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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Industry Perspectives

Michele Fite Wants to Defy Your Idea of What Animal-Free Alternatives Can Be

Burbling bread starters and pots of kimchi or kraut are common in today’s fermentation-forward, health-conscious kitchens. But what happens when you merge the ancient craft that brought us fine wine, soy sauce, and chocolate with cutting-edge science and technology ? You get protein, which is exactly what new(ish) spinoff company Motif Foodworks is all about: making animal-free protein solutions to help feed the alt-meat revolution.

We talked to Michele Fite, Chief Commercial Officer of Motif FoodWorks, to find out more. She will be at the Smart Food Summit (SKS) on October 7th speaking about Next-Gen Food Building Blocks next month. Tickets are almost gone, so register now!

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

Tell us more about how Motif FoodWorks works.
We are an ingredient innovation company dedicated to reshaping the landscape of food through science and technology. We will do that by partnering with food innovators, from chefs to startups to major enterprise brands, and creating animal-free ingredients that will enable new and better food experiences. Ultimately, our goal is to defy expectations of what animal-free alternatives can be.

To achieve breakthroughs in ingredient innovation, we employ an exhaustive process to understand and unlock new food properties. We start with a thorough analysis of the sensory experience that allows us to identify the underlying components. We then decode the genetic makeup of those ingredients, translating them into animal-free counterparts. Powered by fermentation, we harness biology and select microbes designed to produce our target ingredients — ones we have traditionally gotten from animals — through a process that is akin to brewing beer.

Motif FoodWorks just raised $27.5 million dollars. What do you plan to use your new capital to achieve?
With the new funding, we plan to add to and accelerate our product pipeline; expand academic collaborations across a broad set of molecular food science disciplines; scale our science and regulatory staff; and deepen our research and development efforts.

This year alone we have been able to expand our leadership team with the additions of Janet Collins, Head of Regulatory, Government and Industry Affairs, Julie Post-Smith, Director of Business Development, and Morgan Keim, Business Development Manager, who will help Motif unlock the secrets of food and meet consumer demand for delicious, responsibly produced foods.

Why do you think the alternative protein space is so white-hot right now? What is motivating its rise in popularity?
The alternative protein space is rising in popularity because of shifting consumer attitudes, emerging technologies, and the “cool factor” of brands like Beyond and Impossible drawing more attention to the industry as a whole.

People want to eat a little better, both for their own health and the health of the environment, and Motif sees a unique opportunity to move plant-based and animal-free foods beyond a fad and solidify them into a movement by making sure consumers don’t have to compromise between taste, nutrition and values.

You previously worked in big CPG companies such as Nestlé, Dupont and Kerry. How has your experience informed your role at Motif Bioworks?
I am fortunate to bring a depth of experience in the food industry to my work at Motif – from working in consumer packaged goods experience as a marketer and brand manager to serving as a B2B executive in highly technical and specialized businesses such as infant formula, weight management, sports nutrition, medical foods, and dietary supplements. I will apply my abilities to understand consumer insights and trends in the food space and connect them back to technology to my role at Motif, as we work to reshape the food landscape and bring more nutritious, accessible and sustainable food experiences to consumers.

Come hear Michele, Perumal Gandhi of Perfect Day and Lisa Dyson of Air Protein speak at SKS next month! Tickets are going fast.

Eat Safe Verified Wants to Fight Food Recalls and Waste with Radical Transparency

Remember last year’s notorious romaine lettuce recall? That was only one of hundreds of food recalls in 2018 alone. These outbreaks are the sort of food safety issues that a new startup called Eat Safe Verified (ESV) is trying to mitigate. Their solution? Putting more information into the hands of consumers in the form of an app that lists details about the contaminant testing, ingredient sourcing, manufacturing and more behind each product.

We were pretty intrigued by this concept, so we chose ESV as one of the 12 finalists for the SKS 2019 Startup Showcase. To give you a little taste of the action, we spoke with founder and CEO Kiran Kastury about how radical transparency can help solve widespread issues like food waste, allergic reactions and contamination.

Check out the Q&A then get your tickets to SKS to see Kastury pitch live in Seattle this October!

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Eat Safe Verified makes software that brings people and food closer together. Consumers can gain valuable insights into their food, while food businesses are able to easily share information across their supply chain to expedite their business processes, thereby ensuring effective transparency, communication, and collaboration.

What inspired you to start your company?
My co-founder and I collectively have spent years working in bio-tech, specifically in the food testing and analytical services sector, where we saw a huge number of food companies unable to effectively show their customers how they strove to make the best product possible. Furthermore, we were tired of hearing about situations like food recalls, consumers getting sick because of allergens or food contaminations, and food getting lost and wasted by the ton. We believed that in today’s tech-driven world, there had to be a better way for people to learn more about their food, and a better way for companies to easily share information throughout their network.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
I think that education and awareness are probably the biggest hurdles for food tech startups right now. In the case of ESV, we are embarking on a mission of introducing the concepts of information sharing and transparency to an industry that hasn’t been faced with this sort of disruption just yet. We’re confident that with the right product however, we can transform how food is perceived by people on a daily basis.

How will your company change the day-to-day life of consumers and the food space as a whole?
With launching ESV, we are well on track for achieving the free flow of information all the way from the farm to the consumers’ fingertips. Consumers wouldn’t have to spend the significant amount of time they do now worrying about whether or not they are eating a potentially harmful allergen, putting irresponsibly created food in their bodies, adhering to dietary restrictions for heath or personal reasons. I think that ESV is the answer to ensuring that things like consumer miseducation, consumer harm, or food loss cease to happen as regularly.

