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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News Roundup: Meal Kits, Produce Initiatives, and Cookie Dough

This week’s food tech news was all about two things: meal kits and food (and grocery) delivery. From Kroger’s acquisition of Ocado’s technology to Good Eggs’ $50 million fundraise to Chef’d’s partnership with Byte, they kind of dominated the news cycle.

So it’s only fitting we have a few of those stories in our weekly roundup as well! We’ve got the download on Munchery’s downsizing and Blue Apron’s brick-and-mortar stores, as well as a new fresh produce purchasing incentive. And, to round it out, cookie dough.

Blue Apron goes brick-and-mortar

Meal kit company Blue Apron announced a series of pop-up events across seven cities. They’ll have an experiential retail location in NYC, as well as mobile pop-ups (food trucks?) in L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle and movie nights (???) in Austin, Dallas, and Minneapolis. At the NYC pop-up, open May 29th until the end of June, shoppers can check out Blue Apron’s latest products, listen in on panel discussions, and pay a small fee for cooking classes (proceeds are donated to City Harvest). Meal kits are transitioning from a delivery model to retail, and Blue Apron seems to be taking this trend one step further with these pop-up experiences. We’ll try to check it out when they come to Seattle and let you know if the experiment is paying off.

 


JUST Foods debuts new vegan cookie dough

From lab-grown meat to egg-free scrambled eggs, JUST Foods is working to create vegan versions of our favorite foods. Next up: cookie dough. In flavors like Birthday Cake, Chocolate Mint, and classic Chocolate Chip, this egg-free, butter-free dough will be sold in 14 oz jars, as well as single-serve cups and 5 lb tubs for foodservice. Just Cookie Dough first launched in 2016, but JUST Foods (then Hampton Creek) had difficulty keeping up with demand. They’re hoping their new co-manufacturer will help them meet customers’ growing appetites for plant-based foods. Bonus: You can eat it raw, no salmonella qualms!

 

Munchery cuts staff in 3 cities

Online meal delivery company Munchery has stopped operations in Seattle, New York, and L.A. They’ll still operate in San Francisco, their first and largest market, but are cutting around 30% of their staff, according to GeekWire. Unlike other food delivery services which partner with local restaurants, Munchery cooked their packaged meal offerings in their own kitchens, and also gave customers the option to order for multiple days.

 


Non-profit increases access to produce for low-income families

Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit which aims to increase underserved communities’ access to fresh produce, is launching a Reward Card to incentivize fruit and vegetable purchases. Low-income families in NYC will receive cards preloaded with $20, and if they spend it on produce at one of six participating supermarkets, they’ll receive more money put back on the card. Participants can get up to a total of $180 on their card through December 31st, 2018. Wholesome Wave has focused chiefly on doubling SNAP (food stamps) benefits at farmers markets since its launch, but their cards will help them reach a larger audience.

Did we miss any food tech news stories? Tell us in the comments, or tweet us @TheSpoonTech. 

BioBean Uses Coffee Grounds to Fuel Your Fire — Literally

Strong coffee is sometimes referred to as “rocket fuel,” but London-based startup Biobean uses spent coffee grounds to make a much more literal type of fuel: the kind that powers stoves, fires, and even industrial furnaces.

Biobean was started in 2013 by Arthur Kay, an architecture student who realized that even when a coffee shop is sustainably designed, it still generates huge volumes of waste in the form of coffee grounds. But because they’re usually still hot when they hit the trash and add weight quickly, baristas typically empty coffee grounds into a separate container. That, as Kay noticed, makes it easy to collect out of the waste stream for reuse. 

Biobean works with waste management companies throughout the UK to collect used coffee grounds from over 1,500 small coffee shops, chains, and office blocks. After collection, drivers deliver the coffee grounds to Cambridgeshire, where Biobean has established the world’s first coffee-recycling factory. After cleaning and drying the coffee grounds (which are about 60 percent moisture when they come in, Henderson said), workers mix them with sawdust, compact them, and coat them with wax to create 100 percent carbon-neutral biofuel.

The fuel comes in two formats: the first are logs (or briquettes), about the size of a soda can, are a consumer product meant for fireplaces, stoves, or furnaces (kind of like Duraflame logs but with coffee grounds). They’re available for purchase pretty widely throughout the UK: via Amazon, through grocery e-commerce retailer Ocado, and also available in various garden centers. They cost roughly £6.99 ($9.50) for a bag of 16.

The other product is a biomass pellet, which is intended for B2B sales. These pellets are used on an industrial level to heat buildings.

