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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

Big Idea Ventures Raising $250M Fund Targeting Later-Stage FoodTech Companies

Big Idea Ventures (BIV), the hybrid VC firm-slash-accelerator, first caught my attention last year when it launched the New Protein Fund, a $50 million fund targeting seed-stage companies in the alternative protein space, and made its first investment in cell-based seafood company Shiok Meats. At the same time, BIV announced a twice-yearly accelerator program for budding alt-protein startups with locations in New York City and Singapore.

Now the accelerator is seeking its second cohort — and BIV is preparing to launch its second fund. Called Generation Food, BIV’s newest fund will target later-stage companies, Series A and beyond. It will expand its focus to tackle sustainability across the food supply chain, not just in the alternative protein space. The target amount? 250 million dollars.

I hopped on a call with Tom Mastrobuoni, a Venture Partner at BIV and the former CFO of Tyson Ventures (which invested in the New Protein Fund), and Andrew Ive, the founder and Managing General Partner of BIV, earlier this week to learn more about Generation Food. Mastrobuoni said that this fund will take a step back to tackle some of the larger, underlying issues plaguing the food system. He named six target areas:

  • Alternative Protein. With the Generation Food fund, BIV will continue to invest in alt-protein. However, they’ll focus on companies that are enabling general growth within the sector instead of particular food brands.
  • Innovative Ingredient Options. Better-for-you ingredients for healthy products including salt and sugar replacements.
  • Breakthrough Manufacturing. Improved manufacturing processes for proteins, as well as more sustainable packaging and low-waste water solutions.
  • Food Safety Innovation. Technologies that are making food safer and last longer, e.g. hyperspectral imaging.
  • Traceability and Transparency. Supply chain enhancements — but not just blockchain, which Mastrobuoni pointed out can be cost-prohibitive.
  • Logistics Enhancement. Ways to get food from A to B more efficiently, without relying so much on old-school methods like trucks.

At the same time, BIV will continue to use its New Protein Fund to fuel the Accelerator program. Thus far BIV has invested in 12 seed-stage companies through its Accelerator Program — which is split between Singapore and New York — and are about to kick off another. Ive said that he plans to start raising for the second New Protein Fund when the current one’s capital is about 75 percent deployed — in two years or so. He also plans to add at least one more cohort location.

Generation Food is a big step up for BIV, both in terms of scope and size. Ive told me that they were inspired to start the fund after speaking with large corporates, many of whom are making significant commitments to shareholders and consumers about how they’ll reduce their environmental impact — be it through packaging, water usage, CO2 emissions, etc. “Large corporates want to make these changes,” Ive told me. “They just don’t necessarily have the technologies in place to deliver on them.”

That’s where BIV can come in. Instead of corporations having to re-engineer their businesses to meet these targets, they can integrate technology from mid-stage companies which will do it for them.

Considering the volatile economic climate right now, it might seem like an odd time to launch a venture fund. But for BIV, COVID-19 is actually proving the relevance of food technology more than ever. “The pandemic is shining a light on the cracks that have always been just under the surface of the food supply chain,” Mastrobuoni told me. With the Generation Food fund, BIV hopes to drive innovation into spaces that can enhance sustainability and make the supply chain more resilient, should something like the coronavirus strike again.

Indeed, one of the things to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic is a heightened awareness around our food — where it comes from, how safe it is, and how inconsistent our supply chain can be (just try to find flour at your grocery store and see what happens). If we want to ensure a more resilient supply chain — especially in case another catastrophe strikes — we have to make our food system more sustainable now.

That’s the kind of argument that could help BIV attract the full $250 million for Generation Food.

Japanese Startup Base Food to Debut High-Nutrition Bread in U.S.

Bread seems to be the unofficial food of quarantine. No wonder — it’s comforting, it’s affordable, and it’s a soothing home project to tackle, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But much as we love bread, we know that eating it all day, every day is probably not the healthiest decision in the world. A Japanese startup called Base Food is bringing a more nutritionally appealing bread offering to the U.S.

