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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Drink

Food Tech News: Compostable Milk Packaging, Vegan Fast Food Goes Public

Happy weekend, and welcome to the Food Tech News round-up this week. This week we have news on JOI’s new compostable packaging, Sunbasket’s single-serving prepared meals, and a vegan fast-food company that’s gone public.

If you haven’t heard, The Spoon is on Clubhouse! “Food Tech Live” is the name of the room, and every Friday The Spoon team discusses news in food tech.

JOI launches zero waste oat milk

JOI produces nut paste concentrates that can be blended at home to make fresh plant-based milk, and the company just released a new product, an oat powder concentrate in fully compostable packaging. The powder contains only one ingredient, oats, and the 12 oz container produces a gallon of oat milk when blended with water. Once used, the packaging can be composted at home or at a commercial composting center. Many other plant-based milk packagings cannot be recycled, nor composted, According to the company, this is the first fully compostable plant-based milk product on the market.

Sunbasket launches single-serving prepared meals

Sunbasket, a subscription-based meal delivery service, just released single portion sizes of its Fresh & Ready prepared meals. The Fresh & Ready meals do not require any prep like the company’s meal kits, and can be heated up in a microwave or oven within a few minutes. The prepared meals are delivered fresh, not frozen, and start at $8.99. Starting April 25th, the single portion meals will be available for purchase on the company’s website. Throughout 2021, 65+ new meals will be released.

The first vegan fast-food company to go public

Globally Locally, a vegan fast-food chain based in Canada, began publicly trading TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol GBLY yesterday, April 16th. Rather than IPO, the company entered an agreement with Black Lion Capital Corp to consolidate as Globally Local‎ Technologies Inc. Globally Locally manufactures and distributes its own plant-based protein and dairy alternatives, and can therefore offer prices comparable to other fast-food chains at its restaurants. Menu items include traditional fast-food fare made vegan, including burgers, wings, fries, shakes, and breakfast sandwiches. The eight restaurant locations primarily operate as smart kitchens offering pick-up and delivery. Within the next 12 months, the company aims to open at least 20 locations across North America. A few other vegan companies trade on the Canadian stock exchange, including The Very Good Food Company, Eat Beyond, and Modern Meat.

Third Aurora to Bring Augmented Reality to Beer Labels

I’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes I solely pick out a can of beer based on the label artwork. Sometimes there isn’t enough information listed on the can to make an educated decision, so I let bright and colorful artwork catch my eye. Third Aurora, a tech company focused on augmented reality (AR) and machine learning, is gearing up to launch its platform for augmented reality beer labels so beer cans do provide more information. The platform is in the form of a mobile app called Beerscans, which will be made available for users in the upcoming months.

Matt Hallberg, one of the cofounders of Third Aurora, said that many breweries have interesting stories and are doing things behind the scenes, like focusing on sustainability, but the consumer isn’t able to get the essence of the brewery from just one can. A beer can only has space for a few brief sentences and consumers typically have to go on the brewery’s website to learn more.

Augmented Reality Packaging - Beverage Packaging Demonstration - Third Aurora

The Beerscans mobile app uses the phone’s camera, augmented reality and computer vision to scan a beer can, and the app recognizes the circumference of the can and the label. An augmented reality label then pops up and hovers over the can. The augmented reality label will share the story behind the brewery and beer, tasting notes of the beer, and other information that a brewery may want to share. Breweries interested in being a part of the Beerscans app must sign up through the Beerscans website and upload desired information through the website’s portal.

Previously, Third Aurora launched Winerytale, an app that is the same concept as Beerscans, except for wine bottles. Living Labels is another company that has partnered with a handful of wineries to provide AR labels including the popular 19 Crimes winery. Drink AR launched in 2020, and provides AR labels for wineries, breweries, and distilleries.

Third Aurora aims on launching Beerscans in about three months, and it will be available for free on both iOS and Android. Third Aurora is in the process of signing up breweries and wants to have at least 100 breweries signed up prior to the launch.

Starbucks Trialing a ‘Borrow a Cup’ Program in Seattle

Starbucks announced this week that it is currently trialing a reusable cup program at five Seattle, Washington stores for a period of two months. Dubbed the “Borrow a Cup” program, the trial is a continuation of an earlier single-store pilot that took place this past fall and winter in Seattle.

