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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Drink

Atomo Raises $9M in Seed Funding for its Molecular Coffee

Atomo, the Seattle startup that re-creates coffee on a molecular level, announced today that it has raised a $9 million in seed funding from S2G Ventures, AgFunder, Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investor Horizons Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Atomo to $11.6 million.

While Atomo’s molecular coffee was started in a lab, it certainly isn’t lab-made coffee. The company’s formula uses a combination of upcycled (vegan) ingredients that go through various biochemical and thermal processes to recreate the look, taste, smell and mouthfeel of coffee. The result, according to Atomo, is a smoother coffee that is less bitter.

In addition to the funding itself is what the funding will go towards. Atomo is building out a pilot production facility in Seattle that when opened in 2021 will be capable of producing thousands of servings of its coffee per day.

There are three phases on Atomo’s roadmap. The first phase, which the new facility will be producing, is a concentrate that will be used in ready-to-drink cans of Atomo cold brew coffee . The second phase involves using the concentrate as well as a grounds product in something like a Keurig style cup. The final phase will be using 3D printing to create an Atomo “bean” that could be used in grinders.

Atomo isn’t the only company looking to recreate drinks on a molecular level. Endless West makes whiskey, wines and sake spirits by deconstructing the originals and reassembling them.

The coffee industry is getting pinched from both ends during this pandemic. The virus is impacting the labor force in places like Brazil from being able to pick beans, and it is causing shut downs of cafes, which are big buyers of coffee. Just as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat could potentially bring stability to production of (plant-based) “meat” that avoids the wild swings of pandemics, the Atomo’s production capablities could potentially do the same for coffee.

We’ll have to see what the company brews up next.

Cafe X Closed its Airport Locations and Laid Off Staff. Now It’s Planning for the Future

Cafe X has shut down its San Jose and San Francisco airport operations, laid off staff and made a number of other market adjustments as the company adapts to the new realities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Henry Hu, Co-Founder and CEO of Cafe X told us via Twitter messaging that with airport traffic decimated, thanks to the coronavirus, the two airport locations have been closed for months. He is unsure when they will reopen. Hu says that they are still in talks with other airports for new Cafe X locations.

At the same time, however, Cafe X has also started taking pre-orders for machines on its website, which lists the price at $200,000 per robotic kiosk ($5,000 deposit required), and says they will be shipped in Q4 of 2020.

Hu said that Cafe X is not a franchise, the company is just selling the machine and providing support, which can include recipes and menus if the customers wants. Additionally, customers can still choose to purchase coffee and supplies through Cafe X.

This is a little different from when Cafe X first started a couple years back, when the company was not only offering robot-made coffee, but also had a human on hand to provide a more curated coffee experience. The plan at that time was for Cafe X to own and operate its own machines.

The actual physical shape of the Cafe X machine has changed as well. Gone are the rounded corners of the kiosk, replaced with more square right angles.

It’s been a tumultuous year for Cafe X. In January, the company shuttered its three downtown San Francisco locations to focus on its airport business, and now those locations are closed as well. Hu said that because of the pandemic, Cafe X laid off most of its staff except for the engineers.

There does seem to be some light at the end of this COVID tunnel for Cafe X, however. Hu posted a photo on Twitter today of one of its robot kiosks being shipped off to Asia. Hu wouldn’t provide many details, but said its part of a big project in Asia that will include 150-plus machines over the next couple of years.

As I’ve written before, I’m all-in on automated vending machines like Cafe X and Briggo, especially during these pandemic times. Businesses and consumers alike will be looking for ways to reduce human-to-human interactions when it comes to getting their food. Robotic kiosks not only remove one human from the equation, but also hold all of their food and other ingredients behind glass walls away from people. Additionally, robots can run all day without taking breaks (or calling in sick). Spoon Plus subscribers can read my full report on the future of vending machines.

The pandemic is far from over (especially here in the U.S.), so we’ll see if COVID, which negatively impacted Cafe X though most of this year, could also come to the company’s rescue.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article said that Cafe-X’s order of 150 machines was happening over the coming year instead of over the next couple of years.

