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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Giant Black Truffle Goes Up For Sale Via NFT Auction

Renowned French trufficulteur (truffle grower) Bernard Planche has decided to use an NFT auction to sell one of the largest truffles ever unearthed.

Planche, who has been growing truffles for over 30 years, believes putting the giant fungi on the blockchain would prove the truffle’s provenance, quality, and authenticity. According to Planche, he sees the use of NFT as a well to demonstrate how new technology can be used to support and even strengthen long-standing cultural traditions.

The truffle, seen above, is one of the most sought-after edible fungi in the world: the black truffle (tuber melanosporum). With the average black truffle weighing in between 2 to 18 ounces, Planche’s truffle comes in at nearly triple the size of what is considered a typical large truffle. And while it’s not the world’s largest truffle (or even the largest black truffle) ever discovered, its big size puts it in pretty rare company.

The winner of the auction on the Opensea marketplace can pay for the truffle in crypto or everyday money. The winning bidder will not only get the giant truffle and an NFT to prove the big fungi’s authenticity but will also receive a copy of a physical certificate of authenticity (pictured above).

While the auction of a giant truffle via NFT is new, using blockchain as a way to establish food provenance is something startups have been working on for years. A Boston-based started called LegitFish has been working on blockchain traceability solutions since 2018, and Ecogistix has been developing produce traceability solutions using blockchain for at least half a decade.

If you’d like to put a bid in on the giant truffle, you better hurry since the bidding ends Friday. To sweeten the pot, Plance is throwing in a private day of truffle-hunting demonstrations (including searching for truffles with dogs or pigs) on his private estate, the Périgord, followed by a Surprise du Chef dinner.

Ready or Not, OneRare’s Supreet Raju Wants to Welcome You to the Foodverse

While we can’t (yet) enjoy food in all its multisensory glory in the virtual world, Supreet Raju thinks connecting food to the metaverse makes perfect sense.

“Food has to be eaten in the real world,” said Raju, co-founder OneRare, a food-centric metaverse. “But there’s a lot of things that can happen in the virtual world apart from tasting it.”

Raju, who spoke last week at SimulATE, the Spoon’s Web3 food summit, pointed to the popularity of Instagram and TikTok videos and how people love cooking shows, even if they can’t taste the food being made on their screens.

“We as audiences, we never eat that food, but we look at that food, and we are so tempted to tune in. So I think virtual food also makes a connection with people.”

Raju and her husband started OneRare during the lockdown of the pandemic. They began with the idea of food NFTs, where users would collect ingredient NFTs and would use them to claim a dish NFT. The vision grew quickly, and soon they were thinking of a full metaverse with in-world games, chef and brand partnerships, and exchanges of virtual assets for real-world utility. Adding to the momentum was the $2 million-plus raised in November via an NFT drop.

“It was supposed to be a simple project where you collected ingredients to claim your dish NFT. But from there, we’ve added layers. We started thinking about games. Then we started thinking about the utility of NFTs. And here we are, creating the first foodverse in the world.”

Part of the vision includes working with food brands, chefs, and restaurants to bring them into the metaverse and offer residents of OneRare real-world utility in the form of coupons for food, unique recipes they can use, and more.

This week, the company struck its first brand partnership with Urban Platter, an India-based ingredient provider. OneRare players will be able to use tokenized Urban Platter ingredients in in-game recipes and eventually will be able to exchange them for ingredients in the real world. Over time, the ingredient company plans to launch a virtual store in OneRare’s Foodverse where visitors learn about products and even shop.

Not surprisingly, in a world where most people still can’t explain Web3 or blockchain and virtual reality is still for early adopters, there are lots of skeptics when it comes to the idea of a foodverse.

While it may take some time, Raju thinks the skeptics will come around.

“When Instagram came in 2009, brands never took it seriously for the first two, three years,” said Raju. “And then they saw a chef who was just making recipes at home get to like 5 million followers, get his own cookbook, and then get his own restaurant. That’s when chefs and brands started saying, ‘oh my God, we need to make an Instagram account.'”