Come watch Kastury pitch live onstage at the SKS Startup Showcase next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

Anrich3D Wants to 3D Print Food Personalized Just For You

The concept of 3D printing food is already pretty futuristic. Add in nutrition personalization, and you get something that sounds even more like it’s straight out of Star Trek.

That’s exactly the device that Anrich3D, one of the finalists in our SKS 2019 Startup Showcase, is trying to make. The soon-to-be-incorporated company is developing a system of 3D printers which can precisely dispense food based off of an individual’s particular nutritional and aesthetic preferences. Pretty radical, huh?

We spoke with Anrich3D founder and CEO Anirudh Agarwal about why he thinks 3D printing could make food more nutritious, affordable, and accessible. Check out the Q&A then get your tickets to SKS to see Anirudh pitch live in Seattle this October!

Give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
We produce personalized meal plans for health enthusiasts based on information from health trackers, apps, wearables and medical check-ups. Each meal is personalized to the individual using multi-material food 3D printing at scale.

What inspired you to start your company?
Most people don’t know what to eat. There are many apps and services out there to give you very personalized advice. But there are no services to convert those apps into meals. Moreover, humans are good at and enjoy creativity, while number crunching is a machine’s forte. I may want to decide what physical form of food I am in the mood for or even what cuisine, but I don’t want to measure every ingredient according to my nutritional requirements.

A food 3D printer can provide personalized nutrition integrating data from all the apps, wearables and even medical records that exist to create the mathematically optimized meal for me — inarguably, the best possible thing I could be eating. It is said, “It’s 80% nutrition and 20% exercise.” With this, I never have to worry about my 80%!

What’s more, it can produce little bite-sized pieces I call “foodlets” so as to make every bite perfect and an absolutely effortless experience. The peak of convenience beyond what any fast food restaurant can provide. And when machines make it, with scale, it can be available and affordable for all.

With “fast-food” made healthy, we can liberate people to always have a healthy option no matter how busy or broke. There is a saying in Hindi, “Jaan hai to Jahan hai”: if you have your health, you have the world! Health is the foundation of our productivity. With optimal nutrition and therefore good health within grasp, people can reach their full potential and propel humanity forward. And of course lower instances of diabetes, obesity and other lifestyle diseases. A lower strain on the healthcare system. Preventive healthcare!

It doesn’t end there. With enough scale, we can transform the supply chain for food by applying manufacturing inventory management techniques. We can work with grocery stores to minimize inventory and even utilize the fresh produce left at the end of each day to minimize food waste. With more efficient distribution, we may be able to reduce world hunger if not eliminate it completely!

I could go on about specific ground-level applications, but this is the overarching vision. This drives me and gives me a reason to wake up in the morning!

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Where do I begin! Food is a touchy subject. Literally — we need to be careful about what is literally touching the food! We need regulatory approval (FDA for the U.S.) for the parts, the machine and the process of preparing the food. We also need food handling certification for all personnel that handle the food.

Food is also “touchy” figuratively. People have deep emotional connections to their food. A new form of food may have a psychological barrier to cross for acceptance. We need to focus on demonstrations and education and make this “new” thing mundane and “normal” with exposure for the majority to adopt it. The good thing is, instead of giving supplements powders, we want to focus on real food ingredients and just give the precise proportions of those!

How will your company change the day-to-day life of consumers and the food space as a whole?
Food 3D printing at scale has the potential to make “fast” food healthy. In other words, make healthy food convenient and affordable!

No two people are the same. Everyone has different needs and goals. Food 3D printing at scale has the potential to make individual-level personalization available and affordable for all. Beyond personalized nutrition, people crave a personal touch. For some people, a sandwich is most convenient, while it may be a wrap or hot pocket for others. Some want a dish displayed traditionally, while others may like their toast carved as a dinosaur. With 3D printing, this personal touch can also be added.

Armed with personalized nutrition and this personal touch, Anrich3D can change the perception of food and what form it can take! Star Trek anyone?

For kids, healthier food can be delivered in the shapes of their favorite characters to improve their motivation to finish the meal. This can be made into a gamified nutritional educational program for kids where they unlock more characters by finishing each meal. As the levels progress, they need to identify ingredients and make estimates for the amounts of each ingredient in a balanced meal. The program gradually helps them acquire the taste for healthier foods and teaches them about healthy ingredients and nutrition along the way!

This can be a government-mandated nutrition course in every school all over the world to raise a generation of healthier kids with an acquired taste for healthier food and a deep understanding of nutrition to create a healthier and more productive tomorrow!

Even beyond all that, Anrich3D can streamline the food supply chain from farm to grocery store to your plate so as to minimize waste and redistribute existing produce to minimize hunger. Mobilizing forces across countries, we can end world hunger!

Come watch Anirudh pitch live and at the SKS Startup Showcase next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

Steve Nackers on The Evolving Role of Cyber-Security in the Connected Kitchen

Does your blender prefer a specific brand of low-fat yogurt? Is your stovetop eager to share snapshots of last weekend’s epic dinner party? Just how connected are smart kitchens, and more importantly, which appliance knows what (and who are they sharing it with)?

Steve Nackers, corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero, will be at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit discussing cybersecurity, the connected kitchen, and the chances of your slow-cooker chili setting off five alarms in all the wrong places.

