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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Low Tech

The Re_ Device Promises to Let You Grow Your Own Edible Insects at Home

Look, I know the global pandemic pushed us towards growing more of our own food and changing our eating habits. But have we reached the point where we’re ready to grow — and consume — our own insects at home?

That’s the question Beobia looks to answer next week when it launches a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund its Re_ device. The Re_ is a series of five stackable pods that allow you to grow between 100 – 300 grams of mealworms per harvest. According to Beobia, mealworms are 54 percent protein, and “22,000 time more water efficient than beef.”

The grow pods themselves are 3D printed and made from recycled bioplastics. The company doesn’t get into the specifics around the insects or how long it takes to harvest them, but the site mealwormcare.org says they come from darkling beetles, and take between 1– 4 weeks to grow from egg to larvae (which is the mealworm).

The site also doesn’t say how much the Re_ will cost, only that early Kickstarter backers will get a 30 percent discount. The Kickstarter campaign officially launches on July 7.

Edible insects are certainly nothing new to The Spoon. We’ve covered a number of edible insect companies including a cricket protein powder, fried grasshoppers at stadiums, and the funding to build the world’s largest insect farm.

But with almost every story about edible bugs that we’ve written was the caveat, Will people eat them? To be more specific, will people in the U.S. eat them? Despite them being packed with protein, there is still the “ick” factor to get over.

We certainly applaud Beobia and its efforts to create a more sustainable and self-sufficient food system. But at the same time, there is something a little unsettling in the company’s promotional video when it shows someone throwing a handful of mealworms into the blender to make a morning smoothie.

But who knows? After a few more months of quarantine, I may shift my eating habits from too many carbs to a bounty of bugs.

JUST Partners with Michael Foods to Grow Foodservice Sales of Plant-based Egg

JUST announced today that it is is expanding the sales footprint of its vegan egg substitute by teaming up with Michael Foods. Michael Foods is a subsidiary of CPG giant Post Holdings and one of the largest processors of value-added eggs in the world.

With the new partnership, Michael Foods will be the sole manufacturer, supplier and distributor of JUST Egg to its existing foodservice and B2B customers — those who already buy Michael Foods’ egg brands, such as Abbotsford Farms and Papetti’s. It will begin to roll out JUST Egg starting this fall in select locations.

Made from mung beans, JUST Egg currently comes in two iterations: a liquid for scrambles, and a pre-cooked folded egg patty. Both are meant to cook up just like a chicken egg and contain comparable protein, with no cholesterol.

According to FoodDive, roughly 90 percent of JUST Egg’s sales in the U.S. come from grocery stores. The Michael Foods partnership will allow JUST to massively expand the foodservice footprint of its plant-based eggs in the U.S. In addition to restaurants, Michael Foods also caters to large venues like cafeterias, hospitals and stadiums.

Photo: JUST Egg

It’s an… interesting time for JUST to juice up its foodservice business, to say the least. Most crowded venues — like concert halls and stadiums — are shut down for the forseeable future and restaurants are operating at reduced capacity, if they’re open at all.

The point of the Michael Foods news is that JUST is putting fuel in its engine to expand rapidly across multiple channels — and geographic regions. Last year the company acquired a factory in Minnesota to increase production. In March they announced a group of new global manufacturing and distributions partners, from South Korea to Colombia. And just last week, the company announced that it was working with Emsland Group, a German leader in plant-based protein ingredients, to help them scale in Europe.

By partnering with Michael Foods, JUST is clearly thinking (far) ahead to pave the way for more sales when major venues and foodservice establishments open again. Some states are slowly opening up restaurants, but large-scale reopenings, especially for big venues like stadiums, seems far on the horizon.

We’ll have to wait and see if JUST’s partnership with Michael Foods pays off post-pandemic.

Johnny Grey on the Post-COVID Kitchen: No Cabinets, Bigger Pantries, More Pleasure

With COVID keeping many of us at home, kitchens are taking on a bigger role than ever before. They’re not just the place we cook meals; they’re also our offices, a place to teach kids homework, the background of our Zoom video calls as we cook along with family.

