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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Drink

Fellow, Maker of Specialty Coffee Gear, Raises $30 Million Series B

Fellow, a maker of specialty coffee gear, announced today they had raised $30 million via a Series B funding round led by Nextworld Evergreen.

The San Francisco-based company, which has made a name for itself with its somewhat pricey design-forward coffee-making gear, was started by founder and CEO Jake Miller in his dorm room at Stanford where he began work on a coffee steeper that raised close to $200 thousand on Kickstarter.

Since those early days, Miller and his team have launched a family of coffee and tea gear, ranging from French presses to kettles to insulated coffee mugs. The company, which has gained a following among baristas and celebrities for its sleekly designed Stagg EKG kettles (and also influenced a dozen or more knockoffs), also sells coffee beans via its website and has opened a flagship retail store in San Francisco.

Fellow CEO Jake Miller

I first connected with Miller in 2017 when he showed off the Stagg Kettle and pitched his company at the Smart Kitchen Summit. I sat down with him yesterday to talk about his company and plans moving forward.

The home coffee gear market has a rough space for some startups, yet Fellow has been able to grow. Why do you think you’ve had success while others have struggled or gone out of business?

I do think a big part of our success was our “failure” to raise venture capital back in 2013. With limited cash, we had to be incredibly thoughtful about our product roadmap. Not only did we have to understand the appeal and market size of our products, but we had to be very honest with ourselves about the likelihood of us actually delivering a product that customers would love.

For example, although a tiny market, we had high confidence in our ability to launch the best pour-over kettle in the world with a small team and limited resources. In 2013, if someone would have handed us $5 million I think there is a good chance we would have bit off too much and wouldn’t have been able to deliver. It’s exciting to sit here today with the experience of the past 9 years and now the confidence/ability to deliver on the big stuff moving forward. 

What do you plan on using the funding for?

With the capital from the fund raise, we are going to build the team out further so we can run even faster in product development, coffee, and major distribution expansion, including international and our Fellow-owned retail stores. Our second store in Venice, CA opens in August.

The consumer hardware space has changed pretty dramatically since you launched almost 10 years ago, and crowdfunding is one of the aspects that has gotten harder (due to lots of high-profile failures). Would you crowdfund today if you were starting a company or take a different path?

I’m incredibly thankful to the thousands of backers who have supported Fellow through multiple products. The connections we’ve made with our early supporters is priceless. So yes, I think if done right, with the right intentions and expectations, I would absolutely use crowdfunding for a new company today. And, who knows, maybe Fellow goes back to crowdfunding for one of our future products! Even though we don’t need the cash for development today, the insights and feedback we get from our backers is essential to our success.

When you started designing your first product while still at Stanford, did you think you’d be building a consumer products brand long-term?

From day one, my goal was to launch a brand that had real permanence. I often talk internally about my dream of building a 100-year company. So, the desire was there. However, when I think back to 2013 at Stanford sitting in the Launchpad class at the d.School, my big dream was to have 10 employees who were passionate about product design. Now, all of the Kardashians have a Fellow Stagg EKG and it’s also being used by world champion brewers. Fellow today is far more than I ever imagined, but what is exciting is that I truly believe we are just getting started. 

Do you see Fellow expanding beyond coffee/tea hardware in the future?

At some point, yes. But, not today. There is still so much more our customers are asking us to do within coffee. However, at some point in time our customers will ask us to move into other categories in the kitchen. We build beautifully functional tools for the home barista today, and we’re excited to build beautifully functional tools for other passions in the kitchen in the future.

You were a Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase finalist in 2017.  Do you have any memories from that experience you can share?

Yes! I remember pitching on stage alongside so many other great entrepreneurs. That was a real treat for me. Additionally, I remember seeing the other brands and products at the event and feeling inspired. Talking to other founders at SKS helped me to internalize the value that technology can create in the kitchen. 