In the long term, Raju envisions the OneRare foodverse weaved into the broader metaverse, where OneRare powers virtual food experiences in other virtual worlds. The company plans to integrate with other Web3 platform companies to get there, and one example is Chumbi Valley, an NFT role-playing game the company partnered with last year.

“We look at ourselves as the food people here,” said Raju. ” We want to put it on the blockchain. You need an energy drink to train for a race? We’ll be there. You need pizza for your party? We’ll be there. That’s the kind of way we’re building OneRare.”

You can watch my full interview with Supreet Raju below.

The Food Robot News Roundup: China’s Olympic Foodbots, Nuro Gen 3

As Spoon readers know, food robots are everywhere nowadays. So to keep you current on all the goings-on in this fast-moving market, we’re launching a weekly roundup of the top stories at the intersection of food and automation. Let’s get to it.

Metal and medals

Photo: NBC Sports

This video from Reuters shows the futuristic robotics used at the Winter Olympics this year. In an effort to minimize human contact and reduce the spread of the coronavirus, China has installed robot waiters and bartenders to prepare and deliver food in the main media center. Food can be ordered by scanning a code with your phone, but perhaps the most futuristic is the tracks running along the ceiling, where orders are lifted straight from the automated kitchen and lowered to tables. 

It’s been interesting to see how the rest of the world has reacted to the robots in China. Eastern cultures tend to be more accepting of robot technology while some western media outlets have covered it with a more dystopian perspective. But having robots at the Olympics isn’t a new concept. The mascots for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were robots and the Games utilized robots in several ways to make events more efficient and safe. So as the Winter Olympics kick off, I’ll be watching the athletes compete but thinking about the robots behind the scenes that make their lives easier. 

Apples and Oranges

Wavemaker Labs acquired Abundant Robotics’ IP last year, adding to its portfolio of seed to fork robotics that also includes the likes of Miso Robotics, Future Acres, and Nommi. The company is now incorporated as Abundant Robots, Inc and is part of the Wavemaker Labs portfolio.

Now, they are seeking equity crowdfunding to raise money to leverage existing technology to build a new apple-picking robot. The goal is to use the computer vision and machine learning technology that was acquired to build a cheaper and more efficient apple-picking robot.  

Many of Wavemaker’s other portfolio companies have also used equity crowdfunding to raise capital (Piestro just launched its third campaign). Equity crowdfunding can serve as a way to give consumers a vested interest in the success of the venture and can be used as a way to market the company as well. Outside of Future Acres, most of Wavemaker’s companies have been more consumer-focused than Abundant Robots. Since Abundant Robots is a highly technical venture and consumers won’t be interacting with it directly, it’ll be interesting to see how Wavemaker applies the same funding strategy they use for consumer-facing products. 

Share the roads

Founded by two ex-Google Car/Waymo employees, Nuro announced that they have finalized the development of their third-generation driverless delivery vehicles, called “Nuro.” Nuro is 20% smaller in width than the average passenger car and designed to operate on the roads, unlike other delivery robots like Starship and Serve Robotics that operate on the sidewalks (more on those later). 

However, unlike autonomous vehicles like Waymo, Nuro doesn’t house any passengers. Instead, it contains two modular cargo compartments that hold food and can be changed between heating and cooling what’s inside. Because Nuro doesn’t hold any passengers, it’s cheaper to build and the company recently announced that they are building factories to begin production. Additionally, Nuro doesn’t have to sacrifice passenger comfort for safety and even features an external airbag to protect pedestrians and cyclists. 

While the hybrid between autonomous vehicle and delivery robot is unique, perhaps the most fascinating use case for Nuro is as a roving grocery store. A photo in the announcement video shows Nuro stocked with fresh produce. It’ll be interesting to see if this new technology is leveraged by grocery stores as they implement their dark grocery store strategies. 

