News

December 28, 2021

Podcast: Creating the Anti-Ghost Kitchen Ghost With Kristen Barnett

While the fast growth of the ghost kitchen industry is exciting, it has some downsides. The industry’s rapid expansion has often meant low-quality food, a lack of transparency, and, even health code violations.

Kristen Barnett wants to change all that with her newest venture, Hungry House. Barnett, who was formerly with Zuul, wants to be transparent about where the food is made and who is making it and to have tight control over the quality. That means growth will be purposeful in the beginning as the company builds its business one kitchen – and chef – at a time.

Last month I caught up with Kristen Barnett to talk with her about her goal of building an anti-ghost kitchen ghost kitchen. You can hear our full conversation in today’s podcast. Just click play below or listen to it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

December 23, 2021

Why “HOW” Is The Next Big Frontier In Food Marketing

The organic food movement was born way back in the early 1900s as a response to the shift towards synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in the early days of industrial agriculture. However, it wasn’t until 1972 when John Battendieri founded Santa Cruz Organics and marketed some of the first packaged organic products. And it wasn’t until 2002 when the USDA adopted national standards for organic products (National Organic Program). This new USDA designation served to usher organic into the mainstream and by the mid-2000s, organic food sales entered a rapid growth phase, increasing by roughly 17-20% per year (compared with 2-3% for conventional food sales). Today, the organic market is a massive 14 billion dollar-a-year industry that continues to grow. Even large corporations such as Wal-Mart are now offering organic choices to their customers.

Ultimately, people wanted to know what was in their food and, more to the point, they wanted to feel good about it. They wanted food to be natural and non-artificial, the way nature intended.

Having satisfied concerns about ‘what’ was in their food, the next question for many of these mainstream consumers became ‘where’ – and quickly, the local food movement exploded. We now see the “local” designation everywhere, from restaurants to grocery stores. Walk into any Sweetgreen, and you’ll see a list of the local farms which have produced all of your salad’s ingredients. And like organic, local is great, the food is fresher and more sustainable.

However, with the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ boxes checked, it’s fair to wonder what the next big question for the more conscious food consumer is going to be. I’m betting it’s ‘how’ — and ‘how’ is about to go mainstream in a very big way.

One of my “aha” moments came during the most recent Super Bowl. Alongside your standard advertisements for new products (GM EV car batteries, 3D Doritos) and tried and true services (Rocket Mortgage, Uber Eats), there was a somewhat unusual yet fascinating ad from Chipotle Mexican Grill. The spot, titled “Can a Burrito Change the World”, featured no new product, and in fact, it barely featured Chipotle at all. In the ad, a young boy asks the question, “What if this [his burrito] could change the world?” The commercial then rapidly tracks the burrito back through the food supply chain, through the planting, watering, growing, shipping stages, and touching on related topics of healthy soil and carbon emissions. The ad ends with the words (notice the “how’s”), “How we grow our food is how we grow our future” — and if that sounds serious, that’s because, well, it is!

The world population is increasing — rapidly. There were 5.4 billion people in 1991, there’s 7.9 billion people currently, and we’re projected to reach 9.9 billion people by 2051. In other words, we’re well on our way to doubling the global population in a period of just 60 years. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, and with the FAO estimating that 1/3 of all food produced globally is lost or goes to waste, it also comes at a huge cost to the planet.

How huge? Roughly 8-10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) comes from food waste. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the 3rd largest emitter of GHGs behind only the US and China.

Therefore, reducing food waste and maximizing efficiencies within the food supply chain is not only critical to feeding our expanding global population, but it’s also a key factor in fighting climate change and saving the planet. Which brings us back to the conversation of ‘how’. Or again, as Chipotle posited, “How we grow our food is how we grow our future”.

Thankfully, the ‘how’ conversation now carries some hope thanks to some incredible change and innovation happening across the food world. From modern vertical farming to booming urban agriculture industries, we’re learning how to grow food locally, more efficiently, and more sustainably. The startup company I helped co-found, Hazel Technologies, has developed solutions to safely and effectively extend the shelf life of produce by controlling the atmosphere around the produce during its shipping process. The result? Shoppers get to buy fresher, longer-lasting produce, food growers net bigger profits, and the environment sees less food waste. This year alone Hazel is projected to save over 500 million pounds of wasted produce — and we’re just getting started.

Fresher, longer-lasting produce that also benefits the environment would seemingly be a hit with the same customer base that buys organic and local, and in fact, that’s exactly what we’re starting to see on the marketing front. Some of the largest farming companies in the world like Mission Produce (the world’s largest avocado distributor) and Oppy (Canada’s largest fresh produce distributor) are now promoting the use of Hazel’s technology in their supply chain. These market leaders see Hazel’s benefits as a major selling point for environmentally conscious consumers — or even just for those who want longer-lasting produce.