Cuzen Matcha Cruisin’ Through its Kickstarter Goal on its First Day

Part of the problem with this job is that I write about a lot of cool kitchen stuff. This, in turn, makes me want to buy a lot of the things I write about. Things like the Cuzen Matcha.

The Cuzen Matcha is a beautifully designed countertop machine out of Japan that grinds and mixes fresh matcha powder to create a delicious cup of matcha that you can drink straight or mix into another beverage like milk.

World Matcha, the company behind the Cuzen, launched it’s Kickstarter campaign today, and at the time of this writing had already raised more than $22,000 of its $50,000 goal. Early backers can get their own Cuzen Matcha machine, plus 40 cups’ worth of matcha leaves for $299, with a scheduled ship date of October of this year.

And therein lies the problem. I tasted the Cuzen’s matcha at our Food Tech Live event earlier this year (you can watch our video of the Cuzen in action to see for yourself how it works), and it was delicious. And the machine is more sculpture than appliance and now I want to buy one.

CES 2020: A Look at the Cuzen Matcha, a Home Matcha Making Appliance

But I don’t drink matcha with any regularity. But maybe I would if I paid $300 for a machine that makes it? I mean, colder months are coming and a hot mug of freshly ground matcha latté sounds pretty enticing. A matcha latté at Starbucks is around $3.00, and that’s for one that isn’t nearly as good. So I’d only need to drink a hundred homemade Cuzen matchas to break even? That’s not too bad…

Wait. Are we doing this? Am I buying a matcha machine?

Unlike a lot of Kickstarter hardware projects (Rite Press, we’re looking at you), having interviewed the World Matcha team and seen the product in action, I have more faith that this crowdfunded project will actually come to market.

Now the question is whether it will come to my kitchen counter.

Coca-Cola Adapts Digital Marketing to Our New Pandemic Normal

In the abstract, it’s easy to know that the pandemic is affecting everything. But it’s when you get down to the nitty-gritty practical level that you fully understand just how COVID really is impacting everything. Like, for instance, how important pictures are when people are buying your products online.

Marketing Interactive has a story up about moves Coca-Cola is making to adjust its marketing efforts in the wake of coronavirus. From that story:

The company will enhance its brand presence on the “virtual aisle”, investing in high-quality content such as photos, videos and product descriptions, to ensure its brands look as good online as they do in store.

Coca-Cola is also working with retailers to increase the visibility and attractiveness of their products on screens, ramping up SEO, and working with restaurants to make sure its drinks are featured on menus.

It’s no surprise that Coca-Cola would be making these moves. Online grocery shopping has had record adoption and sales since March, thanks to the pandemic, reaching $7.2 billion in June. While restaurants yo-yo between being open to in-person dining and closed as the virus waxes and wanes, one thing for certain is the move to more contacless experiences. These new contactless measures will include digital payments and menus becoming standard.

Of course, Coke’s moves are also coming on the heels of a 28 percent drop in sales for the company as high-volume customers like restaurants, ballparks and movie theaters all shut down because of the virus.

While Marketing Interactive focused on Coke, it’s safe to assume that every CPG brand is making similar moves. If the only way consumers can interact with your brand is through a screen, then companies better make sure that that imagery is optimized for multiple types of screens and that those images look good.

In the 80s, Coca-Cola’s ad slogan was “Have a Coke and a smile.” Smiles are a definitely harder to come by nowadays, but with its new marketing efforts, Coca-Cola is making sure you still get your Coke.

Pepsico Launches New SodaStream Professional Connected Sparkling Water System for Offices

Looking at the homepage for the new SodaStream Professional is like looking back in time. The page features pictures of the connected sparkling water device in the middle of an office as workers stride by, seemingly without a care in the world, sans facemasks.

I bring that up not to poke fun at Pepsico, but because the world that the company imagines for its new device, is far different from the one we currently live in.

Pepsico announced the new Sodastream Professional over the weekend. It’s a carbonated water dispenser and mobile app system that allows users to choose from different unsweetened flavors, levels of carbonation and track their hydration. It will also tell you how many plastic bottles you saved/avoided using.

Pepsisco didn’t provide many other details for the SodaStream Professional (like pricing), but it seems to be a follow up to a similar product the company announced a little more than a year ago. That device was smaller (countertop instead of freestanding), but had the same capabilities and was going into testing last summer.

