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Five Predictions for Consumer Food & Kitchen Tech in 2022

Food tech prediction week at The Spoon continues, and today we’re looking at the home. And if you haven’t already, make sure you check out my predictions on restaurant tech, food robots, and plant-based meat.

Meet The Smart Food Delivery Locker

For the last few years, companies like Walmart, Amazon, and others have been trying to figure out how to deliver food when we’re not home. Ideas have run the gamut, from delivering products directly to our fridges, onto our dinner tables, depositing groceries in our garage, to even dropping deliveries into our car trunk.

All this effort would be unnecessary if homes just had temperature-controlled storage lockers, something that – at least until lately – hadn’t existed.

Until now. This month Walmart and HomeValet announced a pilot program that will deliver fresh groceries to the HomeValet smart outdoor delivery receptacle. Another company, Fresh Portal, is building a temperature-controlled home delivery box that is accessible both outside (for delivery companies) and inside the home. And then there’s Dynosafe, who appeared on Shark Tank in the spring of 2021 and got an investment from Robert Herjavec.

While companies like Yale have been making smart boxes for delivery for a little while, there hasn’t been a widely available temperature-controlled smart storage box. In 2022, I expect we’ll start seeing more deals like the Walmart/HomeValet deal, as well as some integration deals with third-party delivery providers.

Steam-Powered Cooking Gains Traction

Although steam cooking has long been a fixture in pro kitchens, it’s never taken off in the consumer kitchen. However, that could change in 2022.

Consumer steam cooking picked up, um, steam in 2020, when Anova started shipping their countertop Precision Oven. At CES this year, LG showed off a new microwave with steam cooking. And then there’s Tovala, the food delivery and steam oven startup which has started advertising it on national Sunday night football broadcasts.

While steam cooking has followed a similar path to sous vide circulators – a pro tool making its way into the home – I think it has much wider appeal. Because they know the power of steam-cooking, some chefs have pined for an affordable home combi-oven. Now that they’ve finally got their wish, 2022 might be the year consumers take notice.

Amazon Debuts a Smart Fridge

Back in 2017 when I first asked if Amazon might build on a smart fridge, all the evidence I had to go on was a couple of patent filings. Since that time, we’ve watched as the online giant launched branded kitchen appliances and worked on making Alexa a capable home cooking assistant.

And then last fall, Business Insider wrote about Project Pulse, Amazon’s top-secret smart fridge project. According to insiders, the fridge would include machine vision and other advanced technology tell us when food’s about to expire, and automatically order & replenish through Amazon. The effort is reportedly being led by the same group that developed Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and has been in the works for a couple years.

Truth be told, the smart fridge category could use Amazon. The market has grown stale as big US appliance brands have slowed down their efforts in this space, including market leader Samsung. While the South Korean appliance giant has historically been the most aggressive among the bigs in the category, Samsung didn’t make any substantive announcements about Family Hub at CES this year other than adding it to the Bespoke Fridge line. There are also signs that the company may be shifting its focus to its new Home Hub as the center of its smart home strategy.

Bottom line, if an Amazon smart fridge becomes a reality in 2022 (and I think it will), it would catalyze some much-needed innovation from other large appliance makers.

Home Food Waste Technology Comes Into Focus

Smart composting appliances are one nascent category within home food waste innovation coalescing into a legitimate category. Kickstarter darling Lomi has finally started shipping, Vitamix, known for lits blenders, is shipping its FoodCycler FC-50, and a variety of others are on the way.

But composting is the last stop on the food waste mitigation express, and everyone would be better off preventing food from heading to the compost bin. To do that, we need better food storage, something a startup called Uvera is working with its food storage system that uses UVC light to kill bacteria and extend shelf life. There’s also Blakbear, who is working on a food storage system that would measure gasses emitted from food to help measure shelf life. And though they’re long overdue, startup Silo has told me they should be shipping in 2022.