From grocery store shelves to Super Bowl ads, it’s clear that ‘how’ is emerging as the next big frontier in food marketing. Case in point, this year’s CES conference, the most influential tech event in the world, will offer Food Tech as a featured part of the conference for the first time ever. Conference attendees can expect to see an incredible showcase of innovation with much of it dedicated to ‘how’ topics like growing, production, and sustainability.

Producing enough food to feed a growing population without over-taxing the planet is going to be one of the world’s biggest challenges in the coming years, but through innovation it can be done. It all boils down to ‘how’.

This industry perspective was written by Pat Flynn. Flynn is CMO and cofounder of Hazel Technologies, a food tech startup that develops products that extend the shelf life of produce.

December 23, 2021

Uber Eats and Motional to Provide Driverless Food Delivery in 2022

Food delivery platform Uber Eats and driverless technology company Motional announced last week that they are partnering to pilot autonomous food deliveries. The companies plan to launch this service in Santa Monica, California, in early 2022.

The delivery vehicle provided and operated by Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, is the fully electric Hyundai IONIQ 5-based robotaxi. The scope of the autonomous delivery service will be small to start; the electric vehicles will only deliver curated meal kits from select restaurants in Santa Monica on Uber Eats.

The design of Uber Eats drone in 2019.

Although this is Uber Eat’s first attempt at developing driverless car delivery, the company actually experimented with drone delivery in 2019. The design, which included six rotors, was unveiled at the Forbes Under 30 Summit with the intention of testing it out in San Diego in 2020. The drone could apparently carry a dinner for two and had a round trip range of 12 miles. However, since the announcement in 2019, we haven’t heard any other news about the delivery drones.

Uber Eats is certainly not the only company that has taken a stab at autonomous food delivery. In 2018, Postmates (which was acquired by Uber Eats) introduced Postmates Serve, an autonomous sidewalk delivery robot and associated food delivery service platform, which has been running pilot trials in Hollywood. During summer 2021, Grubhub and Yandex announced that they would be bringing food delivery robots to college campuses. Earlier this month, 7-Eleven and Nuro announced a partnership to pilot autonomous food deliveries in Mountain View, California.

Autonomous delivery offers several benefits, including reduced delivery fees for customers and restaurants and minimal human contact. Third-party delivery services were in high demand after the start of the pandemic, and seeing that we are still not out of it, food delivery will likely continue to be a popular choice for customers staying home.

As cool as driverless and drone delivery sounds, there has yet to be a company that has really put its concept into action, especially on a large scale. Several companies have now had the chance to pilot their concepts for a few months to a few years, so maybe, 2022 will be the year we see a wider implementation of this tech.

December 22, 2021

New York is Banning Styrofoam Food Containers – What’s next for To-Go Packaging?

Styrofoam food packaging, made from a hard plastic called polystyrene, poses a plethora of problems. First off, it takes an extremely long time to degrade, and it accounts for 10-40 percent of all litter found in streams. The production of polystyrene also releases about fifty different chemicals byproducts into the air, water, and local communities. This is exactly why the state of New York will ban the use of single-use styrofoam food containers and packaging peanuts starting January 1st, 2022.

According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, the new rule applies to restaurants, caterers, food carts, food trucks, food stores, grocers, cafeterias, coffee shops, delis, colleges, schools, and more. However, there are a few exceptions to the ban, including raw meat and seafood sold with the intention of being prepared off-premises by the customer. Non-profits and places of worship that supply food to those in need may also continue to serve food packaged in styrofoam if they qualify for a certain waiver.

There are no federal bans on styrofoam packaging yet, and all current bans are on a city or county level. In addition to New York, there are 11 other cities throughout the U.S. that do not allow food or beverages to be served in styrofoam packaging, including major cities like San Francisco (CA), Portland (Oregon), and Seattle (WA).

Without styrofoam, what is next for to-go food packaging? Companies producing and developing alternatives to traditional food packaging are focused on using sustainable and biodegradable materials that release little to no chemicals when processed.

In recent years, one of the most popular alternatives to styrofoam is using plant-based fibers to create compostable food to-go containers. Many different fibers can be used for this application, including sugar cane, corn, potato, and bamboo. Packaging made from paper, especially recycled paper, is another common choice. Although these materials are compostable, some compostable packaging contains “forever chemicals” that never break down. A Hong Kong-based company called Ecoinno uses sugar cane and bamboo to craft to-go containers without the use of any of these particular chemicals or plastics.

During this past summer, delivery service Delivery Hero launched a sustainable packaging program for restaurants it serves in an attempt to cut down on single-use and toxic packaging waste. QSRs like Burger King and Taco Bell have begun trialing various alternatives to their original single-use packaging, like reusable, recyclable, and compostable packaging.