According to their website, Biobean’s coffee fuel burns 20 percent hotter longer than wood (at least according to tests they’ve run themselves) because of coffee’s natural oils. And no, it doesn’t smell like coffee when you burn it — which is actually kind of a bummer, in my coffee-loving opinion.

Biobean is exploring other ways they can make use of coffee grounds beyond biofuel. They have a team of research scientists working to transform oils from the grounds into a commercial-grade product that could be used in cosmetics or foodservice. (It’s still in the R&D stages.) Last November Biobean also partnered with Shell to develop a diesel fuel made in part with coffee grounds.

In 2016 the company first began producing their briquettes, and today their roughly 30-person team is working to expand production of their coffee ground fuel and figure out new ways to use those ground-up beans. 

Biobean isn’t the only company trying to reduce coffee-related waste. In fact, Biobean isn’t even the only company repurposing spent coffee grounds — I’ve seen companies repurpose grounds as body scrubs or turn them into compost — but they’re doing on a much larger scale. In 2017, they converted the waste from 28 million cups of coffee into biofuel. Which puts the amount of coffee grounds destined for a landfill in perspective. 

By taking such a huge waste product and turning it into something that displaces — at least a little bit — environmentally unfriendly fuel sources like coal, Biobean’s concept is a slam dunk. I for one hope they make it to the U.S. so that my future lattés can find a second life as a biofuel heating someone’s home.

Two New Programs Bring Bees to Your Backyard

Somehow, I have found myself on the apiary beat here at The Spoon. This despite my turning into a flailing, cowering wildman at the sight (or buzz) of one. Regardless of my grade school-level fear of getting stung, I recognize how important bees are to our food system, which is why it’s exciting to see two new ways people can bring beehives to their own backyards.

You’ve probably heard the buzz on bees by now: Seventy out of every 100 human food crops are pollinated by bees. In the U.S., bees pollinate 130 agricultural plants, and bee pollination is worth more than $9 billion to U.S. agriculture. And, oh yeah, bees are dying off. Where the U.S. once had six million bee colonies in the 1960s, we now have less than 3 million.

So bees need to make a comeback. To help, MOM’s Organic Market in Maryland is selling a starter beehive. Food Dive reports that the local grocery chain has partnered with Richland Honey Bees to sell a queen bee and nucleus hive (a hive in a box). The starter kits are available online, cost $185 and Maryland residents can pick theirs up at one of four local MOM’s shops there.

If you’re looking for an even more low-tech solution to starting up a beehive, head over to Amazon and pick up Turn This Book Into a Beehive. It’s written by Lynn Brunelle, who used to be a writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy, and is filled with facts and activities about bees. But the big selling point, as the title spells out, is that you can turn it into a beehive by tearing out perforated pages, rolling them up and enclosing them in the book’s jacket and hanging it outside.

While this paper-based solution may not be as high-tech as the Nectar hive sensors, it seems like a good way to assist the pollination process in your own backyard, especially as we head into vegetable gardening season.

Of course, if you are interested in getting more into beekeeping, you should check with your local laws to ensure that your city allows it.

Turning a book into a beehive has turned into my next weekend family project. Thankfully I’ll have my grade school son there to help me get over my elementary fears.

Come Explore The Future of Meat at our May Food Tech Meetup

It’s time for the next event in our monthly food tech meetup series! We’ll be exploring a subject that’s been making a lot of headlines recently: the future of meat. Join us on Thursday, May 24th at Galvanize Seattle for drinks, snacks, and some rousing discussion. (Bonus: it’s free to attend, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps!)

The Future of Meat

We’re at a crossroads: meat consumption is on the rise, but demand for meat alternatives has never been higher. And technology is changing the way we create, market, and eat animal products. From plant-based chicken nuggets to lab-grown burgers to transparent distribution channels for high-quality steak and pork, our panelists will discuss how technology is disrupting the meat industry — and what they think meat will look like in 5, 10, and 50 year’s time.

The panel will include:

–Christie Lagally, Seattle Food Tech

–Dr. Isaac Emery, the Good Food Institute

–Ethan Lowry, Crowd Cow

-Catherine Lamb, The Spoon

There will be drinks and snacks, so come hungry and ready to meet the Seattle food tech community — and bring a few business cards while you’re at it. Register here to reserve your spot!

Can the Stircle Unseat Coffee Stirrers and Reduce Waste?

Consider the Stircle. A new invention that aims to reduce the amount of waste surrounding your morning cup of coffee by replacing those wasteful stirrers with a small machine that spins your morning joe to mix in all your cream and sugar. Although what might be more interesting is to consider all the chatter the Stircle is stirring up.