Starship to the moon

Starship Technologies, the San Francisco based autonomous delivery robot company, just received €50 million from the European Investment Bank, the funding arm of the European Union. Although the company launched in 2017, demand skyrocketed (no pun intended) during the pandemic when customers were staying at home or minimizing their contact with other people. Since then, it’s made more than 2.4 million commercial deliveries and traveled over 3 million miles globally. 

In case you missed it: Food robotics coverage from the Spoon

  • Bolk, a French robotics startup that makes bowls, announced on Friday that it has raised €4 million in funding. 
  • Yo-kai’s self-driving ramen vending robot will be making an appearance at the Super Bowl pre-party in LA next week. 
  • Pizza Hut and Hyper Robotics teamed up to launch a fully automated containerized pizzeria in the parking lot of a mall in Bnei Dror, a city in central Israel. 
  • Serve Robotics recently announced that the company’s sidewalk delivery robot has reached Level 4 autonomy.

It Started as a Meme. Now friesDAO Is On Track to Buy a Restaurant After Raising Over $4M Selling NFTs

When Bill Lee and Brett Beller started talking about the idea of using a DAO and NFTs to buy a McDonald’s, they were mostly joking around.

“There was always this joke since the beginning of crypto where if you just traded very poorly, or if you lost a lot of money, you could always work at McDonald’s,” said Lee, an advisor to friesDAO, in a recent interview with The Spoon. “And we just thought it would be hilarious if we got together and said let’s try and buy McDonald’s as a DAO so we can guarantee ourselves a future job.”

The two continued talking and became intrigued enough by the idea to start a Discord server, tell a few folks, and see what happens. Within a few days, a couple thousand had joined the Discord, and it became clear that what started as a meme was now something many were taking very seriously.

“As people started joining, we realized that the pressure is on now,” said Lee. “People are actually wanting to do this for real.”

Different members of the server offered to pitch in, and before long, they had assembled a crew to make it happen. One person started a website. Another registered a domain. Someone put together the documentation. And just like that, a Discord server that had launched after Christmas was a DAO with momentum and real money: As of this week, friesDAO has over $4 million in a treasury.

In the short time the project has been together, Lee and the rest of the team have given lots of thought to how it might work. For token holders, Lee said that while they will have a say in the oversight and direction of the restaurant and get access to real-world benefits like free food, what they won’t get is any ownership equity in the restaurant. That would essentially categorize the effort as equity-based crowdfunding and subject it to much stricter regulatory oversight.

As for the purchase structure and ongoing oversight of the business, the group’s considered a number of ways to do this. While one idea is an outright purchase of an existing restaurant through a contracted third party, another possibility they’re exploring is structuring the deal as a loan to an existing franchise operator to buy another restaurant. This would allow the DAO to rely on the operator’s expertise in running a restaurant, preserve capital, and scale to more cities, all while negotiating real-world benefits for token holders into the terms of the deal like coupons for free food.

With (as of today) over $4.3 million in the treasury, the DAO already has enough to buy a restaurant, but the question is what kind? Lee said the group has priced out everything from a Subway to different nationally recognized burger franchises, but they will likely go after a smaller franchise first, essentially giving them a “practice run” before scooping up a bigger franchise like a McDonald’s.

According to the group’s roadmap, that first purchase should take place around June of this year.

You can listen to my full conversation with Bill Lee of friesDAO below, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you missed SimulATE, The Spoon’s food Web3 summit last week where we talked with others working on restaurant NFTs (including BurgerDAO and Flyfish Group), you can watch all the sessions here with a subscription to Spoon Plus. (Also, make sure to not miss SimulATE II, coming in May).

CES: Welcome to our Food Robot Future (Video)

Last month, The Spoon got on the technology industry’s biggest stage to talk about the state of food robotics with leaders building food robot companies for the restaurant, retail, agriculture and food service.