To participate, customers can order a beverage in a reusable cup for both in-person and mobile orders at participating stores. There is a $1 deposit. Once a customer is done with their drink, they can return the cup to participating stores, all of which will have return kiosks where customers can drop the empty cup. Upon returning the cup, customers also scan their Starbucks app to receive 10 bonus points on their Rewards account. (They get their deposit back, too.)

To clean the cups, Starbucks has partnered with a company called GO Box, which collects cups daily for cleaning and sanitizing, then returns them to circulation within 48 hours. 

Starbucks has also partnered with Ridwell, which offers a home pickup service for hard-to-recycle items, in case a customer can’t actually get to a store to return their cup. Users will get a Ridwell bin in which they can place their reusable cups for pickup at the front door. Users must purchase a Ridwell membership to join the pilot. Pricing varies from $10 to $14 depending on the type of subscription.

Starbucks noted today that a major hurdle on the path towards more widespread use of reusables is convenience. “The challenge is how to make choosing reusables as convenient as you expect from Starbucks – no extra steps – especially with 80% of Starbucks beverages being enjoyed on the go,” the company said in a statement today.

It’s all too possible that the extra steps of having to return a cup to the store or set up service with Ridwell may prove too involved for some consumers. Given that, we can assume the “Borrow a Cup” program is just one small step on Starbucks’ journey towards a more earth-friendly coffee business, particularly where cups are concerned. 

Worldwide, we throw out about 264 billion paper cups per year. Because of their plastic lining, these cups are difficult to recycle and therefore wind up in the landfill more often than not. In the U.S., reusable programs aren’t yet widespread, though that is slowly changing. Fellow QSRs Burger King and McDonald’s have both partnered with LOOP, the circular packaging service from TerraCycle, to trial reusable containers, including cups.

Both Starbucks and McDonald’s worked with Closed Loop Partners’ NextGen Consortium, which aims to reduce packaging waste, prior to the pandemic. Starbucks also had a “bring your own” reusables program in which customers could bring their own cups to Starbucks cafes and receive a small discount in return. That program was suspended because of COVID-19, and has not yet been reinstated at any Starbucks cafe.

Bellwether’s Coffee Roaster Blossomed During the Pandemic, Doubling Installations

Independent coffee shops were hit hard by the pandemic last year. In October, Euromonitor International predicted that the U.S. would have just 25,307 coffee/tea specialty outlets by the end of 2020, a 7.3 percent drop year-over-year and the first such decline since 2011. While giants like Starbucks had the resources to weather the pandemic, smaller independent chains bore the brunt of COVID-19 fallout.

Given this dark backdrop, you might think that Bellwether had a bleak year as well. The startup makes a compact, connected, electric and ventless professional coffee roasting machine meant for independent cafes — like the ones that shut down last year. But actually, Bellwether didn’t just survive the pandemic, it thrived.

“We ended up having a really good year,” Bellwether CEO, Nathan Gilliland told me by phone this week. “We grew revenue a bit over 100 percent last year and installations doubled.”

Gilliland attributed this growth to a number of factors. First, at the start of last year, the company introduced a rental model. Previously, coffee shops could only buy or long-term lease Bellwether’s machines. The new rental model is more expensive than the leasing option, but it also comes with just a one-year commitment (as opposed to five), which proved more enticing to customers. Gilliland said that the majority of new installations in 2020 were rentals.

Another reason for Bellwether’s growth was who its customers were selling to. During COVID, in-house dining/drinking operations were shut down across large swaths of the country. With their consumer traffic down, cafes started selling their roasted coffee to local grocers.

Perhaps sensing and opportunity, in the fourth quarter of last year, Bellwether itself decided to start targeting grocers as potential customers. Since the Bellwether is the size of a vending machine and runs automated roast programs from the cloud, the device is relatively plug-and-play. You don’t need to have a staff of coffee experts to operate it. Roastery (née Carbine Coffee) was another electric ventless roaster that launched around the same time as Bellwether, also targeting grocers. (Roastery’s fate is unknown at this point as its website is just a picture of the device with no text, links or other information.)

