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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Drink

Fresh Idea: Milk Vending Machines on Dairy Farms in the U.K.

With modern day vending machines dispensing everything from pizza and hot ramen to smoothies and boba tea, it was only a matter of time until some enterprising dairy farmers started using vending machines to sell farm-fresh milk.

The Daily Mail posted a story today about two different dairy farms in the U.K. who started selling their milk in unattended vending machines. The impetus for the new machines was recent milk shortages at local grocery stores, thanks in part to the pandemic.

The story mentions the Townsend Farm in Bicester, England, and the Mynydd Mostyn in Berthengam, Wales, both of which sell milk in glass bottles.

On the Townsend Farm, The Milk Churn machine operates from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. According to the family running the farm, the machine gets hundreds of customers each week. In addition to selling straight milk, The Milk Churn also sells syrups for flavored milk (chocolate, strawberry, etc.).

This is actually the second time we’ve written about farmers turning to vending machines during the pandemic. Last month we covered produce farms in France selling fruits, vegetables, eggs and more through unattended vending machines. At least one French farmer reported their vending machine generating tens of thousands of dollars a month in revenue.

Both of these instances show the versatility of modern vending machines. Vending machines don’t require a lot of space or labor and allow farmers to create retail experiences without the need for building out a full store. Vending machines are also capable of handling fresh and perishable items, opening up new retail possibilities that weren’t around before.

I’ll be curious to see if vending machines hop across the pond to farms here in the U.S. Independent farms located somewhat near residential areas could add a revenue stream through unattended retail. And as farmers in France noted, they can sell farm fresh produce for less than what it would cost at the supermarket because there is no markup.

Given all the innovation that’s happening right now, I expect we’ll see a lot of new use cases, errr, milking vending machines for all they are worth this year.

My 2020 Prediction Scorecard: Equity Crowdfunding (✅) and Pop-Up Retail (❌)

Before unceremoniously kicking 2020 to the curb, as an industry watcher, I have to make the yearly mental trek backwards to revisit the predictions I made for this year.

This, wretched, wretched year.

Going into 2020, my big two bets were on equity crowdfunding and semi-permanent pop-up retail experiences. Seeing how it all panned out, I’d say I batted .500 this year. Equity crowdfunding caught on (especially with food robots), but those pop-ups? Not so much-ups.

Equity crowdfunding, or eschewing institutional venture capital money in favor of opening investment up to just about anyone, did seem to catch on this year. Small Robot Company, Winc, Miso Robotics, Mellow, Piestro, Kiwibot, Renewal Mill, Bobacino and Blendid all launched or announced equity crowdfunding campaigns this year.

Why did these companies turn to the crowd? Part of the reason is that skipping VC money means there’s less pressure to scale your business so dramatically. But there are other reasons as well as some Founders told us.

Sam Watson Jones, Co-founder, Small Robot Company told me earlier this year that “VCs are a bit different in the UK. There are very few early stage VCs to fund stuff that requires more development. We knew we had a load of farmers who were excited about what we could develop.” Crowdfunding, Watson said “allowed us to get angels and people who would put ten quid in. It’s been a good forum for us to capitalize on the branding and PR.”

Then just this month, Blendid Founder and CEO, Vipin Jain explained to us why his company decided to equity crowdfund, saying, “Since Blendid has recently expanded into retail establishments with national partners – giving us a much broader audience – it made sense to do crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding not only allows you to raise money, but also drives consumer brand awareness and advocacy, by enabling fans of Blendid to individually invest as well as enjoy our delicious blends.”

So did the campaigns work? That’s kind of hard tell without speaking directly with each company, but here’s what we know:

  • Small Robot Company raised £2,003,880 ($2,596,000 USD), surpassing its goal of £700,000 target
  • Winc raised $5.3 million
  • Miso Robotics raised $16.7 million, or a little more than half of the $30 million it sought
  • Mellow‘s equity crowdfunding was a bust and the company failed to reach its funding goal
  • Piestro‘s first go-round with equity crowdfunding went so well it launched a second campaign
  • Kiwibot has raised $576,034 of the $1 million it wanted
  • Renewal Mill raised $116,777 of its $1 million goal

Bobacino’s campaign won’t launch until next year, and it’s still early in Blendid’s campaign, so we’ll have to check back in on both of those.