This week, a London-based company called Notpla raised €11.7 million (~$13.1 million USD) for its seaweed-based packaging that “disappears”. The alternative packaging fully degrades within 4-6 weeks without the use of any special processing. Although NotPla’s packaging is intended to be a direct replacement for plastic and not styrofoam, this still has potential for the restaurant and food space.

Despite the awareness of the negative environmental consequences of styrofoam, not many cities or states in the U.S. have enforced a ban. Hopefully, with the rise of more packaging alternatives, we will see more places adopting legislature around single-use packaging and plastics. In the meantime, if you are interested in supporting restaurants that use sustainable packaging, check out the free app Jybe.

December 21, 2021

Kvarøy Arctic Is Using Blockchain Tech and AI To Make Fish Farming More Sustainable

We’ve recently written about land-based aquaculture and cell-cultured seafood, two high-tech production techniques that could help to satisfy rising seafood demand while reducing environmental impacts. But conventional fish farming is still a big part of the picture: Global aquaculture production rose by almost 530% between 1990 and 2018, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Kvarøy Arctic, a third-generation family-owned aquaculture business, has been farming salmon in the Arctic Circle since 1976. Over the last two decades, the company has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint. Last week, The Spoon got on Zoom with company CEO Alf-Gøran Knutsen to find out how Kvarøy is using tech to work toward that goal.

The company’s biggest innovation has to do with blockchain technology — which Kvarøy is using to boost transparency and traceability, creating a system where customers can hold the company accountable at every step along the journey from roe to packaged fish product.

“We already had a lot of basic data on where the fish were bred, how they were fed, how they were selected,” Knutsen told The Spoon. “But all of this data was fragmented and kept separate.” With the new system, data on the salmon roe, smolt production, in-sea production, harvesting, and processing are consolidated into blocks. Then those blocks are linked together, creating a chain of data that incorporates information from every stage of the fish’s life cycles. By partnering with fish feed producer Biomar, Kvarøy has even made the individual ingredients in its salmon feed traceable on the blockchain.

Kvarøy’s packages are already printed with QR codes, and the company hopes to fully implement the tracing system with its retail partners sometime next year. The data is also helping the company to improve its own practices, boosting efficiency and reducing fish mortality. For instance, the company is currently experimenting with a prototype of a tool that tells the team when to start raising salmon roe in order to sell a certain amount of fish by a certain date.

The company has also found a way to treat its salmon for parasitic sea lice without using antibiotics. Using Oslo-based tech company Stingray Marine Solutions’ laser delousing system, which is powered by machine vision, the Kvarøy team can eliminate lice without harming the salmon or polluting the environment.

In the near future, artificial intelligence may also help Kvarøy to monitor the health of its fish. The company is considering implementing a system that would recognize and track individual salmon, keeping track of wounds and other potential health issues.

Kvarøy estimates that it takes about 1.4 kilograms less carbon and 500 kilograms less water to produce a kilogram of fish than it would to produce the same amount via standard, non-organic aquaculture. Knutsen attributes most of that difference in environmental footprint to Kvarøy’s fish feed: In addition to fishmeal and krill, the company uses plant-based proteins, starches, and oils to feed its fish. “We are always trying to innovate,” Knutsen said. “And we’re always trying to find new ways of sourcing feed closer to where we produce our fish.”

Last year, Kvarøy launched a U.S. brand, placing its products in Whole Foods Markets and other grocery stores. The company is now working on transitioning away from fossil fuel use, and powering more of its operations with renewable electricity. And in the coming year, Knutsen said that the team will work toward the launch of its first land-based fish farm.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, properly managed fish farms can help to maintain and even rebuild fish stocks. Kvarøy’s approach provides an example of how aquaculture businesses can combine generations of experience with tech innovation to have a better impact.

Image Courtesy of Kvarøy Arctic

December 20, 2021

Make Pie in the Metaverse? Designer Creates AR Kitchen Assistant With Snap Spectacles

One day when Lauren Cason was making a pie with her dad, it wasn’t long before talk turned to her job.

As an XR designer who helps big brands figure out how to use technology like augmented and virtual reality, Cason explained to her father how augmented reality glasses like the Snap Spectacles work. As she was talking, Cason had an epiphany: she could make a prototype to show him.

“One of the things that’s really cool about the Spectacles is that you can prototype stuff with them very quickly,” Cason said during an interview with The Spoon. “So we worked on the pie, and then I spent the afternoon putting the prototype together, and I made a video.”

The video, which you can see above, shows the view of someone working in the kitchen with an AR lens designed to help them cook. The lens puts relevant information such as cooking temperature and countdown timers over items cooked on the stove and in the oven. Cason also created the ability to pull up a recipe by touching a specific area within the cook’s view and even had a note from her dad appended to the dough roller reminding her not to over-roll the dough.

