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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Recipes

Purple Carrot Launches Frozen Meals at Whole Foods Stores

Purple Carrot, best known for its plant-based meal kit subscription service, is getting into the retail game. The company today announced the launch of a line of frozen, single-serve meals that are now available at Whole Foods stores in the U.S.

Like the rest of Purple Carrot’s offerings, the meals are 100 percent plant based and developed in partnership with CPG company Conagra Brands, which owns Health Choice, Earth Balance, and Gardein, among other names. 

These frozen meals will be available for purchase at “nearly all” Whole Foods stores in the U.S. this week for $5.29 each, according to the company press release.

The move to retail is a first for Massachusetts-based Purple Carrot. It has long been known for its subscription-based meal kit company, which specializes in plant-forward, vegan-friendly meal kits. The company was acquired by Tokyo, Japan-based Oisix ra daichi Inc. in 2019. 

Purple Carrot’s launch in physical retail outlets comes at a time when more people are ordering their groceries online thanks to the pandemic. And recent research suggests the pandemic is also causing something of a resurgence in the previously struggling meal kit sector. Finally, COVID-19 may be ushering a new trend into the food world: frozen food as medicine. Given Purple Carrot’s plant-forward, healthy menu, the new line of products is a prime contender for this category.

One might wonder why Purple Carrot is focusing on physical retail stores right now. But despite what the headlines would have us believe, not everyone is avoiding the brick-and-mortar grocery store. Presumably online shoppers will still be able to purchase Purple Carrot’s frozen meals along with any other item they throw in their virtual cart. And with more people working from home, these single-serving meals could easily become a regular staple of someone’s freezer, and a quick way to grab a healthy bite in the middle of the workday.

Recipes for Relief Sells Professional Chef’s Recipes to Quarantined Home Cooks

Though quarantine is forcing most of us to become more dedicated home cooks, few are making fancy, restaurant-worthy dishes every night. But that might change soon.

Recipes for Relief is a website where famous chefs and mixologists post recipes for meals and drinks. Each recipe features a title, the name of the chef who created it, and a short description. You can choose to purchase the recipe for $2, $5, or $10. All of the funds go directly back to the chefs or mixologists. 

The initiative grew out of meez, a recipe management tool that allows professional chefs and mixologists to digitize their recipes, make edits, scale it up/down to feed various amounts of diners, and share them with team members. Meez is currently in beta testing mode and was preparing to launch back when quarantine forced restaurants to shut their dining rooms. Since then, meez has pivoted to share the recipes with folks that are outside the professional kitchen — home cooks.

Recipes for Relief kicked off in mid-April and currently includes around 80 recipes from 20 chefs. I connected with Francine Lee, who does business development for meez, via phone to learn more about why the company decided to start Recipes for Relief. “Other than takeout and delivery, plus government aid, there’s no way to generate revenue for restaurants right now,” Lee told me. “We thought, ‘What can we do?'”

As a quarantined person who loves to cook, of course I had to give Recipes for Relief a try. I added two recipes to my cart that looked both delicious and achievable: Miso Biscotti and Cauliflower Mac and Cheese. Within 24 hours I got an email with a link to my meez account, which had the two recipes plus a dozen bonus ones. From my initial perusing, the recipes all seemed relatively easy to make and featured ingredients that the average person could actually find at a store.

Lee told me the company has also worked with the chefs to edit the recipes to make them doable for non-professionals — using more basic techniques, ubiquitous appliances, etc. “There’s also a lot of cool tips and tricks that happen in a professional kitchen that could be insightful for a home cook,” she told me. Recipes for Relief is also gathering data on what types of recipes people are buying most to curate their new offerings.

I was hesitant about the portion sizes of the recipes. Chefs obviously work on a much larger scale than home cooks. But meez has solved this problem by offering capabilities to scale the recipes (1/2x, 2x, 4x, etc) to accommodate any number of people. You can also manually enter the amount of any ingredient you have (e.g., 1 cup of cider vinegar) and all the other ingredients will adjust accordingly. You can even ask chefs about ingredient swaps in the comments. 

According to Lee, the conversions are actually one of the key selling points for both meez and Recipes for Relief. That could be especially useful in our quarantine kitchens, when we’re forced to work with what we have more than ever before. 

Recipes for Relief’s interface still needs some polishing. There were several grammatical errors and some of the instructions lacked detail. I’d also like allergy and dietary restrictions listed (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free) clearly on the recipes. If meez decides to add a permanent tool targeting home cooks, not restauranteurs, these changes could make it a lot more useful.