I’m curious to see if the food robot world continues to go the equity crowdfunding route in 2021. While it does allow startups to skip the VC death march, so far, it doesn’t seem like a way to raise the large amounts of money a robot company needs to scale. But equity crowdfunding is still a pretty nascent concept. Like so manythings, if someone makes money on it, potential investors will flock to it.

What people weren’t being driven to in 2020 was semi-permanent retail environments. At the start of the year, I thought brands would take to the mini cashierless retail environments created by AiFi with its NanoStore and Zippin with its pre-fab Cubes.

These small, plug-and-play retail environments are easy to set up inside office buildings (or just about anywhere, really). They could, for instance, allow a grocer like Safeway to build a small, unattended Safeway-branded store in a lobby, or a hospital or train station. This is a lot cheaper than building out or retrofitting an existing space. And since there’s no cashier, they can be more economical to run.

But the pandemic forced people to avoid offices and other high-traffic areas, and subsequently pushed them into record amounts of online grocery shopping from home. As such, retailers needed to focus less on creating new retail spaces and more on their own logistics and fulfillment to accommodate all those new e-commerce orders.

I still think cashierless checkout technology will pave the way for a boom in pop-up stores over the next couple of years (AiFi aims to build 330 such stores by the end of 2021). Retailers will want to create more contactless ways of shopping that are fast and get people in and out of stores quickly, and setting up a small, cashierless stores is one way to do that.

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll put pop-ups on my prediction list for 2021….

PeakBridge Commits Up to $3M in Funding for BE WTR

Investment firm Peakbridge is opening up the funding tap for Swiss hydration company BE WTR. In a LinkedIn post this week, Peakbridge Founder and Managing Director, Nadav Berger, announced that his firm “has committed to invest up to $3M in BE WTR.”

BE WTR makes a variety of hygienic water taps for offices and other businesses. The various high-tech taps can pour still or sparkling water, or heat or chill water. BE WTR taps also come with BRITA filtration built into the unit.

The B2B hydration space has been relatively quiet this year, which is understandable, given COVID shutting many business locations down. But there’s still been some activity. At the start of the year, Rocean’s sparkling water machine was getting installed in every room at the Conrad Hotel in New York earlier this year as a perk. In the midst of the pandemic, Bevi added contactless ordering features to its office smart water coolers. The pandemic also didn’t stop Pepsi from launching its SodaStream Professional water dispensers for offices this past July.

But with a vaccine on the horizon, we could see activity in office-related hydration products pick back up. Some companies are re-opening traditional offices, while others are creating smaller regional hubs that employees occasionally come into. Regardless of what shape an office takes post-COVID, a large swath of office worker employees will probably spend less time in actual buildings. As such, companies will seek to maximize that in-person time together. Part of that will be adding small touches like easy-to-use high-end water taps that not only reduce in-office waste (fewer bottles of water), but also give employees a little added comfort.

Food Tech News: Fake Meat Capital of Europe, Plastic Made From Citrus Peels

It’s your weekend food tech news wrapup!

Plant & Bean Ltd. opens massive plant-based meat factory in Europe

Plant-based meat makers Plant & Bean opened a new factory in Boston, England. The factory is capable of producing 55,000 tons of alternative protein products, which will make Boston the faux-meat capital of Europe. The company uses soy as its main ingredient to produce a variety of different plant-based meats such as sausages, burgers, nuggets, and more. Plant & Bean is looking to continue to expand and open more factories, with potential factory locations opening in the next few years in the US, China, Thailand, and Brazil.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland creates plastic from produce

A new technology was developed at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland that uses agricultural waste to produce a more sustainable plastic, PEF (polyethylene furanoate). Agricultural waste such as citrus peels, sugar beet pulp, or other produce containing pectin can be used to develop the plastic. Fossil fuel-based plastic PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly used for food and beverage packaging; according to the press release, replacing packaging with PEF would reduce the packaging’s carbon footprint by 50%.