Considering we’ve long considered the kitchen the heart of the home, it’s no surprise that they’re shifting as we spend more and more time homebound. But how will the kitchen transform to better suit our new needs during quarantine?

To answer that question we turned to Johnny Grey, a British design leader specializing in — you guessed it — kitchens. Today Grey (and a few surprise guests) joined us for our latest Spoon Virtual Event, titled The Future of Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID19 World. He talked about some of the constants of kitchen design, how to embrace the DIY, and how the kitchen is a sort of “3D timepiece.” Here are a few of the highlights:

Fewer cabinets, more pantries
If there’s one part of conventional kitchen design that Grey absolutely hates, it’s cabinets. He thinks they take up too much space in the core of the kitchen itself, which should be a more social space.

In fact, Grey’s overarching goal with kitchen design seems to be to make it a more pleasant space for gathering. To that end, he’s a big fan of kitchen islands (or peninsulas), ideally ones with adjustable heights that can go from a bar space to a dining table.

When asked what he thought we could learn from the past, Grey answered in one word: pantries. He likes a walk-in pantry because you can see things in front of you — like all those bulk bags of dry goods you bought — and you don’t have to rely on dreaded cabinets to store everything.

Where does smart tech fit in?
For Grey, smart tech does have a role to play in kitchens of the future. Specifically when it comes to two things: precision and safety. Grey also emphasized that kitchen technology can help generations age in place. If individuals can cook for themselves, he theorizes that they won’t have to move to assisted living facilities as quickly — thus keeping them home for longer.

Photo: Innit and Sharp

The kitchen as a timepiece
During the virtual event Grey unveiled a new concept he’s been working on. Called the Evening Kitchen, he explained that the kitchen has multiple different lives during each 24-hour cycle. During the day it may be an area for quick meal prep, but in the evening it morphs into a bistro, a nightclub, or even a quiet living room, depending on the circumstances. Grey calls the kitchen a sort of “3D timepiece.”

For that reason, the evening kitchen must look different than the kitchen of daytime. Grey talks about the power of lighting, which gives intimacy, as well as smell and music to transform the space. If you’re curious you can watch his video explaining the concept here.

Especially now, embrace joy
Especially now, kitchens should be a place of joy. “It should be a pleasure to use your kitchen,” Grey said. To make it pleasurable, designers should think about touch, ease of movement, and even color. They could set up places to set a chair in the sun. Consumers themselves can do a lot to improve their kitchen. “Embrace the DIY,” Grey told the audience.

Grey also urged listeners not to put too much pressure on themselves to de-clutter, especially now that the kitchen table is also a coworking space and/or classroom. “It’s not really how people can live,” he said.

Overall, it was a fascinating conversation and — bonus — you get to enjoy Grey’s soothing British accent. You can watch the full video below.

Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID World: A Conversation with Kitchen Designer Johnny Grey

Finally, don’t forget to mark your calendar for our next event on May 21st 10am PT, when Gingko Bioworks program director Sudeep Agarwala will talk about fermentation as a food tech platform.

PepsiCo Launches Two Sites to Deliver All the Snacks to Your Doorstep

With quarantine keeping us all at home and near our pantries, we’re buying more food staples online — and snacking more, too. So it’s no surprise that PepsiCo announced today that it’s launching two ways that people can buy snacks (and other pantry items) directly.

On PantryShop.com, consumers can order curated bundles of popular PepsiCo products with names like “Family Favorites,” “Workout & Recovery,” or, of course, “Snacking.” These bundles have goods from PepsiCo brands like Gatorade, Cap’n Crunch, and Quaker. The Standard Size for the packs costs $29.95, while the larger Family Size is $49.95.

PepsiCo also launched Snacks.com, which is even more snack-specialized. On the site people can order crackers, nuts, and dips, as well as a whole litany of chips from Lays, Cheetos, Ruffles, and more. Orders over $15 ship free.

According to an email sent to The Spoon, the majority of orders placed on PantryShop.com or Snacks.com will arrive within two business days. Obviously that’s not going to sate any chip cravings happening right now, but in a time when finding a grocery delivery spot is almost as hard as finding the golden ticket, two days is actually not that long. And considering everything that PepsiCo is sending is shelf-stable, speed is not exactly of the essence.