Mill It Farms Finds A Plant-Based Whitespace in Alt-Buttermilk

As the name suggests, buttermilk was made from the cultured cream leftover from the butter-making process. Was, being the keyword. With little sacrifice in its taste, modern buttermilk is made through a fermentation process in which cultures are added to low-fat or whole-fat milk. The result is a versatile product that is not only a popular beverage but a key ingredient in salad dressings, baked goods, pancakes, and a laundry list of other food.

The brain trust at Mill It Farms with an accent on brains, blended art, and science to create plant-based, vegan-friendly buttermilk that uses the fermentation of ancient grains to create a standalone beverage and salad dressing line. Mill It Farms Bill Myers, a food scientist who combines practical knowledge with keen market awareness, has taken on the challenge of developing a buttermilk substitute with a universal appeal.

Bill Myers’s dad, a food scientist, was developing a plant-based yogurt for Califia Farms when the two men realized buttermilk represented a significant whitespace in the plant-based market. “It’s like a little bit crazy that no one’s done this yet,” Myers told The Spoon in a recent interview.” With all the plant-based growth, there hasn’t been buttermilk (especially given) how many things buttermilk goes into.”

Aside from the success Mill It has found with offering buttermilk as a standalone beverage, it has a role in the three salad dressings the company provides. A Classic Ranch, Creamy Italian, and Thousand Islands are emerging as competitors to long-standing brands such as Follow Your Heart and Daiya, which contain sugar, cultured dextrose, and natural flavors.

Myers points out that the aim of vegan products, such as salad dressings, that claim to offer clean, healthy alternatives often fall short. “A lot of the early plant-based dressings would take out buttermilk and replace it with hydrogenated oils high in calories and high in fat.”

Myers adds, “I think that’s one of the biggest problems in the plant-based space right now is, you know, people who want to eat plant-based typically are people who are trying to eat clean and trying to eat healthily. They also are trying to eat fewer calories because they’re really kind of monitoring their diet. But a lot of the early like alternatives in the space is high in calories, high in fat, and high in sugar”

To create a sustainable substitute for dairy, Myers went back to a college food science project involving baking and landed on ancient grains such as millet and sorghum. “With ancient grains, there’s a lot of benefits. One is that there are much more sustainable, and they can grow in arid climates. And so it makes sourcing a lot more efficient. “Our costs are lower because they don’t require as many resources, but it also allows it’s also a lot better for the planet.”

Grains also work well as a fermentation substrate, Myers said. With the proper fermentation process, the resulting buttermilk replicates the taste, consistency, and acidity of products made from a dairy source.

MIll It Farms’ vegan buttermilk and buttermilk dressings are now sold in hundreds of retail locations across the country, including Whole Foods, Krogers, and Sprouts.

The Backbar One Is The Robot Bartender Your Parents Would Approve Of

Here at The Spoon, we’ve seen a bunch of bartender bots over the years. From early efforts like the Bartesian to weird animated robot bartenders, we’ve covered pretty much every new product that automates drink dispensing for home or restaurant.

So when the email came into my inbox about the Backbar One, I figured yet another liquor-loving engineering team had programmed a robot arm to pour drinks and decided to start a company.

Boy was I wrong. From the looks of it, someone’s figured out how to create an automated drink dispenser that fits perfectly into the workflow of a restaurant bar and creates drinks at a high enough volume to handle cocktail duties at the busiest of restaurant chains.

As can be seen in the walkthrough video below, the Backbar One integrates with the restaurant’s existing point of sale system. Once a drink order is put in, it is sent to the Backbar One where the bartender looks at the order, clicks the screen to start the process, drops a glass or shaker down on the conveyor belt, and then the machine automatically starts making the drink. Liquor and other ingredients are added, and the drink is ready in about 10 seconds. The bartender adds the garnish and puts the drink on the server’s tray. According to the company, the Backbar One can make up to 300 drinks per hour.

Backbar One Demo Video

The Backbar One has two storage drawers, including a refrigerated top drawer that has room for 12 containers to hold juices, syrups, mixes, and grenadines. The bottom drawer is where the liquor is stored, with room for 28 1 liter or 750-milliliter bottles.