As soon as Cason put the video on Twitter, it blew up. People loved it, including chefs, who told her they would use something like this in their restaurants.

“They said, ‘I don’t know if I would really use this at home, but I would totally use this in my industrial kitchen,'” Cason said.

Cason also got helpful feedback on other aspects of the video. For example, in the first version, a recipe would pop up when the cook tapped on the microwave and a recipe showed up, but some felt the information would obscure the view of the oven as the cook looked around.

“Some folks gave me the feedback that it might be a safety issue if you can obscure the cooktop and the flame area with the recipe,” Cason said. “So I changed it.”

When Cason bakes cookies in the second prototype version of her AR lens, not only does the recipe stick in one place on the wall, but it also includes visual placement guidance on the cookie sheet to help the baker evenly space the cookie dough.

Talking to Cason, my mind began to envision all sorts of ways in which augmented reality could be used as a cooking assistant both in the consumer and professional kitchen alike. Our talk also confirmed what I already suspected: augmented reality, of all the broader technologies that are being grouped under the term metaverse, is the most mature and ready to be useful in real world situations like our kitchens.

When I asked Cason about the metaverse, she said that it’s an interesting time for both the technology and the term itself. However, she also expressed cautious skepticism, especially when it came to big companies like Facebook’s embracing the technology.

“One of my old bosses gave a really good talk about the term metaverse and he said that Facebook was ‘cookie licking’ right now.” Cason said. She explained that the term cookie-licking is when a company treats a new technology space like a plate of cookies, only instead of eating the cookie, Facebook is essentially just picking one up, licking it, and putting it back on the plate.

They’re saying “I’m not going to eat the cookie right now, but I don’t want anybody else to eat the cookie either,” Cason said.

For now, Cason doesn’t concern herself with what cookies Mark Zuckerberg is choosing to lick on the metaverse cookie sheet. Instead, she just plans on continuing to keep iterating on her prototype so her dad – and maybe even a professional chef or two – can bake cookies in the real world with a bit of help from AR.

December 20, 2021

Three Tech Trends Helping To Save Water in the Food Industry

Between disappearing glaciers and groundwater and intensifying droughts, water supply pressure is on the rise in many regions, creating a great need to use water more efficiently.

The Spoon took a look at emerging technologies that are driving smarter use on farmlands and in food processing facilities. Here are some key innovations that could help the food system adapt to a water-depleted world:

Precision irrigation

Crop irrigation accounts for about 70% of water use worldwide, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. High-tech monitoring systems can help to ensure that irrigation water is being used as efficiently as possible.

California-based startup Ceres Imaging company captures aerial images of farmers’ fields, and then runs them through crop-specific data models to analyze plant health. Ceres can get an idea of how much water is in the soil using color infrared imaging — and can also use its proprietary Water Stress Index to detect irrigation issues. CropX of Israel takes a different approach, using a network of soil sensors to analyze moisture and other conditions.

Updated irrigation systems are also helping farmers to save water. Drip irrigation involves laying “drip lines” of tubing along crop rows. The drip lines are fitted with water drippers at intervals to apply a specific amount of water to each individual plant.

Wastewater management

At the processing stage, many plants consume large quantities of water to perform cleaning operations. Businesses must then decide what to do with the resulting wastewater, most of which flows back out into the environment.

A handful of startups are developing high-tech systems that help businesses to find secondary uses for that wastewater. California-based startup Aquacycl has developed a microbial fuel cell (powered by bacteria) that both treats wastewater and generates electricity. According to a Forbes interview with company CEO Orianna Bretschger, the system removes 70% of suspended solids and high levels of carbon and sulfur from wastewater — and the cleaner, resulting water can be recycled for use in cooling processes and other industrial operations.

Indoor farming

Indoor farming systems allow growers greater control over evaporation and soil drainage. Growers can also recycle irrigation water using recirculating systems; and can precisely control the amount of water that is applied to each plant using automation systems. The budding industry also cuts water use at the produce processing stage: There’s no need for triple-washing, as indoor-farmed produce is grown in a clean and controlled environment.

So it’s no wonder that many indoor farming companies boast high rates of water savings. Gotham Greens, Freshbox Farms, and Infarm all estimate that their systems use 95% less water than conventional agriculture to grow the same amount of produce.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 50 years from now, about half of freshwater basins in the country will be unable to meet monthly water demand. Annual drought conditions as well as concerns about a water-scarce future are likely to continue driving tech innovation in the space. Food growers and producers alike may also find that increased transparency around water-saving practices appeal to consumers who are looking for sustainable options.