Founded in 2016, Base Food uses nutrient-dense ingredients like whole grain flour, seaweed, and flaxseed to develop healthier versions of staple foods. Starting today, the company’s second product, Base Bread, will be available direct-to-consumer in California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada and Colorado.

It will come in just one big 72-gram roll, which will cost $3.33 each or $2.99 each if you sign up for a monthly subscription. The bread will come frozen, which is why the company is only able to ship within a 2-day radius of their Reno, Nevada manufacturing facility. Frozen food typically equates to high shipping costs, but when I spoke to Base Food’s COO Michael Rosenzweig last week said they have yet to finalize their fees. 

Photo: Base Bread

Base Food already sells two products — Base Noodles and Base Bread — in its native Japan, and the noodles are already available in the same seven U.S. states which can purchase the bread. Down the road, Rosenzweig said that the company is looking to get into foodservice retail channels, specifically through corporate cafeterias.

Another selling point is Base Bread’s shelf life. Rosenzweig told me that the bread will last a year in the freezer. We’ve in the midst of a pandemic that leads to both panic shopping and a fear of the grocery store, so Base Food’s nutritional profile and long life are both timely selling points. Then again, $3.33 is expensive for a single-serve roll of bread when you can buy a hefty loaf of artisan sourdough from your local bakery for $6 or $7 bucks — or just make your own.

I actually got to sample Base Bread at SKS Japan in August 2019. It was soft and squishy with a malty sweetness — sort of like a honey whole wheat bread. We also got to taste Base Noodles at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition in October, and they were tasty with a flavor akin to a nutty soba noodle.

As someone who loves carbs more than anything else in this world, but is trying to hang onto some semblance of healthy eating during quarantine, Base Bread offers an appealing option. At least until I smother it with butter.

Beyond Meat Debuts in China With Starbucks Partnership

Starbucks will add Beyond Meat products to its menus in China this week, marking the alt-meat company’s first foray into that country, according to AgFunder News. The partnership comes on the heels of a similar one Starbucks and Beyond debuted in Canada earlier this year.

For the China partnership, the coffee chain will add three dishes containing Beyond products: a lasagna, a Vietnamese-style noodle salad, and pesto pasta. Starbucks will simultaneously also add two new dishes to the menu using Hong Kong’s plant-based Omnipork product.

The push into China is part of Beyond’s overall growth plans that the company outlined at the end of February, including expanding manufacturing to Asia. At the time, Beyond CEO Ethan Brown said his company will “continue to focus on Asia with the goal of producing in the region before the end of 2020.”

The COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t appear to have stalled those plans. In fact, Brown flatly stated back in February that the spread of the novel coronavirus would not prevent Beyond from entering China in 2020. “It adjusts some of our plans, but I am not taking my foot off the gas,” he said.

China is the ultimate market to tackle as far as most alternative meat companies are concerned. It has the world’s largest population and is one of the world’s largest meat producers. And Beyond isn’t alone in its plans for expansion in that country. Chief competitor Impossible Foods also plans to expand into that market.

Starbucks, meanwhile, set a preliminary goal at the beginning of the year to become resource positive by 2030 when it comes to carbon, water, and waste. Offering more alternative meat products is part of that, as traditional livestock farming is an extremely resource-intensive endeavor.

Starbucks has over 4,300 stores in China. Most of those closed when the country went on lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Seattle-based chain has reopened 95 percent of its locations.

The Collaborative Raises $7M to Fuel U.S. Expansion of Coconut Yogurt Empire

The Collaborative, a plant-based yogurt startup formerly known as The Coconut Collaborative, has closed a $7 million Series A funding round led by PowerPlant Ventures.

Founded by twin brothers in 2014, The Collaborative started off making coconut-based yogurt and desserts in the U.K. They expanded to the U.S. market in 2018. It’s currently available in retailers nationwide and will launch on Amazon Fresh in May.

It looks like The Collaborative will use its new funds to really put down roots in the U.S. market and expand its retail footprint. The company is also updating its yogurt offerings to include new sizes (like a multi-serve size) and expanding its dessert lineup.