The Backbar One is the most recent example of a trend I’m beginning to see from the latest generation of foodservice robots targeting high-volume restaurants where the design emphasizes seamless integration into existing service industry employee workflows. Much like the automated makeline of Hyphen or the new Sippy drink-dispensing robot from Miso, the Backbar One just feels like the engineers spent time with restaurant operators when putting together the design concepts. In other words, it seems purpose-built, practical, and useful, something an operator of a single independent restaurant or a chain would want to implement if they wanted to increase the productivity and profitability of their bar.

In short, it’s the bartender bot your parents would approve of, which is probably why food and ag venture firm Finistere Ventures (as well as HAX and others) decided to invest a $3.5 million seed round in the company. From an investment perspective, there are probably lots of drink automation startup pitch decks in circulation right now, but I’m sure the investors saw the market potential for a practical drink-making machine that would likely appeal to the Chili’s and Applebee’s of the world (where, by the way, mom and dad are probably eating right now).

Play Bar! The Bartesian Cocktail Appliance Makes MLB’s Opening Lineup Thanks to Aramark

Baseball season is back, which means hot dogs, the national anthem, and cocktail-making robots.

Ok, so the last part is only for those suite-holders at certain ballparks across the US where foodservice giant Aramark will be deploying the cocktail-making appliance from Bartesian.

Aramark’s Sports + Entertainment division announced the partnership last week as part of the unveiling of its new logo and 2022 tech partner lineup. The Bartesian, which makes cocktails by mixing spirits with bitters, extracts, and juices provided via a capsule, will reside in luxury suites at Citizens Bank Park, Fenway Park, Kauffman Stadium, Minute Maid Park, and Oakland Coliseum.

The cocktail-making appliance wasn’t the only new tech Aramark debuted for baseball’s new season. According to the announcement, AI-powered contactless retail checkout systems from Mashgin and Caper will be showing up at Citizen Bank Park, Fenway and Coors Field. Self-ordering kiosks and expanded mobile ordering capabilities will also be available at select parks.

Bartesian’s arrival in baseball stadiums comes almost a decade after the company’s founding. The machine, which has continued to plug on while other cocktail-making appliance companies have struggled or outright imploded, raised $20 million last year from Don Thompson-led Cleveland Avenue and celebrity Mila Kunis.

Here Are Four Ways Starbucks Could Get Into The NFT Business

Starbucks is getting into the NFT business.

That’s according to company CEO Howard Schultz, who recently held a company town hall to discuss what the company’s plans are for the coming year. Schultz, who retook the reigns of the coffee giant this week, said the company would be in the NFT business before the end of the calendar year.

“If you look at the companies, the brands, the celebrities, the influencers that are trying to create a digital NFT platform and business, I can’t find one of them that has the treasure trove of assets that Starbucks has, from collectibles to the entire heritage of the company,” Schultz said.

While it can often be cringe-inducing when CEOs talk about new digital formats – something Schultz acknowledged by admitting he’s not a digital native – he’s right that the company has many assets that could be tokenized and create new ways to engage with its customers.

So what exactly could Starbucks’ entry into the NFT business look like? Here are a four ideas about how Starbucks could leverage NFTs:

Create a Loyalty Program That Gives Special Rewards for Starbucks’ Most High-Value Customers

Back when Adam Brotman, who used to run Starbucks digital and now is CEO of Starbucks-invested Brightloom came on The Spoon podcast, he suggested that restaurants could reward their most loyal customers by issuing them an NFT.

They could say “here’s a code to claim your free NFT,” Brotman said. “And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the Portofino’s NFT.”

Brotman – who Schultz called out in the video above as a ‘digital native’ – highlighted different benefits restaurants could give such as special events, exclusive offers and more. In Starbucks’ case, I can imagine benefits like first access to special drinks or coffee roasts, a monthly free menu item, or digital assets like special coffee recipes.