In addition to the machine itself, Bellwether also makes money through its green coffee bean marketplace. Gilliland said that 85 percent of Bellwether’s customers order green beans through Bellwether, and 65 percent of those order more than half of their green beans through Bellwether. The Bellwether machine roasts six pounds of coffee at a time, and the average Bellwether customer roasts 100 lbs of coffee per week.

With the pandemic receding, Gilliland and Co. are looking ahead to the rest of this year. In addition to more people actually sitting inside coffee shops, another reason the future looks bright for Bellwether could be stricter environmental regulations. Cities like Seattle and San Jose have banned natural gas from being installed in new commercial constructions, creating an opportunity for the all-electric Bellwether to step in as a way for small shops to have their own roaster.

Gilliland is also looking abroad. The company will begin expanding outside of North America this year, with machines going to Southeast Asia and Japan. Additionally, Bellwether is looking to create an iTunes-like experience for its roasting recipes. Coffee shops will be able to upload and sell their particular roast programs via Bellwether, which others could pay for to download and use. Specifics have yet to be determined, but there would be a rev share for roast creators.

Without a doubt, 2020 was a bad year for independent coffee shops. But perhaps Bellwether’s growth could be, well, a bellwether for better times ahead for the industry.

Bartesian Raises $20M Series A for its Countertop Cocktail Appliance

Bartesian, which makes a pod-based countertop cocktail appliance, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Cleveland Avenue, LLC, with participation from Stanley Ventures.

The Bartesian device has cannisters that you fill up with liquor such as tequila, vodka or rum, which it then mixes with a variety pods that contain different flavorings, juices and bitters. Place a glass underneath and push a button and Bartesian dispenses a perfectly mixed cocktail.

By next-gen kitchen appliance standards, Bartesian is a downright old timer. The product launched on Kickstarter back in 2015, where it raised more than $115,000. In 2018, Bartesian decided that it was in the drink business and not the hardware business and licensed manufacturing to Hamilton Beach. The first units started shipping to Kickstarter backers later that year and became more widely available at retail in December of 2019.

According to today’s funding announcement, the Bartesian system has served more than five million cocktails, experienced 975 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2020, and grew its subscriber base 30x compared to March 2020.

Without actual numbers, those stats aren’t super helpful in determining the actual success of Bartesian, and one has to wonder how much the pandemic helped boost interest and use in the Bartesian. With bars and restaurants closed and people relegated to their homes throughout much of last year, having a robot bartender like Bartesian on your counter made a lot of sense. With vaccination rates accelerating, bars and restaurants re-opening, and people being able to once again hangout in person, will consumers still want a home drink system?

Ryan Close, Founder and CEO of Bartesian told me by phone this week that while his company did get a COVID bump, it was already experiencing triple growth rates prior to the pandemic (they got off to a nice start by being an Oprah pick in the winter of 2019). Close said that the company has generated more sales in the first quarter of 2021, than it did during the first half of 2020.

The competitive landscape has also changed for Bartesian over the past couple of years. Drinkworks, which is a joint-venture between Keurig Dr Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, and is also a pod-based drink machine, has been rolling out to different states across the country throughout the past year. And Barsys, which foresakes the pods for straight bottle attachments, is another option for the automated cocktail curious.

The one thing going for pod-based setups like Bartesian and Drinkworks, however, is the ability for people to have a full bar in their homes, without a collection of bottles taking up a lot of space. It’s much easier to store a bunch of flavor pods than a variety of juices, bitters and other drink ingredients. Plus, when people do have parties again, guests can easily make themselves a variety of cocktails with little to no mess.

With its new funding, Bartesian says that it will accelerate its growth domestically and internationally, scale up its production and expand its team. One of the investors, Stanley Ventures, is the venture arm of hardware company Stanley Black and Decker, which, Close said, is looking to bring Bartesian to Europe.

Bartesian also announced today actor Mila Kunis has joined the company’s board of advisors to provide guidance on brand strategy and growth.

Blue Hill Brings Computer Vision to Its Coffee Robot to Recreate the Barista Experience

There is no shortage of robot baristas coming to market. Cafe X, Costa Coffee (née Briggo), Truebird, Crown Coffee, OrionStar, Cafe Rozum, FIBBEE and MontyCafe to name just some of the ones we’ve covered. But Seattle-based Blue Hill aims to differentiate itself from other players in the space by using computer vision to make a smarter machine that recreates the human barista experience.

