workers

Instawork, an online marketplace that connects local businesses across the U.S. with available workers, announced today that it has raised a $60 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Grelock, Corner Ventures, Four River Group, WndrCo and Tilman Fertitta (owner of Landry’s and the Houston Rockets). Existing investors Benchmark, Spark Capital, GV, Burst Capital, and SV Angel also participated. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Instawork to $100 million.

Instawork’s platform supports a number of industries, including food and beverage and hospitality, where qualified workers like servers and chefs can post their services. Instawork checks references and makes sure each worker is indeed qualified, then connects them with open shifts available at different companies such as Marriott, Sodexo, and Sun Basket. After a shift, the worker gets paid within hours of completion and can rate their experience.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it has grown dramactically over the past 15 months and now has more than 1 million workers across the U.S. on its network. Instawork said the number of available shifts on its platform has grown 8x in less than two years, with professionals finding work in less than 24 hours with shifts paying an average of $18 an hour.

Labor remains a hot button issue in the food a beverage sector. Though restaurants and bars have been fully re-opened as the pandemic recedes, they are having a tough time filling open positions as the industry grapples with issues around worker safety and fair pay. As those issues get resolved, platforms like Instawork, ShiftPixy, Shyft, and Jobletics can help fill in short-term workforce gaps.

Aleph Farms Raises $105M in Series B Funding

Cultivated meat company Aleph Farms announced today it has completed a $105 million Series B round of funding, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $118 million. The Series B round was led by L Catterton and DisruptAD with participation from Skyviews Life Science, Thai Union, BRF, and CJ CheilJedang. Existing investors VisVires New Protein, Strauss Group, Cargill, Peregrine Ventures, and CPT Capital also participated in the round.

Israel-based Aleph Farms said the new funds will go towards increasing manufacturing, growing operations internationally, and expanding product lines. Currently, the company is developing a cultivated beef steak and will unveil a prototype for that product in November at the Agri-Food Innovation Summit. 

There is of course an enormous difference between unveiling a prototype and making these whole-muscle cuts of cultivated meat at scale. One of the challenges for cultivated meat companies is being able to produce large quantities of product at a cost that is on par with traditional meat. Aleph Farms launched a new production process at the end of 2020 that will eventually be able to reach that price parity, according to the company.

The process is the first part of a phased build-out for Aleph’s forthcoming pilot production facility, which the company says will be operational by 2022. Aleph Farms also plans to do an initial market launch at that time. The Series B funding will, in bigger-picture terms, go towards helping the company realize that goal. 

Aleph’s announcement today follows recent news from other cultivated meat companies that are also opening pilot production facilities and also aiming for commercial launches in 2022. That includes MeaTech 3D, also based in Israel and also developing whole cuts of cultivated meat. Another Israeli company, Future Meat, has already opened its facility and says it plans to sell cultivated meat in the U.S. by 2022.

Before anyone sells anything, however, these companies must get regulatory approval for each market they want to enter. So far, just one company, Eat Just, has regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat, and that’s only in Singapore. Along with price parity, getting regulatory approval is a major topic in the cultivated meat conversation these days. 

Aleph Farms says it is working with regulatory agencies, though the company did not specify for which markets. Part of the company’s international expansion will be to the United Arab Emirates and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Aleph said it is also evaluating the possibility of a manufacturing facility located in the UAE.

Meati Raises $50M Series B for Mycelium-Based Meat Alternatives

Colorado-based Meati produces whole cuts of meat alternative analogs from mycelium, and today the start-up announced that it has raised $50 million in its series B round (news from Forbes). The round was led by Acre Venture Partners and BOND, with participation from Prelude Ventures, Congruent Ventures, and Tao Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $109.1 million.

Meati uses fermentation to produce its alternative protein products, a technique that the Good Food Institute calls the third pillar of alternative protein. The company has so far introduced two products, a whole cut alternative steak and chicken breast. The mycelium steak was piloted at a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado last year, and the chicken alternative was only offered to select consumers that applied to taste test it. Through the versatility of mycelium, it is likely that Meati will be able to create a wide variety of alternative protein analogs.

This most recent round of capital will be used to develop an 80,000 square foot production plant in preparation for the startup’s commercial launch. According to the Forbes article, Meati’s goal is to be able to produce enough of its alternative protein in its new facility that would be the equivalent of 4,500 cows in a single day.