Panelists on the first-ever food robot panel at CES include Clayton Wood (Picnic), Suma Reddy (Future Acres), Andy Lin (Yokai Express), Juan Higueros (Bear Robotics) and yours truly as moderator.

During the conversation, we discussed business models, the evolution of technologies, policy and much more.

You can watch the full session entitled Welcome to our Food Robot Future below.

The Digital Twin Emerges as Tool For Rapid FoodTech Product Iteration

Changing eating habits and preferences, accelerated by a pandemic, demand different product designs and SKUs. Start-up food companies are increasing their market share with innovative new products. Added up, all of this continual competition in the food space is causing pressure for brands of all sizes for the rapid iteration of food products and their processes.

A new application is emerging that helps food companies deal with all this change, something that at once tracks consumer demand and product details to provide actionable insights for brands in their operations and with their supply chain partners. This new tool is the digital twin.

IBM is one company investing in the digital twin application as software for food companies and manufacturers. From their perspective, a digital twin is a virtual model designed to accurately reflect a physical object. Informed by data, the virtual model can be used to run simulations, study performance issues and generate possible improvement scenarios, all with the goal of developing valuable insights – which can then be applied back to the original physical object.

Transparency becomes increasingly important as consumers seek healthier ingredients and knowledge of food origins. Some brands provide details on their working conditions, plans for a smaller carbon footprint, sustainable packaging design, or community benefits as reasons to purchase their products. The digital twin improves the responsiveness of food brands by gaining deeper insights via consumer- and market- feedback data from multiple sources. Organized data helps food companies reformulate recipes, formats, or product designs in response to those signals.

At BMO’s 15th annual Global Farm-to-Market conference in 2020, Mike Duffy, CEO of New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Grocers noted how the ongoing pandemic made it clear that technology will play a key role in efficient and flexible supply chains. Duffy added ‘it is important how you increase collaboration with all your [supply chain] partners. How do you get to better connectivity, forecasting, and faster decision-making? [There has been] a lack of visibility of products moving through the supply chain. There is a big disconnect from demand signal to production [response]. How do you shorten the cycle time to make manufacturing more responsive to shifts in consumer demand so that there isn’t obsolete or excess inventory?’. It is the goal of digital twin software to provide actionable and product-specific information responding to changing demands from consumers or supply chain partners.

Leading food companies (and rising start-ups) are building a framework with their suppliers and end-customers in an integrated response system facilitated by the digital twin. It allows them to gain the insights to produce products or modify them. For example, the digital twin can estimate modifications with IoT feedback from retail, foodservice, or digital consumer surveys. Digital threads incorporate a range of information and benchmark performance to identify potential opportunities. It simulates the impact of changing raw materials or packaging, factors that may see rising market preference. As part of the support function for the food company, the digital twin more accurately validates production with real-world supply chain and operations information.

For automation leader Siemens, the digital twin helps the food sector become more flexible to drive sustained innovation through the timely use of information. The physical and digital are integrated for continual improvement of products through process updates. Siemens’ software manages data security, protection, and privacy as required, along with transparency where regulated or expected by governments or consumers. As a long-time leader in manufacturing innovation and operations design, Siemens supports how brands respond to change. Combined with lifecycle management techniques, digital twinning accelerates ‘on-point’ production, and ensures faster responsiveness.

Siemens’ Simcenter digital twin software relies on continual feedback supporting the testing and iteration of production lines, from supply chain logistics with partners at the source, to grocery retail or foodservice. Simulations in the digital twin help validate product prototyping with internal operations tests. The cost of failure is significantly less for a virtual prototype compared to a physical, in-market version. For example, UK-based TrakRap works with Siemens digital twinning software to reduce the costs of operations modifications such as packaging. The transparency of the application builds trust across the value chain.

