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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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From Grad School Project to $115 Million Series B: Afresh’s Matt Schwartz on Building an Operating System for Fresh Food

While in graduate school Matt Schwartz had an epiphany.

At the time, he was learning about the food system as part of Stanford University’s Earth Program and also participating in an internship with food tech investor Dave Friedberg, and it was this combination of advanced education with a front-row seat to food tech innovation that helped him to see the future.

“That’s when I came to believe that things were heading towards fresh,” Schwartz told me this week in a Zoom interview. “That we need to move towards a more nutrient-dense form of eating, a less calorie dense form of eating, to be able to nourish the world sustainably. And those two things converged into saying, I want to accelerate this fresh technology thing.”

The focus on fresh food soon led Schwartz and his eventual cofounder of Afresh, Nathan Fenner, to do a graduate study in which they talked to close to one hundred people involved in the food supply chain. It wasn’t long before they realized that, despite the increasing importance of fresh food for food retailers, there wasn’t any technology optimized for managing it.

Afresh’s Matt Schwartz

“We were going to Safeway, to Trader Joe’s, all these large, mega multibillion dollar chains, and they were all running this process on paper and pen,” Schwartz said. “Some retailers that had taken center store, non-fresh technology, and worked with like an IT consulting shop to customize the hell out of it and bend it into the fresh categories. And in that case, you’d still see lack of adherence and ultimately, at the end of the day, because it wasn’t a fit.”

These findings led Schwartz to create a company that built technology focused on managing fresh food in Afresh. Their first product, a software solution for managing fresh food inventory that Schwartz calls a ‘fresh operating system’, has been adopted by grocers of all sizes, ranging from small regionals to nationwide retailers such as Albertson’s (the Idaho-based grocer plans to install Afresh’s technology in 2,300 stores by end of 2023).

And it’s that growth, in which Afresh went from 200 stores using its technology at the end of 2021 to an expected 2000 installs by the end of this year, that is no doubt one reason the company was able to raise an impressive $115 million series B funding round announced this week. The round, led by Spark Capital, brings the company’s total funding to $148 million.

When I asked Schwartz why so many grocers are eager to better optimize management of fresh food inventories, he pointed to how even a company like Amazon found fresh challenging.

“So you look at Amazon, they bought Whole Foods because their pure-play Amazon Fresh was struggling to make a business out of direct delivery. And they didn’t stop there. They opened up their own grocery chain. But really, it was a play to crack into fresh, which is this huge part of the retail market that they couldn’t get a piece of otherwise.”

According to Schwartz, in a world where more consumers are buying commodity food items online, it’s the fresh department that is becoming an anchor for the physical point of presence in food retail. And, despite fairly low overall waste rates compared to other parts of the food supply chain – roughly 4-6% of fresh food is wasted at the store compared to over a third once it arrives in the home – he believes the 25% or so reduction in fresh food waste grocers experience using their system results in significant savings to the grocer’s bottom line.

While Afresh’s technology – a SaaS product running on an iPad – doesn’t have all the bells and whistles compared to some of the robotics and machine vision systems other startups have rolled out to help grocers with inventory management, Schwartz sees a future where all of the technology will work together.

“Where this is going is that there are robot companies, there are computer vision companies that are counting inventory, there are shelf life extension technologies, there are vertical farms, there are cold chain compliance technologies, and I believe that this is all an interconnected trend of fresh first technologies that are coming together to solve this growing problem that is increasingly strategic.”

And naturally, Schwartz sees his technology at the center of it all.

“We think about ourselves as the brain, that software layer that’s going to connect all of those things together,” Schwartz said. “So when the robots know an inventory position, or the computer vision can estimate the quality of the product, or we know whether that a berry was in cold chain compliance or not, all of that data can best fit into our system and drive the best outcomes and decisions for the retailers.”

Some Cities Are Pushing Back on Sidewalk Robots. Here Are Some Possible Ideas For Peaceful Coexistence

While sidewalk delivery robots promise to help reduce carbon emissions and car traffic on cluttered city streets, not everyone is excited about them, including one city traffic administrator in the Yaffa municipality of Tel Aviv.

According to an article published this week in the English-language edition of Israel newspaper Haaretz, Ofir Cohen, the director of transportation, traffic and parking for Yaffa, sent a letter in early July to Israel’s Transportation Ministry to convey his belief that sidewalk robots from Russian tech company Yandex were a nuisance to pedestrians.

From the letter:

“One of the ways we give priority to pedestrians is by limiting bicycle traffic on sidewalks,” Cohen wrote. “It’s understood that the robots, which are about 80 centimeters [31 inches] wide, could be a potential real nuisance for pedestrians on the sidewalks although we have also been impressed by the [robots’] smart-navigation capabilities.”

And then, on Sunday, less than a month after Cohen sent his letter, the municipality notified the Transportation Ministry it was terminating Yandex’s pilot program.

Cohen said he believed the robots should be removed from sidewalks because they made them a much less useable public resource. He also expressed concern about the impact of robot traffic on low-mobility pedestrians as well as the elderly and children.