The Collaborative frames its product as a more sustainable alternative to regular yogurt. While dairy has a hefty environmental footprint, coconut harvesting has its own share of evils. To offset its impact, The Collaborative works with Pur Project to plant coconut trees in Southeast Asia to replenish the ones it uses to create its yogurt.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic slowing down the economy, a slew of plant-based companies have announced funding over the past few weeks. Rebellyous Foods raised $6 million for its vegan chicken nuggets, and Impossible Foods announced an eye-popping $500 million raise to help it weather the COVID-19 storm. As restaurants close and people turn even more to retail, animal alternatives have been experiencing a boom in sales — that’s good news for The Collaborative.

The bad news is it has plenty of competition to contend with. The plant-based yogurt space has really been heating up over the past year. Startups like Yofix, Kite Hill, and Lavva, who makes yogurt from pili nuts, are all jostling to come out with a yogurt tasty enough to convert dairy lovers. Even Big Food corporations, like Chobani and Yoplait, are getting in on it.

With so many new entrants crowding the plant-based yogurt section of your grocery shelf, the differentiator will come down to one thing: taste. Our own Jenn Marston (and self-described dairy lover) sampled some of The Collaborative’s coconut yogurt a few years ago and thought it did a pretty good job of imitating the taste and texture of regular yogurt. With its new funding, The Collaborative will be able to launch new products — in new areas — to try and get even more dairy skeptics on board.

Study: Consumers Willing to Pay 37 Percent More for Cultured Meat

A new study from Maastricht University (UM), where Dr. Mark Post created the world’s first cultured hamburger in 2013, suggests that consumers are willing to pay a premium for cell-based meat.

The study, published in PLOSONE this week, was based on a tasting that UM scientists held for 193 consumers in the Netherlands. It’s the first study on consumer reactions to cell-based meat that included a physical product to taste. The participants were first given a presentation on cultured meat, including the science behind its production and its environmental benefits. They were then given two samples of hamburger, one labeled ‘conventional’ and the other ‘cultured.” However, in reality both were traditional beef burgers.

Even though the samples were identical, all participants rated the flavor of the so-called ‘cultured’ hamburger higher than the ‘conventional’ one. Afterwards 58 percent of the tasters said they would be willing to pay extra — an average premium of 37 percent — for cultured meat.

The participants also noted that their main deciding factor to determine how much more they’d pay for cultured meat was information. The more they knew about the process behind cell-based meat production — and its global societal and environmental impact — the more they were willing to pay for it.

The study also delves a bit into the idea of disgust, which is often more dependent on cultural norms than actual taste (ex. Westerners won’t eat bugs, even though they’re super sustainable). Disgust is certainly one of the bigger challenges that cultured meat will face when it gets to market. Companies have to convince consumers to not only sample this newfangled product — meat grown from cells in bioreactors — but, at least initially, they’ll also have to pay more for it.

“The study shows… that consumers will eat cultured meat if they are served it,” Post noted in an email sent to The Spoon. Not only that, they might even be willing to fork over more money for it. That is, as long as they’re provided with enough information to understand what exactly cell-based meat is, and why it could be an appealing option.

Of course, when cultured meat does eventually hit the market — likely a few years from now in restaurants, a decade from now in supermarkets — companies won’t be able to sit down every consumer and give them a presentation on why it’s a good option for the planet. Instead, they’ll have to rely on marketing to get the word out. Maybe even rope in some high-profile celebrity and chef endorsers like Beyond Meat has done.

They’ll also likely have to face negative campaigns from Big Meat and its friends. The CCF, a lobbying agency with ties to meat corporations, has already aired harsh commercials tearing down plant-based meat. When cultured meat — which is actual animal tissue, just grown outside the animal — becomes available, you can bet that Big Meat will come out swinging. At that point, information (and misinformation) will become all the more important.

Impossible Foods Will Be in Nearly 1,000 Retailers Starting Tomorrow

As of tomorrow, you’ll have a lot more opportunities to buy Impossible Foods’ meatless “bleeding” burgers. The company announced via a press conference on Facebook Live today that it will roll out its flagship plant-based beef product to 777 supermarkets in California, Indiana, Illinois and Nevada on April 17. All stores are part of the Albertson’s family, which includes Safeway, Jewel-Osco, and Wegmans. Impossible’s CCO Rachel Konrad noted in the conference that the expansion will put Impossible in almost 1,000 grocery stores nationwide.