December 18, 2021

Alt. Protein Round-Up: Wildtype’s Sushi, Cultivated Dokdo Shrimp

Ask any cultivated meat startup in the US and they’ll tell you it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. government grants regulatory approval to sell cell-cultivated meat in the United States. Given their vested interest in this rapidly changing market, many of these same startups had something to say as part of the USDA’s recent public comment period on labeling standards for cultivated meat and poultry products. Some 1,700 total comments were received and The Spoon sifted through many of these comments and connected the threads so you don’t have to. You can read Camille Bond’s summary here.

There was lots of other news this week in the alternative protein space, including Wildtype’s distribution agreement, CellMEAT’s new FBS-free growth serum and cultivated shrimp prototype, Eric Jenkusky’s thoughts on the cultivated meat space, and GOOD Meat in Singapore.

Wildtype to bring cultured seafood to retailers and restaurants in the U.S.

In the United States, we will likely be seeing cultivated seafood in sushi bars, restaurants, and grocery stores within the next year. Wildtype, a company based in San Francisco, California, signed an agreement this week with Pokéworks, a restaurant operator with 65 locations, and Snowfox, a sushi bar that operates within grocery stores with 1,230 locations. The intention of the distribution agreement is to allow the masses to get a taste of cultivated seafood in an affordable and accessible manner. Due to the fact that regulatory approval has yet to be granted, it is currently unclear when this distribution will occur.

CellMEAT’s FBS-free growth serum and cultivated Dokdo shrimp

CellMEAT is a cultivated meat/seafood company based in Korea, and this week, the company announced two different pieces of news. First off, the company has successfully developed a growth serum for animal cells that does not require the use of Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). This particular ingredient raises concern amongst animal welfare groups and activists (because it is harvested from the fetuses of pregnant cows during slaughter), and it is extremely expensive. FBS is one reason why cultivated products have continued to have such a high price tag, but many companies in this space have been working towards changing the ingredients found in their growth serums.

The second piece of news from CellMEAT is that the company unveiled a prototype of its cultivated Dokdo shrimp. The shrimp was actually created with the company’s new FBS-free growth serum. According to CellMEAT, the alternative shrimp was created in a variety of different shapes and sizes for a diversity of cooking applications.

Eric Jenkusky of Matrix Meats calls for transparency in the cultivated meat space

In September, the USDA opened a public comment period to solicit input about the labeling of cultivated meat products. The move was widely seen as an important step forward in the regulatory approval process for the commercial sale of cultivated meat products in the United States, which many anticipate will happen soon. When cultivated meat finally does make it to market, it’s important that consumers know exactly what’s in the product, at least according to Eric Jenkusky. Read the full article here.

Eat Just’s GOOD Meat granted regulatory approval to sell new cultivated chicken products in Singapore

Today Eat Just announced its GOOD Meat division has received the regulatory go-ahead to sell new types of cultivated chicken products in Singapore. The company will debut one of the new formats, a chicken breast, at the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach next week. The green light comes just over a year after the company received the world’s first approval to sell cultivated meat from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), Singapore’s regulatory authority for food safety. Read the full article here.

December 17, 2021

Spoon Weekly: The Rise of Molecular Farming & Cookie Robots in Alabama

2022 looks to be a big year for a number of innovating food tech approaches, including molecular farming. The practice, which involves genetically editing a crop so that its cells produce a protein, sidesteps some of the costly and tricky problems of growing proteins in traditional bioreactors since plants have built-in immune systems. As startups such as Moolec Science and Tiamat Sciences bring their products to market, many are eyeing molecular farming as a potentially exciting new approach to produce proteins at scale.

You can read about whether 2022 will be the year of molecular farming as well as the other top stories of the week in this week’s Spoon newsletter. If you haven’t already subscribed to The Spoon to get this and other stories in your inbox, what are you waiting for?

We Read the Public Comments on Cell-Cultured Meat Labeling So You Don’t Have To

After receiving about 1,700 comments, including many from private individuals, the USDA has closed its window for public comments on labeling standards for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.

Some of the most comprehensive responses to the USDA’s list of questions came from the Good Food Institute and New Harvest, nonprofit groups that share a mission of advancing the alternative protein industry. Environmental groups, agricultural associations, and cell-cultured meat startups also entered the fray. Here are some of The Spoon’s takeaways on the debate.

Brave new labeling requirements

The Good Food Institute and New Harvest presented different opinions on a key issue: whether or not the USDA should create unique labeling requirements for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.

Pointing to precedent created by regulatory agencies’ responses to other non-traditional production techniques, the Good Food Institute argued against the need for a new set of labeling requirements. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service “has generally promulgated new labeling requirements only when a new process or method materially alters the finished product or where it raises different or increased food safety risks,” the Institute said in its letter. Even the practice of harvesting meat from cloned animals, the Institute pointed out, has not warranted new requirements.