First, let’s agree that disposable coffee stirrers are a real source of waste. They’re used once for a few seconds and then discarded. I couldn’t find an exact amount of waste generated by single-use coffee stirrers (Today’s Homeowner said that 138 billion were tossed every year), but if you consider there are 24,000 coffee shops in the U.S. and Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee a day, it’s easy to imagine the number of stirrers adds up quickly.

The Starbucks Stircle ?

That’s where Scott Amron comes in. He’s a product designer and inventor of the Stircle. When you talk with Scott, you can hear that he really wants to try and make a positive impact on the world. “For years it’s bothered me that you use a stick or a plastic stick to stir your coffee,” said Amron, “it’s not just about the trash. It’s about the waste.”

Amron’s talking about all the resources that go into making, transporting and storing those stirrers. To him, those little sticks are a big problem.

So he invented a small countertop device that spins drinks around, stops, then reverse spins to mix them. Technically, according to Amron, the drinks aren’t just spun. Because people don’t put the drinks in exactly dead center, the contents rotate and oscillate. Plus, since the sides of the cup angle upwards, there is another dimension to the mix.

Amron says he built the Stircle with large coffee shop chains in mind and that the device can be installed by the milk and sugar for customers to use, or behind the counter for other drinks that need mixing by the barista. It requires a plug, and Stircles can be daisy chained, so multiple ones at a single location don’t each require a separate plug.

“You can stir 50,000 cups on ten cents of electricity,” Amron claims, “It requires very little money and very little energy.”

All this green stirring doesn’t come cheap, though. The cost of one Stircle is listed at $345. That seems high to me for a drink spinner. Plus, $345 is a lot of up-front money for large (and small) coffee chains who tend to think in the short term. Especially when that $345 (for one!) Stircle is up against a $5.65 pack of 1,000 plastic stirrers for a cost-conscious manager.

Amron published the Stircle video on YouTube earlier this month and the debate around it has been robust. Mashable thought it was “nifty,” Spruge hated it, and while TechCrunch was more positive, it called the device’s concept “ridiculous.”

Commenters have pointed out that a spoon, presumably many that are washed after each use, could achieve the same thing at a fraction of the cost. And it seems to me that even though the Stircle cycle is only 7 seconds, that would still cause a pile up of agitated people at the milk station, waiting to agitate their drinks.

But Amron may prove them wrong. He says he already has a number of customers, and part of the reason for the high cost is that he’s making each one to order. If it takes off, he can invest in manufacturing and bring that cost down.

All this aside, I’m more interested in the Stircle because of Amron. Unlike so many of us who have probably known forever that coffee stirrers are bad and kept on using, he is actually trying to do something about it. Even if he winds up just spinning his wheels.

Pig, Out: Omnipork Hopes to Replace China’s Most Consumed Meat

Dumplings, char siu, lo mein, sweet and sour stir fries — a lot of China’s most-loved dishes feature one meat above all: pork. In fact, mainland China is the world’s largest consumer of pork; they’re projected to consume about 56 million tons of it this year alone.

David Yeung is trying to curb Chinese pork consumption by replacing it with a plant-based option called Omnipork. Made from soy, pea, mushroom and rice proteins, Yeung hopes it will exactly mimic the taste and texture of pork. It contains about a third of the calories and saturated fat of traditional pork, as well as more fiber, calcium, or iron. And, since it’s not made from an animal, it doesn’t have any antibiotics or hormones, and carries less of a risk of foodborne illness.

This isn’t Yeung’s first foray into meat alternatives. He is an investor in Beyond Meat and brought the meatless burgers over to Hong Kong to sell in Green Common, a vegetarian grocery store and casual dining chain that he founded. Green Common is one of the few places in the world to serve Just Scramble, a mung bean-based egg substitute.

Omnipork will launch in Hong Kong in June, at Michelin-starred restaurant Cantonese Ming Court. Yeung’s company Right Treat is working to get their product approved by Chinese regulators. If they succeed, Yeung hopes to start selling it in mainland China by the end of 2018. 

According to a taste test with CNNMoney, however, Omnipork isn’t fooling anyone yet. Part of the issue might be because there’s so little precedent; Right Treat is one of the first to focus on making a plant-based pork product. Sure Beyond Meat has a (still relatively new) Beyond Sausage and there are a few companies turning jackfruit into pseudo pulled pork. But compared to beef — especially burgers, “bleeding” and otherwise — there are very few examples of plant-based pig products. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make an all-in-one pork replacement — one that steams, fries, and patties like pork — and they’re going where no meat alternative company has gone before.