This news comes just a few months after Impossible announced a $500 million Series F round — “the largest fundraising round for a food tech company in the history of the world,” according to Konrad. Impossible currently has a total of $1.2 billion in funding.

The plant-based beef will be sold in 12-ounce packages which will cost $8.99 to $9.99, depending on the retailer. Konrad also noted that the product might be available in several different sections of the grocery store — you might find it in the meat section, vegan section, or even the frozen section.

While Impossible has been planning to expand its retail footprint since it first launched in Southern California last fall, it’s no surprise that they’re making a big push now. In fact, Brown stated that the company had actually accelerated the launch in response to the coronavirus. However, he also admitted that COVID-19’s effect on the restaurant industry was challenging for Impossible’s foodservice partners — all 15,000 of them. “It’s been devastating,” Dennis Woodside, the President of Impossible, added.

In an effort to pad sales, Impossible worked with the FDA to allow its restaurant partners to sell uncooked 5-pound bricks of Impossible Foods beef directly to consumers. But that’s a short-term fix, and more a way to help the restaurant augment their sales than anything else.

The time is ripe for Impossible to start concentrating on its grocery presence. “We think retail is going to be a very large business,” said Woodside, noting that the company has added a second line at its manufacturing facility specifically to cater to grocery.

During the conference, Woodside also weighed in on the fact that COVID-19 is also disrupting manufacturing supply chains left and right. Meat production, specifically, has been disrupted by factory shutdowns due to employee sickness. Woodside made a point to contrast that with Impossible’s manufacturing setup, which is automated and therefore “much easier to keep people apart” than in meat processing plants.

Brown also touched on a point that’s been a favorite of alternative meat companies ever since the pandemic hit. He stated that COVID-19 was introduced to the human population through the consumption of wild animals, and that “our reliance on animals as a source of food is not only an environmental disaster… but is at the root of some of the largest public health risks to the human population.”

There’s some pushback against that argument. But one thing that’s not in question, at least for this reporter, is that Impossible burgers are delicious. Sadly since I’m based in Seattle I won’t be able to purchase any Impossible Beef on my next masked grocery run — but at the speed that Impossible is expanding, I have to bet that time isn’t too far away.

Hargol FoodTech Raises $3M to Launch First Grasshopper Protein Product

Hargol FoodTech, a company that produces commercial grasshopper protein, announced today that it had raised $3 million from existing shareholders Sirius Venture Capital and SLF Investment Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $5 million.

With its new funding Hargol plans to expand its production capacity to launch its first insect protein product line, which will be called Biblical Protein.

Based in Israel, Hargol is a portfolio company of The Trendlines Group and has been commercially farming grasshoppers for human consumption since 2014. This will be its first product release. Back in 2018, the company stated that it had already received $5 million in requests for orders of its grasshopper protein from companies like Ikea and Pepsico. Almost exactly two years later it seems like it’s finally prepared to start fulfilling said orders.

Hargol is far from the only company out there in the bug biz. Aspire makes B2B insect protein and acquired consumer-facing cricket bar brand Exo in 2018. Entomo Farms makes roasted crickets and cricket powder, and Orchestra Provisions is trying to entice consumers to eat insects by turning them into spice mixes.

There’s no question that we should be eating bugs — they’re high in protein and amino acids, incredibly sustainable, and easy to produce. But what is unsure is whether or not we’ll ever want to eat bugs. Western consumers may never get over the “ick” factor around eating creepy crawlies, regardless of how high in protein or easy on the environment they are.

Hargol has an advantage in that its grasshoppers are blended up into a powder, so they’re unrecognizable as bugs and can be easily added into other foods, like smoothies or cookies. Still, I’m not sure how ready Western consumers will be to “hop” up and buy a bag of grasshopper powder.