While the Institute argued for maximum flexibility, New Harvest seemed focused on guiding the creation of a framework that would be easy to navigate and empirically informed. The group advocated for a required qualifier term, disclaimer, or visual icon on cell-cultured meat labels, but suggested that the USDA wait to decide on a specific qualifier until we have a better understanding of how consumers will react to different options.

To read the full post dissecting comments about how we should label cell-cultured meat, head over to The Spoon.

A Cookie Robot is Pumping Out That New Cookie Smell in Huntsville, Alabama

If there’s one of our five senses that’s continuously underutilized when getting people to open their wallets, it’s the sense of smell. Anyone who’s been lured into a Subway sandwich shop by that bread(ish) odor wafting in the air knows what I’m talking about.

So naturally, when the company behind a new Smart Cookie cookie-making robot reached out to tell me about their new machine and its deployment at Dipwich sandwich shop in Huntsville, Alabama, my first thought was how great it must smell.

The ~~cookie scent wafting machine~~ robot itself is pretty simple. First, a robotic arm puts paper-plated par-baked cookie into an oven. Once the cookie gets rethermalized to 350 degrees – which takes about two minutes – the robot will put toppings on top of the cookie and then place it in a small cubby for the customer to retrieve it. The robot has two ovens within the kiosk, and working at full-speed can pump out about 60 cookies per hour.

You can about the Smart Cookie robot and see a video of it in action here.

Restaurant Tech

Jet.com’s Founder Launches Wonder, a Logistics-Driven Bet on The Future of Restaurants

Last week, Marc Lore, the ex-CEO of Walmart.com and founder of Jet.com, formally announced the launch of Wonder, a ghost kitchen-driven delivery brand powered by high-profile chef recipes and cook-en-route delivery vans. The company currently is delivering food to four cities in Union County in northern New Jersey and has plans to expand to New York and beyond in 2022.

Wonder has reportedly raised an eye-popping amount of money for a company that only formally announced itself today. According to reports, the company has already raised over $500 million in capital, which likely means a valuation in the multi-billion dollar range. The impressive raise is due to Lore’s track record of building highly successful and disruptive e-commerce businesses. Lore’s Jet.com effectively became the core engine of Walmart’s e-commerce efforts once the retail giant bought the company for $3.3 billion in 2016.

The company has partnered with several high-profile chefs to develop recipes and lend their names to virtual restaurants that Wonder will turnkey. Seventeen restaurants and chefs have partnered with Wonder, including Bobby Flay, Nancy Silverton, Daisuke Nakazawa, and Marcus Samuelsson.

The company was founded in 2018 by Lore and was initially run by his brother Chad. However, in 2019, former Diapers.com exec Scott Hilton took over in 2019, and now, Lore – who had mainly been acting in an advisory capacity – is stepping as the company’s CEO.

To read about Marc Lore’s futuristic vision for restaurants, click here.

Ghost Kitchen Operator REEF Continues Acquisition Spree, Buying Hospitality-Focused 2ndKitchen

REEF Technology, an operator of ghost kitchens and proximity hubs, announced it has acquired 2ndKitchen, a provider of turnkey food service to hotels, offices, buildings, and other hospitality businesses. REEF and 2ndKitchen will combine their businesses under the REEF brand and will operate under REEF’s Hospitality division. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The concept behind 2ndKitchen is to provide food service to local businesses that don’t have their own kitchen facilities, such as pubs, sports venues and hotels. The company handles everything, including setup, ordering, menu development, payment, fulfillment, and customer support. The company, which has set up shop in Chicago, New York City, Miami, Denver, Dallas and New Orleans, powers food service to over 100 thousand rooms and common areas today.

For REEF, the deal instantly adds a large inventory of customers for their kitchen business. The company, which has grown its ghost kitchen network from 50 in February to 450 as of October, needs lots of new open mouths to feed as it expands it food production capacity at a rapid clip, and this deal helps deliver just that.

Click here to read the full story about REEF’s acquisition of 2ndKitchen.

Future Food

Motif Foodworks’ New HEMAMI Receives GRAS Status From FDA

Motif Foodworks is on a mission to improve the taste and texture of plant-based foods, and in June 2021, the company raised $226 million USD to do exactly that. This week, the food-tech company made its most recent product called HEMAMI commercially available for large-scale distribution to its customers.

HEMAMI appears to be the combination of the words “umami” and “heme”. This novel ingredient is a heme protein derived from yeast, created via precision fermentation. Heme is a molecule that contains iron, and it is found in high concentrations in the blood of animals and humans. According to the company, HEMAMI can be used to improve the aroma and flavor of plant-based meat analogs likes burgers, sausages, chicken, and more.

Plant-based heme (made from a base of soy) is what gives Impossible Burger the realistic meat flavor and its “bleeding” texture. A Chicago-based start-up called Back of the Yards Algae Sciences developed spirulina-derived heme that can be sprayed onto plant-based burgers and other analogs to provide a meatier flavor.