פלישת הרובוטים לישראל החלה: לראשונה ברחובות תל אביב, רובוט משלוחים אוטונומי. ככה זה פועל.

These are essentially the same reasons that the city council of Toronto decided to issue a ban on the use of sidewalk robots late last year. The city’s accessibility advisory committee proposed the ban, expressing concern that the robots would be hazardous to those with low mobility and impaired vision, as well as elderly people and children.

“Sidewalks are an important publicly-funded public resource, created for pedestrians to safely use,” David Lepofsky, the chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, wrote in a letter to the Council. “Their safe use should not be undermined for such things as private companies’ delivery robots.”

My guess is these rulings – which followed San Francisco’s ban on sidewalk robots in 2018 – will become more and more common as sidewalk robots go from trials to wider deployments. Because of this, it’s probably worth exploring ways to accommodate the increased use of robotic delivery vehicles and pedestrians.

One idea is simply to set limits on fleet size and traffic. In cities with lighter pedestrian traffic, having limits to ensure the sidewalks don’t become overburdened with robots makes sense.

Another is to continue to push for guidelines and safety measures for robot fleets on pedestrian walkways. Guidelines put into place during the Toronto trial included a 6 MPH speed limit, mandatory insurance for robot companies, audible signals, reflectors with lights, brakes, and a requirement that robots yield to pedestrians. I can these being expanded further and putting the legal and financial burden on robotic delivery companies to ensure pedestrians are not obstructed in any way.

Finally, I can also imagine cities exploring robot travel lanes, similar to what you might see for bikes on streets and on the sidewalks themselves. And who knows, beyond that, we might even see some of them consider sending the robots underground into tubes.

What do you think? Are there other ways you can envision pedestrians coexisting with sidewalk delivery bots? Drop us a line and let us know or let us know in the comments.

Scoop: Tovala to Roll Out New Steam + Air Fry Smart Oven This Fall

Tovala, a Chicago-based smart oven & food delivery startup, will roll out a new oven this fall called the Tovala Steam + Air Fry smart oven.

Technically, Tovala’s second-generation oven, unveiled in 2018, has convection built in (which acts essentially the same as air frying). Even so, the company hasn’t pushed the air fryer functionality in promotions or via specifically designed air fryer recipes up to this point.

Above: The email sent to select Tovala subscribers who received test units of the third-generation Tovala oven

But that looks like it will soon change. According to an email sent out to a limited number of selected beta testers, Tovala has sent out a beta test version of a new model with an enhanced emphasis on air frying. The email says that “a lot of chef brains and engineering talent went behind this latest model,” which potentially hints at some interesting new recipes and features for users of the new Tovala hardware. According to the email, the latest generation of the smart oven will begin shipping to customers this fall.

At this point, it’s unclear if the company intended for word of its third-generation smart oven to get out. After Tovala sent out the test units to backers, they then sent an email calling delivery of the units a “happy accident.” Some Tovala customers were told by the company’s customer support that the new oven is the same as the old one, only that they will be sending out “air fry baskets” for an additional fee.

Update: Tovala responded to our request and confirmed they are unlocking air frying capabilities through a software update and a new accessory in the air fry basket. According to Tovala, it will be the same model oven, but after the software update and the air fry basket is made available they will rename the model the Tovala Steam + Air Fry Smart Oven. The company also confirmed they are updating their scan-to-cook feature and plan to have 100 grocery items optimized for cooking with the basket.

Ottonomy Debuts a Swervy, Customizable Delivery Robot in Ottobot 2.0 as it Closes $3.3M Seed Round

Today Ottonomy, a maker of autonomous delivery robots, unveiled its second generation robot, the Ottobot 2.0, alongside its announcement of its $3.3 million seed funding round according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The new funding, which is led by pi ventures, also has Connetic Ventures, Branded Hospitality Ventures, and Sangeet Kumar (Founder & CEO of Addverb Technologies) joining the round.

As you can see in the video below, the second-gen Ottobot introduces several features, including a new swerve-drive capability (which Ottonomy calls “crab mode”) in which the Ottobot’s drive train can turn each wheel independently. This allows the Ottobot 2 to spin in place (aka ‘zero-radius turning’) and swerve as it navigates (vs. the more tank-style mobility of robots without a swerve drive) towards it destination. This type of advanced maneuverability allows robots to weave through tight spaces, something that the Ottobot will need with its emphasis on both indoor and outdoor delivery.

Ottobots 2.0 - Most Accessible #Manoeuvrable #Scalable #AutonomousDeliveryRobots #Ottonomy #Ottobot

Other features of the new Ottobot 2.0 include modular storage locker capability (operators can switch out storage lockers to different configurations), a large front-facing color display screen, contactless delivery access, and uphill/incline travel capability.

Another interesting difference is the gen two doors are opened on the side vs. access via the top of the cabin on the first-generation Ottobot. The side-accessible doors are breadbox-style, meaning they slide open vs. a hatch-style door. Both gen one and two allow users to open the Ottobot after scanning a QR code.