A Membership Coffee Club

Another potential avenue for a Starbucks NFT could be a subscription coffee club. A club could be something like the Bored Breakfast Club, an NFT-powered subscription service that sends NFT holders special coffee roasts by mail. It could also include some Flyfish-club like benefits like special access to Starbucks’ unique venues like their roasteries.

Access to Unique Digital Experiences

A Starbucks NFT could also be a ticket to unique online experiences such as a tour of coffee locations or virtual online event with coffee experts. When asked about where he sees the metaverse going, Adam Brotman even suggested this as an idea.

“If I’m a Starbucks in the metaverse, I’m not just serving coffee. I’m growing coffee. I’m giving people tours of my farm in Costa Rica. What are the things that I wish I could transport people to experiences that I can’t scale in real life because of distance or cost or physics?”

NFTs Could Be Deep Insights Into Starbucks’ Coffee

One thing that makes NFTs and the blockchain interesting is their ability to provide proof of provenance for food and beverage products. Starbucks has long made noise about its use of fairtrade coffee, so it’s easy to envision how NFTs could be proof of where the coffee was sourced and provide deep insights to the coffee purchaser about the coffee chain of custody and provenance.

While all of this is speculation, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of my guesses is close to the direction Starbucks heads with their NFT effort. The company is a leader in digitization of the customer experience and is recognized for having one of the industry’s best loyalty programs.

Finally, given Adam Brotman’s presence at the Starbucks town hall and that the company he now leads, Brightloom, was essentially the result of Starbucks’ attempt to spin out its digital program assets into a standalone company, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brightloom plays a part in whatever NFT efforts emerge out of Starbucks this fall.

The EVERY Company Uses Iconic Product to Showcase Its Animal-Free Egg Whites

It’s common for musicians to play their most challenging piece to open a concert. Not only is the goal to calm the nerves, but it is also a way to showcase talent and let the audience know what they can expect. Using this model, EVERY Co. figures a great way to let the world know how exceptional its EVERY EggWhite is to have Bay Area’s Chantal Guillon, use it in its signature French macarons.

“From the day we founded the company, we have been asked by customers when will we get our hands on it (egg whites),” Arturo Elizondo, CEO, and founder of EVERY, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We wanted to launch it in the most iconic application that really is the holy grail of functionality and with a customer that lives or dies by the ingredients.”

Founded initially as Clara Foods in 2014, the company rebranded in 2021 to better illustrate its mission of providing animal-free proteins that can be used in a vast array of applications. Unlike cell-cultivated and plant-based proteins, EVERY uses a 3D model of an egg protein and puts it through a fermentation process to achieve three products that serve different high-value markets. Elizondo says the resulting fermented egg white has the perfect consistency and mouthfeel, an ideal substitute ingredient.

In addition to releasing its EVERY EggWhite, the company has EVERY ClearEgg. This clear, highly soluble protein can be used in beverages and fortifying agents. Elizondo said that his company has been partnering with AB InBev, which is experimenting with using ClearEGG in protein drinks and other drinks. EVERY has a similar relationship with cold-pressed juice and plant-based snacks brand Pressed to use its soluble protein in the juicer’s Pressed Pineapple Greens Protein smoothie.

The third product from EVERY is its EVERY Pepsin, a digestive enzyme that is Kosher, Halal, vegan, and vegetarian. Pepsin is often used in dietary supplements and food processing.

With no background in science, Arturo Elizondo brings an element of cache and evangelism to the company that is the backbone of every conversation. His passion for a global future of food security caused him to leave his job in Washington, D.C., and move to the Bay Area without a job or place to live.

“I didn’t want to just sit on the sidelines, and so once I learned about the impact of animal ag,” Elizondo said. “I felt I had to do something about this. “I was in D.C. and Geneva and realized that if we as a world were going to have a shot at averting this climate crisis, I need to at least try and give it a shot.”

Elizondo met his future partners at a conference in the Bay Area. Seven years later, the company hopes to provide a cruelty-free alternative to egg whites and products that use whites as a primary ingredient. The decision to go after the egg market was deliberate.