Which is also why Omnipork has such great potential. Since there are so few vegan “pork” products, if Yeung can successfully develop one that has the same taste and texture as the real thing, it could be massively successful. After all, pork is the most consumed meat in the world, according to the World Watch Institute — and much of it is consumed in China. 60% of all hogs are bred in China, 95% of which are slaughtered and eaten before they leave the country.

Yeung realized that if he was going to tempt China away from pork, his product would have to be tailored to Chinese culinary tastes. While the majority of plant-based meat alternative companies are developed for Western palates, he worked to create a specifically ‘Chinese’ plant-based pork product. (He did, however, team up with U.S. scientists to develop it.) Because if a pork alternative is going to make a serious dent in the meat industry, it has to make a serious dent in the Chinese pork market.

Yeung’s timing just might pay off. There are around 50 million vegetarians in China, and, thanks to growing concern for health, food safety scares, and millennial dining habits, the number is projected to rise. Pair this with the fact that the Chinese government announced two years ago that they’re aiming to cut national meat consumption by 50% and a growth in the Chinese vegetarian protein market seems inevitable. If demand for meat alternatives increases in China, as it did in the U.S., then Omnipork could soon be flying off the shelves — as long as the flavor gets a little closer to pork.

5 Interesting Things We Saw at the Specialty Coffee Expo 2018

This past weekend was the Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle, and it was a playground for all things java, joe, and bean juice-related. We saw robot baristas, we saw electric coffee roasters, we saw coffee connection apps — and we also drank lots and lots of free samples.

Here are five things that piqued our highly caffeinated interest on the show floor. Maybe they’re hinting at the new wave of specialty coffee trends to come?

Beanscrop’s handheld espresso machine

For those who love their espressos (and macchiatos, cappuccinos, etc.) but don’t have a few grand to drop on a home espresso machine, Beanscrop might be a good investment.

From South Korea, Beanscrop’s coffee makers require no electric power, disposable filters, or cups. Their Cafflano Klassic is a coffee grinder, filter, and travel mug all in one — just add hot water. But the product that really caught our eye was their handheld espresso maker: it weighs less than 6 ounces and uses hydraulic water compression to help users push down with exactly 9 bars of pressure — the magic number for espresso-making. The coolest part? According to their team at the booth, it works with hot or cold water. The Kompresso is available on Amazon for $109.95.

Ground Control’s flashy batch brewer

Ground Control‘s Cyclops coffee brewer machine won Best New Product (Commercial Equipment) at the expo. The machine looks like something that would be in Frankenstein’s lab, complete with coils and glass bulbs. What Ground Control says makes its coffee so special is the multiple infusions. Basically, the machine siphons hot water over a bed of coffee grounds, then extracts all that coffee and siphons it out into the glass bulbs on top of the machine. It then re-infuses the grounds with more hot water and combines the two extractions, resulting in what is, apparently, an amazing cup of coffee.

I couldn’t taste the difference, but I did really enjoy the awesome-looking brewing process as the coffee spews out of the top.

 

SpeedETab mobile ordering platform

You know when you really want a latte but the line at your local coffee shop is too long to mess with? SpeedETab wants to help you skip right to the front by allowing its users to order and pay for drinks and food ahead of time.

The Miami-based company provides a white label ordering platform independent coffee shops. Other companies like QuickCup and Joe Coffee also let users order their coffee ahead and skip the line, but what sets SpeedETab apart is its malleability. They work with their coffee shop clients to make specialized apps tailored to their particular brand. SpeedETab starts with their templated app, then adds in the icon, logo, and color palette of their clients’ coffee shop in an effort to push brand loyalty.

SpeedETab charges shops flat fee for all their services and ingrates directly into their PoS system. The platform seems like a valuable tool for smaller coffee shops which don’t have the money or staff to design and run their own app, but want to get in on the order-ahead trend.

 

Individual pourover coffee bags

Quite a few booths featured single-serving pourover coffee bags. Individually packaged like tea bags, these pre-filled coffee filters balance over your coffee mug. All you have to do is slowly pour hot water over the top, stirring once or twice to agitate the grounds and extract all the flavor. Coffee Blenders and Twin Peaks are two that I noticed specifically, but this coffee delivery system was definitely out in fine form at the expo.

As someone who is quite the coffee snob and sometimes finds myself in situations without good coffee, these little on-the-go bags could be lifesavers. Many are also compostable, so they would be great options for camping or other trips where you’re not sure you’ll have access to a high-quality cup of joe.

Twin Peaks pourover coffee bags.