We should start of by saying that when it comes to computer vision, Blue Hill has the bona fides. Blue Hill Founder is Meng Wang, who was previously CTO and Co-Founder of Orbeus, which developed the Rekognition computer vision/image analysis system. (Orbeus was acquired by Amazon in 2016 and became AWS Rekognition, which has become controversial in its own right.)

Wang is applying his computer vision pedigree to coffee. Like other robo-baristas, Blue Hill’s system (dubbed “Jarvis”) features an articulating arm that grabs cups and operates a La Marzocco espresso machine. But unlike other robots, Blue Hill’s arm is aided by robust computer vision which not only assists with item recognition, but also helps the articulating arm act more like a human barista.

As Wang explained it to me over video chat this week, Blue Hill’s computer vision means that things like milk or cups or spoons don’t need to placed in a specific area in order to be found by the robotic arm. The arm can open a fridge and identify “soy milk” wherever it is placed inside just by looking. Or if the grinder is moved, the arm doesn’t need to be re-programmed because it recognizes the grinder and can still operate it, no matter where it is. As long as the robot knows what to “look” for, the system can be set up to accommodate different shapes and spaces.

But Wang says the other advantage with its computer vision is its ability to train the articulating arm. By examining video of human baristas making coffee, Blue Hill’s robotic arm can replicate those same movements. The high pull, the frothing, the milk blending, even the latte art can be recreated by the robot by watching humans do the same thing. It uses the same coffee equipment used by specialty cafes, it just has a robot handling them.

The reason for all this high-tech robotic re-creation is that at the end of the day, Blue Hill wants to be in the high-end coffee business. It’s not just about the robot, it’s about creating a perfect cup of coffee. Blue Hill even sources and roasts its own beans. To be fair, Blue Hill isn’t the first company to tell me that they want to create a premium coffee experience delivered by robot. Briggo had its own line of coffee beans too, and Cafe X had a human on hand at each kiosk to curate a customer’s coffee choice.

But Blue Hill is more interested in building up its own brand of automated coffee experiences, rather than licensing out the technology to another coffee company. That choice could be a tough hill to climb for the company as people don’t know what a Blue Hill is and robots are still very new. As a result, lots of people will need to learn that a) robots can make coffee, and b) getting Blue Hill’s brand of robotic coffee is a better choice than finding a nearby Starbucks (a drink they’re already familiar with).

Blue Hill sticking with a premium, human-like experience also means that they are sacrificing a certain amount of speed. Right now, Blue Hill is focused on opening its kiosks inside other retailers like the Super Joy Coffee Lab or Swee20 desert shop, both in Portland, OR. But if Blue Hill wants to move into more high-traffic (and more revenue generating) locations like airports and office buildings, having a robot that behaves like a human sacrifices the speed you get with automation. Will people want to wait for a robot to make their latte like a human would? Perhaps, if the coffee is good enough. But people in those situations are typically more about speed than precision drink crafting.

Adding to the pressure, the robot coffee space hasn’t exactly worked out so far for some of the early startups. Briggo was quietly sold off to Costa Coffee with nary a whisper, and Cafe X shut down all of its locations last year (though it re-opening some and shipping machines off to Asia).

Will Blue Hill’s computer vision and premium cup of coffee be enough to bring in repeat customers? We’ll have to wait and see for ourselves.

Revolmatic and Nayax Bring Contactless Automated Beer Dispensing to Bars

Every Los Angeleno I know is predicting an explosion of going out in the coming weeks as vaccinations accelerate. Bars and restaurants will be packed once again as those who have been stuck at home for the past year feel empowered to venture amongst other people once more.

Finally being able to release all that pent-up demand will be great for bars, restaurants and the workers there — but it’s going to be busy. Perhaps they should consider enlisting a little robotic bartender help to keep the drinks flowing.

If they do, Revolmatic has just the device. The Polish startup makes an eponymous automated beer dispensing robot that can act as either a bartender’s assistant or a standalone vending machine.

The Revolmatic is a countertop device that connects to a keg to automatically pour beers. The machine will dispense disposable cups into a rotating tray that slides the cup under the beer dispenser for filling. (Reuseable cups can be used, but they need to be placed in the tray manually.) Revolmatic can pour up to 450 beers per hour, and the machine has special software and a touchscreen to adjust factors like temperature and foam to make sure pours come out correctly.