We sent him a few questions before the October event about how the Sub-Zero team are tackling innovation, performance, and adaptive privacy settings.

This interview has been lighted edited for clarity. 

Tell us more about what you do for Sub-Zero Group, Inc.
I’ve been with Sub-Zero Group, Inc. for over 18 years. During that time, my career has spanned from field support to product launches to innovative research initiatives. I have enjoyed experiencing a wide part of the DNA of this family-owned company and its commitment to its customers — something I’m excited to see even more growth around with the recent breaking ground on our new innovation center that will serve as a hub for research and development.

As the Corporate Manager of Electronic Controls for Sub-Zero Group, Inc., my team will be one of the first to move to the new innovation center where we will work alongside teams from across our three great brands on developing and integrating the controls, software, and innovations that deliver on that promise of quality and value that Sub-Zero Group, Inc. is known for.

How have you seen technology transform the way we cook in the kitchen?
Yes — technology is reshaping the kitchen and the home space around us in ways we see, and in ways we don’t. However, it is important to make sure that those technologies are applied in meaningful ways that enable and enhance the consumer experience. From the NASA-inspired air filter technologies that enhance food preservation to precision software and instrumentation that has evolved greatly in the last decade to provide the consumer greater control and more predictable cooking results, these technologies are reshaping the cooking experience. We continue to take really innovative and new technologies and shape them in ways that help our consumers to have an experience in the kitchen that gives them confidence.

Do you envision a future in which all kitchen appliances are connected and controllable via your phone/voice?
The key thing is providing the consumer with choice. Homeowners still really value the ability to interact with their appliances, but are also looking for ways to improve their efficiency in the kitchen. Their data, privacy, and security should be what they have control over, and we need to enable them to interact with their appliances in the ways that are most seamless and comfortable for them. For some people, that will be voice, for others it is mobile, and still others it is a physical knob. Thoughtfully designing the appliances from day one throughout our engineering process to accommodate that choice and respecting the values of our consumers is what drives our vision of the future.

How do you address consumer concerns about privacy with IoT-enabled devices?
We take security very seriously and have worked closely with organizations like UL and Microsoft from the start to ensure proper measures are in place to be proactive about vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity is an ever-changing landscape, and is something we must continuously evolve and update our security measures to stay on top of. The most important thing is to have a mindset and commitment to security as a priority in every step of your design process and throughout the various levels of your organization. That is something we take seriously and continue to cultivate.

We also understand that consumers have concerns about IoT enabled devices. Our customer service teams are dedicated to working with consumers on their questions. Our hope is always that any concerns they might have we address so effectively that they come away with confidence and a greater sense of trust. To that end, we work to be clear, transparent, and effective in communicating what and how data is handled.

What’s the one kitchen appliance you could never live without?
My Wolf induction cooktop, hands down. Induction is finally making inroads in the U.S., and I’ve converted a few family and friends as well. I had used gas and standard electric methods for years previously, but getting my first Wolf induction cooktop was eye-opening. The power, efficiency, and absolute precision was amazing. To be able to drive a pot of water to rolling boil in under a minute, and yet leave chocolate at a soft melt for as long as needed with such precision on the same devices is incredible. There is a lot of exciting innovation to come in this space too which makes me even more eager for future generations of the product!

Come watch Steve speak on Hacking The Oven: Cybersecurity & The Connected Kitchen at SKS next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

Suleiman Alhadidi on How to Maximize the Future Kitchen, Even in Small Spaces

We talk a lot about the appliances that go into the future kitchen — but what about the design of the space itself? As populations urbanize, millennials take over, and automation and delivery become more and more omnipresent, the actual space of the kitchen must also evolve to accommodate these new technologies.

Suleiman Alhadidi works on reimagining living spaces in the MIT Media Lab’s City Science Group project. Alhadidi will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} next month speaking about how new housing types, automation, and generational shifts will affect the design of future kitchens. But we got curious about how our kitchens are going to look down the road (robots? foldable ovens?), so we went ahead and asked Alhadidi a few questions over email. Check out the Q&A below then grab your tickets to SKS now!

This interview has been very lightly edited for clarity. 

I’ve heard rumors you’re working on some sort of robotic kitchen concept. Tell us more about that.
In the City Science group, we strive to design the future of cities, buildings, and homes to provide more livable communities and to make life more enjoyable. As populations swell and space is at a premium, we need to make better use of space in all facets of our lives. The Piccolo Kitchen Project explores new modes of cooking using robotically enabled cabinets and appliances to minimize the footprint of the kitchen while maximizing the ability for users to cook large meals, socialize, and utilize the same space for work during non-meal times. Our team has reimagined the kitchen as a multipurpose-system that adapts to the user needs.

The kitchen project is part of the robotic-micro-unit project which aims to provide affordable urban spaces in tier-one cities such as New York and San Francisco. As living space becomes scarce, its cost is rising and unaffordable. Unaffordability is a major cause for the displacement of people and with them, their culture.

Recently, some cities have increased affordable housing units; however, there is a strong need for innovations in space management in the home that allow for smaller groups to accommodate residents’ needs. We are hoping that the application of the micro-unit robotic systems will have a positive impact in densely populated cities by reducing unit cost and allowing people to live where they work and enjoy their life.