Photo from Nestlé Japan

Whiskey barrel-aged Kit Kat bars to be released in Japan

Japan has released the most exciting flavors of Kit Kat bars over the years, with 400 different flavors like matcha, ube, yuzu, adzuki bean, and purple sweet potato to name a few. The newest flavor, a whiskey barrel-aged Kit Kat bar, will be released on December 15th in Japan. This new flavor was developed by Yasumasa Takagi, a pastry chef and former Iron Chef competitor The bar is made from Ghanaian cacao nibs that have been aged in Scotch whiskey barrels for 180 days, and will cost ¥300 ($2.88 USD).

Michael Jordan’s beer and snack- delivering drones

The Grove XXIII, Michael Jordan’s golf course that opened last year, now has drones that deliver boxes of beer and snacks to players. The drones bring beers in a box, while snacks come delivered in a brown paper bag. This new addition to the golf course allows golfers to avoid additional interactions with cashiers or employees.

Robot Smoothie Company Blendid Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Blendid, a company that produces standalone robotic smoothie-making kiosks, is running an equity crowdfunding campaign through MicroVentures with the goal of raising up to $5 million.

Blendid sent word of its crowdfunding efforts via a marketing email today, though it appears that the campaign itself has been live for roughly a month already. As of this writing, Blendid has already raised more than $240,000 in its crowdfunding campaign.

Equity crowdfunding is becoming quite the popular way to raise money for food-related robot companies. In 2020 alone, Miso Robotics, Kiwibot, Piestro, Bobacino and Small Robot Company all launched or announced equity crowdfunding campaigns.

There are pluses and minuses to going the crowdfunding route. By eschewing traditional VC capital, startups lose out on some of the knowledge and connections that come with institutional investors. But at the same time, crowdfunding helps these companies sidestep some of the scaling pressures that comes with VC money.

Previously, Blendid (formerly 6D Bytes) raised $13.5 million from Benhamou Global Ventures, Plug & Play, Hone Capital and Partech Ventures. We sent a note to Blendid to find out more about its decision to go the crowdfunding route and will update when we hear back. UPDATE: Blendid Founder and CEO, Vipin Jain emailed us the following statement:

“Since Blendid has recently expanded into retail establishments with national partners – giving us a much broader audience – it made sense to do crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding not only allows you to raise money, but also drives consumer brand awareness and advocacy, by enabling fans of Blendid to individually invest as well as enjoy our delicious blends.”

As part of its pitch to potential investors of the crowdfunding campaign, Blendid shared some of its financials. Not surprisingly, 2020 was a rough year for the company. Blendid’s first two locations were at colleges, and given the pandemic and the shift to remote learning, those machines have been inactive for most of the year. According to Blendid, the company earned just $546 in Q3 of this year and $64,119 for its 2020 fiscal year.

Having said that, the fourth quarter has been pretty busy for Blendid. The company has opened two new robots at Walmart locations in California. One of those locations is actually a co-branded robot with Jamba as the company moves away from an owner-operated model to more licensed deals. This shift towards licensing should help with consumer adoption by leveraging the brand recognition that comes with a partnership like Jamba (and others).

One other interesting tid bit from Blendid’s disclosures is that the company is already looking beyond making just smoothies. From the “Product Roadmap” portion of the campaign page:

Q3 2021 – Food format #2 leveraging the existing kiosk, which has been designed as a platform that can be modified to support a large variety of food formats.

For those interested, the minimum investment for the crowdfunding campaign is $100. This post isn’t an endorsement of Blendid and any investment carries with it a certain amount of risk.

Food Tech News: New Growth Medium for Cultured Meat, Pepsi’s Plastic-Free Promise

As winter quickly approaches, COVID-19 restrictions resurge and stay-at-home orders seem like they’re in the near future. If you’re like me, you might be trying to decide which new kitchen project you want to take on. I perfected my kombucha process in March and even experimented with alcoholic booch (it was terrible). Should I try my hand at vegan donuts or croissants this time around? Sauerkraut or kimchi?