You can read the full story of Motif’s new HEMAMI platform for more realistic plant-based meat products at The Spoon

In 2022, Molecular Farming Startups Will Move Toward Commercialization of Animal-Free Proteins

Like many of the technologies that are driving innovation in the alternative protein space, plant molecular farming has traditionally been used in the pharmaceutical industry. The practice — which involves genetically editing a crop so that its cells produce a desired protein — is being discussed as a way to rapidly produce proteins for COVID-19 vaccines.

In the food industry, molecular farming is one route to producing the animal proteins that give egg, dairy, and meat products their visual, taste, and functional properties. Molecular farming allows you to use the exact same protein that would normally be produced by a chicken or cow, without the need for any actual animals.

Moolec Science, a spinoff of Argentina-based agtech company Bioceres Crop Solutions, is probably the most prominent name in molecular farming for the food industry. Moolec already sells chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme, which the company grows in safflower plants. They’ve also successfully grown meat proteins in soybean and pea plants.

To read the full piece on whether 2022 will be the year of molecular farming, head on over to The Spoon.

Food Robots

SJW Robotics Demoes RoWok, a Fully Robotic Wok Restaurant Kiosk

This week, SJW Robotics, a maker of robotic kitchen technology, publicly demoed its robotic kitchen prototype for the first time.

When we first covered SJW earlier this year, the company was still keeping the cooking robot under wraps since patents had yet to be filed. With all their patent applications in the mail, I caught up with company CEO Nipun Sharma on a zoom call to get a virtual walkthrough of the Toronto-based company’s first product, a robotic wok-centered kitchen and consumer-facing kiosk called RoWok.

Sharma started by punching in his order on a large touch screen on the front of the large kiosk. Once entered, the robot got to work by dropping pre-cut ingredients such as chicken cubes, green onions and julienne carrots from segmented storage siloes in customized proportions onto a perforated steel tray. The tray shuttled through a steam tunnel via a conveyor belt (“like a car in a carwash.”). Once warmed, the food was dropped into an oiled wok for cooking. After it was cooked, the food was put into a bowl, sauces added, and then the meal was prepped for serving. Currently the robot has a station for humans to put the bowled food on a counter, but Sharma says the plan is integrate cubbies where the prepared meals can be placed for pickup by the customer.

To read the full story about the RoWok, click here.

December 16, 2021

We Read the Public Comments on Cell-Cultured Meat Labeling So You Don’t Have To

After receiving about 1,700 comments, including many from private individuals, the USDA has closed its window for public comments on labeling standards for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.

In its letter to the USDA, the Arizona Department of Agriculture argued that this refers only to muscle derived from living animals. Other legacy agriculture groups (including the Alabama Farmers Federation and U.S. Cattlemen’s Association) agreed that cell-cultured products should not be considered meat.

But there are other ways to interpret the government’s definition. The Good Food Institute wrote that it does apply to cell-cultured products, because they’re grown from skeletal muscle and fat cells. New Harvest argued that in order to eliminate any room for ambiguity, “strong consideration should be given to amending the statutes and implementations to expressly clarify that ‘meat’ […] may also be produced outside the animal.”

When it came to identifying appropriate qualifier terms for the new products, most of the groups commenting from inside of the industry expressed a preference for “cell-cultured,” or “cultivated.” Alternative seafood startup BlueNalu pointed to research that the company commissioned on the use of different terms, which found that the term “cell-cultured” maximized consumer appeal while minimizing confusion.

Notably, legacy agriculture corporation Tyson Foods (which has invested in UPSIDE Foods and other cell-cultured meat startups) supported the use of the same terms. Tyson also argued that it could be appropriate for cell-based companies to use product descriptors that consumers may associate with conventional meat, like “pork loin” or “steak.”

The Good Food Institute discouraged the USDA from adopting certain terms that have been put forward by legacy agriculture groups, such as “lab-grown,” “imitation,” and “synthetic.” The Institute argued that these terms do not accurately describe cell-cultured meat.

Keeping cell-cultured consumers safe

The concept of consumer confusion has long been used by legacy agriculture groups pursuing stricter labeling requirements for plant-based meat and dairy products.

In its letter to the USDA, the Good Food Institute invoked a different kind of consumer confusion. Cell-cultured meats contain the same allergens as slaughtered meats — but if cell-cultured products are labeled differently, the Institute argued, consumers could be confused into thinking that they are free of animal allergens, creating a potential health risk.

New Harvest weighed in on some potentially misleading claims that could appear on cell-cultured meat labels. Descriptions of these products as animal-free, safer and more sustainable than slaughtered meats, or acceptable by different religious standards should all be subject to scrutiny, the group argued.