Piccolo Kitchen aims to accommodate all the needs of an apartment resident while occupying as little space as possible. It is a modular unit that includes appliances, storage, counter space, and a sink in a compact area that can be optimized for different needs using its various robotic components. The unit needs to be portable, modular, and compatible with consumer kitchen appliances. Through a series of robotic arms, pulleys, and actuators, the kitchen will provide users with the ability to access the cabinets and appliances they need at that time while moving the ones they don’t need out of the way. The proposed kitchen design aims to go beyond being solely a cooking space and serve as a workstation as well.

How do you think the move towards automation will affect the way we interact with food?
Robotics and automation will be an increasingly important part of our lives. We hope that Piccolo Kitchen can prioritize the culture of the kitchen with a user-focused design. It is modular in nature, giving the users choices on their space, knowing that cooking is a personal experience with many cultural attributes. It aims to optimize the kitchen space and volume without compromising its functionality, especially in micro-units.

We are hoping that automation will make cooking more enjoyable and enrich the social experience in our homes; allowing the transfer of knowledge with their loved ones, allowing the development of personal expertise on how to cook healthier, and enabling everyone to prepare and interact with food no matter how limited their space might be.

I think that cooking and food preparation should be multigenerational; accessible by the young and old and also possible for people of all abilities. We are focused on small spaces with an aim not to compromise but maximize the cooking experience.

Are there any trends you see emerging in the food space which you think are particularly interesting?
New modes of technology are emerging in the way we produce and consume food; blockchain technology is allowing new modes of decentralized exchange of food and goods. This technology is changing the food production ecosystem. Food production is becoming closer to its demand in the same city; urban farms allow for district-level food production. This new ecosystem promotes different sustainable ways of sharing food while avoiding waste, as shown in several apps like iRecycle, My Waste, and OLIO. This makes food sharing easier in certain communities, copying what old cultures were used to do to share both cooked and uncooked food.

Millennials are attracted to healthier food. We see a surge in special-diet online stores that aim to have better food choices. These platforms provide more convenient ways to shop.

Kitchen appliances are now enabled by Internet of Things; allowing a better user-driven cooking experience that is customized for different cultures and cuisines. Wireless-charging and autonomous appliances will allow more flexibility in making both home and commercial kitchens and will change the way we order, store, cook, and consume food in our homes.

In the future, do you foresee communities growing and cooking food more locally or outsourcing it from further away? In short: How will our future living situations impact our relationship with food?
I am a believer in community-driven economies. I expect that communities and neighborhoods will be able to grow and consume their food with the advent of advanced technologies. In the City Science group, we work to enable communities and neighborhoods to be equitable and autonomous; you can grow your plants without soil using hydroponics, for example, and technologies like this will enable decentralized methods of growing your food locally. This will promote sustainable approaches and empower communities by enriching culture and local values.

We see urban dwellers in the future living in dense compact neighborhoods where places for work, live, and play are all located in close proximity. Such neighborhoods will be responsive to the unique needs and values to individuals through the application of disentangled systems and smart customization. Such a system (if developed properly) will allow for more productive, enjoyable, and sustainable lives.

Come watch Suleiman speak about new, innovative and efficient kitchen design at SKS next month! Get 25% off your tickets here.

David Kay on Why Consumers Will Love Cultured Meat (Just as Soon as It Gets to Market)

When talking about cultured meat (that is, meat made without animal slaughter), one of the first names that comes up in conversation is Memphis Meats. This Silicon Valley startup was the first company to start serious development in the cell-based meat space four years ago, and they are still on the cutting edge today.

We invited Memphis Meats’ Senior Manager of Communications and Operations (also its first employee), David Kay, to speak about the potential of cell-based meat at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) next month alongside Lou Cooperhouse of BlueNalu. But we got a little eager, so we went ahead and asked Kay a few questions about the meat alternative revolution and how he thinks consumers will react to eating meat grown in a bioreactor.

Check out the interview below then grab your tickets to SKS. They’re going fast!

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Memphis Meats is growing animal meat without the animal. Give us a high-level explanation of how you do that.
We start by obtaining animal cells from high-quality livestock animals. We figure out which of these cells are most capable of self-renewal and which ones give us the potential to express the characteristics we desire with respect to taste, texture and aroma. Once we select these cells we feed them nutrients. The nutrients are, at a high level, the same nutrients that the cells would get in nature — amino acids, water, oxygen, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. The cells grow, multiply, and create muscle tissue (aka meat). At scale, this will take place in a facility that is similar to a beer brewery. We call this process “essential nutrition” because we can produce just the meat consumers desire and nothing more.

What’s the reasoning behind developing cultured meat?
With the global population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, demand for meat is expected to double. But given the amount of resources modern livestock production requires today — a third of the world’s arable land and fresh water — we simply won’t be able to meet that demand. At Memphis Meats, we want to enable our food system to feed an increasingly hungry planet while preserving both the planet and cherished culinary traditions. We expect cell-based meat production will coexist with conventional meat production, and that together these methods will meet demand.

When will we actually be able to eat cell-based meat? When do you guess it will first enter the market and how long will it take before it’s available in your average supermarket?
While we are working as fast as we can to bring a product to market, we are also cognizant that our number one priority as a food company – and as a nascent industry – must be ensuring product safety and consumer trust. Key to this is establishing a sensible regulatory framework. We are committed to providing consumers with Memphis meat through appropriate regulatory channels. While other innovative industries might follow the “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley ethos, we firmly believe that our product release must be done in a responsible and transparent manner.