With many of us being stuck indoors once again, it might be a perfect time to catch up on some Food Tech News. This week we have news on the development of a new growth medium for cultured meat cells, sustainable Pepsi bottle packaging, Good Catch’s expansion into Europe, and Subway’s new online catering platform.

Innovate UK funds development of new growth medium for cultured meat

Centre for Process Innovation and 3D Bio-Tissues, a start-up from Newcastle University, have partnered and received grant money from Innovate UK to make cultured meat animal-free while simultaneously reducing the cost of developing it. The project aims to replace the most common growth media used to culture animal cells, called fetal bovine serum (FBS). There is a morality issue with FBS, as it is extracted from slaughtered pregnant cows in the meat and dairy industry. The new serum will likely be developed from agro-industrial byproducts, which would then remove the use of animals and then solve the ethical issue that FBS poses.

Pepsi to go 100 percent plastic-free in several European markets by 2022

PepsiCo announced this week that it will be transitioning to use recycled post-consumer plastics for its Pepsi bottles in several European countries. By 2021, Spain, Greece, Poland, Germany, and Romania will have 100% rPET(recycled polyethylene terephthalate) Pepsi bottles. France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Great Britain will make the switch by 2022. The company estimates that this change will save around 70,000 tons of single-use plastic a year.

Good Catch expands to Europe

Good Catch, producers of plant-based seafood, expanded its products into the European countries of Spain and the Netherlands this week. The company’s vegan tuna, fish burgers, and crab cakes are now available in 70 different stores throughout the Netherlands and in the specialty chain Sanchez Romero in Madrid. This news follows Good Catch’s recent expansion into Canada in October and the launch of the company’s D2C platform last month.

Subway launches online catering platform

Subway announced the launch of its new online catering platform that is provided by ezCater, an online marketplace for business catering. The new platform aims to offer a convenient way to place large orders for employee lunches and company events. This new feature is now available at every Subway located in the US.

Review: BEERMKR Makes it Easy to Make Beer

The fact that I hate beer either makes me the worst person to do a review of the BEERMKR countertop home brewing system or the best person to do such a review.

On the one hand, I can’t tell the difference between “good” beer and “bad” beer because IPAs, stouts, lagers, and what have you all taste gross. So I’m not the best judge of BEERMKR’s end product.

On the other hand, my particular dislike for beer means I know nothing about hops or grains. It also means I have never tried to make my own beer. So if a device promises to render that process idiot-proof, well, then I’m probably the right idiot.

Avid Spoon readers will know that I included the BEERMKR on my 2020 holiday gift guide. So you already know I like it. For the TL;DR set, despite some of its quirks, I actually had fun making beer with this, and that’s probably because I got all the benefits (beer) with hardly any work.

All the ingredients you need.

And brewing beer at home the old fashioned way takes lots of work. The traditional process involves buckets, hoses, bottles, bottles potentially exploding, babysitting, sterilizing… All that is to say that it’s complicated! And all those complications have turned a lot of people away from making their own beer.

BEERMKR solves this by putting everything in two pieces of hardware: a (big) countertop brewing/fermenting system and a slightly less big BEERTAP, which sits in your fridge and dispenses beer.

BEERMKR’s grain hopper. Just throw everything/anything in there.

One of the keys to BEERMKR’s ease is the fact that it replaces buckets and bottles with a one-gallon plastic bag/bladder (equivalent to 12, 12-oz bottles). Snap it into the brewer/fermenter to make the beer. Then once that’s done, transfer the bag to the dispenser.

We’ve actually written about how BEERMKR works (and shot videos of it) a few times over the years, so I don’t want to get too bogged down with the mechanics of the system. Like the machine itself suggests, let’s get to the fun part!

BEERMKR sent me a test unit along with the ingredients for two different beer recipes: A stout and an IPA. All of the ingredients are separated out in pre-portioned packets. In the accompanying BEERMKR app, you select either a BEERMKR’s recipe or you can DIY it if you’re a pro. Because I’m a n00b, I used the BEERMKR recipe for the Chubby Stout.

BEERMKR app

With my recipe selected, the BEERMKR app used a series of videos to guide me through the set up of the machine: how to install the bag, how much water to add, where to put the grains, what to expect in the first phase, etc.