Considering the meteoric growth of online grocery since the coronavirus pandemic began, it’s no surprise that PepsiCo is trying to take advantage by launching its own direct sales platforms. With Instacart orders, PepsiCo is competing with other brands to get in your cart. By taking the process onto their own site, they own your purchase 100 percent.

That is, if consumers will go for it. There may be increased interest in online grocery shopping, but I’m not sure if consumers are willing to add another marketplace to their digital purchasing habits. Do people have enough loyalty to PepsiCo brands to place an entirely separate snack order on Snacks.com, as opposed to just adding a few bags of Hot Cheetos to their regular online order?

I suppose, like so many things right now, we’ll have to wait and see. If PepsiCo does see some healthy interest you can bet we’ll see other Big Food brands like Coca-Cola or Nestlé following suit with their own online marketplaces. What better to go with your PepsiCo Snack Pack then a Coca-Cola Soda Pack to wash it all down?

Ecoinno Raises $6M for Compostable Food Packaging Made of Sugar Cane and Bamboo

Ecoinno, a Hong Kong-based company making sustainable packaging from plant fibers, has raised $6 million in Series A1 funding from Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs and Alibaba Taiwan Entrepreneurs Fund (h/t South China Morning Post). This brings the startup’s total funding to $8.8 million.

Founded in 2015, Ecoinno uses a patented technology to make a sustainable packaging material out of pulp from bamboo and sugar cane. Called green composite material (GCM), the product is compostable and will decompose in 75 days.

Thus far, GCM has been trialed chiefly in CPG applications like coffee capsules, as well as single-use takeaway food containers. South China Morning Post reports that it’s first customer will be an undisclosed Hong Kong airline… once the coronavirus pandemic passes and flights to and from Hong Kong resume in full. The airline will use Ecoinno’s biodegradable food and drink containers to serve passengers.

Ecoinno will use its new funding to scale up production of GCM and expand R&D for more applications of its biodegradable packaging. It’s also building a fully automated factory in Tai Po with robotic assembly lines.

Since most of us are relying on takeaway and delivery to get our food these days, packaging is definitely top of mind. Even before COVID, fast food chains like Taco Bell and Starbucks had outlined ambitious plans to cut packaging waste and switch to recyclable or compostable options.

But not all compostable packaging is actually, well, compostable. Some contain so-called “forever” chemicals which are harmful to humans and never break down. Sweetgreen and Chipotle have both taken big steps in 2020 to transition to truly compostable containers, though it’s tricky to find biodegradable food packaging that’s strong enough to hold food, especially liquid, without breaking. Ecoinno’s GCM is made of 100 percent plant fibers, so no pesky forever chemicals.

Of course, the GCM hasn’t been put to the test yet. But considering we’ll probably see more to-go orders for a long time yet, even after restaurants reopen dining rooms, now is certainly an opportune time to invest in green packaging innovation.

Lunch Meat and Waffle Makers? NPD’s Susan Schwallie on How COVID-19 is Transforming our Dining Habits

The coronavirus pandemic has upended almost every aspect of our life, and eating habits are certainly no exception. What, where, and how we’re making and consuming our food has transformed dramatically in the past eight weeks alone.

At today’s virtual event Changing Food Habits in the Era of COVID-19, Susan Schwallie of market research firm NPD Group dug into the data on how the pandemic is shifting the way that we eat. Some you might be able to guess (more carbs and online grocery), but NPD’s numbers give some surprising insight into where and what we’re eating right now — especially at home. Here are a few of the biggest shifts she’s seen:

More Eating at Home
Unsurprisingly, as restaurant dining rooms around the country shuttered in March and consumers began working from home, people started to eat more at home. Schwallie noted that there was about a 6 percent lift in the number of meals consumers ate at home this April, compared to the same time period last year.

That might not seem like a lot. But according to Schwallie, “these are actually massive numbers.” Consumers already ate about 80 percent of their meals at home, a carryover from the shift away from restaurants after the 2008 recession, so that additional six percent equates to millions of meals.