Ottonomy, which began operating its first generation robot in the CVG (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky) airport in 2021, will use the money to expand to new markets in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Here’s Our Q&A With Ranjani Varadan, Who Just Became Shiru’s New CSO After a Decade With Impossible Foods

When she became the first scientist ever hired by Pat Brown at Impossible Foods in 2011, Ranjani Varadan became a pivotal part of the R&D team for one of the earliest entrants in the modern plant-based meat industry. Over the next decade, she would play a part in helping guide Impossible through many technical milestones, from the very early days in its stealth lab all the way to commercial scaleup.

And now, Varadan hopes to witness many more seminal moments in the alternative protein space as part of her new role as the Chief Science Officer for Shiru, a company that makes ingredients for CPG companies building plant-based meats and other alternative proteins. Varadan will oversee all aspects of R&D, from discovery and screening to ingredient pre-production.

I sat down with Varadan to talk to ask her about her time at Impossible, the decision to come to Shiru, how she believes her new company differentiates itself in a fast-growing alt protein market, and what she sees going forward for the plant-based foods and alternative protein industry. Answers have been edited slightly for readability.

Congratulations on your move. Tell us a little about your journey before you got to Shiru.

I have a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland, and then I was a postdoctoral fellow for several years.

And at the end of my postdocs, I was thinking about what to do. A fairly traditional route for folks with my training is the biopharma industry, and that was not particularly compelling to me at the time. I wanted to do something that was meaningful. So I was very fortunate in that I was put in touch with Pat Brown who had just founded Impossible in 2011

For me, that was the first time that I could put climate change, food security, and animal welfare all in one sentence. And it was really eye-opening and very compelling for me. It was a vision Pat had at the time with a very small team of people, so I joined because it was really so refreshing and such a different way of thinking about the problem.

What attracted you to the opportunity at Shiru?

I’m excited to be joining Shiru because I think we really need a way to rethink ingredients. Even for companies like Impossible, for them to make the next game-changing product, you really need access to ingredients that will not carry whatever other sentiments of the plants they’re extracted from, or be limited in the type of functionality like soy proteins. So I think for technical reasons, ingredients are going to bring the next big change to plant-based foods, and I’m very, very excited about Shiru doing that.

Talk about that transition from Impossible, an early stage, vertically integrated plant-based meat company which essentially built the entire ingredient list for their consumer products, to Shiru, which is a B2B company building novel ingredients for other plant-based meat companies, who in turn build consumer-facing products.

At the time (at Impossible), we were really trying to extract every different thing, every different protein so we could to play with it, understand what it does, and formulate a product with it. Ultimately, I think when you see the reality of what it takes to commercialize a product, it is very difficult for a single company to be vertically integrated for each one of these ingredients. Because the mission is not to create one SKU for plant-based meat or whatever other product a company is making. You want to be able to make a variety of different products for the economic viability of the company itself.

This is one of the reasons I find Shiru to be very interesting and fascinating because instead of trying to do it like that, you’re saying ‘we’ll create the toolkit’, right? And not only is it going to be a viable business model for Shiru, but it’s also going to help the entire community.

My understanding of Shiru is that you’re building alternative protein building blocks, but you’re not trying to create animal identical ones like you might see like with some other precision fermentation-focused companies. It’s actually looking within plants and looking for functional equivalency rather an exact equivalence with an animal protein. That’s an interesting switch for you.

Shiru is trying to create an ingredient toolkit coming from natural sources. Not just plants, it could be algae, it could be fungi, or other sources of proteins, but all naturally occurring sequences. And like you said, not looking for the exact one to one match. It’s an orthogonal way to think about the problem in a scientific way, because ultimately what you care about is the way the protein behaves. What is the texture, appearance, flavor, or whatever other aspects of the protein you are trying to create – can this protein do the same thing? As long as you’re satisfied that, it doesn’t matter whether it’s exactly the same protein or not.

One of the differentiation pitches I think I’ve heard from Shiru is this idea of building a massive database of potential plant-based protein ingredients. You’re using machine learning or AI to mine that. Talk about that. Is that is that a new thing for you?

A typical traditional approach is to say, ‘here are all sorts of plant proteins – soybeans, peas, what have you – let’s look at what these proteins can do for us? And then you find that it’s very limited. So now we have to find other sources of protein.

I think what Shiru is doing very intelligently is really leveraging validated tools from AI and machine learning and, I don’t want to get too technical, but using the sort of tools that are available for language modeling. So in a way that you might translate from one language to another, for example, using tools that have been developed for those types of things and applying that to proteins to really understand if I have a protein that looks like this, what are their proteins are going to look like that? So they’ve been able to utilize millions of protein sequences available in the public domain and use these machine learning tools to really find these matches. That’s why the library can be billions and billions, 10s or hundreds. And that’s unique, right?

It seems a lot more efficient. If you’re spending all this time trying to get an exact match to get an animal identical protein, it’s a very finite target you’re kind of aiming at. Whereas if you’re looking for functional equivalency, you have a much wider swath and I think it could accelerate time to market, correct?