Why is communication such a critical aspect of the alternative protein revolution?
From the earliest days at Memphis Meats, we have seen communication as a crucial responsibility of cell-based meat companies, and a necessary tool for establishing trust with consumers. We had our media debut, including a viral video of the world’s first cell-based meatball, when we were less than six months old and had only four team members. Since then we have regularly updated the public as we’ve reached milestones in product development, regulation, fundraising and our growing team. We want to empower consumers to make their own decisions. We are confident that, if provided with the facts, consumers will be enthusiastic about cell-based meat.

What do you think is the biggest hurdle cultured meat has to face? Consumer acceptance? Regulatory issues? Labeling pushback?
We will be ready to go to market as soon as a regulatory path is established in the U.S. We are grateful for the speed and openness that both agencies have demonstrated so far in regulatory conversations, and we look forward to continuing to provide them with the information they need to make informed decisions.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

McCormick’s Hamed Faridi on How CPG Giants Can Leverage AI and Data to Stay Nimble

Anyone else remember having to rummage through the deep, dark recesses of your spice cupboard in search of a bottle of peppermint extract, or maybe some “rubbed sage”? That’s where the McCormick brand has lived for most of my life.

Which is why it’s so interesting to see the spice giant branching out to leverage AI and data to create new flavors, personalized spice blends and even a grill that plays music based on what you’re cooking. That’s a hell of a leap from taco-seasoning packets.

This new tech-y push is led by Chief Science Officer Hamed Faridi, who will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) with Richard Goodwin, IBM lead researcher, discussing their recent collaboration and AI-powered flavor platform. We emailed Faridi a few early questions because October was too long to wait. (Buy your SKS tickets now, they are going fast!)

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

Lately McCormick has been combining flavor and AI, for example through its Flavorprint service and its partnership with IBM. Do you think this combination is a trend we’ll see more of?
Flavorprint service is provided by the Vivenda Corp. McCormick AI is currently under development via a partnership with IBM Research and is solely focused on new product innovation. We are assembling a database of 14,000 ingredients, over 400,000 formulations, millions of culinary recipes, and over a billion sensory and consumer data points loaded on a highly proprietary algorithm to be an inspiration partner for our product developers who are working in 20 labs located in 14 countries. It is a learning algorithm that becomes smarter and more innovative when receiving feedback from the developers using it on their daily product development activities.

What role do you envision large CPG companies such as McCormick playing in the future of food?
A lot. The large CPG should become more nimble and agile and respond quickly to the changing consumer taste, habit and experience. That is exactly what we have done in the past and will continue to do in the future.

In the coming decades our industry will be facing seismic changes. Among them is the unprecedented explosion of e-commerce that has disrupted the entire retail supply chain from end to end. The food industry will go through major M&A to stay competitive. The new generation of consumers, led by millennials, is forcing CPG companies to have a greater focus on transparency, natural and organic products, GMO, sustainability, and social responsibility.

Additionally, the information technology revolution will change almost everything we are doing today. Nutrogenomics and customized nutrition will transition from experimental to mainstream. And last but not the least, global warming, droughts, and loss of cultivable land and mass migration from rural to city centers are threatening all agriculture-based industries.

As the Chief Science Officer of McCormick, my number one responsibility is to turn all these seemingly insurmountable challenges into opportunities for accelerated growth, wealth creation, and competitive advantage. For example, e-commerce will provide unlimited shelf space which in turn will offer a platform for significant increases in new product introductions and mass customization. Advances in data analytics, artificial intelligence, and robotics will simultaneously make new product development better, faster, and cheaper. Potential loss of cultivable land lends itself to the exploration of aquaculture. There is never a dull moment in what I do day in and day out.

How does a large, established company like McCormick innovate and pivot to take advantage of fickle consumer trends?
By being committed to science-enabled innovation and acting nimbly.

What’s the one spice you couldn’t live without?
I love my cinnamon sprinkled over my breakfast every day. I never miss sprinkling black pepper, oregano and taragan on my salad for lunch and dinner. I love to have my tea with a dash of cardamom. My wife always adds a blend of turmeric, cinnamon, rosemary, cumin, and saffron to cooked rice she makes almost every evening that we eat at home.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

FoodNetwork.com’s Michelle Buffardi on Why Recipes (and Cooking) Won’t Be Obsolete

I can credit Food Network with kickstarting my obsession with food. When I was young I used to stay up and watch Emeril throwing his spices into pots with a “Bam!” and follow the fast-paced cooking challenges on Iron Chef. And of course cook along with all the recipes on FoodNetwork.com.

Back then, Food Network was one of the few players in the online recipe game. Now there’s a lot more competition, including new digital recipe sources like guided cooking apps and smart speakers. That’s why we’re so excited to have Michelle Buffardi, who oversees editorial and programming strategy for culinary content at FoodNetwork.com, Food.com and CookingChannelTV.com, speaking about the future of food media at the 2019 Smart Kitchen Summit next month.

Check out our Q&A with Buffardi below and get your tickets to see her in Seattle. Save 25 percent with code THESPOON25!

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.

You oversee culinary content for FoodNetwork.com. What does a day in the life look like?
No two days ever look alike! A day could include brainstorms (those are the best meetings!) or greenlights for things like recipes for video or otherwise, holiday programming since we work several months in advance, new video series or chefs and hosts we want to work with for digital series. I also have many meetings with other teams, such as our product and tech teams, about site enhancements and other projects to make sure the content and tech come together for the best user experience.