The Return of the Sandwich
Not only are people eating more at home, what they’re eating is also shifting because of the pandemic. Schwallie noted that consumers are cooking in big batches, relying on leftovers, and buying private label and less expensive brands to make their dollars go further. As she pointed out, these shifts are pretty similar to what happened in the wake of the 2008 Recession — only now, disruptions in the supply chain are causing temporary shortages of products like flour, yeast, and pasta.

The Recession also saw the rise of brown bag lunches — something that’s not exactly relevant now. In fact, Schwallie noted that lunch is the meal experiencing the biggest shift lately, as office workers no longer pick up food to-go from restaurants. “It’s the return of the sandwich,” she said.

In fact, the food with the biggest spike in at-home consumption since the pandemic began? Lunch meat. (The beverage with the biggest spike is — you guessed it — wine.)

Source: Susan Schwallie, NPD Group

The Rise of Niche Appliances (and Carbs)
With more people cooking at home, it’s no surprise that we’re relying more heavily on kitchen appliances. But the type of appliances may be surprising. Schwallie said that in the week ending March 7 — around the time that people were realizing they might be at home a lot over the coming months — there was double-digit growth in sales of niche food and beverage appliances like soda makers, grills, pasta machines, and pizza ovens.

She noted that “carb-related categories” also experienced an uptick in home usage: waffle makers, air fryers, rice cookers, bread makers, etc. One obvious reason is that consumers are turning to comfort food right now. Schwallie also pointed out that as people get into cooking ruts, they might dust off specialized appliances to spice up their meal routine.

Switching to Online and Digital
“COVID has been an accelerator for everything online and digital,” Schwallie stated towards the end of the event. That’s certainly true for the food sector. She noted that third-party grocery delivery experienced a nearly 300 percent increase in sales in April alone.

As we’ve covered pretty extensively here on The Spoon, restaurants are also making rapid pivots to go digital. Schwallie said that online ordering for takeaway orders from restaurants is on the rise, as are ghost kitchens built to fulfill said orders.

Source: Susan Schwallie, NPD Group

What’s Next?
So which of these trends will stick around once shelter in place orders lift and we’re able to return to restaurants? Schwallie named ghost kitchens and online grocery orders as some of the technology that will carry over into the post-COVID world, for sure. Baking bread and using our waffle makers, though? Those trends might not have the same staying power.

—

Next Thursday we’ll be back with a virtual event on The Future of Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID World, with Johnny Grey. Sign up — and check out our schedule of upcoming online events — here.

You can watch today’s event in full below:

Changing Consumer Food Habits in the COVID-19 Era

Vejo Review: The Pod-based Connected Blender Falls Short on Taste and Value

During quarantine, with most of us turning to comfort food and relying on shelf-stable ingredients, it can be hard to eat all your fruits and vegetables. Which is why I was intrigued by Vejo, a blender and pod system that claims to make getting those recommended daily nutrients easier. So I took them up on their offer to try sample their product.

Founded in 2015, Vejo is a connected portable blender. It pairs with the company’s biodegradable pods, which are filled with freeze-dried fruits and vegetables and come in varieties like pre- and post-workout, detox, and sleep enhancement. Just add water, insert a pod, twist on the cap, and the blender will whir up a nutritious drink in 30 seconds.

I got the starter kit, which costs $130 and includes the blender and 8 Vejo drink pods. Additional pods can be purchased a la carte or as a subscription and equal out to roughly $4 per serving. There’s also an app which you can use to reorder pods and set reminders to make your drink, which I declined to download.

The first thing I noticed when I opened up my Vejo box was ‘dang, this is heavy.’ The Vejo blender — which looks like a silicone-coated thermos — was in a padded box, swaddled like an iPad. The pods all came in a separate box, alongside which there was a charger pod, charging cord, and a brush for cleaning. I’m guessing there was so much packaging to make you feel like you’re getting a luxury good — which, considering its high price point, makes some sense. But I felt super wasteful tossing it into my recycling bin later.

All the packaging for the Vejo [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Ready for some healthy smoothie blends, I opened up the instruction manual to see that… I had to charge the blender for a minimum of two hours. It’s nice that the Vejo came with its own charger, but I hate having yet another piece of hardware to lose. And it was annoying to have to wait two hours to charge something up when I was ready to try it out right then and there.