 

IceColdNow keeps your cold brew chilled

We’ve seen products that can keep your coffee hot or keep it cold, but how about one that can go from one to the other? Ice Cold Now‘s electric chiller, the Cafe Cold Wave, takes hot, freshly-brewed coffee and cools it in one minute thanks to a refrigerant-filled stainless steel coil. Users can set their desired temperature on a screen on the machine.

“Basically all iced coffee being served is old,” said Ice Cold Now founder David Dussault. “This is going to be fresh, just like your hot coffee.” This enables coffee shops to serve cold coffee without spending 12 to 24 hours cold-brewing, which requires a lot more coffee beans and also doesn’t extract all of their flavor. With Ice Cold Now, you also don’t have to use ice, so there’s no dilution.

Here’s a video we took of the Cafe Cold Wave in action on the Expo show floor. The product is available for preorder now on Ice Cold Now’s website.

Did we miss any other cool coffee gadgets, tech, or trends at the Specialty Coffee Expo? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @thespoontech!

How Different Are Different Generations’ Eating Habits, Really? We Investigate.

Chances are you, you’ve heard some buzz about millennials’ eating habits. Maybe from this very site! The Spoon research indicates that younger millennials are the generation that cooks at home the most frequently: 95 percent prepare meals at home at least once a week, compared to 92 percent of those aged 30-44 and 93 percent of those aged 45-59. And when millennials do cook, over a quarter of them choose to make elaborate meals that take more than 30 minutes to prepare.

But what do millennial cooking habits look like in real life? And what about the eating habits of older generations; are their dining practices changed by evolving technologies like meal and grocery delivery, or new trends like plant-based meats and local, sustainable ingredients?

We decided to investigate, using our own team. Three of us — me, a millennial; Jenn Marston, an older millennial (milleXial?); and Chris Albrecht, a Gen X-er — kept track of what we ate, and where we ate it, over one weekend. The goal was to compare our food “journals” and try to tease out similarities and differences in our eating habits. Here’s what happened:

Catherine, Millennial:

Friday: For breakfast I ate a few spoonfuls of an olive oil chocolate cake—straight from the pan—that I’d made the day before. I found the recipe online, which is where I find most of my recipes, though I still have cookbooks for fun/aesthetics/hoarding purposes.

Lunch was leftover cauliflower pasta eaten out of a microwaved tupperware at my coworking space. Sometimes I get $9 salads from the vegan shop around the corner but other times it is too taxing on me mentally to justify paying that much for nut cheese and a few sprigs of kale.

Friday night I went to a friend’s birthday party and ate a meal of guacamole, cheese cubes leftover from someone’s art gallery opening, and risotto scooped up with crackers.

Saturday: I had also consumed a healthy amount of wine on Friday, which is why, for breakfast, I made pasta carbonara with peas and ate it on my sofa. (Eggs + carbs = surefire hangover cure.) I usually get most of my fridge fixings from my Imperfect Produce membership, which comes biweekly.

I know I should be making coffee at home, but there are so many amazing coffee shops close to my house it’s hard to justify. So I went to one of those coffee shops (no robot baristas, sadly).

Before dinner I went to a brewery, then headed to a dinner party. This meal was unusually sophisticated: fresh crab flown over from Alaska (where two of my friends fish in the summers), lemony pasta, and a big board of bread from a local bakery and butter. Wine, of course.

Sunday: I indulged in the hallowed millennial tradition which is Brunch, at a hip spot which is not Southern but serves “Southern-style” food (shrimp, grits, etc.), has very long lines, and doesn’t give coffee refills. Still very good.

That afternoon I prepped my lunch for the week which involved roasting a large salmon filet I had forgotten about in my freezer alongside some limp broccoli that was past its prime.

Dinner was another dinner party (I am usually not this popular), with more crab, salad, and chicken thighs. Dessert was a smorgasbord of items from Trader Joe’s. 

 

Jenn, Older Millennial:

Friday
Latte for breakfast, as usual. I’ve made them at home, on the stovetop, for years.

Lunch on weekdays is kind of ridiculous, since it’s just me, working from home, alone. It usually consists of sporadic handfuls of whatever’s in the fridge. Today it’s leftover rice, cheese cube, spinach right out of the box. Handful of tortilla chips later on. More lattes.

Headed to a friend’s place for dinner, where there was enough Mediterranean food to feed the block. Nothing too outside the ordinary fare you’d expect. I took a little of everything, including beets. I’ve been trying to like beets for year. As of this writing, my attempts have been unsuccessful.

Saturday
I’m terrible at eating breakfast and almost never do, unless a glass of Filmjölk counts.

Went to Whole Foods in the morning looking for taro root, because making Poi is on the list of things to do soon. No taro root. I did, however, get some Beyond Burgers, which we cooked for lunch, along with salad, pineapple, and plantains.