RevolMatic Automatic Beer Dispenser - Automatic Mode

As noted, there are two versions of the Revolmatic. A bartender assistant is just as it sounds: it’s a machine that cranks out beers so busy bartenders can focus on other, more complicated drinks. There is also a standalone version that integrates Nayax’s payment system (among others) to create an unattended beer vending machine.

In its vending machine form, the Nayax integration allows customers to pay for their beers through a number of payment options like credit card or by mobile phone via an app like the Monyx Wallet (which is popular in Europe). Machines are typically set up in areas that conduct age verification upon entry (like a bar), and the Nayax system can decline payments from people underage.

We are starting to see robo-bartenders pop up in more places. Macco Robotics in Spain uses a humanoid-looking robot to pour beers. GlacierFire in Iceland uses multiple articulating arms to mix cocktails. In California, Rotender makes a full-on standalone cocktail vending machine. And Cecilia.ai adds a dash of chatbot with its robot.

There are a few reasons we’re seeing so much activity in the space right now. First, robots are still a novelty and might attract a few extra lookee-loos who are curious enough to buy a robo-drink. Second, if a robot can take over the simple work of pouring beer after beer after beer (think: at festival or stadium), then humans are freed up to better interact with customers or perform higher-skilled tasks. Finally, post-pandemic, bars and restaurants are looking to reduce the amount of human contact, something contactless vending machines do.

Right now, the Revolmatic is available in European countries such Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic and has a base price of €6,000 Euros (~$7,000 USD).

If you wan to see more drink robot action, then be sure to attend Articulate, our upcoming food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. It’ll be packed full of great speakers from across the robot landscape talking about the most pressing issues facing the industry. Get your ticket today!

Pani Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Its Countertop Hydration System

What should we call Pani, the forthcoming hydration system that officially launched its crowdfunding campaign today?

It’s a water filter, because it removes bad stuff like chlorine and mercury from your tap water. It’s also a mineralizer, because it adds good stuff like calcium and potassium back into your water. But it also sports a pod system to infuse flavors and enhancement boosts into your water.

At the end of the day, Pani creator, Allen Tsai just wants to improve the water you’re drinking. Pani (the word) means “water” in Hindi, and Tsai was inspired to launch Pani (the company) in 2018 after spending time digging water wells in Nepal. Pani’s first product was an IoT water flow meter that tracked water usage. That product turned out to be more of a B2B play, but for this new hydration system, Tsai is focused on the consumer market.

In addition to filtering, mineralizing and flavoring water, the countertop Pani device also dispenses said water hot and cold, between 40 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pani is launching at a time of growth for the bottled water industry. Even soda giant PepsiCo got in on the action a few years back with its acquisition of SodaStream. So the timing is right to catch on with audiences that still want flavored/mineral water but don’t want to buy single-use bottles and contribute to the world’s huge plastic waste problem. In addition to eliminating the need for bottles, Pani’s flavor pods are multi-use and the plastic housing is reusable, so it avoids Keurig-like waste problems as well.

All of this, however, does not come cheap. Early Pani backers can buy a Pani for $199 (while limited supplies last). When it comes to retail in the Spring of 2022, a Pani will cost $399. That’s a lot for a single-use countertop device. It does however, offer more functionality than the Mitte, which just mineralizes water, or the Rocean, which only creates fizzy water.

In the end, the Pani is many things, now it just needs to see if it’s the right thing for consumers.

Food Tech News: Electrolyte Beer and Food Waste Jet Fuel

Welcome to the weekend, and your weekly Food Tech News round-up. If you indulged in too many Irish stouts this past Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day, you might want to try some electrolyte-infused beer over the weekend. In addition to health-conscious beer, we also have news on food waste being considered for jet fuel and a plant-based egg company in Singapore.