As someone who’s worked in a restaurant and knows how complicated recipes not developed for home chefs can be, I’d normally be skeptical of tackling a restaurant recipe at home. But now, with time on my hands and a hankering for a physical project, there’s no better time to try my hand at a complicated recipe — especially if those recipes are also helping to support restaurants.

Gousto Raises $41M for High-Tech Meal Kit Business

London, UK-based Gousto announced today it has raised another £33 million (~$41 million USD) for its meal kit subscription service, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The round was led by Perwyn, with participation from BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures and online fitness guru Joe Wicks. It brings Gousto’s total funding to $179 million.

The new funds will go towards further developing Gousto’s technology, which is a huge component of both its customer interface and back-end logistics. On the consumer-facing side, Gousto uses an AI-powered personalization tool to recommend the most relevant meals to customers, who can select from over 50 recipes each week. Customers can choose a 2-person box or a family-size box, with recipes ranging from around $30 to $60, depending on the size of the box. According to the press release, Gousto currently delivers over 4 million meals to 380,000 U.K. households each month.

Behind the scenes, Gousto uses AI to automate parts of its supply chain and optimize overall logistics. The company also plans to launch a Next Day delivery service and build out its tech team over the coming months. 

If fundraising and headcount growth sounds a little out of place in today’s troubled economic times, remember that Gousto is a meal kit company whose primary goal is to serve people in their homes. The UK, where the service is available, is currently on lockdown in response to coronavirus that’s set to be extended until early May. That makes for a plenty of potential customers where a service like Gousto is concerned. The company told TechCrunch that demand for its business “has spiked upward” in recent weeks. In particular, Gousto has seen a 28 percent increase in family-style boxes. 

All that said, if you’re hoping to become a new Gousto customer, you’ll have to wait. A note on the Gousto website says the company is not accepting orders from new customers at this time, due to “extremely high demand.” There’s no word of how long that will last. Presumably, the new funding round and corresponding plans to increase headcount and tech development will help Gousto better reach the high demand for meal kits that will be around for some time.

Delish to Host Instagram Live Cooking Classes for Parents and Kids

If you’re a parent working from home with kids out of school, chances are you’re on the lookout for creative ways to distract them — hopefully while they learn some things.

Maybe one of those things will be how to cook. Recipe platform Delish is launching an Instagram Live series to teach parents and kids how to cook together.

According to an email from Delish, the series will be hosted by the platform’s editorial director Jo Saltz and her children. Episodes will air each weekday at 1:00pm ET and last 15 to 20 minutes (the first episode aired today). If you can’t tune in at that time, episodes will be saved in a Highlights section of Delish’s Instagram so you can watch when you’re ready.

Each #CookingTogether lesson will feature “kid friendly” recipes like pizza waffles and something called puppy chow (which I just had to Google and must say, I now want very badly).

Healthy? Not exactly. But kids can be picky, and if you’re already fighting a battle trying to keep them educated and entertained it’s not exactly the time to try and sell them on broccoli, too.

I don’t have kids myself, but I think Delish’s #CookingTogether series is a smart way for the recipe brand to make the best of the current situation — and differentiate themselves from other recipe site competitors. While people are quarantined at home they’re looking for both inspiration on what to cook and free ways to entertain themselves (and their children).

I bet before the coronavirus pandemic has died down, we’ll be seeing a lot of recipe services experimenting with new tactics to cater to the new normal.

Guided Cooking Deals to Help You Eat Better While Social Distancing

Being in the business of covering food news, it’s easy to be all doom and gloom right now. While the COVID-19 outbreak is certainly causing huge disruptions in the foodservice industry, there are some silver linings.

The coronavirus — and subsequent social distancing measures — could have a real effect within our own kitchen. Reuters reported last week that quarantined folks in China have been spending time in their kitchens and learning to cook, leading to increased downloads in recipe apps and guided cooking services.

If you’re also cooped up at home and looking to flex your cooking skills, there are plenty of great services out there to help you learn to be a better chef. And good news — some are even offering deals!

We’ve listed some below, and will be updating the list as we learn of more. If you notice any are missing please leave us a comment or email tips@thespoon.tech.