Ate dinner w/ friends, at the only “Mexican” restaurant I’ve found in NYC that’s remotely comparable to the west coast. Tore into a plate of enchiladas like nobody’s business.

Sunday
Filmjolk. Coffee. Leftover plantains.

Did my busy (lazy?) person’s lunch, which is to just pick at a bunch of stuff in the fridge, including this thing my family constantly makes fun of me for, which is literally just chicken that’s been boiled then put in the fridge. More plantains.

No meat for dinner b/c I try to eat it only a few times per week, and never twice in a day. Had salad and yams instead. Felt pretty good about overall food this weekend, then proceeded to ruin that feeling with four pieces of shortbread. I regret nothing.

 

Chris, Generation X:

Friday
Friday nights are always pizza + movie night at the Albrecht house. Always. While we usually have it delivered (my 7 year old likes to tip the drivers), this past Friday we opted to make our own. We used store fresh dough and sauce, and baked up a delicious lamb sausage and spinach pizza (plain cheese for the kiddo).

Saturday
Had a swim lesson at 8 a.m. My son eats the same breakfast every day: a toasted “round” (flatbread with raisins), Fage yogurt with some kind of jelly mixed in, a hard boiled egg (no yolk), and some sliced mango. My wife’s not a big breakfast eater, preferring to stick with coffee. I blended up a smoothie with frozen berries, soy milk, and protein powder.

Saturday lunch was reheated pizza from the night before all around.

Saturday dinner was… complicated. I spent the day blowing new insulation into our attic, so I was more tired than hungry. I think all I had was a chocolate shake from Sonic. More leftover pizza for the rest of the family.

Sunday
Sunday morning is usually for waffles, but we were out of the ingredients. The kiddo had his normal breakfast. I had some Ellenos yogurt and a piece of bread with bulk peanut butter and honey.

Sunday lunch for me was prepared Chicken Tikka Masala from the local grocer while my wife brought home a salad bar salad for her. The kiddo was on a playdate and we were told he ate some mac-n-cheese and apple slices there.

Sunday dinner was at the table, the wife made delicious homemade beef burgers from scratch with a side salad.

Conclusions

Keeping in mind that this was a very limited time window with a very small sample size, the general millennial eating trends — convenience, lots of dining out, involved home cooking — still proved mostly true. I spent a lot of time cooking elaborate recipes, ordered groceries through a delivery service for optimized convenience, ate out more than anyone else, and prioritized eating (and drinking) local, “artisanal” food and beverages. For me, eating is not a means to an end — rather it’s an experience, one that is very social.

Though Jenn is also a millennial, she’s a slightly older millennial. The fact that there were distinct differences between her weekend eating and mine — she ate out less often and prepared simpler meals — suggests that even within generations, there can be significant differences. That isn’t surprising; millennials span an age range of 15 years, and a lot of them are now at the age where they’re starting to get married, have kids, and stop blowing all their money on craft beer and tasting menus.

However, she did highlight a focus on eating plant-based foods (Beyond Burger!), which is distinctly millennial. And anyone who goes out seeking taro root to make Hawaiian poi at home is at least a semi-adventurous eater who wants to experiment in the kitchen.

Chris also cooked pizza, a semi-involved meal, though he admitted that he usually gets it delivered (maybe soon it will made by a robot?). Compared to Jenn and I, he also ate at home more, or brought food home.

All in all, nothing from our food journal bucked the trends: the younger generations ate out more, spent more time preparing elaborate meals, and prioritized local and sustainable food. Now if I could just start getting more food delivery and using meal kits on the reg, I would be the ultimate millennial.

 

3 Low-Tech Solutions That Could Impact a High-Tech Food Industry

Innovative food-related gadgets and practices don’t always have to rely on things like sensors, apps, and machine learning to have a positive impact. In fact, in some parts of the world, these “low-tech” (that is, technologically simple) solutions are often all that’s needed to prevent waste, improve farming practices, and even boost the local economy.

That is to say that low tech, while maybe not as alluring as, say, using sensors to save the bees, plays a bigger role in advancing food than one might initially think. Their simplicity is effective, and often just as interesting, or at least thought provoking, as a high-tech alternative.

Consider fermentation, specifically as a way to curb food waste. Instead of just chucking food that’s about to decay (or selling it at a discount on a digital marketplace), some countries turn to a kind of “controlled decay” through fermentation. This isn’t new. The idea of preservation through decay has been around for thousands of years. And around the world, it’s still a food preservation practice.