Finally, two hours later, I decided to give the Vejo a go with a Clean Greens drink. Per the instructions, I filled the blender up to the fill line inside with cold water, peeled the top off the pod, and popped it into the device upside-down. Then I screwed on the top tightly until it began to buzz. Thirty seconds later, after the buzzing stopped, I took out the pod and composted it (the biodegradable pods are a nice touch, despite all the other packaging).

The pod is in — ready to blend. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The smoothie was… fine. It definitely tasted healthy, which is to say it wasn’t very delicious — but it did include spinach, cucumber, and sea buckthorn, all of which are good for you. My bigger quarrel is that the finished drink was tiny. The finished product barely took up half of the glass I use for my morning smoothie. And since most of the pods instruct you to fill the blender with water, this drink would definitely not keep me full. I tried three other drinks and, while some of the sweeter ones like Pina Berry tasted better, none left me wanting to make them again.

The price — pods equate out to be about $4 per serving — is certainly cheaper than buying a smoothie out or even using a service like Daily Harvest, whose frozen, pre-portioned smoothie cups run about $7 each. But Daily Harvest’s blends are a lot more robust — and taste a lot better, too. Plus there’s something to be said about eating real fruit, even if it’s frozen, instead of powder mixed with water.

You can also just use a regular old blender (gasp!) and put your own frozen fruit in, which makes a drink that’s both tastier and more customizeable. For customers looking for a blender of the future, may I suggest the cordless, silent appliance from Millo? True, it doesn’t have the pre-mixed pods, but do consumers really want to be locked in, especially to something that doesn’t taste good?

Vejo’s finished Clean Greens drink. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Vejo also offers a high-end personalization service called Vejo+ which makes individualized pod blends to best fit a consumers’ biology. The company sends one of its phlebotomists to Vejo+ clients to do a blood draw, which they analyze, along with weight measurements, and formulate pods to help the clients reach their health goals. That fits right into the broader biomarker-based customization trend that’s being built by Genopalate, Viome, Sun Genomics and others.

Vejo+ costs $1,500 for three months, which is way over my price range — and about triple the price of other personalized nutrition services. However, in my opinion it’s much more useful, and unique, than Vejo’s current service.

Interest around Vejo+ aside, I found that regular old Vejo fell short. Considering we’re all trying to eat more vegetables but restrict our trips to the grocery store, I can see Vejo’s appeal. Especially if you’re an elite athlete or need a reliable way to ingest copious amounts of produce and vitamins. But for me, what Vejo offered in pure health just didn’t make up for its poor taste and bulkiness.

I guess I’ll have to get my fruits and vegetables from regular old fruits and vegetables.

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.

Japanese Startup Base Food to Debut High-Nutrition Bread in U.S.

Bread seems to be the unofficial food of quarantine. No wonder — it’s comforting, it’s affordable, and it’s a soothing home project to tackle, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But much as we love bread, we know that eating it all day, every day is probably not the healthiest decision in the world. A Japanese startup called Base Food is bringing a more nutritionally appealing bread offering to the U.S.

Founded in 2016, Base Food uses nutrient-dense ingredients like whole grain flour, seaweed, and flaxseed to develop healthier versions of staple foods. Starting today, the company’s second product, Base Bread, will be available direct-to-consumer in California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada and Colorado.

It will come in just one big 72-gram roll, which will cost $3.33 each or $2.99 each if you sign up for a monthly subscription. The bread will come frozen, which is why the company is only able to ship within a 2-day radius of their Reno, Nevada manufacturing facility. Frozen food typically equates to high shipping costs, but when I spoke to Base Food’s COO Michael Rosenzweig last week said they have yet to finalize their fees. 

Photo: Base Bread

Base Food already sells two products — Base Noodles and Base Bread — in its native Japan, and the noodles are already available in the same seven U.S. states which can purchase the bread. Down the road, Rosenzweig said that the company is looking to get into foodservice retail channels, specifically through corporate cafeterias.

Another selling point is Base Bread’s shelf life. Rosenzweig told me that the bread will last a year in the freezer. We’ve in the midst of a pandemic that leads to both panic shopping and a fear of the grocery store, so Base Food’s nutritional profile and long life are both timely selling points. Then again, $3.33 is expensive for a single-serve roll of bread when you can buy a hefty loaf of artisan sourdough from your local bakery for $6 or $7 bucks — or just make your own.