On the flip side, the coronavirus pandemic is making us all take a long, hard look at our food systems and security. Insects have the advantage of being incredibly easy to produce with limited natural resources and space, so maybe COVID-19 will actually help nudge consumers to open their minds to eating bugs.

Soylent Relaunches in Canada as Meal-in-a-Bottle Sales Fuel Up

Starting today, Soylent’s meal-in-a-bottle drinks and powder will again be available for delivery to Canadian consumers, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

This comes after the more than two-year hiatus in Soylent sales in the Great White North. In the fall of 2017, Soylent had to halt Canadian distribution of its products after, as it wrote in the press release, there were “challenges with certain Canadian government filings.” Chiefly, it did not meet Canadian food inspectors’ standards of what constitutes a meal replacement.

Almost three years later Soylent has finally caught up on the proper regulatory paperwork and is returning north of the border. The company will relaunch in Canada with a more limited lineup, including three beverage flavors and two powders flavors. The product will initially be available only online through Soylent’s website.

Now is an ideal time for Soylent to expand its sales footprint. The aforementioned press release noted that the company’s return to Canada “comes at a time when many people are looking for shelf-stable, nutritious products that can be delivered directly to their homes.” In short, a pandemic — when people are panic shopping and anxious about having enough food that won’t go bad quickly — is actually kind of a perfect situation for meal replacement drinks like Soylent.

Jamie Sullivan, Director of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs for Soylent, told me over email that the company had seen “ebbs and flows” with their online sales that “seem to be aligned with the demand and worry about access to meals, groceries, and nutrition during this time.” She also noted that most of the company’s sales right now are coming from D2C channels — unsurprising, considering the rise in food delivery and grocery e-commerce as people shelter in place.

Soylent isn’t the only meal-replacement drink that’s navigating shifts in demand during the pandemic. James McMaster, the CEO of Huel, another complete nutrition company, told me that sales of their meal beverage have been “unprecedented.” He pointed out that Huel’s long shelf life (12 months), D2C sales channel, and low price point ($1.90 a meal) are all contributing to its popularity as we enter a time where people want to stay in more, shop less, and, with a recession looming, save money.

Meal replacement drinks could do more than just serve as back-up consumer nutrition for the pandemic. Sullivan also told me that Soylent is making donations to food banks. Thus far Soylent has donated more than 500,000 Soylent meals.

Normally I’d shy away from including blatant PR-y announcements like this in a piece. However, food banks are currently in desperate need of nutritious food, and meal replacements could actually be a viable solution to help pad nutrition gaps in donations. As well as in your pantry.

3D Food Printing Hasn’t Really Taken Off – This 3D Printing Exec Turned Pastry Chef Hopes to Change That

3D printing has taken off in countless industries and professions. Food isn’t one of them.

Not that people haven’t tried. There’s been a number of startups and a big company or two working on 3D food printing in recent years, but for the most part the technology’s been adopted by a fairly small handful of culinary adventurers.

One French 3D printing executive thinks food printing’s lack of success is due to those trying to convert their ideas into printed food with general purpose 3D model printing software (software for converting a 3D model to the printer is called ‘slicer’ or ‘slicing software’). This, Marine Coré Baillais says, leads to suboptimal results.

Baillais, the founder of a French 3D food printing consultancy called The Digital Patisserie (La Pâtisserie Numérique), told me that the reason general purpose 3D printing software doesn’t work well is it’s designed to print with materials like plastic filament, not food paste. This usually leads to less than optimal results because a food paste has unique characteristics that make it much different than filament.

“Paste is a viscous material and when you extrude it with a syringe, you need to consider pressure that changes during the 3D printing,” said Baillais. Baillais also said that viscous materials like paste are also difficult to retract during printing, which can lead to defects in the print.

This led the former deputy CEO of French 3D printing services company Sculpteo to think about creating her own software which would allow her to print with things like paste and create a continuous printing path.

“The idea came to me when I started to 3D print food myself, I adapted a syringe on one of my FDM (note: FDM stands for ‘fused deposition modeling’, a 3D printing process) printers,” said Baillais. “I took the software I normally used and it was not working.”