This post gives a pretty good rundown of some of the delicacies you can find in Vietnam that exist due to preserving food through fermentation, including rượu nếp, which many Vietnamese believe kills parasites. There’s also fish sauce — the kind you’ll find on restaurant menus anywhere in the world — as well as kimchi, Sauerkraut, and Filmjölk, to name a few. True fermentation connoisseurs, I dare you to try this.

Fermentation honestly seems like kind of a no-brainer in terms of a way for, say, restaurants to preserve food and reduce waste. It’s already a trend amongst foodies, which makes me wonder if, as more and more people make efforts to curb waste, fermentation has a chance to go from delicacy to staple.

Speaking of food spoilage: typically, the closer one gets to the Equator, the faster food decays. So it makes unfortunate sense that in Kenya, fruit and vegetable vendors are constantly losing money because their produce goes bad after only a couple days. The same is true for many places of similar latitude where refrigeration isn’t always readily available.

A company called FreshBox (not to be confused with hydroponic produce company FreshBox Farms) came up with a pretty simple solution: a solar-powered cooling unit — the “box” — that looks a bit like a walk-in fridge, but reportedly costs way less to operate. Each unit can hold 70 crates of produce. Vendors pay 70 Kenyan shillings ($.068) per crate per day.

Food waste is one of the main contributors to millions of people in Africa facing starvation. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, 50 percent of all produce is lost in the post-harvest stage of production. FreshBox may not be able to solve such a massive problem overnight, but it’s proof that serious problems don’t always require a high-tech answer. Sometimes a cold box powered with cheap solar energy will do.

Another pervasive problem the food industry faces is scarcity of arable land. An oft-quoted figure is that by 2050 we’ll have to feed 2 billion more people worldwide. But it’s also generally agreed on that farmers will have to produce more food on less land. Indoor farms that raise plants without soil are one solution, but there’s no proof yet that these “modern” farming systems will be enough.

And some haven’t given up on traditional agriculture land yet. Regenerative agriculture is a land-management strategy that restores soil fertility and resilience and, in the process, sequesters CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change. Like fermentation, practices in regenerative agriculture have been around almost since the dawn of agriculture itself. They include everything from crop rotation, low tillage, installing cover crops, planting borders for bee habitats, and composting, to name a few.

One especially interesting aspect of regenerative agriculture is the role livestock can play — a definite counterpoint to the idea that livestock production is only harming the planet. Some farmers have taken to a practice called “rotational grazing,” where livestock is strategically moved around to graze, so no one part of the land is entirely depleted.

Some farmers and ranchers are already exploring the possibilities of how this seemingly low-tech action could integrate with various high-tech components in order to mitigate the burden of livestock production while also helping the actual soil. And more software is becoming readily available when it comes to overall land management, so it will be interesting to see if it can work in tandem with these age-old farming methods.

A lot of these “low-tech” innovations are currently happening in the developing world, more as a necessity than for some “oh cool” factor. At the risk of over-simplifying the matter, it would be worthwhile for food companies in more developed nations to explore these practices in more detail. Would, for example, something like FreshBox be of use to those at farmer’s markets, or the fruit and vegetable vendors who set up on the streets here in NYC? Could restaurants make more use of fermentation instead of throwing out huge percentages of their inventory?

Doing so would obviously require a lot more effort than just casual interest or enthusiasm. Still, it would behoove us to step away from the burger-flipping robots for a sec and explore such possibilities.

 

Sous Vide Pot Is Just a Pot… For Sous Vide

Sous vide fiends, gadget lovers, and devotees of the perfectly-cooked steak, listen up.

Tuxton Home recently launched their Sous Vide Pot on Kickstarter, which is a pot… that holds your sous vide wands in place. The pot is essentially a large stockpot with a 2.4 inch sous vide adapter hole, which they claim will accommodate most sous vide products on the market — or at least any one that is less than 2.4 inches in diameter. (Which notably excludes the Chefsteps Joule, though the Kickstarter page says they’re developing an adaptor to fit it.)

There are some quantifiable advantages to the Sous Vide Pot. Compared to an open Triply pot, it is 31% faster to reach goal temperature, and it requires less water and energy. The Kickstarter page also touts the silicon-rimmed lid as a replacement for clips you typically need to keep sous vide packages in place. The lid prevents evaporation, so as long as you completely cover the meat (or whatever) you’re cooking with water, you should be good. Tuxton Home also offers a custom-fitted rack to ensure that your food pouches stay fully immersed. Whether or not that makes it worth a buy depends on the frequency you sous vide and how much you value convenience.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2024375030/sous-vide-pot-here-we-cut-the-hole-in-the-lid-for?ref=category_newest&ref=discovery

The cool and not so cool part of this product is that it is basically just a nicely made large pot. Which means it is a versatile piece of kitchen equipment, but also means it’s not especially groundbreaking. But if your kitchen is teeny tiny (like mine), every gadget has to have multiple uses — and the Sous Vide Pot does, at least, seem to be relatively high quality. Though it might have made more sense for Tuxton Home to have designed a variety of sous vide-adaptable lids to fit pots that are already in your kitchen.