I actually got to sample Base Bread at SKS Japan in August 2019. It was soft and squishy with a malty sweetness — sort of like a honey whole wheat bread. We also got to taste Base Noodles at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition in October, and they were tasty with a flavor akin to a nutty soba noodle.

As someone who loves carbs more than anything else in this world, but is trying to hang onto some semblance of healthy eating during quarantine, Base Bread offers an appealing option. At least until I smother it with butter.

New Version of the Kenyon City Grill Lets you Grill Indoors While Sheltering in Place

Perhaps during this time of lockdown, you have perfected your sourdough starter and are looking for a new, appropriately social distanced cooking hobby. With the warmer weather, maybe its time to up your grill game!

But Chris, you protest, I live in an apartment with no balcony or otherwise small domicile with no room for a bbq!

Fear not, cooped up reader, there is a grill for you and it’s getting an updated look. Kenyon Grills makes the indoor/outdoor City Grill, an electric device that allows you grill up meat and veggies from the comfort of your counter. On April 21, its newest grill will be available to buy.

The new City Grill features a more polished look but retains the same functionality of previous models. It’s a smokeless and flameless grill with a 1,300-watt element that heats up to 600 degrees in seven minutes. It has a removable non-stick grate for cleaning, and an optional lid for more oven-like cooking, and an optional griddle plate for who want to make pancakes and bacon. All of this will set you back $475, and the device will be shipping then as well, so it’s not just pre-order.

We haven’t used the City Grill here at The Spoon, so we don’t know about any issues such as hot spots or ease of use. But as the weather turns nicer and the timeline for staying stuck indoors is still in question, maybe apartment dwellers will warm up to the idea of indoor grilling.

The City Grill certainly isn’t the only indoor grill. The Cinder uses sous vide-style precision (without the water bath) for cooking meats, though that company’s web site says that the device is currently sold out.

If you do pick up a City Grill, be sure to drop us a line and tell us whether it’s hot or not.

GrapeStars Lets Celebrities Sell Booze to You Through Social Media

Have you ever wanted to buy gin endorsed by Ryan Reynolds? Or a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc curated by Sarah Jessica Parker? Now’s your chance. GrapeStars, the online marketplace for celebrity-endorsed brands of booze, is live to make sure you never have to go without a glass of wine supported by a famous person, even in the time of COVID-19.

Based in Miami, GrapeStars had its soft launch this week. Initially they’ll ship to 45 states in the U.S. The company has plans for a formal launch in mid-May 2020 with a portfolio of 1,495 products from 203 celebrities.

Here’s how it works: consumers can either purchase directly through the GrapeStars app, which currently works on iPhones or Google Play, or they can click on links embedded on celebrity’s social media profiles to be redirected to their GrapeStars store. From there they select their star-supported booze of choice, which is shipped to their door. Cost depends on weight, distance, and timing (e.g. overnight, 2 day, etc), and GrapeStars pockets 15 percent of each sale.

According to an email conversation with a GrapeStars rep, the startup recently closed a seed round, raising $3.7 million with a mix of convertible debentures and equities. The company will launch a Republic Crowdfunding Campaign to raise an additional $1 million sometime in the next few weeks.

This concept is obviously on the sillier side, but GrapeStars may actually hitting the market at an ideal time. Since everything is stressful right now and meditation apps can only do so much, sales of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. rose 55 percent in the week ending March 21, according to Nielsen data. Since bars are no longer to sell you the good stuff, people are turning to grocery stores and e-commerce to get their booze fix. Consequently, online alcohol delivery services like Drizly and Minibar are seeing a huge spike in sales. Wine subscription services, like Winc and Vivino, are also seeing rapid increases in sales and higher ticket sizes.

Plus, since everyone is turning to social media to feel connected amidst social distancing, celebrities may find themselves with a captive audience that’s bored enough to, say, order specialty booze endorsed by their favorite movie star.