Plant Jammer
If you stocked up on a bunch of vegetables but aren’t sure exactly how to turn them into meals, Plant Jammer could be a useful guide. The service, which is available via a website or an app, uses AI to generate vegetarian recipes based on what you have available at your house (which could be very helpful if you’re trying to make use of what you have without hitting up the grocery store).

As of today Plant Jammer’s paid features will be free to all users. According to an email from the company, they will assess how long to continue the offer based off of the progression of the coronavirus outbreak.

Photo: Hestan Cue

Hestan Cue

If you have a smart cooking system Hestan Cue at home and want to finally learn how to use it to make fancy restaurant meals at home, you’re in luck. The company, which makes a connected cooktop and pan set that connects with your phone to guide your cooking, is now offering a free Hestan Cue Cooking School. The first course is all about Mastering Eggs — other courses have not been announced yet. If you want to follow along, you can sign up here.

Photo: Now Serving

Bookstores

It’s never been a better time to invest in cookbooks: you get new recipes to try, great reading material, and are able to support local bookstores that have had to shutter to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Now Serving, L.A.’s only cookbook bookstore, is trying to beef up sales by offering free online shipping. If you’re in the area you can also get curbside pickup. The Book Larder, Seattle’s only cookbook bookstore, is also offering free shipping on orders over $50.

Photo: ckbk Instagram

ckbk
Looking for cooking inspiration and bored of your usual staples? Online subscription service ckbk lets you browse a bunch of cookbooks virtually — sort of like a Spotify for cookbooks. Interested folks can use the code WECANCOOKTHROUGHTHIS to get a 30 day free trial to ckbk, which allows them to browse 360 cookbooks and 85,000 recipes to find new recipe inspiration.

Photo: Blue Apron

Meal kits
Some of us need a little more hand-holding during our cooking process. In that case, several meal kit services are offering discounts. Blue Apron is offering $60 off through March, and Hello Fresh has a variety of promotions going (including $80 off over four weeks).

Do you have a guided cooking service offering a deal to help folks cook during this trying time? Give us a shout in the comment section or drop us a line.


I Tried Hungryroot, the Healthy, 10-Minute Meal Kit. And it Actually Delivered

Whenever I get a pitch in my inbox asking me to sample a new product, my first reaction is usually skepticism. Could this cricket bar really be that good? Is it actually feasible that this pill will help me avoid a hangover? Will this meal kit really make me eat healthier in less time than other meal kits, or just cooking for myself?

That last pitch came from Hungryroot, the grocery-slash-meal-kit hybrid delivery service aimed at millennials trying to eat better. And the answer, much to my surprise, was yes. Hungryroot actually did make good on its promise: to provide simple, healthy recipes that can be prepared in under ten minutes.

How it works

On its website Hungryroot refers to itself not as a meal kit or a grocery delivery service, but a sort of hybrid of the two. The ingredients included are a mixture of known brands, like Beyond Meat sausages or Banza chickpea pasta, as well as Hungryroot-made offerings, including a range of sauces and pre-cooked grains. To get started you go onto HungryRoot’s site and create an account. Then you input any dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, etc.). You then choose your subscription plan, which is anywhere from 3-6 two-serving meals per week, plus snacks. I selected the smallest option, 3-6 meals, and chose a vegetarian meal plan.

A few days later a box arrived with 11 ingredients meant to create three plant-based meals: a Pasta (Banza chickpea pasta, HungryRoot Cashew Cheddar, baby broccoli), a Market Plate (shaved brussels, pre-cooked grain mix, and Beyond Meat sausage), and a Warm Bowl (HungryRoot lemongrass tofu, snap peas, and Lotus Foods brown rice ramen). There was also a tub each of Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Black Bean Brownie Batter, which were gluten-free, vegan, and surprisingly delicious. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

Test
My HungryRoot recipes [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The Good

One of Hungryroot’s main selling points is the speed and ease with which you can prepare the meals. And, at least from my experience, they really deliver. The recipes I tried consisted of only three ingredients each, all of which were pre-prepped (the brussels sprouts were shredded, tofu nuggets pre-cooked, etc.). All I had to do was some light vegetable chopping, boil some water, sauté, and mix. Even if you have very, very few kitchen skills — and the bare minimum of appliances (read: pressure cookers) — you’d be able to nail these recipes. You don’t even need a microwave.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the meals were meant to be ready in 10 minutes and… they actually were! Some even took less time than that. In the past when I’ve tried meal kits, the dishes often end up taking much more time and effort than their glossy recipe cards promise, so it was nice to be eating something warm and filling and full of vegetables mere minutes after I pulled the ingredients out of the fridge. All of the meals also had enough leftover for me to take them into lunch the next day.