Tuxton Home will start shipping Sous Vide pots to early backers in May 2018. Which seems ambitious — but the company is confident they’ll hit their goal ship date. This is because they control every aspect of the production, from design to manufacturing to distribution. Tuxton Home’s parent company Tuxton also has 20 years of experience manufacturing and distributing cookware, so this isn’t their first rodeo.

You can get a Sous Vide pot for $115 with the Early Bird deal. Which is kind of a lot for a glorified stockpot, but if you’re a sous vide fiend who wants to be able to make perfectly-cooked steak slightly more quickly than you already do, it might be worth the investment.

The Stone Notebook for Chefs is Water Proof and Grease Proof

For my money, paper is still the best way to take notes. But if you’re a chef concocting your next big creation, the kitchen is a dangerous place for paper. Water splashes or grease smudges can turn notes into illegible junk.

Bookblock is set to change all that with the new Stone notebook, the pages of which, the company says, are resistant to both water and grease. So chefs can jot down notes about recipes or whatever without fearing that an errant spill or splash will ruin all their work.

What wizardry can achieve all of this? Surprisingly, it’s a very low-tech solution; one that’s also in the name of the product. The pages of the Stone are made from — stone. According to the press release:

“Offcuts taken from limestone quarries, that would otherwise go to waste, are churned up to a fine powder and turned into paper. The result is a material that’s completely immune to water and grease. Butter, wine, and oil can simply be wiped off with no stain left on the pages or smudging of the ink, making it a paper born to survive the kitchen.”

The Stone also features handy conversion charts, perforated pages, a pen holder, and magnets to keep the book in place on steel kitchen surfaces.

While we haven’t gotten our hands on one, it supposedly works just like a regular notebook. Chefs can still use their Sharpie or other favorite pens with abandon and without fear of losing any information.

Bookblock says that Gordon Ramsay, Marcus Wareing and Pierre Koffmann are already using the notebook. Everyday kitchen cooks will be able to purchase the Stone through Kickstarter starting on March 26th. where early bird backers can pick one up for £14 ($19.75) for the first two days, and after that it will be £18 ($25.39). If the Stone lives up to its promise, they’ll get my money.

Kickstarter Project Asks: Would You Like a Slice of Ketchup?

If you’ve worked in the front of house of a restaurant, chances are you at one point did ketchup bottle rotation. This task consists of emptying out one ketchup bottle on top of and into another, which somehow prevents them from exploding. But this server sidework could soon disappear if a new Kickstarter project catches on.

Bo’s Fine Foods has developed Slice of Sauce (registered trademark!), a “no-mess slice of Ketchup.” That’s right, slices of ketchup. Judging from the promotional materials, the 3 3/4 x 3 3/4-inch slices look like thick pieces of tomato-based fruit roll-ups, and are packaged like store-bought deli cheese.

According to the campaign information, the benefits of the ketchup slices are:

  • Ingredients that are vegan, non-GMO, and gluten-free with no artificial flavors
  • Uniform ketchup application with no “soggy bread”
  • Shelf stable product that will last up to a year in the pantry, no refrigeration needed

The recipe for these ketchup slices came from Bo’s Fine Foods Founder, Emily Williams. She was experimenting with her father’s old recipe for BBQ sauce, which called for braising lots of vegetables and then discarding them. Rather than tossing them, Williams ground them up, then baked and dried the mixture. Voila! A slice is born. We reached out to the Slice of Sauce folks to find out more about this miraculous discovery, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

Initial reaction to sliced ketchup around the Spoon offices was decidedly… skeptical. From the campaign video, it doesn’t look like the slices melt, which just seems weird; like eating the ketchup crust that forms at the top of the ketchup bottle. But we were all intrigued enough to potentially try it, and wondered what other condiments could be slice-a-fied. Mustard? Mayo? Sriracha? (That last one would be delicious).

Slice of Sauce has raised more than $12,000 of its $15,000 funding goal. Early backers can get their own ketchup slices for a $10 pledge, with delivery estimated for June of this year.

What do you think? Would you add a slice of ketchup to your burger, or wrap or grilled cheese? Leave us a comment and let us know!