The Good Food Institute reported that approximately $1 billion has been invested into companies using fermentation to develop alternative protein. That being said, Meati faces a few competitors in this space. AtLast had an impressive funding round earlier this year ($40M), and is currently developing new alternative protein analogs alongside its existing bacon product. Prime Roots uses fermentation and fungi to craft various protein alternatives, including bacon, chicken, lobster, and beef. Focusing on the B2B realm, Mushlabs also ferments mycelium to create alternative proteins products.

Meati has stated that the commercial launch of its first product will be sometime in 2022. According to an article published on Techcrunch, the first commercial product will likely be a mycelium-based jerky.

C3 Raises $80M to Expand Its Virtual Food Hall Concept

Virtual restaurant company C3 (Creating Culinary Communities) has raised an $80 million Series B funding round co-led by Brookfield Asset Management and REEF Technology. Egon Durban and Greg Mondre Managing Partners and Co-CEOs of Silver Lake Partners, along with Dean Adler, Co-Founder of real estate investment firm Lubert-Adler.

C3’s business these days is as much about real estate as it is about restaurants. The company operates more than 40 virtual restaurant brands, leveraging underutilized kitchen spaces around the country to cook and fulfill those orders. For example, the company has a partnership with Graduate Hotels and uses kitchen spaces at Graduate locations to serve delivery-only orders to guests and the surrounding community.

In March of this year, C3 said it would also bring its virtual restaurant concept to residential spaces, starting in Nashville, Tennessee and Phoenix, Arizona. The company recently partnered with Kitopi to take C3 brands overseas to the UAE, has a deal to use Reef locations for kitchens, and last month said it would make its virtual brands available to Chowly’s 10,000-plus restaurant customers.

For all C3 concepts and partnerships, meals are available through the company’s CITIZENS GO mobile app, which is powered on the back end by online order company Lunchbox’s software.  

The $80 million fundraise will go towards further expansion in the form of signing leases with real estate developers at various mixed-use, retail, and hospitality spaces. According to today’s press release, these leases will serve to open CITIZENS food halls, which are brick-and-mortar versions of the C3’s virtual food halls. These spaces will also provide additional kitchen space with which to fulfill delivery-only orders for C3 brands. 

The virtual food hall concept itself isn’t new, with companies like Deliveroo, Zuul, and others employing their own versions of it. Few have pursued expansion as aggressively as C3, however. The latter says it has opened 250+ digital brand locations in the U.S., will have 1,000 by year’s end and is on track for 12,000 kitchens globally by 2023. 

DaVinci Kitchen Equity Crowdfunds €500,000 for Robotic Pasta Kiosk

DaVinci Kitchen, a German startup making an autonomous robotic pasta kiosk, has raised more than €500,000 (~$591,000 USD) through equity crowdfunding. The company’s campaign ran from March to the end of June this year on Seedmatch, with 488 investors participating. Combined with a previous Seed round, DaVinci has raised now raised €1.35M (~$1.6M USD).

DaVinci’s pasta station is a self-contained pasta-making kiosk that’s 2.1m wide by 2.5m high and 2.4m long. Customers use an app to place orders and customize their meals, and an articulating arm swings about preparing and plating the dish. The DaVinci can make 40 meals per hour. As company Founder Vick Jorge Manuel explained to me last year, pasta is actually just the beginning for the kiosk, as different components (like a deep fryer) can be swapped into make all manner of cuisines and dishes.

DaVinci is just the latest robot startup to use equity crowdfunding to raise money. Blendid, Kiwibot, and a bunch of companies in Wavemaker Labs’ portfolio (Piestro, Bobacino, Miso Robotics) have all turned to the crowd to raise capital. Part of the allure of equity crowdfunding is that it allows a company to raise money without the pressure to scale that can come with institutional VC funding. Additionally, equity crowdfunding can act as a marketing vehicle and helps build a community around a product. For more, check out this panel from our recent ArticulATE conference all about the ins and outs of equity crowdfunding. (Spoon Plus membership required.)

Through an exchange on Linkedin over this past weekend, DaVinci told me that the company will use the new money to finish its pre-production version kiosk, with the goal of opening up its own test restaurant in Leipzig. DaVinci will also start to raise a traditional round of funding for its Series A starting in September.

PitchBook: More than $10B Invested in Grocery Startups This Year

We’ve been saying that investment in grocery startups is downright frothy this year, and now PitchBook has put a number to all this VC activity. CNBC reports that venture-backed grocery startups have raised $10 billion so far in 2021, according to PitchBook’s data, vaulting past the $7 billion raised in the sector last year.