New companies, such as Twinthread use digital twin applications to make it easier for small and medium-sized food companies to model their factory and in turn gain insights that optimize production. Utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning, Twinthread provides rapid value via operations cost savings, such as greater energy efficiency, and quality control.

Companies such as Twinthread and Siemens are supporting a revolution in food tech with the digital twin serving as the end-to-end applied tool in both the supply chain and for product management. Digital twins are timely in their ability to quickly respond to and improve product design, one day potentially anticipating pandemic impacts, or climate-, social-, trade- and geopolitical- related implications to food product development and innovation. Digital twins are design thinking in action, placing emphasis on consumer- and market-centric innovation ecosystems which remove the silos between demand signal and production response.

French Winegrower: Let Us Use Gene-Edited Crops

Last month, French winegrower André Baniol wrote an open letter to the French Institute of Vine and Wine (IFV) and to the French Ministry of Agriculture to make a plea for relaxing restrictions on the use of genetically modified crops.

As first covered in French wine industry publication Vitisphere, Baniol made a case for gene editing as a way to get rid of harmful pesticides without changing the grape varieties.

“They would simply receive genes for resistance to cryptogamic diseases, without losing either their organoleptic characteristics or their surname, the unavoidable access key to the market,’ wrote Baniol.

Secretary General of the Assembly of European Wine Regions, Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, agrees. From Vitisphere:

According to Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, the 50% reduction by 2030 in the use of phytosanitary products requested by Europe within the framework of the Green Deal is impossible without recourse to genetics. “Other countries like the United States and Israel are already using it to release new varieties, so we shouldn’t miss the boat”. Problem, in Europe, NTGs have been subject to the same regulations as GMOs since 2021. The latter prohibits the “deliberate release” and “placing on the market of GMOs” without specific assessment of the risks to human health and the environment.

As Clermont-Tonnerre writes, the US and other countries have taken a much more laissez-faire approach to the use of gene-editing compared to the EU, essentially allowing them if any changes made using the technique could have happened through traditional plant-breeding methods. The UK, post-Brexit, has taken a similar stance towards gene-editing, and just last month, China amended its rules to allow for a fast-tracking of gene-edited crops.

Long-term, the use of gene-editing holds great potential as a way to create plants that are more resistant to disease, pests and changes brought on by climate change. It also enables the creation of new crops, such as mustard greens without a bitter taste or pungent smell.

In general, the EU has been slow to take up the subject, but as pressure from different agriculture interest groups grows and politicians in countries like Switzerland begin to push for more relaxed regulation over the technology, one has to wonder if the European governing body will begin to take notice.

Meet Bolk, a Robotic Bowl Food Canteen Company That Just Raised €4M

Bolk, a maker of bowl-making robotic canteen, announced today that it has raised €4 million in new funding.

Founded in 2020, the French startup is using the capital to build prototypes which it has already started to deploy around Paris and surrounding areas.

The Bolk canteen bot, which is reminiscent of Chowbotics’ Sally robot, takes up 2 square meters of floor space and can produce up to 60 meals an hour. The Bolk is completely autonomous and can make a variety of foods, using a mix of sweet, savory, cold or hot ingredients that can make up to 300 total combinations.

The company supplies food ingredients to each robot. Ingredients are pre-cooked in local kitchens in Paris, and Bolk re-stocks each robot twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday.

The company plans to expand in 2022, looking to deploy up to 40 Bolk-bots around France. The initial rollout will be into corporate offices, but the company also has plans to explore other potential venues such as public spaces or retail environments.

The company was founded by Nicolas Jeanne, who like many in this space point to a mission of democratizing fresh food through the use of robotics.

“The catering sector is constantly evolving and we are building a new self-service food experience, offering companies and their staff a daily menu of delicious and eco-responsible meals at the best possible prices; meals that are made to order and produced in 45 seconds flat, therefore ultra-fresh,” said Jeanne.

You can get a sneak peek at the Bolk in the video below.