After you do all that, you push the single, solitary button on the machine, and congratulations! You’re well on your way to making your own beer. From there BEERMKR takes over, keeping your beer at the right temperature, agitating it, and literally doing all the work. When it came time to pitch my yeast, BEERMKR sent me an alert and showed me some more videos on how to do that. Easy peasy.

The app fills you in at each step along the way, telling you what temperature the beer is at, the different stages of fermentation, and the resting (FWIW, I never knew beer had to rest). Once I pitched my yeast, I just sat back and watched on my app over the following nine days or so as the beer came together.

When it was done, the app sent me an alert. I removed the plastic bladder holding the beer, placed it into the BEERTAP, screwed in the CO2 cartridge and waited a day for the liquid to carbonate. Which… didn’t exactly happen the first go-round.

BEERMKR app

BEERMKR is still very much a new product. As such, there are several kinks the company is working out. My beer didn’t actually fizz up all that much because there were leaks in the CO2 lines. But the BEERMKR customer service team is super attentive, identified the problem quickly and sent me some clamps to tighten up the hoses. (A service rep even Zoomed with me to make sure I installed them correctly.)

Once the clamps were in, I waited another 24 hours, then I was able to enjoy a frosty, chocolatey stout. Or, at least my neighbors did (you know, because I hate beer).

One downside to the BEERMKR’s bag system is that it removes the need for bottling. That means that in order to share my beer, people had to come to me. This might be a bummer for hardcore brewers who like gifting their beer, but it was fine for me.

The biggest complaints I have are that during the fermentation phase, the machine gets loud twice a day as it does some kind of vibration something. I couldn’t control the timing of this vibrating, so it wound up waking me up in the middle of the night because it is loud. This is an issue the company said it is fixing in the app, so by the time you get yours, it might not be a problem. I fixed the issue by moving the machine into the garage.

Big BEERTAP

The app also had some other quirks about updates on different stages of my beer, but those didn’t impact the end product and they too are being addressed in updates.

But look. The point is, I had fun making beer! And I hate beer! If I loved beer and knew what I was doing, I would probably have had even more fun because BEERMKR lets you add whatever kind of flair you want to your beer. Want to throw in some raspberries or dandelions or cinnamon? Go crazy! Toss it in the grain bin and let that new/crazy flavor soak in.

At $499, the BEERMKR isn’t cheap, but what’s good is that unlike the now-defunct PicoBrew, it doesn’t rely on some proprietary pod system, so you’re free to go hog wild with your brews. But also homebrewers I know said that the price was good for what it does, given all the time and work it saves you.

BEERMKR didn’t make me love beer, but it made me love how easy it was to make beer.

Terra Kaffe Raises $4 Million for Pod-Free Grind and Brew Coffee Maker

Terra Kaffe, a New York based startup that makes grind and brew coffee machines, has raised $4 million from The SeedLab, an early stage venture capital firm focused on consumer products.

The company had previously raised $575,000 in a seed funding late last year, and the new round of funding brings the company’s total to just under $5 million.

Last year, company CEO Sahand Dilmaghani showed me their coffee maker, the TK-01, and I liked what I saw. I also liked the fact that it was shipping, something that wasn’t the case (at the time) with my long-overdue Spinn.

Both machines are part of a growing category of grind and brew (also called superautomatic) coffee makers that make espresso-level coffee with the convenience of a Nespresso or Keurig, but without the plastic waste of pod-based systems. Nespresso and Keurig have come under fire in recent years for how much plastic they push into the waste stream, and while both are trying to make their pods more environment-friendly, it makes sense (and better coffee) if you can just grind from fresh within the system when you’re ready to brew.

In researching the TK-01 and the grind and brew market, one thing I noticed is how Terra Kaffe’s machine resembles a few other early grind and brew appliances on the market. And when I say resemble, I mean looks like an exact replica from an outward physical standpoint.

I asked Dilmaghani about this and he told me when he was getting the company off the ground, he didn’t have enough funding to custom design an entirely new coffee machine. This meant getting creative.