So she got to work on developing software. Her company partnered with the University of Technology at Troyes, France last year and set out to create software that would create specific G-Code (the control language used to communicate with the 3D printer) for a paste-based 3D printer that would relay the nozzle size, layer height, print speed and compensation for the first layer.

The team has gotten far enough to start printing with 3D food printers and they created a video of the software printing (what else) a replica of the south-facing rosace of the Notre-Dame.

slicer software for 3D printed cake

I asked Baillais why she decided to tackle 3D food printing after working at a big 3D printing services startup focused on enterprise applications. She told me it was in part due the frustration that had built up over the past decade at the relative lack of interest from the food industry in using 3D printing. She also has passion for making food, particularly French pastries, so much so that she went to culinary school and got trained as a pastry chef.

With her new pastry chef diploma in hand, she went to work at the age of 44 in the restaurant of the historic Le Meurice hotel. It was at Le Meurice where she also learned why many chefs don’t like working with machines and why the current 3D food printing technology isn’t satisfactory for them.

And so it’s this combo of 3D printing expertise and high-end culinary training that led Baillais and her company to their current state, a working version of their software in just a year. The team is currently working on finding more testers and potential partners to use her software.

Eventually she hopes to commercialize the software either as a stand-alone software application or a plug-in to generic software. She has hopes that by making 3D food printing easier with better software, it will lead to greater adoption of 3D food printing.

“At Sculpteo, we were always building applications with our clients, so they can get the best of this technology that I love,” said Baillais. “I hope that we’ll do the same for the chefs with this new company.”

Applegate to Launch New Blended Meat and Vegetable Burgers in Retail This Month

Hormel-owned Applegate will begin selling Well Carved, its frozen line of blended meat and vegetable products, in grocery stores this month, according to IngredientsNetwork. Well Carved includes hybrid beef and turkey burgers mixed with beans and vegetables, as well as blended meatballs. The new offerings feature a garden-full of plants lentils, cauliflower, spinach, parsley, and kale.

The Well Carved line was meant to debut at the Natural Products Expo West in March, but like every other event, it was postponed in response to COVID-19. Applegate decided to push the launch back to April and do it with retailers — though it hasn’t yet specified which ones, how many, or in which areas.

Applegate was actually the first Big Meat brand to venture into blended products. It launched The Great Organic Blend Burger, made from a mixture of beef and mushrooms, a year ago. That puts it well ahead of Tyson, which debuted its Raised & Rooted line of blended beef burgers and plant-based chicken nuggets in June. Soon after, chicken giant Perdue also released a line of hybrid chicken nuggets, made with plant-based protein from Better Meat Co.

Pricing may be a hurdle for Applegate. A four-pack of Well Carved burgers goes for $9.99, which is almost twice the price of a four-pack of organic beef burgers at some supermarkets. In fact, it’s almost on par with the price of Beyond Beef burgers. I’m wondering if people looking to cut their meat consumption will actually purchase a blended burger when, for roughly the same cost, they can just buy a delicious plant-based substitute?

Two things could work in Hormel’s favor, though. One, the Well Carved burgers are frozen. And in a time when people are stocking up on frozen food like nobody’s business to avoid grocery runs, that’s a good thing. Well Carved burgers also position themselves as clean label and wholesome — that is, they contain only vegetables and meat. Some critics don’t like that plant-based meat like Beyond and Impossible contains a litany of ingredients and is processed. That could spur flexitarian consumers looking to cut their meat consumption to give Well Carved a try.

It’s a prime time to drop a new alt-meat product in retail. With COVID-19 spurring sharp increases in grocery sales for both meat and plant-based meat, this is a prime time to experiment and see if blended burgers can actually make it in the market.

COVID-19 Summit: For Struggling Restaurants, the Key Terms are “Shapeshift” and “Break Even”

“It’s really f***ed up right now,” That’s how Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen, summed up the current restaurant situation on our COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit. “I’m sorry dudes, but there’s no other way to put it.”

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus epidemic is wreaking havoc on the hospitality industry, decimating restaurant sales and forcing massive layoffs. So how can restaurants, bars, and catering services innovate to make it to the other side of the pandemic?