A HungryRoot Pasta meal, with cashew cheddar sauce. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The Bad

There’s always a catch, and for Hungryroot that catch is its cost. Smaller deliveries, which include groceries to make 3-4 two-serving meals plus snacks, cost $69 per week. Medium deliveries (4-5 two-serving meals plus snacks) cost $99 per week, and large deliveries (5-6 two-serving meals plus snacks) are $129 per week. Shipping is free for all orders and you can pause your subscription at any time.

[Update: A representative from Hungryroot emailed me to note that the company has just rolled out a new food profile survey that allows them to design custom pricing plans based on family size, personal health goals, etc. Most plans range from $60 to $100 per week. Orders over $70 will receive free shipping.]

Hungryroot updates its offerings every Thursday, so there are always fresh options to choose from on their site, and deliveries happen weekly.

Cost-wise, Hungryroot’s service shakes out to $8-$12 per meal, depending on which service you choose. The pricing is in line with other meal kits on the market right now, like Blue Apron and Purple Carrot. HungryRoot meals also have the added benefit of taking less time than other meal kit competitors and requiring less elbow grease and fewer dishes. However, $70 will buy me groceries for 2-3 weeks’ worth of meals, so it felt indulgent to spend it on a single week’s worth of ingredients, even if they do save me a few minutes in the kitchen.

Hungryroot’s Market Bowl prepped and ready to eat. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

When talking about food delivery of any kind, it’s required that we wag our fingers at the amount of packaging they use. Hungryroot did indeed come in a large box lined in foil insulation with ice packs, but the box and foil were home recyclable, as were the drained ice packs. At least they claimed. Regardless, I didn’t have to suffer the guilt that comes with shoving a bunch of bulky packaging into my garbage can, knowing it would end up in a landfill somewhere.

Is Hungryroot Worth It?

So do I recommend Hungryroot? Surprising no one more than myself, I actually do. For consumers that want to prioritize healthy eating and don’t mind paying for it, but are tired of prepackaged $15 takeaway salads, Hungryroot makes a lot of sense. In that way it’s similar to Daily Harvest, the frozen, pre-prepped smoothie and microwaveable meal service. Hungryroot requires more work than Daily Harvest, but it also has a bigger and tastier payout.

In the end, I think that Hungryroot is one of the rare direct-to-consumer meal companies to actually deliver on its promise of healthy, easy, plant-based meals. The question is whether there are enough of those consumers out there to save Hungryroot from the struggles that are affecting other meal kit and prepared food delivery companies.

Recipe Database Yummly Will Personalize “The Entire Digital Kitchen” to Help You Cook The Perfect Steak

If you’ve ever searched for a recipe online, odds are you’ve perused at least a few offerings on Yummly. This massive database started out with a focus on personalizing recipe discovery. Then, almost three years ago, appliance giant Whirlpool bought the company and the stakes changed. In the words of Greg Druck, Chief Data Scientist at Yummly, the company has now expanded from “personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen.”

Curious? So were we, which is why we invited Druck to speak at Customize, our food personalization event happening next week in NYC. (Hot tip: There are still a few tickets left, and you can get 15 percent off with code SPOON15.)

To ramp up to the main event we asked Druck a few questions on what exactly a personalized kitchen might look like and what tools it’ll feature (hint: digital assistants and something called a “virtual pantry.”). And yes, the kitchen of the future should be able to perfectly cook a steak to your personal definition of doneness, every single time.

Check out the Q&A below. We’ll see you in New York!

Tell us a little bit about what Yummly does. 
Yummly is the most advanced AI-powered digital kitchen platform with over 25 million users. Yummly started out as a personalized platform for discovering online recipes. We are now expanding our offering to support the future of the kitchen. We want to help our users achieve their cooking-related goals with smart appliance integrations, premium guided recipes, and tools for meal planning and shopping.

Yummly places strong emphasis on personalized recommendations for the consumer. How do you optimize those suggestions? 
The Yummly recipe ingestion pipeline (pun intended) builds comprehensive representations of over 2 million recipes by inferring latent structure. Machine learning models parse the recipe and map it onto our food knowledge graph, inferring nutrition information, cuisine, techniques, difficulty, and more. This provides a foundation for content-based recommendation algorithms. 