Yes, And that’s why for a young company so early in their lifecycle, they already have targets. For a company with a team of forty or so people, to be at a stage where you have targets waiting to take into commercialization, is fantastic.

And because I believe that access to these types of ingredients will really create the next game-changing plant-based foods, for me it makes sense as the logical next step. I spent all this time kind of understanding the whole landscape of plant-based foods, helping to create them at Impossible. I was leading the initiative for strategic ingredients at Impossible before I left. And now to say, ‘Okay, actually here’s a completely different way of thinking about it.’

Does Shiru have a wet lab?

Yes, they do have a wet lab. I think the team is about 10 people in the lab right now. They have robotics set up to help do the rapid high throughput screening.

From a process perspective, like they’re you’re using algorithms to look through this huge dataset, sift through it, come up with promising candidates, and then you then move things into the lab?

Yes, and I think ultimately you would set up your platform for you to feed everything back the output from the wet lab right back into your learning.

What are you looking to accomplish over the next year?

I think in the very near term, really to absorb everything that’s going on at Shiru, but really to help commercialize their first few targets that are already in the works. That will be a great thing for Shiru, because it brings a lot of credibility to what they’re doing and brings in revenue which we can invest back into R&D, which is really the heart of the company. So I think that that’s just the beginning. And, you know, for all the reasons we talked about, very excited about how it’s gonna take off and really revolutionize the way we’re thinking about it.

Tell us a bit about Shiru recruiting you.

Shiru approach to me once my profile changed on LinkedIn. I was committed to teaching the entire year, so I took on advisory roles in several companies. In retrospect, I was very fortunate. I wasn’t going in too blind. I had the time to really talk to several folks and companies and really take a step back and look at what’s going on out there to understand what should be the next thing I want to do. So I’m glad I have that opportunity. I think Jasmine is an exceptional leader. You’ve talked to her. The team is wonderful. They have a great board. The board is also full of people with a lot of experience. So I think it’s going to be fantastic

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Podcast: Building a Next-Generation Ingredient Company with Shiru’s Jasmin Hume

As the former head of food chemistry for Eat Just, Dr. Jasmin Hume thought there was a lot of white space for innovation when it came to food ingredients.

She knew food companies would increasingly need new and novel ingredients they could build plant-based food products around, but felt there wasn’t enough research being done to discover these critical building blocks.

So she decided to start a company to do just that. So far, the company has raised over $20 million and recently hired Impossible Foods’ former VP of R&D and strategic ingredients.

On the podcast, Jasmin and I discuss a variety of topics, including:

  • How the alternative protein market is evolving from early fully vertically integrated brands to companies like Shiru that build ingredients and solutions for a variety of companies
  • The new cohort of food companies utilizing AI and ML to build the next generation of food
  • How what Shiru is doing with precision fermentation is different from that of Perfect Day and others trying to create animal-identical proteins
  • Where Jasmin sees the ingredient industry going in the future
  • Plus lots more!

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below or you can find it at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘Late Empire Sort of Stuff’: Wonder Faces Backlash Over Environmental Impact of Vans

By and large, the residents of the northern New Jersey suburbs where Wonder delivers agree that the well-funded startup’s food tastes great.

What they can’t agree on is whether having hundreds of Mercedes diesel vans idling curbside each night while Wonder employees prep meals is a good idea at a time when most experts agree climate change is fast becoming an existential crisis.

A story published in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal details the bickering that has broken out amongst residents of South Orange and Maplewood, New Jersey, about the omnipresent vans zig-zagging through their towns each night.

On the one hand, some feel the Wonder trucks are an unnecessary and carbon-emitting extravagance.

“There’s a stigma of calling the Wonder truck and having them idle outside your house for the decadent purpose of making you dinner in a truck,” resident Will Meyer told the Journal. “It feels like this is late empire sort of stuff.”

And then there are those who don’t see a problem with the trucks.

“It doesn’t bother me,” said Lisa Bressler, who didn’t see the trucks being much different from Amazon and UPS trucks driving around town. “I guess I like unnecessary luxuries.”

For my own part, the trucks seem a bit out of step with efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of food delivery. Serve, a maker of sidewalk delivery robots, asks on their Twitter page why should we use a two-ton car to deliver a two-pound burrito. It’s a legitimate question that makes me wonder if a three or four-ton diesel van sitting outside my home cooking food for 20 minutes is a good idea.

Ok sure, so maybe a couple of hundred vans probably don’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but what about a scaled-up, USA-wide Wonder? The company has grand plans to eventually take this to cities across the country and if it’s as disruptive as Marc Lore thinks it is, it could essentially reinvent food delivery. In a scenario like that, we’re looking at tens of thousands of Wonder vans driving around every night and sitting curbside.

Wonder’s Scott Hilton told the Journal they are evaluating electric vehicles, so maybe by the time the company rolls out across the country, they’ll have this thing figured out. But for now and the foreseeable future, residents of this New Jersey suburb will continue to debate the impact of Wonder’s vans on the environment.