In the press release, Pepsico said it was bringing “customizable beverages to workplaces, college campuses and airports.” But those are three locales that are either shut down or severely diminished, thanks to the global pandemic. There isn’t as much call for a sparkling water dispenser for the masses when there aren’t masses of people in any given location.

At least the SodaStream Professional appears to be contactless, with control via the mobile app.

The SodaStream Professional faces competition for your sparkling water dollars. Bevi makes similar fizzy/still flavored water dispenser for offices (and introduced its own touchless tech in June). And the Rocean was supposed to put its sparkling water dispensers at the Conrad New York hotel this past spring, but who knows how that went.

It should be noted that the SodaStream Professional is a good idea. We need to use fewer plastic bottles and drink less sugary sodas and this device seems like it can help with that. I just would like to hop in a time machine and fast forward to when we can safely go back to the office and use one.

Pepsi and Diageo Will Launch Paper Bottles in 2021

Spirits company Diageo, best known for the Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Smirnoff brands, announced this week that it’s created the world’s first plastic-free, paper-based bottle. Along with Monday’s announcement, Diageo also said it has partnered with venture management firm Pilot Lite to launch a sustainable packaging tech company called Puplex Limited.

First, the bottle. Puplex Limited designed and developed a bottle made from what the press release calls “sustainably sourced pulp” that is 100 percent free of plastic and also food safe and recyclable. The bottle will debut in 2021 with Johnnie Walker scotch whiskey.  

Scotch won’t be the only beverage available via these new bottles. Puplex Limited created a consortium of companies that includes PepsiCo and Unilever to further develop these bottles and launch their own branded versions in 2021, based on Puplex’s designs and tech.

More than 1 million plastic bottles are sold globally every single minute, and each of of those takes about 450 years to completely degrade. When it comes to recycling said bottles, the U.S., certainly wouldn’t win any prizes, unless they’re for not recycling: in 2017, just 8 percent of plastics were recycled, according to data from the EPA.

Given our broken recycling system, major beverage companies (among others) are now under pressure to reduce their overall reliance on plastic. For example, in 2019, PepsiCo teamed up with Coca-Cola and Keurig-Dr. Pepper for the Every Bottle Back program, which aims to reduce plastic use as well as invest in the improvement of the recycling of plastic bottles. 

So far, developing alt-packaging for the plastic bottles has proved challenging. It seems Diageo has made something of a breakthrough with its product announced this week. How scalable that breakthrough is across the entire beverage industry remains to be seen. 

The Premium-ization of Coffee and Taking Roasting to the Edge

Bellwether Coffee makes ventless, electric coffee roasters the size of a fridge that automate the roasting process. It’s an interesting play to take coffee roasting away from centralized producers and bring it closer to the edge. At least in theory, that means fresher java for consumers, and bigger savings for Bellwether customers (which range from cafés to grocery stores).

To learn more about how coffee roasting is evolving — and where the coffee market is headed in general post-COVID — I spoke with Bellwether’s CEO Nathan Gilliland. 

This long-form interview is exclusive to Spoon Plus subscribers. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

Your Next Alt-Milk Latte Could Be Made With Barley

Whether it’s for sustainability reasons or those related to health, more folks nowadays are looking for alternatives to animal-based dairy. Oat milk, chickpea milk, almond milk, and others have all made strides in the alt-dairy market, and now they have a new competitor: barley milk. Plant-based dairy company Take Two Foods just launched its “Barleymilk” product, the first of its kind to use what it calls “rejuvenated barley” to create milk for human consumption.

Portland, OR-based Take Two was founded this year, and launched “Barleymilk” this past March. Right now it’s available in coffeeshops and cafes around the Pacific Northwest and in Los Angeles, according to a recent company press release. 

The company claims Barleymilk is a first of its kind. Over an email exchange with The Spoon, Take Two cofounder and CEO Sarah Pool said that in terms of a source for plant-based milk, “nobody knows about barley because the majority of companies are just fast-following trends.” In other words, plenty of companies are coming to market with almond milks and coconut milks, but barley is an untapped resource in terms of an ingredient for alt-milk.