When I’m not in meetings, I’m working on editorial calendars or plans for different platforms—my team works on content across our website and apps—researching trends and new talent. When I have time in my day, I stop by our test kitchen for a tasting, which is where our recipe developers present the recipes they’ve made that day for various digital needs and projects. We taste them and give feedback.

Consumers have a plethora of different platforms at their fingertips to discover recipes. How do you entice them to come to FoodNetwork.com?
Our fans come to us for two main reasons: our culinary credibility and our variety of chefs and hosts. We have recipes for anything anyone is looking for developed by the best chefs on the planet, such as chefs from linear shows or exclusive digital projects and chefs from our test kitchen who develop recipes, write how-tos and do product tests for us.

We work hard to make sure we have recipes and content for trends, special diets, every holiday and of course, weeknight dinner recipes specialized to popular appliances (like the InstantPot). No matter what people are looking for, we have it.

In addition to people coming to us from search, our amazing team is great at promoting all of our content on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter), often with original content developed for each platform, and our editors work to share the best content in our weekly and daily newsletters. In short, we ensure that we’re giving our fans access to the best content in all of the places they visit and connect with us.

Two years ago at SKS Tyler Florence made the bold claim that the recipe is dead. What do you think?
I don’t want to disagree with Tyler! However, I don’t think cooking is dead, so I don’t think the recipe is dead. There is a trend, especially as more people gain confidence in the kitchen, of cooking without a recipe. That is winging it with familiar ingredients and methods, or taking a known recipe, like that stir-fry you have memorized, and swapping in different proteins, vegetables, sauces or seasonings.

The bowl and composed-food trends also lend themselves to no-recipe cooking — just layering delicious homemade or store-bought elements like grains, raw or roasted vegetables, sauces and salsa, roasted chicken or a fried egg. Even so, there are new cooks every day who need a recipe to get them going. Plus, even for experienced cooks, whenever we want to make something new or unfamiliar, we need that blueprint.

In short, I say the recipe is not dead; long live the recipe!

How do you think that recipes will continue to adapt to meet shifting consumer demands in the age of digitization and convenience?
This is so interesting and exciting to me. Recipes used to be made for magazines and consumer packaging, so they had to fit a specific format and word count. That’s not the case anymore. The formula is the same — people will always need to have the ingredients, measurements and the cooking method listed — plus a photo is important, too.

However, [I predict that] formats will change: recipes will start to look different depending on the platform they’re intended for, or will be written differently so that they can be read by a voice-enabled device, for example. The ways people consume information and the devices they use are constantly changing which means we’ll keep evolving the ways in which we deliver that information. Including recipes.

Want to see Michelle Buffardi speak about the future of the recipe in the digital age live? Get your tickets to SKS in Seattle on October 7-8th. We’ll see you there!

To Scale Meat Alternatives, Startups Need to Stop Relying on Meat-Industry Machinery

In a perfect world, we would never again have to think about how the sausage gets made. To make that fantasy a reality, we have to start thinking about how the veggie sausage gets made.

The plant-based meat revolution – heartened by the wild success of products like the Impossible and Beyond Burgers – is based on the concept that we can make animal meat obsolete by using technology and plant protein to mimic meat’s taste and texture. But so far, this tech-driven approach hasn’t quite extended to production technology.

Since the dawn of factory farming in the 1970s, the meat industry has been on a constant trajectory of optimization in production. Even today, industry interests are pushing for faster line speeds at processing plants, with the pork industry requesting a lift on the current limit of around 1100 pigs an hour. Even at the initial rate, this subsection of the industry alone was producing more meat in a handful of weeks than the plant-based meat industry produced in total in 2018. It seems that the meat industry is still the reigning champ of moving fast and breaking things.

Sausage-making may be unpleasant, but it is impressively efficient.

The plant-based meat industry, on the other hand, has been slow to address the unique production needs of its products, and as a result, it has been slow to scale. Demand for popular plant-based options has outpaced supply to such a degree that Bloomberg keeps a crowdsourced, interactive “outage” map to show where the Impossible Burger is unavailable due to product shortages.

The solution most companies are taking to this problem? Partner with co-manufacturers to use meat industry machinery and facilities. Instead of mimicking the efficiency of the meat industry’s production technology, the plant-based meat industry is using the same machinery straight off the shelf. Beyond Meat, for example, produces much of its product out of beef processing plants in Georgia and California. In this way, plant-based meat companies are victims of their own success: turning to stopgap options to match the market’s appetite without solving the underlying production puzzle.

This doesn’t just denote a lack of innovation. It’s hobbling the ability of plant-based meat companies to economically increase production volume, and as such, to lower costs. Even as sales of plant-based meat climbed to $3.7 billion in 2018, production volumes fall far short of the 105 billion pounds of animal meat produced each year. Despite a major uptick in sales numbers, the actual volume of plant-based meat on the market still makes up a miniscule one-fifth of one percent of the meat industry. This isn’t surprising when you take into account that plant-based options are two to five times more expensive than factory-farmed meat. Even as the dollars roll in, the amount of plant-based meat on the shelves isn’t skyrocketing. With these stats, it’s not surprising that the majority of consumers still turn to animal meat for cheap, widely available protein.

The plant-based meat industry can make significant progress by addressing some of the fundamental incompatibilities of meat-industry machinery with plant-protein processing. After all, the meat industry didn’t become the behemoth it is by failing to optimize its production tech.