“The egg is in everything,” EVERY’s CEO said. “I remember when I first went plant-based and was in a grocery store, reading the label and saw eggs in everything. The egg is universally loved across cultures and in so many foods we eat. We wanted to be the first in the world to use this technology for one of the big multi-hundred million animal protein markets.”

Rather than using its three products to go directly to consumers, EVERY wants to enable third parties such as bakeries, beverage companies, and any industry that uses egg whites. “The technology is only as useful as the impact that it has on products,” Elizondo added. “Our products must work in every application. They have to be able to perform across the board. We want to give eggs a run for their money.”

This takes us back to the iconic French macaron. Beginning today, March 23, the macarons, using EVERY’s EggWhites, will be available in-store at Chantal Guillon’s San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif. locations and for Bay Area delivery via partners like GrubHub, UberEats, Seamless, and Allset on Wednesday, March 30. It is interesting to note that products using these alternative egg whites won’t be labeled “plant-based” (a standard marketing term) but are vegan as no animal is used in their creation. Elizondo believes that vegans will, for example, welcome baked goods back into their lives that have been missing for years because of their use of animal-based eggs.

“I miss eating the angel food cake we used to eat at Xmas every year. Now I can eat that. There’s something really magical about that. We’re not guilting people into comprising. You can truly have your cake and eat it too.”

Canadian Sisters Launch Capra Press, a French Press That Doesn’t Oversteep and Eliminates Messy Cleanup

Mia and Zoey Knobler had a love-hate relationship with the French press. The two sisters from British Columbia loved the richer flavored coffee that resulted from the steep and plunge appliance, but hated the messy clean-up and the over-brewed coffee resulting from continued exposure to the grounds.

So they set to making a French press that had all the upside of that full-bodied first pour but not the downside of over-brewed coffee and sludgy cleanup. The result was the Capra Press, which debuted this week on Indiegogo and has raised over $32 thousand as of this writing.

The sisters teamed up with product designer Jeff Polster to create a French press with two interesting differentiators. The first is a mesh filter that seals after pressing, preventing bitter coffee from over-extraction. The filter utilizes silicon umbrella valves that seal the grounds into the bottom after plunging.

The second feature is a removable bottom that enables easier cleanup. Called the “grounds-keeper,” the twist-off bottom allows the user to dispose of the grounds into the trash or compost.

Capra Press Founders (L to R): Jeff Polster, Zoey Knobler, Mia Knobler

The team worked out of the Revelstoke Idea Factory, a community maker space and design lab in Revelstoke, British Columbia set up by the City of Revelstoke and the Revelstoke Fabrication Lab Society. After two years of prototyping and testing their ideas, the trio launched the Capra Press on Indiegogo this week.

Longtime readers of The Spoon might recall another French press project called the Rite Press that raised $1.3 million on Kickstarter but never delivered the product. When I asked Mia Knobler about the inevitable comparisons some might make to the ill-fated Rite Press, she pointed out that the Rite Press was offered at an artificially low price ($40) that didn’t consider the true cost of manufacturing. The Capra Press Indiegogo pricing starts at $85 for ‘Super Early Birds’ and has a retail price of $125.

“We are very far along in the process with the Capra Press and have been conservative with all our estimates to ensure that we can fulfill all the orders from our customers without compromising on quality or innovation,” said Knobler.

While all hardware crowdfunding campaigns carry some level of risk, the Capra Press is off to a good start, with over $32 thousand raised in just two days from nearly 300 backers. With 34 days left, the campaign has a long runway to raise more funding.

Cana Unveils Pricing for Molecular Beverage Printer, Gives a Peek Inside

Today Cana, a company building a countertop drink printer that makes nearly any type of beverage, announced pricing for the drink machine, beverage cartridges, and the estimated ship date for the product.

Called the Cana One, the company’s first countertop beverage printer will have a limited time price of $499 for the first 10 thousand orders, after which it will be priced at $799. Customers can reserve a Cana One at the lower price for $99 on the company’s website (the $99 will be applied to the purchase price).