BOLK - pionnier de la cantine robotisée

SimulATE: All Sessions From Food Web3 & Metaverse Summit

Here’s the lineup:

  • Building a Crypto Powered Food Future – Amber Case (Unlock Protocol), Chad Horn (Devour Token), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Welcome to the Foodverse – Supreet Raju (OneRare), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry Amogha Srirangarajan (Carbon Origins), Barry Herbst (The Elliott Group)
  • Case Study: Making an NFT Restaurant with Flyfish Club – David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), Josh Capon (Flyfish Club), Conor Hanlon (Flyfish Club), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Building Web3 Burger Joint – Al Chen (BurgerDAO), Perrin Davidson (LA Eats)
  • How Will AR Change Food & Cooking – Lauren Cason (XR Creative Technologist), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • NFT Strategies for Consumer Packaged Goods – Brad Klemmer (Bored Breakfast Club), Brett Fink (Yerb), Perrin Davidson (LA Eats)
  • Chefs Spike Mendelsohn & Tom Colicchio Talk CHFTY Pizzas

 

Spoon Plus members can watch the complete sessions below.  If you would like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here. 

Your Next Job May Be in the Metaverse. Here are Four Ways Web3 Will Change The Way We Work

This week at SimulATE, the first-ever event examining the intersection between food and beverage and Web3, The Spoon hosted a panel on the future of work in the metaverse.

To look at how our jobs may change in a Web3-powered world, we welcomed Amogha Srirangarajan, the CEO of delivery robot startup called Carbon Origins, and Barry Herbst, a VP and executive recruiting firm The Elliott Group.

Below are four ways our panelists saw work changing as we enter the era of the metaverse:

The Metaverse Will Become A Way to Do All Forms of Work

Srirangarajan, whose company Carbon Origins hires virtual reality experts to operate their sidewalk robots, said in the long term, the work-from-anywhere nature of the metaverse would open doors for workers who have previously been shut out of the labor market.

“You’re going to have jobs that anybody can do in the metaverse.” said Srirangarajan. “The jobs that we’re creating are from all walks of life are moms and dads, as they’re called students, people with disabilities, people from all around the world. They can choose what time they work, how long they work with who they work, and what type of jobs that they work on.”

Web3 Jobs Will Be Community Driven

According to Herbst, jobs in Web3 will be centered around communities.

“Web2 is all about profit, while Web3 is all about that community,” said Herbst. “Brands coming into this space are going to add value to their consumers in a whole different way, connecting with their consumers, their customers, their patrons.”

Srirangarajan agreed that community is essential and sees the metaverse as a great place to find enthusiastic new talent.

“This is how we found every single one of our Skipsters,” said Srirangarajan, referring to the term the company uses for their remote VR robot operators. “The technology’s there now to support large groups of people coming into this virtual world with affordable hardware, and hanging out and building communities.”

The Metaverse as The New Job Training Ground

According to both panelists, the metaverse will be used to teach us new skills we will need for our jobs.

“Training is why we started using VR at Carbon Origins,” said Srirangarajan. “Training is going to be a big application early on. Training for all sorts of industries, starting with the service industry.”

“I foresee a lot of continued training and development not only in the real world but also with the headset, which will save companies a lot of money,” said Herbst. “Having that experience, whether it’s learning how to clean or cook, or even going on a date, having that shopping experience, eating a meal in the metaverse. Humans are social animals, and while we thrive on having that connection with people whether it’s face to face, it’s also fun having just as we’re doing now.”

Meet The Chief Virtual Officer

According to Herbst, Web3 will push brands to create a new executive job role, the Chief Virtual Officer (CVO), and one of the skills required by the CVO is that of digital real estate manager.

“The chief virtual officer will have to be very fluent first in digital land,” said Herbst. “What are the best in class metaverses to buy digital land?”

Another necessary CVO skill will be an understanding of digital security and the ability to fortify a brand’s metaverse presence.

