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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Low Tech

Want to Make Cool, Modernist Cuisine Style Food Videos? This Kickstarter Might Be for You!

High-end commercials are expert at making you hungry or thirsty — chips literally explode with nacho cheese flavor, orange juice flies across the screen before slowly cascading down perfect cubes of ice.

If you run a scrappy CPG company that has champagne product video tastes but a beer budget, or you just want to make cool food videos a la Modernist Cuisine, then you should check out The Garage Learning online film school project, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

The Garage is offering up a mix of online classes for different levels, in-person workshops (which they say will follow COVID-19-related protocols), and perhaps the coolest part: DIY kits to build things like catapults, LED lighting and sliders.

There are different levels [–OF WHAT?–] available, depending on your existing skillset. The Beginner course teaches you how to use your smartphone video, and there are also 101 classes in lighting, electronics and basic rigging. Intermediate is more for still photographers using DSLR for video as well as special effects and slow motion. The Advanced level teaches higher level motion control, compositing techniques and entrepreneurship.

Prices vary from $29 for one beginner class to $199 for a one year intermediate subscription to $2,999 for everything including the DIY kits. Classes are scheduled to start in June of 2021.

One of the people behind The Garage is Steve Giralt, who sharp-eyed readers might recognize from a video he put out last year about shooting video with robots. The Garage is taking that initial video and really blowing it out into a full-on class.

Being able to put more of a professional polish on product videos would actually be a useful skill for a lot of startup food brands. Hiring creative agencies and video houses is expensive and time consuming, and the ability to create your own videos in-house that make a small up-cycled, plant-based snack bite as alluring as a big chain cheeseburger on TV could be boon for budget conscious entrepreneurs.

Some Fun High-Tech Suggestions for Contactless Halloween Candy Delivery

Among the many, many, many things COVID-19 has upended is Halloween. For obvious reasons, the idea of interacting with hundreds of strangers crowded on your doorstep in a single night to personally hand out candy isn’t quite as sweet during a pandemic.

As such, we at The Spoon have wracked our brains to figure out how food tech might be able to rescue any Halloween encounters you might have with contactless delivery. Here are a few methods we’ve seen elsewhere online.

ALEXA POWERED CANDY CHUTE
One idea that seems to be gaining traction around the web is building a candy chute. Basically you get a six-foot piece of PVC pipe or whatever, and slide those fun-sized Snickers and more down to the trick or treaters. There isn’t much “tech” in this approach, and you still have to touch the candy bars to slide them down the chute. But those intrepid enough could zhuzhe it up a bit by building some kind of Alexa-enabled, Arduino-powered food dispenser at the top. Kiddos arrive and just have to yell “Alexa, gimme some candy!” and out it comes.

ROBOT DELIVERY
This one is a little more complex, but instead of going outside to personally meet trick-or-treaters, you could send a robot. Now, most people don’t have access to a personal Starship or Kiwibot, but the Keyes family over in Austin, TX have developed their own cool looking candy carrying robot (see below). If you don’t have that mechanical know-how, maybe strap a tray on top of a remote controlled car and drive it down to the curb?

CANDY BY DRONE
I’m thinking that for potential legal and regulatory reasons, I should say that you should definitely not try this at home. But over on done maker, DJI’s forum, you can see where someone did indeed deliver candy using a drone and some rope. There are definite navigational issues with this approach, with the rope swinging wildly (it’s no Google Wing), but perhaps the drone expert in your life could hack together a better solution. And then not use it because, again, we think that is a crazy idea.

Of course, if you’re looking to discourage trick or treaters, you could 3D print this double barrel candy corn launcher, because candy corn is gross.

Do you have any contactless candy dispensing hacks? Leave a comment and let us know!

Will Pure Over’s All-Glass, No-Paper Filter Coffee Device Win Over Crowdfunders?

There is no shortage of solutions out there promising to improve your morning cup of coffee. But that hasn’t stopped Pure Over from throwing its hat into the ring with a new pour over solution that launched on Kickstarter today.

Pure Over’s is pitching an all-glass pour over system that doesn’t require anything beyond ground coffee and water. In other words, no filters. The Pure Over uses a “cake filtration” system, so traditional filters are not necessary.

I spoke with Etai Rahmil, CEO and Founder of the Portland, OR-based Pure Over this week by phone. During our call, he explained the benefits of his all-glass setup. First, it cuts down on waste because you don’t need single-use paper filters. But also, “Paper filters are superfine, they filter out the oils,” Rahmil said. “The glass filter brings out more bold chewy mouthfeels. Like a french press.” Additionally, Rahmil said that since glass does not impart any flavors, like a metal filter might, you get a more unadulterated drink. “The only thing in your cup is coffee,” he said.

As noted above, we’ve written about a ton of coffee\-related Kickstarter products over the years. Many of these have suffered huge delays. (Hello, Spinn and Kelvin!) Others never reached their backers. (Hello Rite Press!) I asked Rahmil why his product would be different and why he’ll be able to make the difficult leap from prototype to full-scale production.

“We’ve been working on this for two years,” Rahmil said of the product, “I think that me being a glass artist, I’ve been able to prototype and design this in a way that makes manufacturing easier. There are no electronics. No plastics.”

Rahmil said that they’ve already done a small manufacturing run of 100 units to send out to friends and family and coffee influencers.

As with backing any crowdfunded hardware, caveat emptor, buyer beware. You can get your own Pure Over for pledge of at least $35, with units expected to ship in December of this year.

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.