That’s especially true when it comes to upcycled barley, which is made from the spent grain that goes to waste during the beer brewing process. Pool said about 8 billion pounds of spent barley goes to waste annually around the globe as the result of beer brewing. Take Two “rescues” this grain and uses it to make its Barleymilk, which Pool says can be used for everything from lattes to smoothies. The drink contains about 5 grams of protein per serving and has more than 50 percent less sugar than other milks. 

Of course the acid test for plant-based products these days is taste. And actually, that’s one of the major gripes about plant-based dairy products. They rarely taste like the real thing, and according to Pool, the more nutritious they are, the worst they taste. “Even though the plant-based milk category is booming right now, brands haven’t been able to solve converting the mainstream consumer to non-dairy,” she said. “First and foremost, because plant-based milk doesn’t taste amazing.”

There’s some debate on that point. Plant-based milk is “the most developed of all the plant-based categories,” according to the Good Food Institute, which also notes that plant-based products like dairy are “increasingly competitive with animal products on the key drivers of consumer choice: taste, price, and accessibility.” So plenty of folks are buying alt-dairy products.

That said, taste is subjective, and not everyone agrees on the taste of current plant-based milks. Even my former colleague Catherine Lamb, a die-hard when it comes to plant-based anything, has written about the “bitter aftertaste that comes with, say, pea protein or soy.”

Take Two says its Barleymilk tastes good enough to drink by the glassful, and can also be used as a cooking ingredient. Whether consumers agree is to be determined. The milks currently come in four flavors: original, chocolate, vanilla, and something called “chef’s blend.” Online, a two-pack costs $9.98 (plus $5.99 for standard shipping), and, as mentioned above, the products are also available in cafes in parts of the Pacific Northwest and L.A.

At The Spoon, we haven’t yet gotten the chance to taste Take Two’s take on alt-milk, and we’ll keep you updated when we do. In the meantime, the company says it plans to expand Barleymilk nationally across both retail and foodservice by the Fall of 2020. 

 

Bevi Will Socially Distance Its Smart Water Coolers With Touchless Tech

As restaurants reopen and (some) employees go back to the office, ensuring sanitary, socially distanced public spaces is a major topic of discussion, and contactless is fast becoming a requirement for everything from restaurant menus to grocery deliveries to lunch.

Your office water cooler can join that list now, too. Today, Bevi, a tech company that makes smart water coolers for office and commercial spaces, announced a new touchless dispensing feature meant to make it machines feel more sanitized and socially distanced to users.

The Bevi machine dispenses both still and sparkling water in a variety of flavors. The system involves an internet-connected dispenser that hooks up to a tap water source. Up to now, users could set flavors, carbonation levels, and other preferences using a touchscreen built into the machine. But come July 13, both new and existing Bevi machines will offer touchless dispensing that utilizes an individual’s mobile phone, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Come July 13, Bevi will send an on-screen animation to all its machines that includes instructions on how to use touchless dispensing. To enable the animation, companies just have to run a simple software update. From there, users can scan a QR code, which will replicate Bevi’s dispensing menu on their own personal screen. The same options for drink customization (carbonation levels, flavor, etc.) will appear on the user’s phone just as they would have on the machine’s touchscreen.

On the surface, the update seems a small one, but actually, these micro innovations from the tech world play an important role in making the world, or at least your office or local restaurant, a more sanitary place. While the scale of germophobism varies from one individual to the next, the pandemic has definitely called into question our use of these screens in public settings.

Various efforts are in place to address those concerns. Restaurants across the world are being urged to adopt contactless menus. My colleague Chris Albrecht makes a good argument for gesture control on kiosks and smart dispensers. Others are releasing facial recognition technology on their machines, so that a user need only have their face scanned to access the customer profiles and past orders. 

But facial recognition systems are expensive and come with a double side of privacy concerns. In lots of cases, it may be that a simple QR code is more feasible for a business to implement, especially if it’s for something simple like dispensing a lime-flavored water.

That seems to be Bevi’s thinking behind its new feature update. Doubtless we’ll see many other device-makers rolling out their own touchless functionality in the near future.