Yummly also learns taste profiles for 25 million users by combining explicit and implicit feedback based on behavior and usage. Machine learning systems synthesize this data along with other contextual and ambient signals including day of the week, season, and location to create dynamic personalized feeds for each of our users. 

Has Yummly’s acquisition by Whirlpool changed its approach to personalization (by gathering data from home appliance usage, etc)?
Whirlpool’s acquisition of Yummly has allowed us to expand from personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen. We believe personalization is the key to helping people achieve their goals, such as eating healthy, saving money, and reducing stress. Combining Whirlpool appliances as the hardware with Yummly software and machine learning systems allows us to personalize the experience to each home cook.

For example, Yummly will recommend personalized meal plans and shopping lists — in addition to individual recipes — based on a user’s tastes, goals, and appliances. We’ll keep track of the ingredients they have on hand and incorporate information from their “virtual pantry” into recommendations that will help them save money by reducing food waste.

Integrations with the Yummly Smart Thermometer and Whirlpool ovens will allow Yummly to adapt cooking algorithms to each user’s needs: for example, cooking a steak to a user’s personal definition of doneness. Combining these ideas into one seamless experience will substantially reduce friction in the kitchen. 

How do you envision recipes (and the recipe recommendation process) getting even more personalized over the next 5 years?
Conversational digital kitchen assistant AIs will help people create plans and recommend custom recipes that are much more personalized to specific needs and more useful for achieving goals in the kitchen. AI will guide you through the week, providing ongoing personalized advice, as well as gamifying and tracking progress against goals over time.

Your AI services will personalize a weekly meal plan and schedule for your household and then have the ingredients delivered to your home. Your plan may include a custom stir-fry recipe that uses up the carrots and chicken that were going bad (recognized using in-kitchen cameras) to save money and reduce food waste. It may avoid pasta or adjust ingredients according to your personalized nutrition plan to help you maintain a low-carb diet (because your assistant knows you’re not tracking well against your weight-loss goal). It might include a cheesy broccoli recipe to help you achieve your goal of getting the kids to eat more vegetables. It may even suggest cooking the chicken dish on Sunday to have an easy meal ready for Monday, reducing the stress of meal planning. Lastly AI may automatically adjust the bake time and temperature to make the dish extra crispy for you, and monitor cooking using a smart thermometer, notifying you when it is done.

This is just the tip of the iceberg — get your tickets to Customize to hear Druck’s fireside chat, where we’ll discuss how personalization will reshape the consumer kitchen. Get 15 percent off tickets with code SPOON15.

Why a Blue Apron Sale is a Good Idea, and Who Might Buy It

Meal kit company Blue Apron said on its Q4 earnings call today that it was “evaluating a broad range of strategic options” to revive its struggling business — including a sale of the company or its assets.

To say the least, the company’s Q4 earnings were not good: sales have dropped more than 30 percent over the last quarter and the company posted a loss of $1.66 per share, both of which were bigger dips than expected.

Sales aren’t the only way forward for Blue Apron. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is also considering raising more money, as well as a merger with other meal kit companies.

But for my money, Blue Apron’s best option would be to sell, sell, sell. Blue Apron has been hustling hard to claw itself out of its downward spiral with little to no success. The company halted its partnership with Walmart-owned Jet.com in August. Deals with Beyond Meat and Weight Watchers to make specialized kits haven’t pulled up dragging sales, either. And just last week the company rolled out its new Meal Prep Kits aimed at aspirational, Instagram-savvy millennials.

However, none of those initiatives could solve the two of the big reasons that consumers didn’t stick with Blue Apron meal kits: time and convenience. Even with the simple recipes and pre-prepped ingredients, meal kits still take time to make — and they’re not always markedly cheaper than just ordering food delivery, which is more convenient than having to cook at all (plus no dishes). Some customers also chafe at being locked into subscription models.

These challenges aren’t unique to Blue Apron. Competitors like Hello Fresh, Purple Carrot and Marley Spoon are also trying to figure out how to attract customers and, most importantly, keep them loyal to their brands. But that’s just it — there are so, so many players in the meal kit game, likely due to its relatively low barrier to entry — and they’re all competing for the 93 million Americans who, according to NPD, have stated that they would like to try meal kits. Other players include deep-pocketed retailers like Kroger (which sells Home Chef meal kits) and Albertsons, which are rolling out their own in-store meal kits, and even CPG companies like Tyson.