This Restaurant Tech Founder Thinks The Value of Virtual Brands is Bottom Line Savings, Not Top Line Growth

If you ask Michael Jacobs what he thinks of virtual restaurants, you might expect an enthusiastic declaration of support for the concept. After all, as a co-founder and the original CEO of Ordermark and someone who helped conceive of the idea behind Nextbite, he helped create one of the highest-profile startups powering a wave of virtual restaurant brands launched in recent years.

But in reality, his answer is decidedly more circumspect.

“I don’t think restaurants need virtual brands,” Jacobs told me in a recent phone interview. “It’s a nice to have, and it’s not bad for the restaurant, but it’s not anything that will save a restaurant.”

In other words, Jacobs believes that while restaurants can get ok top-line growth running a virtual brand out of their kitchen, it’s often not a game changer for the overall business.

Where he thinks digital-powered business models can make a difference is by helping restaurants with another part of their P&L: expenses. In particular, the cost of food and materials required to run a restaurant.

This realization dawned on Jacobs over time, first as the founder of Tapin2, a company that made software running multi-brand digital restaurants at stadiums, and later as the CEO of Team Kitchens, a facilities-based ghost kitchen company he started after selling his shares in Ordermark/Nextbite in 2019 (after his separation from Ordermark, he and the company engaged in a round of litigation that, according to Jacobs, has since been settled).

During these stints, Jacobs realized that while there are some benefits to tapping into a collective brand to gain customers and garner incremental sales a la a traditional virtual restaurant, the real power in a collectively powered brand lies in the cost savings of pooled purchasing.

“While working with some of the enterprise brands, I realized that they were saving as much as 50 to 60% on every item they were purchasing,” he said.

In contrast, independently owned restaurants and smaller chains utilizing a virtual brand concept aren’t getting the same scaled purchasing savings as large enterprise restaurant brands. But according to Jacobs, if these smaller organizations leverage pooled purchasing through a virtual collective, it can make a huge difference to margin-constrained businesses.

“The important thing is like during this time where restaurants are hurting from inflation, we have a solution where they can save 15 to 25% give or take on what they’re purchasing right now,” Jacobs said. “And as we scale, I think the numbers will get even better.”

“What I wanted to build was a network of restaurants that work together,” Jacobs said of his new company KitchData. “Where it’s a bunch of small to medium-sized businesses who collaborate through these virtual brands on their purchasing.”

By doing this, Jacobs believes the restaurants can collectively work together to create a virtual brand with a purchasing power similar to that of an enterprise business. Sure, it’s a virtual restaurant, only one where the focus is on the bottom line rather than the top.

KitchData also pairs its technology with concept and brand development consulting, where it helps operators develop a brand they fully own, something Jacobs sees as another significant differentiator.

“It’s theirs to do with as they wish,” Jacobs said. “Ric Flair owns Woo Wings (the virtual chicken wing brand the famed pro wrestler launched recently). Powerbomb Pizza is owned by Pro Wrestling Tees. DaMandyz Donutz is owned by (pro wrestlers) Daria and Amanda.”

KitchData is getting going just as some in the broader restaurant tech space – including Jacob’s former employer – are restructuring as part of a broad pullback of the easy money invested into the space over the past few years. Jacobs, who managed to raise $3 million in seed funding for KitchData despite investor cooling, has high hopes for his company.

“I think it’s the best thing invented for the restaurant industry itself in decades,” Jacobs said. “And we’re going to do a good job at saving the bottom line for restaurants.”

Massimo de Marco on Why Piestro Decided to Build a Back-of-House Pizza Robot

This week, Piestro CEO Massimo de Marco announced on Linkedin that his company Piestro is building a back-of-house pizza robot for restaurants.

After seeing the news, I decided to catch up with de Marco to ask him why he decided to diversify his company’s product portfolio beyond the automated pizza vending machine that the company says has $580 million in preorders.

You can read the transcript of my interview with de Marco below.

You’re working on a back-of-house robot. What’s the thinking here?

As we started showing our original machine to some of the big pizza brands, they would say ‘this is great, but what about the back of the house?’ My response was, ‘funny you say that, come and let me show you some designs’. They thought a back-of-house machine makes tons of sense, because clearly labor is not coming back for them. They’re having massive issues with keeping their stores open.

Explain the product.

It’s about three feet wide by about 32 inches deep. And if fits into pretty much any kitchen space because it doesn’t protrude more than a prep table.

Think of a pizza store that has a 110-inch pizza table which acts as an assembly line with all the different ingredients. If you can take that space and make it smaller, say a 68-inch assembly line, for the rest of the ingredients, our machine will add tomato, cheese, and pepperoni. We are also working on an addition for a couple of the top other ingredients. From there, the pizza can be finished on the pizza table where an employee can add the oil, add garlic, etc and then put it into the oven.

So it works with a restaurant’s existing ovens?

Yes. Think about the big pizza companies that have these ovens that cost $55,000. They’re not going to remove those from their back of the house right? These restaurant operators’ big concern is how do they get people to assemble the pizza correctly without any waste and do it very, very quickly. With our new machine, they will be able to assemble a pizza next 45 seconds to a minute depending on how many ingredients. They can consistently get one pizza per minute coming through so that the employee can take it and put it in the oven cook.