The company will ship everything necessary to make a drink – the sweeteners, alcohol, and the molecular drink cartridges – to the customer’s home. When the Cana One auto-detects that cartridges are getting low, the company will automatically ship them to the customer’s home.

How much the Cana One user pays for ingredients largely depends on consumption. Customers will order drinks and pay anywhere from $0.29 to $2.99 per beverage. The more a customer consumes, the more they pay, and the faster Cana is shipping out replenishment to their doorstep.

Above Left: Current Cana Prototype. Above Right: Cana Design as Presented on Website

The company showed the Cana One off to CNET in advance of today’s announcement. Not surprisingly, the current prototype being shown to press doesn’t quite look (at least on the inside) like the design concept of the Cana One on the company’s website. As you can see above, the sugar and spirits cartridges in the conceptual design on the right are high-polish and are not transparent, as seen in the working prototype on the left. Cana did not show off the molecular ingredient cartridge during the reveal demo this week, but you can see what they suggest it will look like in the conceptual design on the right.

CNET editor Brian Cooley sampled five drinks from the machine – cold brew coffee, two blueberry coolers, a grapefruit sparkler, and a mimosa – all of which took on average about 30 seconds to make. According to Cooley, all the drinks were good but were not exact replicas of the original versions.

One interesting aspect highlighted in the company’s new hero reel on their website is an emphasis on creators. The company will feature recipes from creators on the Cana touchscreen. Since users can create their own recipes, featuring popular recipes from individuals makes sense. However, at this point, it’s unclear how recipes are discovered or how creators will be compensated for their unique mixes.

According to the announcement, the Cana One is expected to ship in early 2023, but with the following caveat: their current ship date is “based on current visibility into its supply chain.” That caveat probably is smart, given the current chaos in worldwide supply chains and the uncertainly brought on in recent weeks due to war in Ukraine.

You can watch the CNET video about the Cana One below:

The Story of ColdSnap, the Make Anything Ice Cream and Frozen Beverage Appliance

If there was a gadget that won the hearts of the tech press at CES 2021, it was the ColdSnap.

The countertop appliance, which makes ice cream, margaritas, cold coffee drinks, and more in less than two minutes, had many declaring it the best of show. CNN featured it, Seth Myers talked about it, and CES awarded the ColdSnap with an innovation award. It was a cold treat-making miracle!

Over a year after ColdSnap’s time in the national spotlight, I caught up with company founder and CEO Matthew Fonte to hear the story behind his appliance and to get an update on how things are tracking.

According to Fonte, the idea for the ColdSnap came from his daughter. Every night while reading to his kids before bedtime, he’d ask them to come up with an idea for a new invention. One night in 2018, his daughter suggested a machine that made single-serve ice cream at the push of a button, and Fonte told her he didn’t think such a machine existed and explained why.

“I said, Well, it’s kind of a pain,” Fonte said. “Sometimes, you have to put the bucket in the freezer for a few hours. You can only make one flavor. That consistency is never repeatable. You have to wait about 40 or 50 minutes for it to freeze. There’s always cleanup associated with the process. It’s a big ordeal.”

As he explained why someone hadn’t yet made an instant ice cream machine, Fonte realized this could be both a lesson and an opportunity.

“I said what else can we do about it? And talking with them, this idea emerged, well, could we use a pod where we put in a machine and flash one ice cream at a time?”

The next day at work, Fonte set about finding out. He asked some coworkers if they thought it would be possible to freeze six ounces of ice cream in a couple of minutes, and they were skeptical. But Fonte knew that there were machines that could freeze a quart and a half in about 40 minutes and thought if the volume of liquid was reduced, it could freeze much quicker.

Fonte put the question to a friend who does computational fluid modeling. After running the numbers, his friend told him he thought it was possible.

“Armed with that knowledge, I said, ‘Okay, let’s give it a try.’ I wasn’t sure how we were going to be able to do it, but I knew it was possible.”