We tackled that question during today’s socially-distanced summit. In one of the first panels of the day, Mark Brand, a chef, B-corp owner, brewery manager, and professor (okay, overachiever), spoke with Egger to The Spoon’s Michael Wolf about how restaurants can innovate to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are a few takeaways for restaurants that came about from the conversation:

Prepare for an uphill battle
Surviving as a restaurant, even in better times, is damn hard. Brand said that — in the very best of times — restauranteurs are making a maximum of 15 percent revenue on each transaction. “Folks think we have more money than we do as restauranteurs,” he joked. Therefore the vast majority of foodservice organizations don’t have a lot of padding to fall back on when their main revenue source, like in-house dining, suddenly goes away.

To survive, you must adapt
One of the biggest challenges facing restaurants is that there’s no blueprint to go off of. “A lot of people are making this up as we go,” Egger told the summit audience. That said, Egger and Brand had a few tips to help foodservice businesses survive the crisis. “The words of the day are ‘shapeshift’ and ‘break even,'” Egger said.

In short: restaurant operations will have to pivot to stay afloat, perhaps branching into new sales channels. Some foodservice spots are also offering purchase incentives, like a 1-to-1 donation where for each meal you purchase, one is donated to someone in need or a healthcare worker fighting COVID-19.

But no matter how many initiatives or pivots restaurants make, all they can really hope to do, Egger says, is break even. Hopefully that will be enough to help them make it to the other side of the coronavirus pandemic.

Another thing to look out for? A smaller menu. “I think there’s a lot of money to be made in a modest menu,” he said. Not only in terms of selection, but also pricing and serving size.

An opportunity for change
The panel wasn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, both Brand and Egger agreed that this crisis could actually help us transform our relationship with food for the better. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to reevaluate the restaurant structure,” Brand said.

Egger agreed, noting that COVID-19 could catalyze us as a society to prioritize our food more highly. “We can make sure that our food is sourced locally, workers are paid, and we can put together a healthy meal,” he said. “We’ll have a great sense of respect for food again.” 

Here’s the full video below.

COVID-19 Summit From The Spoon: Mark Brand and Robert Egger

Frontline Foods is a Grassroots Org. Delivering Food from Local Restaurants to Hospital Workers

Many of us are wondering what we can do to help during the coronavirus pandemic. We can order takeout from our favorite local restaurants and applaud hospital workers, but, at least for me, it feels like I should be doing more.

At least one initiative has sprung up to help both restaurants and medical professionals. Frontline Foods is a donation-based platform that purchases and delivers food from local restaurants to hospital workers fighting COVID-19. One of the organizers, Joel Wishkovsky, came up with the idea just a few weeks ago (it feels like eons ago!) and started a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy food from local restaurants with which to feed hospital workers.

Pretty soon, he started to see folks in other cities working on similar initiatives. So he founded FrontlineFoods.org as a platform to centralize the grassroots efforts. “We provide tools, processes, and national funding for all of these local chapters,” Wishkovsky told me over the phone yesterday.

Less than two weeks in and Frontline Foods has already raised over $700,000 and delivered over 7,000 meals to healthcare workers. So far Frontline Foods is currently available in nine urban areas, from Austin, TX to Silicon Valley. You can donate to your local city or choose to donate nationally, in which case the organization itself will decide where to allocate the funds. Local restaurants apply to become part of Frontline Foods’ network, and all food is delivered either by the restaurant itself or by volunteers.

Today Frontline Foods announced its partnership with the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK), helmed by celebrity chef José Andres. WCK typically drops chefs in to feed hungry people in disaster-stricken areas. But in this crisis, Wishkovsky said that WCK was looking for a way to help the disaster that is supporting a restaurant during COVID-19. WCK will provide 501C3 backing for Frontline Foods and help them vet restaurant partners.

No Frontline Foods branch in your city? Don’t fret. You can also take initiative and petition to start your own chapter locally as long as you’re comfortable with putting together a team and leading fundraising (admittedly no small task).

If you want to do something a little less involved but still help out, you can also donate to Frontline Foods here.