What’s the production capacity in terms of ingredients?

We don’t have a set amount, because it’s in the back of the house. Even if you do you 40 To 50 pizzas, you can always refill the machine constantly. You already have a person there that’s finishing up the pizza and putting them into the oven, boxing them. It’s not something our Piestro vending machine. You don’t want to go back to refill the vending machine. That’s why the Piestro Maestro has 80 to 100 pizza capacity ingredients; with our back-of-house machine, 40 is plenty, depending on the ingredients. But regardless, you can make 60-plus pizzas with tomato sauce and cheese without having to refill it.

One of the messages you are pushing is that automating part of the pizza making leads to less waste. Is that resonating with potential customers?

We’ve had interesting conversations with some big brands. One founder of pizza restaurant company said to me, ‘if I can fix just the amount of cheese that we put on our pizza so that we’re not wasting it across my company, I can save at least $70 to $80,000 across the company in cheese alone.’

So that’ll pay for how many machines?

It’s gonna pay for at least a couple of machines. But again, I’m an operator, and I want to get these machines in the back of the house of these restaurants and get them going, and then they will pay us a SaaS fee at the end of the month. And we haven’t figured out what this is going to be, but clearly it’s going to be considerably less than the Piestro (Maestro). Once it’s all said and done, our Piestro automated machine is about three grand a month, and I want to say this is probably going to be two-thirds of that. Which again, is not something that we have defined yet.

When will I be able to see one of these in a restaurant?

We’re going to put it into the kitchen of a large brand around the beginning of October. But that’s the that’s the first machine, the prototype, that is going to be tested. It’s a pilot is not going into a public restaurant but in a test kitchen. Once we make them happy, then we know that we can mass produce the machines, but we want to make sure that if they have something to say about it, then they can give us all the feedback that they can give.

With the company adding a second product, I know you much of your fundraising through crowdfunding. Are you looking to raise money to kind of scale this?

Well, we are gonna close this current round fundraising. We’ll see how we do, but we are definitely planning on another fundraising coming up in the fall. It’s already been planned. But the beauty is that this product is not very different from our current technology. It’s the same as the dispensing we use at Piestro, so we don’t have to go out and reinvent the wheel.

Thank you for spending time with me.

Thank you.

Zero Acre Farms Launches a Healthy Cultured Cooking Oil That Tastes Good and Saves the Planet

By his own admission, Zero Acre Farms founder Jeff Nobbs is a thinking man’s entrepreneur. And while he has taken a somewhat circumventous route to the world of healthy food and environmental well-being, diet and nutrition have always been at the forefront of his life.

“Looking backward, even in middle school, I was, you know, the weird kid who brought in chicken breast and radishes for lunch,” Nobbs told The Spoon in a recent interview. “And because I thought that was just the healthiest thing. And I didn’t drink sodas growing up because I thought they were bad. So why would I do something bad? Even then, it always kind of puzzled me that there was so much conflicting advice regarding diet and nutrition.”

Years later, with e-commerce and food industry successes under his belt, Nobbs’ Zero Acre Farm is bringing to market a cultured cooking oil (actually a multipurpose oil) that checks all the boxes. Not only is it healthier than alternatives such as corn oil, soybean oil, and canola oil, Nobb’s new entry into the market uses less water in its production and engages in no deforestation.

Some of the benefits of Zero Acre Farm’s oil include a higher smoke point than heart-healthy olive oil; heat-stable monounsaturated fats (35% more than olive oil; and low linoleic acid (aka 10x less “bad fats” than even avocado oil). By comparison, one cup of corn oil, one of the more common cooking oils, contains 28 grams of saturated fat and 199 grams of polyunsaturated fat.

Moving from e-commerce Extrabux to starting a healthy restaurant in 2015 in San Francisco allowed Nobbs to tap into his lifelong passion for food and forced him to “turn on the fire hose” and gather as much information as he could from varied sources.

“I did not want to make the same mistakes that others have made and learn from others,” Nobbs said. “So I gathered knowledge from my co-founders and a long list of people that each contributed a little bit. And I kind of take each conversation and create my own mosaic.”

One of the lessons Nobbs learned, which has been steadfast in his restaurant, Kitava, and now with Zero Acre, is that creating good-tasting food is as essential as providing health benefits and helping with climate change.

”We’re not going to bring products to market where people must make a sacrifice or where they feel like to do the right thing to the planet,” Nobbs explained. “I think it’s unrealistic to expect consumers to make a sacrifice on one of those critical areas such as taste, and we focused on that from the start of our product.”

Zero Acre Farms employs a fermentation process Nobbs says is between precision fermentation and biomass fermentation. Using his business acumen to its fullest, Zero Acre uses a third party to produce its product at scale, which the founder states will allow it to hit the ground running with a substantial supply of products.

“We’ve seen some companies start with the new product and have 150 units available for sale. We’re not taking that approach; we’re making thousands of units available for sale, and we’re at a commercial scale,” Nobbs says.