Part of the reason for the big jump is the mega-rounds that some grocery startups around the world raised during the first half of this year:

And that doesn’t even count all the other, smaller fundraises that have happened for companies like Food Rocket and Fridge No More.

The pandemic certainly had a hand in driving all this frothiness. Lockdowns, social distancing and general fears around catching COVID-19 pushed record amounts of people into online grocery shopping in 2020. Additionally, there are a wave of startups like Gorillas, and Gopuff and Fridge No More that are creating an entirely new type of on-demand, speedy delivery model. These companies operate dark stores in neighborhoods with a small delivery radius, promising grocery delivery in as few as 10 minutes. This is a new concept for most shoppers, and the allure of tapping a few buttons on your phone and food arriving minutes later could upend the way we buy groceries.

CNBC adds that all of this massive funding is disproportionate to the opportunity in the online grocery category. As such, there could be a wave of consolidation coming soon. This is true whenever money floods a particular sector, and it is especially worth considering given the fluctuating state of the pandemic.

Questions around how much consumers will stick with online grocery shopping once the pandemic recedes remains unclear. Vaccines have helped abate the virus, but they are rolling out at different paces around the world, and viral variants threaten to bring resurgences in case numbers. Brick Meets Click reported that online grocery shopping dropped to $7 billion in sales this past May, down 16 percent year-over-year. But that $7 billion figure is still 3.5 times higher than pre-pandemic online grocery sales.

But none of what might happen can change what’s already been done. That $10 billion has been invested, now we’ll just see which companies can bring bring returns.

Czech Online Grocer Rohlik Raises $119M, Its Second Nine-Digit Round This Year

Czech online grocery startup Rohlik announced today that it has raised a €100 million (~$119M USD) Series C round of funding. TechCrunch was first to report the news, writing that the round was led by existing investor Index Ventures, with participation from Partech and Quadrille Capital, who had also previously invested in Rohlik.

This funding comes just months after Rohlik raised a €190 million (~$230 million USD) Series B round in March of this year. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Rohlik to nearly $380 million, and according to TechCrunch, Rohlik is now valued at €1 billion (~$1.2 billion USD).

That Rohlik is able to raise gobs of money in such quick succession is not a surprise. Investment in the online grocery space has been frothy this year, with players like Weee!, Instacart, Xingsheng Youxuan and many more all hauling in big rounds in the first half of 2021. Driving much of this investment is the pandemic, which pushed droves of people into avoiding public spaces and buying their groceries online for either pickup or delivery.

More recently, funding has been going towards smaller, dark grocer stores that promise grocery delivery in under fifteen minutes. Companies like Gorillas, Getir and Gopuff have also raised tons of cash for rapid expansion this year. Rohlik, however, is more of like a traditional big-box online grocer offering delivery in two hours. This “slower” approach doesn’t seem to have impacted the bottom line. Rohlik told TechCrunch that its revenues in 2020 passed €300 million with more than 750,000 customers, with basket sizes between €60 and €100 per order.

The pandemic remains the big question mark looming over the entire online grocery space. While vaccines are rolling out around the world, many countries in Europe have only a third of their populations fully vaccinated as of now, and the full effect of complications like the Delta variant remain unknown. How potential resurgences in the virus could impact how people shop for groceries remains to be seen.

For its part, Rohlik has already expanded its services to Hungary and Austria, with plans to move into Germany, Romania, Italy, France and Spain.

Soft Robotics Raises $10M to Add 3D Vision and AI to its Octopus-like Grippers

Soft Robotics, which is best known for making octopus-like grippers for robots, announced today that it has raised a $10 million extension to the $23 million Series B round it raised in January 2020. The round was co-led by Material Impact, Scale Venture Partners and Calibrate Ventures, and adds Tyson Ventures (the venture arm of Tyson Foods) to the syndicate. ABB Technology Ventures and Tekfen Ventures participated as well. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Soft Robotics to $58 million.

Soft Robotics uses rubber tipped grippers with “air actuated soft elastomeric end effectors” that mimic an octopus, allowing robotic arms to pick up odd-shaped and delicate items like eggs and bread without crushing them. The company says the new capital will help Soft Robotics launch its new SoftAI technology, which adds layers of 3D vision and artificial intelligence to its gripping solution.

According to Soft Robotics’ website, “SoftAI will evaluate the pick scene and automatically choose the best grasp and ideal robot trajectory to optimize rate and reduce product damage.” It’s easy to see how this type of automated discernment would come in handy for a company like Tyson Foods (which was already using Soft Robotics before it invested), which needs to pick up and pack all different types of animal products of varying shapes and sizes.