Is GrapeStars going to solve any of the very significant challenges that COVID-19 is imposing on the food system? Absolutely not. But is it fun, entertaining, and a relevant service in our new Netflix-fueled normal? You bet.

COVID-19 Summit: Coronavirus Could Actually Help us Reduce Food Waste (in Some Areas)

Unpopped popcorn kernels from movie theaters. Pre-wrapped cheese plates for airline passengers. These are just a few of the unexpected food resources that, due to social distancing recommendations, are going to waste during the coronavirus pandemic.

True, reducing food waste might not be one of the top-of-mind priorities right now for many of us, including airlines and movie theaters. But as Dana Gunders, Executive Director of ReFed, pointed out during yesterday’s COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit, as the coronavirus shakes up the food system from top to bottom, our food waste patterns are shifting too. “There’s enormous volatility in the system right now,” she said.

As we shutter restaurants, Gunders explained that we’ve cut off the supply chain to half of the food system. With that outlet closed, farms, processors, and distributors that typically work with foodservice are eyeing the grocery market and trying to establish new sales channels. Gunders walked us through how each sector of the food ecosystem is experiencing change — and what that means for food waste.

Farms
Farms, many of which rely on restaurant partners to sell their goods, are trying to pivot to find new retail channels. “But it’s not that instant,” Gunders said. She explained that instead, millions of pounds of green beans, tomatoes, and cabbage are getting tilled under because farmers can’t find outlets for them. So until farmers are able to forge new partnerships for e-commerce and D2C delivery, farm waste will increase. 

Processors and Manufacturers
With retail shopping on the rise, Gunders said that processors and manufacturers, such as CPG brands, are seeing up to triple the typical demand. But they’re also trying to navigate social distancing regulations and employee illnesses, which negatively affects their production capacity. This is bad news for upcyclers — companies that make goods out of traditional waste products, like spent grain from breweries — who are suddenly having difficulty sourcing their raw materials. 

Photo: ReFed

Distributors
When foodservice entities are forced to shut down and cancel their orders, distributors are the ones stuck with extra product. Distributors are seeking new retail channels to find an outlet for these leftover foods — but Gunders pointed out that the food is not often packaged for retail sales (e.g. the aforementioned popcorn kernels and cheese trays). 

Grocery and Retail
If you read The Spoon on the reg, or have gone shopping for toilet paper over the last month, you know that grocery stores and retailers have been experiencing a huge boom. At the same time, grocery stores are having difficulty forecasting how much to stock, since demand is so volatile right now. And as Gunders pointed out, volatility leads to challenges in purchasing, which could actually lead to more food waste on the grocery level. 

Restaurants and Foodservice
As we know, restaurants and foodservice establishments have been one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic. Forced closures over the past few weeks led to an initial spike in donations to food banks as restaurants tried to avoid throwing away food — the donations were too much for the system to handle in some cases, said Gunders. But as restaurants stay closed, these donations are now dropping off. There are also challenges around logistics; transporting food donations the last mile can be tricky when restaurants have laid off employees and volunteerism is down.

Consumer
One of Gunders’ biggest takeaways from the summit is that COVID-19 is forcing us all to be a lot more conscious about what food we’re buying and how we’re using it. When going to the grocery store means standing in line for an hour, you’re forced to be more strategic about how to use up food you already have at home — and that means less food waste. At the same time, Gunders pointed out that hoarding behavior at the grocery store can lead to more food waste when people discover they didn’t actually need that 6-pack of brie cheese wheels.

As more people cook at home, we’re also gaining kitchen skills. These could serve us going forward; consumers will learn how to freeze, preserve, and make use of their food, instead of just throwing it away. Gunders also said that people might begin to eat food that’s past its “sell by” date, which is notorious for being confusing and overly conservative. It’s also an opportunity for the adoption of smart kitchen tech which helps use up food, like IoT-connected containers or meal planning resources.

The majority of food waste right now happens within the home. If we start being more conscious about our food, and how we consume and preserve it, the COVID-19 outbreak could actually be a significant opportunity to cut food waste. But only if we all do our part.

You can watch the full session with Dana Gunders below or check it out on Crowdcast.

The Spoon COVID-19 Summit: Dana Gunders on COVID-19's Impact on Food Waste.