Plant proteins may be made to taste like meat, but they don’t function like animal proteins. Meat industry machinery is calibrated and automated to deconstruct carcasses and prepare cuts and grounds made from specific animals. It’s less effective at producing meat from plant sources, which have markedly different functional properties in terms of moisture retention, protein structure, and so on.

Another option plant-based meat companies are turning to is a food extruder: a machine initially designed to form foods like pasta and cheese puffs, and also to structure protein. While these are sophisticated machines, we are only in the early days of redesigning them for the massive scalability plant-based meat production requires right now. This means that even with highly skilled operators, it can be difficult to achieve product consistency and avoid costly errors. These machines are also expensive to begin with, with price tags reaching into the millions for a single unit.

Some of the potential changes to machinery could be as simple as adding internal sensing and modifying certain preset functions on otherwise similar machines. Other options represent a more revolutionary redesign of the entire flow of the production process that allow for products to be made continuously instead of batch-by-batch, and with substantial energy and input savings to boot.

To outcompete the old guard, the plant-based meat industry has to stop ignoring how the veggie sausage gets made and adopt new machinery that’s actually optimized for the industry’s unique needs. When this happens, plant-based meat can finally become widely available at an accessible price.

Until then, we’ll be stuck with shortages and stuck with the status quo.

SKS Q&A: Andreas Wuerfel on How Big Grocery Can Stay Innovative, Agile and Competitive

If you’ve eaten out in Europe, Russia, or Asia, chances are at some point you’ve patronized a café, hotel, or kiosk that purchase food from mega-retailer METRO AG. As the largest non-U.S. wholesale and foodservice company, the Germany-based METRO functions in 35 countries and serves over 24 million businesses.

One place it doesn’t serve is the U.S. However, Andreas Wuerfel works for METRO as Group Director for U.S. Strategic Partnering; keeping a finger on the pulse on retail trends in the U.S. through local partners and applying them to the METRO network. Which means that he is uniquely positioned to track innovation across foodservice and grocery across the globe.

If you want to hear Wuerfel speak about the ways that METRO is forging the future of retail — digitally and otherwise — get your ticket to SKS. Then get a sneak preview with the Q&A below.

You’re the Group Director for U.S. Strategic Partnering at METRO. Tell us about what your role entails.
While METRO Group has no local operations, the US is a key “lighthouse” market for us. US restaurant, hotel, and retail innovation trends often foreshadows development in our Europe and Asia markets. Gaining an understanding early, and working with key US players is important to the degree [with which we] can cooperate across our Europe customer footprint. With that in mind, my role is to help initiate our “bridge-to-Europe” strategic/commercial deal opportunities, to help create win-win-win value for our Europe customers, our US partners, and METRO at large.

You were involved with founding the METRO Accelerator program, powered by Techstars. Why did Metro AG decide to help create an accelerator?
Globally, the retail sector is undergoing rapid change. Much of that dynamics comes from outside our traditional channels. Outside established large IT firms, it is often young startup teams that best ideate, invent and disrupt “the future of retail”. In working with retail tech and hospitality tech founder teams from around the world, our METRO Accelerator is specifically designed as an outside-in innovation program — to help capture, fund, and shape the relevant early-stage digital applications most meaningful for our small business customers and our own stores long term.

How do you stay competitive in the competitive wholesale retail space, especially against giants such as Walmart or Tesco?
Despite the aforementioned retail industry transformation — simply put — it’s still all about ensuring we offer “the right product for the right customer at the right price exactly when and where needed.” To ensure this “contract with our customers” is fulfilled, METRO leverages its unique footprint and supply-chain advantages. (Globally, METRO Cash & Carry is the only wholesaler doing business in 35 countries, with deep access to local assortment and competitive pricing).

What are a few ways you’ve seen tech transform retail?
Inside METRO, we’ve found tremendous value in helping educate and consult the “long tail” of the hospitality and retail industry. We are unique in that our primary customers are 24+ million small business owners. Not consumers but rather the many independent restaurants, hotels, retail operators, catering companies, and small professional offices — all looking to understand and benefit from the use of digital innovation as well as new “next-gen” food & beverage choices. Our down-market innovation programs and corporate investment initiatives therefore all center around enabling our small business customers and their guests, in the process helping to transform the independent retail customer side of our business.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

SKS Q&A: GenoPalate’s Sherry Zhang on How Your DNA Can and Should Dictate What You Eat

In Western cultures we tend to go to the doctor to get medicine, but there’s a growing movement advocating for food as the first step towards healthier bodies. (Which, when you think about it, is pretty obvious.) But determining what foods to eat to make you feel better can be tricky, especially in our age of fad diets and fast-food.

Dr. Sherry Zhang founded company GenoPalate to try and solve the whole what-do-I-eat-to-feel-better question for individuals by looking at genetics to create personalized nutrition programs. Sort of like Ancestry DNA for your diet.

Zhang will be speaking at our flagship Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} conference in Seattle this October, exploring the burgeoning trend of food as medicine. (Psst — Early Bird ticket sales end tomorrow, so grab yours before the price goes up!) We asked her a few questions to get a better sense of how exactly GenoPalate works, and what sort of role it could play in mapping out our dining future.