Chicken Wing and Poultry Automation with mGripAI

In addition to its new technology, Soft Robotics said its new funding will go towards commercial expansion to keep up with pandemic-driven demand. Last year COVID-19 exposed shortcomings in our food supply chain, with meatpacking facilities, which were already a dangerous place to work, becoming hot spots for the virus. Implementing robots in a meatpacking or other food-related factory can help add additional safety and social distancing to the work environment. Robotic arms can work all day without fatigue or injury, and placing robots on a line can help space out workers, so people aren’t working right next to each other.

During our first ArituclATE food conference back in 2019, a robotics researcher told me that robotic “grippers all suck.” But that appears to be changing. In addition to Soft Robotics’ octopus approach, new technologies based on origami (paper folding) and kirigami (paper cutting) are creating entirely new types of gripping technology that can be used for odd-shaped and delicate items. The combination of the pandemic and investor interest could help fuel accelerated development and implementation of this new gripper technology and unlock new areas and uses for robots in food production.

Botrista Raises $10M Series A for Its DrinkBot Automated Drink Dispenser

Botrista, the company behind the commercial DrinkBot automated beverage dispenser, announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Purestone Capital and La Kaffa International with participation from Sony Innovation Fund, Middleby Corporation and PIDC. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Botrista to $16 million.

Meant for restaurants an other foodservice companies, the DrinkBot is a cloud-connected automated drink maker, dispensing mocktails, infused teas and lattes, iced coffees, lemonades and more without the need for a full bar. Drinks are ordered via an on-board touchscreen, so the experience is contactless, and they are mixed and served in less than 20 seconds.

Botrista is taking a vertically integrated approach as it comes to market. The company provides the hardware for free, charging a monthly maintenance fee and selling the drink ingredients, which as of last year were $1.40 – $1.90 per drink. DrinkBots connect to the Botrista CloudBar for drink recipes, automated inventory management, as well as sales and menu performance analytics.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Botrista said it experienced 10x growth year-over-year, which isn’t that hard to believe. The pandemic is driving demand for more contactless food and beverage preparation, as well as the need for takeout and delivery-related tech. The Botrista can churn out drinks continuously, quickly and at the touch of a button — perfect for high volume establishments like ghost kitchens and restaurants with high off-premises volume.

Automated mocktail and juice dispensing is becoming a hot little sub-sector of the food and beverage robotic space. Over in Switzerland, Smyze’s robot baristas also make a bevy of juice beverages. And last year, SomaBar, which makes a countertop drink dispenser, pivoted away from Soju-based cocktails to have its machine create juices, teas and regular mixed drinks.

It’s worth noting that both Sony and Middleby participated in Botrista’s latest funding. Last year Sony set up an artificial intelligence unit to work on both recipe creation and robotics. It’s easy to see how DrinkBot’s combination of data and automation fits in with that endeavor. And Middleby, a giant in foodservice automation, could open up a large network of customers for Botrista.

Botrista said it will use its new funding to scale up deployment operations to roll out DrinkBot nationally.

Better Juice Raises $8M for Tech That Reduces the Sugar in Natural Juices

Better Juice, a company that uses enzymatic technology to reduce the amount of sugar in natural juices, has raised $8 million in seed funding. The round was led by iAngels with participation from Maverick Ventures, Food Tech Lab TFTL, The Kitchen Hub, NEOME, Schestowitz Group, and Semillero.

The company’s tech comes in the form of a simple machine that can be integrated into the juice-manufacturing process. This “column” contains immobilized non-GMO microorganisms. When juice passes through the column, the food-grade microorganisms convert juice sugars (fructose, glucose, sucrose) into dietary fibers and non-digestible sugars. Better Juice says this process can reduce up to 80 percent of all sugars in the juice.

A single column can produce 1000 liters of juice per 1 liter column.

Health experts, consumers, and many others have debated the merits of juice for years now. Increasingly, critics have pointed to the amount of sugar in juices — even natural ones — and said there’s as much sugar in a glass of OJ as in a soda.

Better Juice’s technology is currently designed to target orange juice’s specific sugar composition. However, the company says seed round of investment will allow it to expand into other product lines, including ice cream, soft drinks, and jam. Funding will also go towards building a full-scale manufacturing plant in Israel, which will increase production capacity “by 40-fold.” Additionally, the company will expand its sales and marketing teams as it moves into commercialization stage.