Breweries are infusing beer with electrolytes and healthy ingredients

Do you like your beer with a twist of lime? Or how about with an infusion of electrolytes? A few breweries in the U.S are offering low-ABV beers infused with electrolytes and other nutritious ingredients. Zelus Beer Company (Massachusetts) was founded by a triathlete, and the brewery produces low-alcohol beer made with calcium, potassium, and different salts. Harpoon Brewery (Massachusetts) makes a beer with Mediterannean sea salt, chia seeds, and buckwheat. Mispillion River Brewing (Delaware) has a Berliner Weisse on tap that is infused with berries and a variety of undisclosed electrolytes. These beers are geared towards those who follow an active and healthy lifestyle but still want to enjoy a beer without feeling the negative side effects of alcohol. We’re not sure if they will actually rehydrate lost electrolytes, but an ice-cold beer after a hard workout is delicious regardless.

Photo from Unsplash

Commercial aviation industry considers using food waste for fuel

Taking a trip by plane adds a lot to your carbon footprint, especially if that trip is international. To combat the unsustainable nature of traveling by plane, the commercial aviation industry is looking into alternative options for jet fuel. One that has been presented in a study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the use of volatile fatty acids derived from “wet waste.” Food waste, animal manure, and wastewater are the components of wet waste, and researchers extracted volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from this mix. This possible alternative can reduce food waste going to the landfill, carbon dioxide emissions, and soot released into the air by 34 percent.

Photo from Float Foods’ Instagram

Plant-based egg start-up Float Foods receives Temasek grant

Float Foods is a Singapore-based start-up that has developed a whole plant-based egg product, and this week the company received a grant from the Temasek Foundation. The amount of the grant was undisclosed, and it came from Temasek’s Ecosperity Innovations Grant, which aims to assist start-ups with an emphasis on sustainability in Singapore. The company’s proprietary product is made from legumes and called OnlyEg. Float Foods says it is the first to create a whole plant-based egg product in Asia; other plant-based eggs typically come in a powder or liquid form. Float Foods aims to bring its product on shelves in Singapore in 2022.

See (Through) LG’s Transparent OLED Display on Crown Coffee’s Robotic Kiosk

When it comes to robot baristas, the robot itself usually takes center stage. I mean, those articulating arms are doing the actual work of making a latte. But with Crown Coffee’s Ella robot coffee kiosk, the wall in front of the robot is just as cool because it is actually a transparent display.

The transparent OLED display is made by LG, and shows off full motion video and graphics. But because of the transparent nature of the display, you can also see through the video action to watch the robot concocting your drink.

We actually covered Ella and its transparent display last year, but this week, LG Information Display Singapore posted a (promotional) video to LinkedIn giving us a better, more polished look at the technology.

Aside from being cool, it’s easy to see how this type of display could help robot baristas generate additional revenue. The colorful displays will undoubtedly attract eyeballs and could run sales for particular drinks and snacks, upsell items after you place an order, or even run third-party advertisements, without impacting how the actual robot operates.

While robots are very cool, they still have yet to fully prove themselves in the marketplace. Cafe X shut down all of its robot baristas last year (though the airport locations are starting to open back up), and Briggo was quietly sold to Costa Coffee with no fanfare or indication of what the sale price was. That’s typically not a good sign.

I still think there’s a bright future for robotic kiosks (we’re actually hosting a full day virtual summit to discuss food automation — you should join us!), especially in high-traffic areas like airports and malls where people want drinks quickly. Robots can churn out consistent drinks all day and night, and they are also contactless, which will most likely remain important even as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes.

The transparent displays make even more sense for co-branded robotic kiosks. It’s not hard to imagine how a Starbucks branded robot would take advantage of this technology to run a steady stream of ads and promotions.

Right now, the only place to see Ella’s transparent display in action is at its installation in Singapore. As it rolls out more locations, Crown Coffee plans to have a mix of owned and operated machines as well as licensed kiosks. As more robots come online, it’s apparent how cool the transparent display will be.

Bread to Booze: Misadventure Distillery Makes Vodka from Surplus Baked Goods

What if you could drink booze and help save the world by reducing food waste? That may be slightly hyperbolic, but Vista, California-based Misadventure Distillery aims to reduce the amount of food waste that enters the landfill by producing vodka made from surplus baked goods.

Misadventure Vodka is distilled twelve times and contains 40 percent ABV, and the main difference between it and other vodka is that instead of using grains or potatoes as the main ingredient, it uses unsold baked goods.