After Four Years, It Looks I’m Finally Going To Get My Spinn Coffee Maker

Well what do you know? It appears my long, nearly half-decade wait for the Spinn coffee maker is nearing an end.

That’s because I got an email last week letting me know that my Spinn is on its way. For those of you who have been following along, the company first started pitching their centrifugal coffee maker back in 2016. I ordered one early – in the first wave – and waited excitedly for my machine to arrive in 2017.

Only it didn’t, and before long Spinn stopped given expected ship dates. The months soon stretched into years. Backers became restless.

In the meantime, I documented the long and twisting journey of Spinn, from its continued delays to it a new funding round and more.

The company said they started shipping last year, but my research showed they had only really shipped early production models to beta testers, some of whom included the company’s own investors. This shipment appears to be the first one to a broader set of backers.

The company, which had seen a slight setback due to COVID-19 related shutdowns, had teased they had finished production ready for backers in their most recent monthly update:

Since our last update, our colleagues in China have been working very hard on setting up the production line, the pre-assembly, assembly, packaging, and preparing all units of this batch for international shipment. These days, being able to line up a production run is all the more exciting. Our teams across the globe have been hard at work catching up after the shutdowns due to COVID-19.

Despite a four year wait, I’m still pretty excited for my Spinn. I can’t tell you how many emails I received from other backers over the last couple years asking if they should give up and ask for a refund. What I always told them was that despite the long wait, the company’s detailed monthly production updates and news of their funding made it seem the Spinn team was working to get this thing done.

Now they finally have. Once I get it in a few weeks, I’ll have to see if the long wait was worth it.

The Kelvin Home Coffee Roaster Enters Production, Ships To Backers in August

Back when the Kelvin, a countertop home coffee roasting appliance, launched on Kickstarter in March of 2018, their promo video made a simple but powerful statement:

“The roast of the bean, the most important factor in our coffee’s flavor, has always been completely out of our control.”

While that’s a bit of an exaggeration – there are plenty of home roasting machines available at the click of a button – the idea of a simple, small countertop appliance was enough to entice me to back the Kelvin. With an estimated ship date of December 2018, I had hopes I’d be roasting my own coffee beans by Christmas.

Two years later, I’m still without my Kelvin. When I’d checked in last August with the CEO of IA Collaborative (the company behind the Kelvin), Dan Kraemer told me via email he expected shipment in November, but another Christmas came and went and still no Kelvin.

But this week, a light at the end of my coffee roasting tunnel appeared in the form of an update that said the Kelvin had entered full production.

From the update:

Now that most parts are made for mass production, the team will begin assembling roasters and loading onto pallets to be shipped in the coming weeks. While our team was testing roasters from pilot production, our manufacturing team was preparing the Kelvin packaging.

Anyone familiar with the hardware crowdfunding knows delays are almost expected nowadays. Still, a year and a half delay is a long one, especially when it seemed much of the research and development of the product appeared completed by the time it showed up on Kickstarter.

I shouldn’t complain too much. Some products never make it to the customer, and other delays can take the better part of a half-decade (I’m looking at you Spinn), so just getting a product you backed on Kickstarter nowadays, no matter how delayed, can feel like a win.

While it might be a couple years later, here’s to hoping I’ll be roasting beans by Christmas.

Food Tech Intelligence Brief: The Lessons From PicoBrew (Spoon Plus)

Last week, an email went out to Picobrew customers informing them that PicoBrew had been sold through the bankruptcy process and had new owners (that won with a $7.5 million bid). The email also made clear the new owners weren’t all that interested in running the business.

And so as they sell off the pieces, I’ve been thinking about what lessons we can pull from the remains of a company that once had so much promise. There were many, in part because the company was trying to do so many things. They made hardware, had a consumables business, and sold into both consumer and professional markets. In a way, PicoBrew was as much a test lab for new ideas as it was a company, providing a fantastic case study for various food tech concepts and business models.

Of course, each company is its own unique combination of people, investors and ideas that ultimately results in a journey specific to them. That said, we can learn some truths from story of PicoBrew that are both instructive and broadly applicable to companies charting similar waters:

This Food Tech Intelligence Brief is available to Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.