In short, the competition is just too fierce, the margins are too thin, and the market’s not getting any bigger. Blue Apron has been struggling ever since its dismal IPO in 2017, and at this point it seems like no amount of corporate brainstorming or brand partnerships will save it.

In this author’s opinion, it’s time to sell.

So who would step up and buy Blue Apron? My colleague Chris laid out a comprehensive list of potential buyers in December of 2018, and I think it still holds true. The biggest contenders? Retailers who don’t already have their own meal kit service (hi, Walmart!), CPG companies, other meal kit companies, and even dark horses like Uber. Or maybe private equity groups would just acquire Blue Apron and sell it for parts.

Despite its troubles, Blue Apron has significant assets to offer. According to its latest quarterly report, the meal kit company reported $454.9 million in net revenue in 2019 with thousands of orders per month. It also has a nationwide logistics network and supply chain, which is one of the trickiest parts of meal kits. Not to mention years of customer data related to what food people are buying, and where they’re buying it.

All of that could make Blue Apron an attractive purchase, especially at a low price point. Maybe by the next earning call we’ll have a better idea on whether Blue Apron will continue to try and turn the tides, or if it’s going to cut and run.

I Used GenoPalate to Create a Custom Nutrition Plan based on My DNA

A few weeks ago I rubbed my cheek with a swab, slipped it a vial of liquid, and sent my DNA off to be tested. This was part of a service from GenoPalate, a startup that uses information gleaned from DNA to create personalized nutrition plans for users. Having never done any sort of DNA test before, I was surprised at how simple it was: the entire process took maybe three minutes, including creating an online account.

Cut to 10 days later and I got an alert that my GenoPalate report was ready. I downloaded the GenoPalate app, logged in with my email and password, and prepared to get new insights into my ideal diet.

What I found was surprisingly . . . unsurprising. I was told I should eat a diet that’s moderately high in carbohydrates, high in fiber, and has low levels of sugar and saturated fat (but is high in “healthy” fats). I’m likely lactose intolerant (can confirm: yep) and likely not sensitive to gluten. I’m a fast caffeine metabolizer and a normal alcohol metabolizer. I have gene variants that indicate I might need to consume higher levels of Vitamin A, E, and D, among others.

I also got a list of my recommended fruits, vegetables, starches, proteins, and cheeses. These included raspberries, squash, and lettuce, as well as bagels, spaghetti, gruyere cheese, eel, and chicken liver.

Is it fun to discover that my “best” fruits include kiwis? Sure. But after reading through my GenoPalate results, I realized that I didn’t really discover anything I didn’t already know. Basically, the test told me I should be eating a pretty basic healthy diet.

That said, I’m not necessarily GenoPalate’s target audience. I’m already quite conscientious about what I eat and have done a good bit of trial and error to determine what foods make me feel healthy and energized. For someone with a chronic illness, or who suffers from low energy or persistent digestion issues with an unknown cause, GenoPalate’s reports could be more revelatory.

I also didn’t get to try GenoPalate’s recommended recipe service, which, for an additional $30 ($199 as opposed to $169), will give you five recipes based off of your genetic profile. In retrospect, that would have been helpful insight to have. Five recipes aren’t a lot, but they could provide some building blocks for future meal plans and guidance on how to turn the barrage of information in the nutrition analysis (e.g., eat raspberries, not blueberries) into something actionable.

In fact, that’s really the problem with GenoPalate. You can see its potential — discovering which foods to eat to make you feel your best — but right now the technology is too early-stage to be all that helpful for the average person (i.e. me). I haven’t tried them yet, but I imagine services like Viome (which does include recipe recommendations) and Sun Genomics, which also give personalized nutrition reports, are at a similar place. One of the more useful services is DNANudge, which also uses your DNA to guide your grocery shopping outings and push you towards brands that are a better fit for your biology.

Overall these services can give you some high-level information, but they’re not quite ready to be a granular guide. That said, I still think there’s huge potential in the space. As the technology evolves I imagine these services will be able to become more helpful, possibly even linking up with recipe recommendation services as well as health trackers to create a super-curated, all-in-one dietary guide. With these added capabilities, services like GenoPalate could create personalized, shoppable meal plans, and even tweak recipes to meet your health goals (losing weight, training for a marathon, etc.)

If you’re curious about the potential for personalized food and nutrition, then you’ve got to join us at our Customize event on February 27th (next week!) in NYC. GenoPalate’s CEO Dr. Sherry Zhang will be there speaking about biology-driven dining. If you want to come, you can use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tickets.