I spoke with Whit Rigali, one of the co-founders of Misadventure Distillery, to learn more about the company’s food waste-based vodka and mission. Rigali, a former bartender, and Sam Chereskin, an agricultural economist, wanted to start a distillery, but do so with sustainability in mind. When the two read the National Resources Defense Council’s report that revealed that 40 percent of food in the US goes to waste, they knew food waste was the sustainability issue they wanted to tackle and launched the company in 2017.

The co-founders began working with food banks in San Diego to gather surplus bread, pastries, and other baked goods that had been sent in. Food banks typically do not distribute these types of food because they are considered empty calories, but these sugar and starch-laden foods are perfect for creating alcohol. Misadventure Vodka can essentially use any type of baked good, like bread, bagels, donuts, croissants, cake, and cookies, but the company tries to separate out items like buttery garlic bread for example.

During the distillation process, gluten and most of the baked good flavors are removed. However, Rigali said that Misadventure’s vodka still retains a subtle vanilla flavor and has a silky mouthfeel. The leftover waste from the vodka-making process is donated to a compost facility local to the area. Rigali said, “If everybody in the U.S. switched to drinking Misadventure, we would divert the same amount of carbon dioxide as a forest the size of Yosemite National Park.”

It is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year globally, so there is a huge opportunity for companies to make edible food and drinks from this waste. A company in Sweden, Gotland Spirits, recently launched a new vodka made from pasta, bread, crackers, and milk powder that would otherwise be wasted. Toast Ale, a brewery based in the UK, uses bread that would end up in the landfill to make it beer.

Misadventure Vodka can be purchased on the company’s website with shipping available to 40 states in the U.S., and one 750ml bottle costs $24.99. Additionally, the product can be purchased at local retailers and restaurants in San Diego county. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

Food Tech News: H&M’s Castor Bean Oil Fabric, Self-Heating Coffee Cans

Welcome to this week’s Food Tech News round-up! With March just around the corner, we’re nearly at the “anniversary” of U.S. business shutting down due to the pandemic. We’re not sure if this is the kind of anniversary worth celebrating or crying over, but whatever mood you’re in, we have some news from the world food tech to make your day better.

This week we have news on H&M’s castor bean oil and cactus fiber fabrics, self-heating coffee cans, a plant-based innovation competition, and new vegan hot dogs from Meatless Farm.

H&M is making castor bean oil-based nylon fabric and leather from prickly pear fibers

Swedish multinational clothing company H&M has launched a sustainability concept called Innovation Stories, and recently debuted the first clothing line, Science Stories. In this new line, a castor bean oil-based yarn made by Fulgar will be used to create a fabric much like nylon, which is typically made from a group of plastics called polyamide. Additionally, H&M will be using Desserto’s vegan cactus leather for several clothing items. Pieces made from these fabrics will include women’s pants, shirts, and tracksuits, and will be available in select stores and on H&M’s website starting March 8.

Photo from High Brew’s website

High Brew Coffee now produces self-heating coffee cans

High Brew Coffee produces a variety of canned cold brew, espresso, and latte drinks, and the company’s latest innovation is a self-heating can of black coffee. BevNet reviewed the product this week and found that the temperature of the coffee reached around 120 degrees (which is moderately warm for a cup of coffee). The can is manufactured by HeatGen, and the coffee drinker simply needs to twist the bottom of the can and shake it a few times to activate the solid-state chemical reaction that warms the coffee. The self-heating can is available for High Brew’s 10.3 Oz Black & Bold flavor and costs $20 for a 4-pack.

Photo from Unsplash

ProVeg Asia to host plant-based innovation contest

ProVeg International is a non-profit that advocates for sustainable food system change, and this week it announced the Plant-based Food Innovation Challenge. The challenge is looking for students who have innovative ideas for plant-based foods and is open to students enrolled at universities in the ASEAN region. The event is supported by companies in the plant-based space like Oatly, Beyond Meat, HaoFoods, and Nestle. ProVeg is currently accepting applications for proposals from now and until March 13, 2021. Competition finalists receive up to $1,500, mentorship, and internship opportunities.

Meatless Farm to launch plant-based hot dogs during summer

Meatless Farm, a British-based producer of plant-based meat alternatives, announced this week that it will be launching vegan hot dogs during the summer of 2021. The hot dogs will be made from base ingredients of coconut fat and pea protein, and free of both gluten and soy. After launching this upcoming summer, the hot dogs will be available in retailers and foodservice operators throughout the U.S.