An engineer by training, Fonte got to work 3D printing parts in his garage and building prototypes. He soon realized one of the biggest challenges would be the pod; if he could find a container that enabled quick freezing and was also low-cost, Fonte knew he could make it work.

After trying out all sorts of vessels ranging from soup to soda cans, he eventually settled on the energy drink can.

“What we settled in on was Red Bull aluminum beverage can,” said Fonte. “It’s called a slim can and has a lot of surface area per volume, which enables us to freeze quickly.”

They’re also widely available, which meant they would be affordable, and they’re recyclable.

As Fonte worked on the system, he realized his machine was more than an ice cream-making appliance. He began testing alcohol and coffee drinks, frozen yogurt, smoothies, and more.

He also realized that because the system used a pod with a long shelf life, his product could be potentially transformative for markets where cold chain storage is not widely available or cost-prohibitive.

“China’s ice cream market is as large as the United States, but they have 25% the amount of refrigeration per capita that we do here in the States. If you could circumvent the cold supply chain and give them shelf-stable pods they can freeze their ice cream on demand, they can reach the masses there and grow that market four times.”

Over the next couple of years, Fonte continued to work on the system and started to build a team. The company raised money via a friends and family funding round and filed for patents. When the pandemic hit, a manufacturing plant in the Boston area shut down, and Fonte and his team swooped in.

“Opportunistically, we went and purchased the building,” said Fonte. “And now we have just over 40 employees. We are canning or putting the dairy in our cans, or sterilizing the cans to make them shelf stable. We’re painting the cans, we’re building machines. We do all the old food science here on site.”

Nearly four years after the initial inspiration, Fonte and his team are looking at rolling out about 100 machines to businesses around the Boston area this year and are eyeing a wider rollout in 2023. He’s also started talking with large CPG brands who could possibly license his technology to enable a new way to offer their products to their customers. And while he does see the commercial market (office spaces, restaurants) as his first market, he intends to create a product for the home.

As for his daughter who came up with the idea, I asked Fonte if she would get free ice cream for life or even stock in the new company.

“I think both,” said Fonte.

You can listen to my full conversation with Fonte by clicking play below or by listening to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: Building The Star Trek Drink Replicator With Cana’s Matt Mahar

This week, Cana came out of stealth and announced their “molecular beverage printer”, a device the company says will be able to create almost any beverage from the same 80 or so flavor compounds.

In our conversation we talk about the development of Cana, drink personalization, the business model, the future of beverages and much more.

I’m glad I had this conversation because I had so many questions which Matt addressed, including:

Will the Cana beverage printer cartridge include alcohol and sweeteners, etc?

One thing I wasn’t entirely clear on from the initial announcement was whether the Cana will make a complete beverage, including alcohol, sweeteners, etc. According to Matt, the answer is yes. The Cana will make complete beverages, no matter if it’s a glass of wine, beer or whatever, complete with alcohol, sweeteners, etc.

Will Cana unlock personalized beverage market?

That’s their plan. I will write more about this later, but it looks like Cana not only will allow you to make whatever unique beverage you want (chocolate peanut butter coffee beer anyone?), but it seems they are also thinking about possibly partnering with drink and culinary creators to unlock special recipe concepts.

Pricing?

They addressed this in their initial posts, but Matt shed additional light on it for me when he said they expect their drinks to be 50% cheaper than anything you get at retail. The discount will be even steeper compared to bar and restaurant pricing.

Matt discusses a lot more details and their plans for the future, so give it a listen! You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Cana Unveils Molecular Beverage Printer, a ‘Netflix for Drinks’ That Can Make Nearly Any Type of Beverage

In late 2018, food tech entrepreneur and investor Dave Friedberg got together with a few scientists for dinner and drinks and talked about a recent article he had come across. The article detailed a research study that suggested most any beverage is made up almost entirely of water, with only about one percent or so making up a drink’s unique flavor.

It wasn’t long before someone wondered aloud if it would be possible to create a machine that could synthesize nearly any drink.