Tell us more about GenoPalate. How exactly does it work?
GenoPalate revolutionizes how people eat healthy based on their unique genetics. Through a simple swab test, GenoPalate’s nutrigenetic home test analyzes 100+ genetic markers that determine a person’s specific needs for 24 vital nutrients such as carbohydrates, vitamin D, and sodium, and sensitivities to lactose, gluten, caffeine and alcohol. The company combines genetic results with millions of nutritional variables to recommend the foods a person should eat more of. Then each client receives a report that includes their genetic results, what they mean, and a personalized list of the 80+ foods that benefit that specific client the most. Using its genetics-based personalized nutrition technology, GenoPalate is changing how people choose, shop for and eat food for better health.

How do consumers get access to GenoPalate’s technology? Is it offered as a solo service? Do you work with partners? A combination?
It is easy to get access to GenoPalate’s technology. Consumers can order their GenoPalate nutrigenetic home tests by going to its e-commerce platform at genopalate.com. It is offered as one streamlined experience and each service comes with GenoPalate’s genetics-based nutrition analysis, a personal nutrition and food map report followed by Activate, a 12-week digital coaching program that provides individual consumers actionable knowledge to eat for their genes.

Personalization is a growing trend in the food space. Why do you think it’s having such a moment lately?
There are definitely radical changes in the expectations, needs and wants of food shoppers lately. I think the driver behind this trend in consumer behavior is the advancements in the technology world that enables 1) the dramatically increased amount of information on sources, ingredients and manufacturing processes to the food we have access to today; 2) the level of precision in health information that we now are able to access and analyze for better understanding the impact of food and nutrition on a person’s health and wellness by the high-paced advancement in the field of clinical genomics. Consumers have always had the appetite for personalized food options for their needs but it was not possible to meet those needs at greater scale. Now we have the technologies to offer that, it is reasonable that consumers and the industry they influence cannot wait for taking it on.

How do you address the issue of privacy around the personal data you gather to create nutrition profiles for GenoPalate?
Keeping our users’ genetic and other personal information private and safe is important to us at GenoPalate.

We implement de-identification procedures along with encryption of each individual’s data to ensure secure storage and complete anonymous separate of your genetic and personal information. Only automated GenoPalate product services have access to both of this information to deliver our product to each user.

As a business, we do not sell, lease or rent users’ personal information to third-party without user’s consent. User’s genetic information may be used by our product development team to enhance our services to our users. In this case, users’ data will be de-identified and aggregated before analysis to preserve anonymity.

To learn more about our data security and privacy measures please visit, https://www.genopalate.com/legal.

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Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

Mayku FormBox’s DIY Mold Machine is Out to Democratize Manufacturing

Say you’re a chocolatier who wants to make candies in the shape of dolphins, or unicorns, or a customer’s name. You’d have to get your hands on a foodsafe mold, which usually means you either have to choose from limited selection in stores or pay a boatload to have a custom mold made.

That’s exactly the sort of restrictive problem that the Mayku (pronunced ‘Make-you’) Formbox is trying to solve. The machine, which is about the same size and height of an open laptop, works by softening a thin sheet of food-safe material and forming it around any object up to 200 mm squared (7.8 inches squared). Once the sheet sets it can be removed and used as a mold for everything from plastic to molten sugar.

Mayku co-founders Benjamin Redford and Alex Smilansky both came from design backgrounds. “To make a product in the digital world you just have to press a few buttons. Comparatively, the barrier to entry in the physical world is so high,” Smilansky, who also functions as Mayku’s CEO, told me over the phone. With the FormBox, he hopes to democratize manufacturing and make it easier for small companies or even home enthusiasts to make short runs of products.

Mayku FormBox - a desktop vacuum former that puts the power of making in your hands

The Mayku FormBox costs $699 and comes with 40 food-safe moldable sheets. You can order additional sheets for $1.30 each. Seven hundred bucks is certainly not nothing, especially if you’re a small-scale producer just starting up. However, Smilansky assured me that it’s miles cheaper than buying custom silicone molds, which he said can cost hundreds of dollars each and sometimes require a customer orders many multiples per order.

Mayju first launched the FormBox on Kickstarter in 2016 with a goal of getting 100 preorders. Within a month they had 1,300. They began shipping the summer of 2018 and are now being used by roughly 4,000 makers.

According to Smilansky, a surprisingly large portion of their makers are in the food industry. “We initially had no idea that the food industry would be interested in this,” Smilansky told me. “But it’s actually our fast-growing segment.” But when you think about it for a second, this type of product seems perfect for artisan food and beverage companies. It allows them to experiment with new products with relatively little investment and risk, and can also help them stand out from the competition.

Beyond the FormBox, London-based Mayku has plans to expand to a suite of products. Smilansky said that they want to build a family of integrated machines, including a 3D printer, laser cutter, and more. They also want to create an online platform where their community of creators can share designs and videos of themselves showing off their techniques the Mayku FormBox.

“It’s really about small-scale manufacturing,” Smilansky said. “We wanted to give creative makers without massive budgets access to the same kinds of tools that giant companies have.”

That’s an ambitious goal, especially for a 12-person company that’s raised 2.6 million pounds(~$3.24 million) on top of the initial $600,000 they pulled in on Kickstarter.

However, the Mayku FormBox is coming about at a very opportune time. There’s currently a growing movement towards the democratization of previously difficult/expensive tasks — including in the kitchen. Small companies and even ambitious individuals can now do everything from roast their own coffee to make their own chocolate. And now with the Mayku FormBox, they can take that chocolate and shape it into whatever their heart desires.