“The whole development is a story of trade offs,” said Dilmaghani in a phone interview. Instead of paying a company to create an entirely new product, they worked with a Chinese ODM (original design manufacturer) to build the hardware system architecture using some off the shelf parts such as brew unit and chassis (why there are others that look like the Terra Kaffe). Dilmaghani and his team focused on software, the UI and the overall consumer experience.

“I was like, ‘let’s prove out the market that there is an opportunity here'” said Dilmaghani. “Let’s work with as much off the shelf as possible, give people some awareness that this can sell DTC (direct-to-consumer), that it isn’t the Nespresso model that I have to lose money on the machine and only make money with recurring revenues. That you can make money on the product, and it can be a viable business.”

It’s a much different approach from Spinn, who designed a coffee maker from the ground up. The end result was a long drawn out design and manufacturing ramp-up process that took years to bring their product to market. In contrast, the TK-01 was available and shipping last year, and, according to Dilmaghani, has sold in the thousands.

And I imagine it’s this early sales success, not a complicated piece of hardware, that mattered to the company’s newest investors.

Meet Bobacino, the Boba Tea Making Robot

Let’s just get this out of the way: “robo-boba” is fun (if slightly difficult) to say out loud. But it’s a phrase you could be saying it a lot more if Bobacino has its way. Today the company took the wraps off its eponymous boba tea-making robot kiosk and launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to help bring it to market.

Bobacino is currently in the prototype stage, and uses an articulating arm to mix one recipe of tea, sweetened milk, syrup and tapioca balls over ice to make its boba tea. Future versions of the machine will be able to create multiple recipes.

That’s where the equity crowdfunding campaign comes. Bobacino is looking to raise $3 million from everyday investors starting in January of 2021. Money raised will help the Santa Monica, CA-based company further develop its robo-boba and bring it to market in the second half of 2021.

Bobacino is backed by Wavemaker Partners and Embark Ventures. Sharp-eyed Spoon readers will recognize Wavemaker from its backing of Piestro, which makes a standalone robotic pizza vending machine. (For more on the future of vending machines, check out The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report.)

Like Piestro, Bobacino has a two-pronged business model that involves both owning and operating its own machines as well as co-branding with existing boba tea brands.

In addition to the assist from Wavemaker, Bobacino has its own pedigree in automated drink vending. Bobacino Founder and CEO, Darian Ahler, previously co-founded and was head of operations at Truebird, the NYC-based robotic coffee kiosk company.

The fact that Bobacino exists shows how the robotic vending space is maturing and already becoming thinly sliced. Unlike previous robot beverage companies like Cafe X and Briggo (which was acquired by Costa Coffee) that made a wide variety of coffee and tea drinks, Bobacino is only making boba tea drinks. Add Blendid’s robot smoothie maker to the mix and it’s pretty easy to envision hospital lobbies, airports (you know, after the pandemic), and even grocery stores installing a variety of these machines to offer a bevvy of different beverages (which is also fun to say out loud).

Merlot-M-G! The WineCab Wine Wall is a Robot+AI Sommelier

What do you get for the person who has everything? How about an artificially intelligent robot sommelier that can securely store, manage and suggest wines from your collection?

The Winecab Wine Wall does all that (hat tip to Boss Hunting), acting kinda like a very expensive automated wine vending machine that you’d find in only the poshest 7-Eleven.

Wine Walls come in a variety of sizes, from the more modest Curio Classic model, which holds 130 bottles ($139,000) to the 15 ft. Wine Wall, which holds 600 bottles ($249,900). Each system features:

  • An articulating arm, calibrated with a gentle touch for handling delicate bottles of wine
  • A label scanner to automatically catalog bottles you add
  • An AI assistant to recommend wines and food pairings
  • Security features to gate access to certain bottles

OK. So the Wine Wall might be a bit of pricey overkill for your average oenophile. But, it’s possible to see the Wine Wall in a restaurant or hotel or even a grocery retailer that wants to add high-tech wine recommenation to their offerings without bringing on a full-time sommelier. (Though, admittedly, the interaction with a human sommelier is part of the fun of ordering fancy wine.) Winecab even has a smaller six-foot version of its wall “coming soon” that basically looks like a wine vending machine.