All in all, the dramatic differences between different commenters’ visions indicate the need for a clear and empirically supported framework — one that is built on a realistic understanding of consumers’ needs, and that protects companies’ rights to truthful commercial speech.

As New Harvest stated in its letter to the USDA: “Regulatory frameworks need to be redesigned to keep pace with innovation and technology and future-proof our food system. We cannot expect this technology to positively impact our food system when it is built on an outdated regulatory foundation and minimum public scientific data.”

December 16, 2021

Eric Jenkusky of Matrix Meats Calls for Transparency in the Cultivated Meat Space

When cultivated meat finally does make it to market, it’s important that consumers know exactly what’s in the product, at least according to Eric Jenkusky. Jenkusky is the CEO of Matrix Meats, a company that makes plant-based scaffolding for alternative protein and cultivated meat products. I caught up with Jenkusky last week to talk about the cultivated meat market, the regulatory approval process, and the role he saw his company playing in all of it.

In the past year, Matrix has had contact with 50 plus companies in the cultivated meat industry, and is currently engaged with 22. It is also now offering companies a wet lab research contract, where it will assist interested cultivated meat companies with the feeding and scaffold protocols.

After a busy 2021, next year will be even busier for Matrix; according to Jenkusky, “We are looking at assisting a few companies in achieving a product, a cultivated food product with at least 50 percent cultivated cells in the paid product by quarter two of 2022.”

When cultivated meat products are unveiled by various companies, Jenkusky said an important question is never asked, “How much of this product is cultivated cells, and what type of cultivated cells are those?” For the sake of the industry’s reputation and the consumers who care about what they’re eating, transparency will be crucial. We are often shown photos are videos of different whole cuts of cultivated meat products, but the composition of these products is rarely disclosed.

As Matrix Meats works with companies to achieve a cultivated meat product, Jenkusky said, “One of the things that we plan on doing is when our product comes, is we’re going to be completely transparent to the world as to what and who we’re working with.” Although the USDA and FDA will be regulating the labeling and overseeing the production of cultivated meat products, it is currently unclear what level of transparency they will demand of these products.

About 40 percent of surveyed consumers expressed that they were afraid of lab-produced products such as cultivated meat. Fear like this often stems from not knowing or understanding what a product is made of and how it was produced. In the plant-based space, alternative meat sales may be dropping to the lack of ingredient transparency. For consumers to adopt cultivated meat, it will be critical to disclose ingredients, cell composition, and the production process.

December 15, 2021

Grocery Robot Specialist Simbe Robotics Patents System to Detect Produce Freshness

Whether it’s to carry groceries around the store or to deliver them to our front door, it won’t be too much longer before everyday shoppers see robots both in and around the grocery store.

But one potential interesting new use-case for in-store robotics we haven’t heard much about is for detection of produce freshness. That may change soon, as Simbe Robotics, the maker of the Tally 3.0 robot, has just been issued a patent for spectral imaging of produce and meats and detect how fresh they are.

The US patent, which is number 11,200,537 and titled “Method for tracking and characterizing perishable goods in a store,” uses computer vision to record images across a period of time and derive a set of characteristics specific to the type of food. For produce, it can assign a percentage of ripeness, determine whether it is under, over, or at peak ripeness, and determine if there is other biological matter such as a contaminant on the food. It can also determine whether a fruit or vegetable is rotten, damaged, or bruised.

From the patent:

The computer system can access and implement hyper-spectral template histograms or template spectral profiles for “underripe by three days,” “underripe by two days,” “underripe by one day,” “ripe,” “overripe by one day,” “overripe by two days,” “spoiled or rotten”, and “moldy” for specific varietals of fruits and vegetables or for fruits and/or vegetables generally. Similarly, the computer system can access and implement hyper-spectral template histograms or template spectral profiles for “fresh,” “rancid,” “low-fat,” “moderate-fat,” “high-fat,” “low-water content,” “moderate-water content,” and “high-water content” for specific varietals of meats or for meats generally.

For those unfamiliar with the Tally 3.0 robot, the company first unveiled its latest in-store mobile grocery robot in October of 2020. The robot, which wanders grocery store aisles to monitor product levels and detects misplaced items, utilizes computer vision and AI algorithms to capture and provide data to store managers more quickly without needing to send as much information to Simbe’s cloud platform.

This type of mobile inventory checking technology is valuable enough, so much so that grocers like Schnucks have already started deploying the robot across the entire chain of stores. Others, like Hy-vee, are in trials with the Tally 3.0 and likely will expand their fleets over time.

As Simbe’s robots add the capability to help grocers fight food waste – one of the most significant cost drivers for the notoriously thin profit margins in the grocery business – chances are we’ll see more grocers adopt in-store inventory robots en masse.

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