“How do you secure those assets safely? How do you handle a hardware wallet to ensure that you’re not going to get hacked, or have your assets stolen or fished?”

And finally, the CVO will also be the chief Web3 community officer.

“Managing that community and paying it forward is going to be a really large focus for this chief virtual officer,” said Herbst. “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships and keeping that community intact.”

You can watch the video from the panel, Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry, moderated by The Spoon’s Ashley Daigneault, below.

SimulATE Summit: Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry

Former US Defense Official: Cell-Cultured Meat & Other Future Food Technology is Critical For US National Security

Last week, the future food industry was abuzz with the news that China had put cell-cultured meat and other future food technologies in its five-year plan.

According to Matt Spence, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy under the Obama administration, this type of move shouldn’t be all that surprising given how critical many leaders in emerging economies view food innovation to their national security.

“What what used to keep me up at night when I was at the Defense Department running Middle East policy was what type of attack is ISIS is going to launch?” said Spence last month, speaking on a panel (moderated by yours truly) at the Consumer Electronics Show. “How to plan for war with Iran? How are we thinking about going after Osama bin Laden?”

According to Spence, who is now managing director for investment and advisory firm Guggenheim Partners, what worried leaders around the region was very different.

“When I talked to leaders in the region, what kept them up at night was ‘do I have enough food and water to feed my population?’. They are realizing they have a way of producing meat that people want more of as they get wealthier, and others are appetites and demand for luxury change. And the equation doesn’t add up unless we do something new.”

While Spence himself may have come away from these conversations with a greater conviction that food technology is an essential part of a national security framework, the US still has no comprehensive plan around building a food future nearly seven years after he left the State Department. That’s not to say some parts of the US government responsible for food regulation and policy haven’t been slowly progressing on regulatory frameworks for some future food. Still, like with many things driven by US agencies, it’s all relatively piecemeal, and there’s no real cohesive strategy to it.

Maybe that will change. There are signs, after all, that the US government sees this as important, such as the recent grant given to Tufts to create an alt-protein center of excellence. But again, these are small gestures compared to the all-in approach we’ve seen from China, Israel, Taiwan, and other countries.

But who knows? As the Biden administration takes another swing at a slimmed-down Build Back Better bill in 2022 and works on other spending priorities in the second half of his term, let’s hope he and others in his administration begin to work on developing a more comprehensive, forward-looking plan to build a more sustainable food future. I’ve even written down a few ideas he could use to get started.

According to Spence, the timing is good for cell-cultivated meat and other future food technologies to begin making a difference.

“There’s a technology and a change we can make every day by what we eat, and I’m hard-pressed to find other areas of national security that there is that type of ready solution available.”

Just click play below if you want to watch the Future of Meat panel from CES 2022 to hear Matt Spence and others.

Yo-Kai’s Self-Driving Ramen Vending Robot is Heading to the Super Bowl

Yo-Kai Express, a maker of robotic vending machines, debuted its autonomous mobile ramen vending robot this week. Named the Yatai, the robot made its appearance at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington as part of an innovation event put on by the software giant.

When the company first announced the mobile ramen-bot at The Smart Kitchen Summit Japan in December 2020, founder Andy Lin said the machine would be able to navigate specific routes and stop when hailed by a mobile phone. The company also said they were already beginning to work with a manufacturer and had started discussions with the Universities of California at Berkeley and Irvine about having the mobile ramen machine traverse their campuses.

While the final destinations for the first few Yatais have yet to be disclosed, the company knows where its next stop is for its autonomous ramen robot: The Super Bowl. According to Lin, The Yatai will make its general public debut in LA next week at the Super Bowl pre-party.

And what about the Takumi, the home ramen machine the company teased in 2020? Based on our conversations with Yo-Kai, because the company’s primary focus has been the rollout of the Yatai, they hit pause on the rollout of the Takumi. Hopefully, with the Yatai finally making it to market, we’ll see the Takumi making an appearance soon.