In the next few months, Better Juice plans to bring its product to market. How seamlessly it can integrate its technology into existing manufacturing processes will be a key factor. The company has said in the past that its column is easy to install and doesn’t require special training or a specific set of skills. Once the column actually comes to market, we will see how well this assertion holds up.

The company opened its pilot production facility in January of this year and currently has partnerships with “leading beverage companies.”

ResQ Raises $7.5M for Back-of-House Restaurant Tech

ResQ, whose software platform manages restaurant repair and maintenance tasks, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding thus far to $9 million. Homebrew, Golden Ventures, and Inovia Capital led the round, which also saw participation from various angel investors, including Instacart president Nilam Ganenthiran, Gokul Rajaram (Doordash, Board of Pinterest and Coinbase), and AirBnb’s Lenny Rachitsky, among others. ResQ’s restaurant customers, including Yum Brands! franchisee Soul Foods, also participated.  

The company’s technology focuses on a very specific part of the restaurant back of house: repairs and maintenance. Through the ResQ platform, restaurants can request, manage, and pay for a service, as well as manage the documents for these things. 

ResQ also connects restaurants with a network of contractors able to perform those services. The company’s ever-growing list of available services right now includes HVAC, refrigeration, electrical, janitorial, plumbing, pest control, grease trap cleaning, preventative maintenance, and just about anything else needed to keep a restaurant kitchen up and running.

Digitizing the management of such things would, ResQ suggests, help with revenue recovery in the restaurant back of house. The company says restaurants typically spend between 3 and 5 percent of annual sales on repairs, and that the ResQ platform has saved businesses 10 to 30 percent in annual repairs and maintenance spend. 

Keeping costs in the restaurant back of house down has been a topic of growing interest for the last several months. Lockdowns and restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic decimated already-thin margins for businesses. Many have said digitizing the back of house, whether through inventory management, back office-focused platforms, or maintenance management, is an important way to keep costs down. Granted, much of that talk comes from the tech companies selling these services and the investors funneling money into them. Realistically, smaller, independent restaurants won’t necessarily have the budget to pay for more software, at least not while the industry slowly recovers.

For its part, ResQ has plenty of bigger restaurant chains that are clients in the meantime. That list currently includes Wendy’s, Burger King, Panera, KFC, and Taco Bell, to name a few. 

ResQ will use its new funding to build up its team and launch its service in new markets. Currently, ResQ is available in Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Chicago. 

 

S2G Ventures Unveils the First Five Investments for Its Oceans & Seafood Fund

S2G Ventures has invested in five different companies as part of the inaugural investments for its $100 million Oceans & Seafood fund. The point of the new fund is to support companies and entrepreneurs building new systems, solutions, and processes geared towards the “blue economy.”

The World Bank defines the blue economy as “the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.” In other words, it calls for a more sustainable approach to doing business when it comes to our oceans and the life within them. Multiple areas are touched by the blue economy, including maritime transport, renewable energy, fisheries, and waste management strategies. Even tourism could play a role.

Via a statement, S2G Managing Director Kate Danaher called sustainably managed ocean ecosystems “a pillar of global environmental recovery, a driver of economic growth, and a foundation for food security and human health.” The firm says its Oceans & Seafood fund is the largest in North America. It will invest in companies helping to “build marine ecosystem resilience, de-risk the ocean supply chain, maximize the value of natural resources and support animal and human health.”

Thus far, companies in S2G’s group of inaugural investments are:

ReelData. Based in Canada, the company makes software it says can increase land-based aquaculture’s profitability, sustainability, and scalability. Initial products include AI-informed feeding systems, biomass estimation and health/stress analytics.

ViAqua Therapeutics. The Israel-based biotech producer makes orally administered RNA-based treatments for shrimp to improve their resistance to disease. S2G says the company has the potential to apply its technology across “all aquaculture species and platforms where cost-effective RNA production and novel delivery systems (such as nano and micro encapsulation) are needed.”

Moleaer. U.S.-based Moleaer has nanobubble tech that can treat water systems, including removing harmful pathogens and increasing recoveries of natural resources. 

Additionally, S2G has invested in two undisclosed companies. One is an “ocean surveillance company” that will track dark vessels and illegal maritime activity. The other is a “fishmeal and oil technology company” based in the U.S. that holds proprietary zero-waste fishmeal technology that could be applied to other parts of protein production in fisheries.

The focus of the overall fund will be divided into three areas: ecosystem resillience, resource optimization, and consumer centricity. S2G said it believes focusing on these areas will improve ocean health while still “generating above average financial returns.”