Will Blue Apron’s New Meal Prep Kits Help The Company Get Out of Its Rut?

Beleaguered meal kit company Blue Apron is making yet another attempt to boost declining sales with a new service: meal prep kits.

The new kits come with everything you need to prepare four meals for two people (so eight meals in total). It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to make the components of all the meals, which are meant to be packed away into containers to be reheated or eaten chilled throughout the week.

Blue Apron has four prep kit options: Signature, Carb Conscious, Pescetarian and Multi-Cooker. They shake out to around $72 per box, or $8.99 per serving. The kits don’t come with containers, and the website notes that you’ll need 16 storage vessels to hold your food and sauces (eight large, eight small).

The prep kits are already available to people in select states on the East Coast with a planned delivery date for February 24. Blue Apron will expand their availability nationwide later this year.

Blue Apron’s meal prep kits

You have to give Blue Apron kudos — it’s experimented tirelessly to come up with ways to revitalize its struggling business. So far the company has teamed up with Beyond Meat and Weight Watchers, and last year it even started offering same-day delivery. So far, none of these have done too much to jump start sales for Blue Apron, which reported a 35 percent slump in Q3 of 2019.

So could these meal prep kits finally be a win for the company? I actually think it has a better chance than, say, incorporating Beyond Meat into their menus. Meal prepping is a growing trend and it’s definitely more convenient to get all the ingredients to make four different meals send right to your door.

But even with the prep kits, Blue Apron will still face two big issues: inconvenience and price. Setting aside two full hours to prep four days’ worth of meals may be a smart time investment, but it’s still kind of a long time — especially for those who aren’t very cooking-savvy. And what if you end up going out for lunch or don’t want to reheat that salmon you cooked four days ago? The prepped meals will also cost around $8 per serving, which is not markedly less than grabbing a sandwich or deli salad.

Long story short, while the meal prep kits are an interesting bid, I don’t think they’re enough to entice new consumers to try Blue Apron — or keep them coming back. Then again, 93 million Americans are meal kit curious, so there’s definitely a market out there. If they want to tap into those potential customers, I think Blue Apron would be better off following in the footsteps of other meal kit companies and selling its kits (meal prep or otherwise) in retail, instead.

Not Sure What to Eat? Just Breathe (Literally)

When deciding which diet to follow, most of us rely on friends’ recommendations, online questionnaires, or internet wisdom. Then again, why not shape your food choices off of your actual breath.

Israel-based startup Lumen gives dining recommendations based off of the amount of CO2 which you exhale into their proprietary device (which reveals whether you’re burning carbs or body fat).

We think that breath-based dietary guidance is pretty cool, so we invited Dana Varrone, Lumen’s VP of Strategic Partnerships, to speak at Customize, our food personalization summit, in NYC later this month. Join us there to hear her talk about how personalization can unlock the power of food as medicine (use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off those tickets).

But first — if you want to learn more about how your breath can indicate what you should be eating, check out our Q&A with Varrone below.

Tell us a little bit about what Lumen does.
Lumen is a device and app that helps you take control of your metabolism. Through your breath, the Lumen technology measures your fuel source in real time, telling you if you’re using fats or carbs for energy, and provides you with a personalized nutrition plan to help you reach your health and fitness goals.

A metabolic measurement (RQ) that was once costly and time-consuming in a clinical setting is now available through a single breath with Lumen.

Why do you think that there has been a rise in interest around personalized nutrition over the past few years?
I think there are three main reasons for the rise. Firstly, people are fed up with going on diets and not getting the results they want, and are starting to recognize that what may work for one person may not work for them. “Go Keto as carbs are the devil” is on the one extreme and “follow the myplate and eat a balanced plate of grains, protein, fruit, veggie and dairy” is on the other extreme of the advice spectrum. Couple this with advanced research being published on how various foods may impact your gut and the increase in allergies nationwide, and question marks start going off in people’s minds of perhaps one size does not fit all.

Secondly, with the rise in technologies such as the AppleWatch, fitbit and the like, consumers are seeing the value in getting personalized feedback. Consumers can now see how many steps they’ve walked, calories they’ve burned and can even get feedback on their heart rate. This immediate feedback empowers consumers to feel like they can now be in control of their own lives, whereas before it was left to your doctor and your yearly physical visits.