After its launch, Nobbs believes there are opportunities to produce food products—such as snack foods—that use cultured oil and a solid fat variety that could take the place of butter or margarine.

While Zero Acre Farms’ product is available today exclusively on its website, in the future Nobbs hopes to bring the product to retail.

Q&A: Goodr’s Jasmine Crowe Talks About Her Plan To Build a $100 Million Company Addressing Food Waste & Food Insecurity

Last month, food waste reduction and food insecurity startup Goodr raised an $8 million Series A funding round.

When Jasmine Crowe founded the company, the Atlanta-based startup used technology to help large food service providers reduce food waste. Over the past two years, Goodr has expanded its business to provide expertise to companies looking to provide food to those in food insecure situations.

I wanted to catch up with Crowe to ask her about how the business has evolved, the challenges of raising venture funding as a Black founder, and where she sees the company going in the future.

You can read the full interview transcript below.

Before this most recent round, you’d managed to operate without a lot of outside funding.

We really just bootstrapped. To date have done more revenue than we’ve done in funding, which is something I’m personally proud of.

What was some of the thinking behind deciding to go after new funding?

It was really about scaling up to meet our demand. We had so many big deals that we were bringing in, so many new customers that we were onboarding. Because we have always been really lean and capital efficient, we’ve also had a very small team. So it really got down to ‘hey, we need to, we got to get more people in the door.’ And so that’s kind of really what happened. I was like, ‘I’ve got to raise money because I’ve got to hire more people.’

This round comes at a time where we are seeing a pullback in venture funding. You were right in the midst of that pullback.

We definitely were 100% all involved with that market change and it was scary. It was really scary because we just didn’t know. When I started raising funds in the market in late September, October of last year, and I remember one of my investors was like, ‘oh, Jasmine, your numbers are so great, look what you’ve done.’ At the time, I had only raised like $1.4 million or whatever prior to so we were like ‘you’re going to be able to raise this money so easily, like this is going to be the fastest money you’ve ever raised’. And it definitely wasn’t that. I think we had some struggles with it.

When did you notice the winds of change?

It was March of this year. We had an investor that we were working with, and then they were like, ‘Oh, the market is changing, we’re gonna have to protect our downside’. And they tried to give us these really just terrible terms. There was a lot of that. For me, that was scary because we were at a time when we were trying to grow the company and ultimately, this was happening, and I was very afraid we weren’t going to be able to do it. But we made it through.

When I first talked to you in 2017-18, some of the company’s focus was on food waste reduction using technologies like blockchain. That was part of Goodr’s pitch early on. Through the pandemic, you really moved to help people in a time of food insecurity. So talk about how the business has evolved over the past couple of years.

At the start of the pandemic, we were extremely busy, because so many businesses were closing and we were giving all of their food as you can imagine. So eventually, I thought ‘You know what, you got to go back to what you’re really good at Jasmine and that’s helping people. You got to get back into the groove of like making sure people have access to food.’ And so we spun up the hunger solution side of our business. We made it very clear and very easy to work with us to address food insecurity in a community. So we began working with customers like the NBA, and Accenture, and State Farm, who wanted to do something with a lens of being positive, of being in the community, and giving people that dignity. We’re still helping businesses reduce their food waste, but we’re working on the food insecurity side as well.

Is there still a blockchain-oriented component to your food waste reduction solution?

We do have two use cases. One is a smart contract with our nonprofits, where when they sign for the deliveries, there is a letter of donation letter that goes into our clients’ platform that their signature somewhat creates. And so we have an agreement with them to do that. And then there’s one use case on Ethereum just really showing how the food is moving, who’s getting the food, what time it was received. It’s there, but we pulled back from it because it was becoming super trendy.

How would you describe the food waste reduction platform and the technologies?

The best way to describe it is we inventory everything it is that a business sells. We make it really easy for them to request a pickup. So this is a one stop shop for those clients. They’re clicking on the items that they have, they’re requesting a pickup and we’re leveraging our APIs and our technology to aggregate different drivers for the logistics of getting that food picked up and then delivered directly to those nonprofits.

What it also does is it converts for every single pound of food that we keep out of landfill. It’s converting that to a lot of sustainability metrics that our clients are using, such as how many meals are provided, how many people, who the food is going to, how many pounds of CO2 emissions that they’re helping to prevent. We have a dashboard that also says to them, ‘this is equivalent to this many gallons of water, this many trees kept off the road.’ So it really helps them to tell a story around their sustainability initiatives.

Who is your typical customer?

We have a lot of large corporations. Our big customers like the food service customer. So we have the Sodexos, the Aramarks, the Compasses, those are essentially our customers. And then we work with their locations to roll out the service. We serve companies like Nike, Oracle, LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs, Capital One. They’re our customers, but we’re really getting all the food if that makes sense.

We know that the tech industry has too many white guys. When you went out there to raise funding, as a Black founder, was it more challenging for you? What barriers did you find?