The idea of a vino vending machine isn’t that far fetched. Last year PanPacific unveiled a beer vending machine that could verify the buyer’s age before dispensing. Combine that type of technology with the higher end cuisine vending companies like Yo-Kai Express, Chowbotics and Piestro are trying to create and suddenly the idea of a robot wine sommelier doesn’t seem so silly.

Hmmmm… perhaps I’ll put one on my Christmas list for next year.

After a Summer Hit by COVID-19, Home Brew Appliance Startup MiniBrew Secures Funding for 2021

MiniBrew, a Netherlands-based maker of home-brew appliances, announced last month they’ve secured funding to continue operations after a months-long struggle with COVID-19-related difficulties.

The company, which started shipping its home brew appliance last year in Europe, had big plans for expansion into the U.S. and other markets, but saw a number of strategic investors pull out in the midst of the pandemic.

The loss of investment back in June meant the company went into “suspension of payment” (meaning they couldn’t pay their creditors) and laid off members of the team. The resulting reduction in personnel and funding also meant MiniBrew had to put a halt on development of a 110-volt model of its machine for the U.S. market.

Despite the struggles due to COVID-related funding issues, the pullback came amidst an increase of usage of the appliances in the field as home brewers stuck indoors fired up their units to make beer. According to the company’s update, homebound MiniBrew users created three times more beer recipes compared to pre-COVID times.

Luckily for those MiniBrew users, the company announced they’ve reach an agreement with their creditors, secured funding and are once again adding new features for the MiniBrew such as recipe sharing.

MiniBrew’s struggles and small dedicated user base are reminiscent of PicoBrew’s here in the States, although unlike PicoBrew, the MiniBrew team was able to negotiate with its lenders to live another day.

Overall, home beer making automation remains a struggling category. In addition to PicoBrew and MiniBrew, we’ve watched startups like iGulu and HOPii struggle after big crowdfunding campaigns, while others, like LG’s much-hyped HomeBrew appliance, looks like it never got out the door.

Despite the category’s struggles, there are still companies like BEERMKR, INTHEKEG and Pinter rolling out products and an early and enthusiastic of early adopters buying them.

The challenge will be whether the category can ever break out beyond the small group of early adopters who are craving a tech-forward home brew solution.

NotCo’s Milk Alternative Launches in the U.S. Today

Chile-based food tech company NotCo, best known for its alt-protein products, announced today it is launching its plant-based milk alternative in Whole Foods stores across the U.S. These alt-milk products will be available in Whole and Reduced Fat varieties at stores as of today, according to a press release from NotCo sent to The Spoon.

The launch follows an $85 million Series C funding round from September, an investment the company said would help NotCo expand internationally through both retail and restaurant partnerships. Previously, NotCo raised $30 million in 2019 from a pool of investors that included Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos. The company’s total funding to date is $115 million.

All that funding and expansion aside, the company has undergone some changes in the last year, including having to restructure its business and do layoffs. NotCo also shut down its Santiago-based production plant for its NotMayo product, passing production of that item on to an unnamed third party. Currently, the NotCo website only lists the milk alternative under its products. A spokesperson for the company told The Spoon that the milk products are currently for sale across Latin America.

Like other milk alternatives out there, NotMilk is comprised of a number of plant sources, pea protein being the main one. Pineapple juice concentrate, cabbage juice concentrate, and chicory root fiber are others. NotCo claims that, with these ingredients as well as AI and machine-learning algorithms, it is able to recreate the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of regular ol’ milk. As of today, U.S. consumers can see how it stacks up in terms of those elements to other choices already in grocery stores.

On that note, NotCo joins the likes of Oatly, Take Two, and others that already have plant-based milk alternatives in the U.S. market. Further down the line, all these companies may have to compete with Impossible, which is developing its own milk alternative. Whether other alt-protein heavyweights like Perfect Day and Eat Just ever come to market with milk alternatives remains to be seen. Regardless, NotCo faces more than a little healthy competition when it comes to retail shelves in the U.S.