“Why not just make the Star Trek Replicator and let people print any drink they want, when they want, right in their own home?”

That night the concept for the Cana, a ‘molecular drink printer’, was born.

The device, which one investor describes as a “Netflix for drinks”, uses a single cartridge filled with flavor compounds that Friedberg claims can make a nearly infinite number of drinks: “We know we can print an infinite number of beverages from a few core flavor compounds. We know we can do this across many existing beverage categories — juice, soda, hard seltzer, cocktails, wine, tea, coffee, and beer. Consumer taste testing panels score our printed beverages at the same or better taste levels as commercially available alternatives. Our hardware designs will print beverages quickly and accurately. Our pricing and the footprint of our hardware can yield significant savings and advantages for most households..”

The system is about the size of a toaster and utilizes what the company describes as novel microfluidic liquid dispense technology that combines Cana’s individual flavoring ingredients in a small form factor.

The company was incubated within Friedberg’s Production Board, his investment holding company for ag and food tech businesses. The Production Board has spent $30 million building Cana’s proprietary hardware platform and chemistry system.

In Friedberg’s blog post about Cana, he talks about how this new appliance is part of a larger trend towards decentralized manufacturing.

“Making a molecular beverage printer meant inventing a new kind of supply chain. Provided that the printers can use materials mostly sourced locally (i.e. tap water), we can replace old industrial supply chains with ones that are more nimble and more redundant, moving production to the point of consumption — the home. This new decentralized supply chain would use less energy and less carbon and cost less to operate, sourcing and shipping only the flavor compounds that make up the 1% of each beverage, rather than all the water and packaging.

This great decentralization in food is something I wrote about in 2019, when I talked about how intelligence in food production systems had begun to move towards the edge: In food retail, IT, robotics and digital powered micromanufacturing start to make its way to the different storefronts. In the restaurant space, we’re beginning to see automation and robotics to create hamburgers at the quality a Michelin star chef would make them, only without the chef. And at home, we’re witnessing the emergence of digital technologies used to grow food and prepare food and beverages beyond the capability of the home cook.

Friedberg and the Cana team have smartly positioned their system as a way to create beverages without all the plastic waste, claiming that the machine can print enough drinks to save a family from throwing about a hundred containers a month into the recycle or trash bin.

From here, the company plans to move the Cana into full production. While they aren’t yet releasing pricing, Cana says their machine and the ingredients will be more affordable than buying the drinks in containers. The company says they will have more information on pricing and the initial design in the coming months.

Stay tuned…

Image Credit: Cana Technology

What The Heck Happened to Drinkworks?

One of the stories I missed while I was out of the country in December was the shuttering of Drinkworks.

What makes the announcement so unexpected was, overall, things seemed to be generally going well: the company was expanding nationally, sales seemed on the uptick, and they’d even just announced the newest generation drink appliance in October of 2021.

Then, less than two months later, the joint venture between Anheuser-Busch and Keurig Dr. Pepper announced it was ceasing operations.

I don’t have to tell you how unusual it is for a company to announce a new product and then shut down just months later. And, now, almost a month after the news, we really don’t have a good answer for what happened, which is why it’s still worth asking: what the heck happened?

Generally, what that type of quick about-face tells me is that the higher-ups – and by that I mean the two companies involved in the joint venture funding – decided the project wasn’t working and pulled the plug.

So what does ‘not working’ mean? It could be any number of things: Appliance or beverage pod sales weren’t meeting forecasts. Customer satisfaction was low. The project was sucking up too many resources. Maybe the two companies didn’t like working together or their strategies diverged. As I said, it could be anything and we may never know (unless, of course, a former insider wants to tell us. Please reach out if you’d like to do so privately).

The end of Drinkworks also begs the question: is this the end for home cocktail appliances? Bartesian – and now Black and Decker – would argue no. As for me, I’m not sure I want a pod-making machine, but I would take a voice-enabled cocktail marking robot.

Watch my video look at the demise of Drinkworks below.

What The Heck Happened to Drinkworks?