Lastly, with the rise in social media and newsfeeds being curated for you, people are demanding speed and instant gratification. This is specifically the case with the millennial generation that have grown up with this being their norm. This results in people wanting answers fast, based on them and their needs, now.

What are the biggest hurdles towards creating personalized dietary guidance towards consumers?
I think the biggest hurdles are in asking the right questions to the consumer at the onset and being able to adjust the personalization over time based on both qualitative and quantitative data that takes into account lifestyle changes, life events, food tolerances, goals, and physiology.

What do you think personalized food or drink will look like 5 years down the road?
I think data from a variety of touch points will be the primary driver in personalizing a consumer’s nutrition and will be housed with an engagement app that makes sense of all the data, with Lumen being at the helm of this.

If you want to see Dana speak about how personalization can unlock the power of food as medicine, join us at Customize this month in NYC! Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tix.

In 5 Years We’ll Each Have a GPS to Guide All Our Food Choices, says Suggestic CEO

Ten years ago if you were driving somewhere you’d have to either memorize directions or print out a paper map. Cut to now, and it’s almost unheard of to drive anywhere new without a GPS guiding you, turn by turn.

That’s exactly what Victor Chapela, CEO of personalized nutrition company Suggestic, thinks will happen to our diets. He believes that in five years, AI-driven technology will “drive” our food decisions just like a GPS drives our directions now. The result? Very high personalization, and comprehensive food discoverability.

If you want to know more about how we actually get to this future, you’ll want to come see Chapela speak at Customize, our food personalization event, on February 27th in NYC. (Use code SPOON15 to snag 15% off your tickets!)

But first, check out this Q&A below to learn a bit more about Suggestic and why Chapela envisions a future where you can get personalized recommendations in your kitchen, grocery stores, and even on restaurants menus.

Tell us a little bit about Suggestic and how it capitalizes on personalization.
Suggestic is a personalized nutrition platform, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that uses advanced technology to create and deliver customized eating plans that are individually tailored to each person. Suggestic helps users plus healthcare professionals and businesses to not only select a dietary plan that is right for their health goals but it then proactively suggests what to eat, even at restaurants, through Suggestic’s patented Augmented Reality (AR) technology.

Suggestic’s programs make it easy for its users, clients, and members to stick to their tailored dietary program and see results. Suggestic’s science-based approach to nutrition is designed to help all users find success in their programs. 

What are some of the biggest challenges in bringing personalized diets and nutrition to consumers?
The biggest challenge is that people have diverse body chemistries that react differently to foods so something that would usually be deemed as “healthy” may not always be from one person to the next. Also, people have trouble staying with an eating plan so we need to accurately determine how best to customize plans that consumers will follow. With AI, we can create personalized nutrition plans that best fit a person so that they can stick with their plan and ultimately be successful in their quest for a healthier and happier life. We have so much knowledge of food and we can take it to another level with the use of AI — it takes something very complex and makes it very simple and actionable.

We can work with each individual person to filter out foods specific to their diet, whether because of allergies, health concerns or personal preferences, so that people can easily see the options right for them. This type of tailored plan not only makes it easier for people to follow, but it also allows people to actually eat the foods they like as AI learns with a person, leading to greater success in sticking with a plan.

Why do you think that there has been a rise in interest around personalized nutrition over the past few years?
There is no one-size-fits-all diet that works equally well for everyone. Even though browsing social media you would think otherwise, based on all the “magic bullet” dieting programs now promoted. People are frustrated. They are only now discovering that they need to find out the nutrition needs of their unique biologies.

What do you think personalized food or drink will look like 5 years down the road?
Today we are seeing signs of several huge industries colliding. Technology is connecting the healthcare and wellness industries to food and nutrition options. 

In the next five years, we will see an ecosystem emerge that will allow for two different things to happen simultaneously: very high personalization and comprehensive food discoverability. 

First, we will be able to seamlessly stack all types of personalization, goals, preferences, and requirements. This will allow my food options to consider everything I care about and everything my body needs. It will connect all the information about myself, from my blood chemistry, genes and microbiome to my activity, sleep and food intake.

Second, we will be able to filter and sort out all the food options around us with this personalized profile. We will have all the restaurants, grocery products, recipes, and food delivery automatically being selected to match what we like best out of what is best for us.

In five years we will use technology to find food in the same way we use our GPS today to drive back home. It is not that we do not know the way home. It is that we will outsource the decision making process to an AI we trust and get step by step suggestions of which foods we can select. We will be living in a “one-click” send food world.