It was definitely hard. An article I saw last week made it clear that the amount of funding that was going to Black founders has gone down. I was really focused on the business in 2020 and 2021, as opposed to I think probably focusing on trying to get the money in. So it’s hard, and it didn’t get easier for us. But what I will say is, I felt like I still went out there and went after it the right way. It wasn’t easy for me, and I probably should have gone out sooner. In hindsight, I think that was the thing that I missed out on. Going out in late 2021 hurt me because it started to slow down a little bit.

Tell me about your current like footprint in terms of cities and reach.

In terms of revenue and customer size, our top five markets are Atlanta, Washington DC, Dallas, Denver. We’re seeing a lot of work like in the tri-state area; we have a lot of customers in New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York area.

We’re really trying to expand what our client base is. We operate in about 26 cities right now, and our goal is to really be everywhere in the United States. We just want to be in as many places as we can. And eventually, probably not with this round of funding, but we’re going to start looking at what it looks like to have some kind of North America expansion, most likely, throughout Canada or Mexico.

I understand the food waste reduction side monetization model. Can you talk about the business model for the food insecurity management side of the business?

It’s such a big span. I think a lot of people, because it’s so charitable, they don’t look at it from a business standpoint. Billions and billions of dollars are spent on an annual basis trying to feed people. Now Goodr is coming in with this as a systematic solution, saying what this many, with this amount of money, this is how many meals we’ll be able to provide this many families.

So it’s a managed service?

It’s a cost-plus model. Our customers will come to us and say ‘we have a budget of $50,000, we’d like to service families that are food insecure.’ We then create a menu, we do the entire activation. So it’s a cost plus. They’re paying an administrative fee plus the fee for all of the food.

What’s the big plan five years from now? What do you want Goodr to grow into?

I think it should be worldwide. Ultimately, within five years, we are tracking ourselves to being a company that’s making $100 million a year. I think we could get there within five years. Our goal for 2024 is to be about $25 million, and so really to see ourselves double year after year after that. Food waste is becoming such a bigger problem, so people are finally paying attention to it. When I was first getting started with this company, ao many people just didn’t believe it was a big issue and they didn’t think it was a big deal. And now, I think people are starting to understand food waste is a problem and what can we do to address it. More and more customers are coming to us, and it’s a blessing.

Thank you for your time.

You’re welcome.

With European Governmental Approval, Ynsect Moves Forward With Its Plan to Feed the World, Save the Climate

Will bugs save the world?

Save may be a strong word, but Paris-based Ynsect, a producer of insect protein and natural insect fertilizers, believes in the dual mission of feeding the world and protecting our diminishing climatic resources. That vision moves a step forward with backing from a European food safety agency and data that supports a change in consumer attitudes toward a diet containing bugs and insects.

According to Ynsect’s CEO Antoine Hubert, approval by the European Food Standard Agency for Ynsect’s Lesser mealworm for human consumption will allow his company to quickly move forward with its efforts to create its line of insect-based products as well as work with third-part food manufacturers.

“Our company was born from a passion for helping tackle climate change through real solutions. Insect protein, which can easily be incorporated as a powder into a whole range of products, is healthier than plant protein and more environmentally friendly than traditional animal proteins,” Hubert told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We’re excited to see the EFSA approval come through in line with consumer demands; conscious consumers become increasingly informed of better choices for both them and the environment.”

Coinciding with the EFSA green light results from an independent research firm gave further credence to Ynsect’s timing. OnePoll, a British market research company, surveyed consumers to gauge their willingness of participants to consume insects as an alternative source of protein. At first, only 59% were open to the idea, but after learning the benefits of insect consumption, over 70% responded favorably. More than half of vegans and vegetarians responded favorably once the benefits were explained.

Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm and Buffalo beetles, an insect that Hubert says is rich in protein and fat. The mealworm as a bug has been part of Southeast Asian diets and can reproduce prolifically. Ynsect uses vertical farming techniques to “grow” these insects and deploys chemical-free produce to turn them into a range of products, including fertilizers and pet food. Recently, Ynsect expanded its footprint by acquiring Protifarm, a Dutch mealworm producer, and then by incorporating Nebraska-based Jord Producers, a start-up mealworm farm, into its portfolio.

Ynsect’s consumer product is called AdalbaPro, a minimally processed ingredient line offering meat replacement and protein fortification solutions. Working with European partners, AdalbaPro products are already in several baked goods, sports nutrition, pasta, and meat alternatives. AdalbaPro contains all essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals as a high-quality animal protein.

As Hubert chronicles his company’s path, not only has it shown organic growth by evolving from a fertilizer/aquaculture company to pet food and then to a product for humans, but Ynsect’s approach has also overcome the issue other alternative protein companies face in building infrastructure. The company has carefully conducted its mealworm growing processing plan, which allows it to remain nimble for an opportunity in Europe and, hopefully, after governmental approval, the U.S.

To date, Ynsect has raised more than $400 million from such companies as OurCrowd, SuperNova Invest, and Caisse d’Epargne. The company also has captured the imagination of the real-life Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. The actor/investor recently touted Ynsect’s product on Steve Colbert’s late-night show.

(Extract) Robert Downey Jr - The late Colbert show with Stephen Colbert