For their part, most appliance brands still don’t seem to have a cohesive strategy for helping consumers reduce food waste, but that didn’t stop them from talking up sustainability at CES year. I hope all the talk translates to more action in 2022.

AR Takes Guided Cooking to the Next Level

Ever since Thermomix pioneered the category of guided cooking with the launch of the TM5 (and more recently the TM6), there’s been an array of companies building tech to assist consumers as they cook. In the last few years, that’s meant voice assistants from TinyChef and Amazon, software and connected cooking hardware from Hestan and others, and we’ve even seen futuristic concepts like this one at SKS 2020 that monitors eye glances as a way to help a consumer manage meal-making.

But the biggest leap forward in cooking assistance might come in the form of augmented reality. Last fall we saw Snap release their food scanning app that utilizes their augmented reality bar to help provide contextual information for items scanned by the phone, and last month we wrote about a cool demo of how a pair of AR glasses could significantly level up the home cook’s capabilities in the kitchen. And while Lauren Cason’s demo was just that – a demo – I expect some appliance makers may have taken notice of how powerful the combo of cooking and augmented reality could be.

We have a couple more prediction posts to come, so make sure to tune in next week!

NASA Offers $1 Million to Innovators to Create Food Systems For Deep Space

This week, NASA announced $1 million in total prize money for innovations as part of Phase 2 of its Deep Space Food Challenge. The contest, which announced Phase 1 winners last October, is a NASA Centennial challenge that aims to foster innovation around sustainable food production technologies or systems that require minimal resources and produce minimal waste.

The goal, according to NASA, is to develop food systems that can feed a team of four astronauts on a long-haul space mission of up to three years. They also make it clear they hope this challenge will result in food innovation that can help feed more people on earth.

“Feeding astronauts over long periods within the constraints of space travel will require innovative solutions,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “Pushing the boundaries of food technology will keep future explorers healthy and could even help feed people here at home.”

While judges in Phase 1 focused on how innovative the proposed systems were, contestants didn’t actually have to build anything. That all changes in Phase 2. According to the announcement, Phase 2 entrants are expected to take their ideas to the next step and build working prototypes. From the announcement: “…the competition calls on teams to design, build, and demonstrate prototypes of food production technologies that provide tangible nutritional products – or food.”

For Phase 1, NASA announced 28 winners who had developed ideas for making food using technologies ranging from 3D printing and cell-cultured meat production to vertical farming. One of the winners – Space Cow – even developed a system concept that converts CO2 and waste streams straight into food, with the help of food-grade micro-organisms and 3D printing.

All of the winners from Phase 1 automatically meet the submission requirements for Phase 2 and have been invited to participate. In addition, the challenge is also opening the door to new entrants for Phase 2, for which NASA is taking registrations for entrance until February 28th. The Canadian Space Agency is running a parallel contest as part of the Deep Space Food Challenge (each space agency is running a separate contest with separate prize pools).

NASA’s Phase 2 prize purse is divided in the following ways: $20k each will be awarded to the 10 top scoring teams, and $150 thousand will be awarded to the top 5 scoring teams, each of whom will be invited to compete in Phase 3.

While NASA hasn’t detailed what Phase 3 will entail, the Canadian Space Agency has described their Phase 3 as “Full System Demonstration” where finalists “will grow and scale up their solutions in Canada over a 12 to 18-month period starting in Fall 2022.” I assume – if and when NASA launches Phase 3 – their final leg will focus on a similar system scale up as its primary criteria.

Nextbite’s Alex Canter Shares Insight on Virtual Kitchen Trends in 2022

This week I spoke with Alex Canter, the CEO and a co-founder of virtual restaurant company Nextbite, to hear his perspective on what 2022 holds for virtual kitchens and restaurants.

Nextbite, based in Denver, Colorado, uses a host kitchen model where it licenses a portfolio of delivery-only restaurant brands to restaurants with excess kitchen capacity. Restaurant partners can fulfill orders under these virtual brands to augment their restaurant’s dine-in and off-premise revenue. By taking on an additional restaurant brand, a restaurant can take advantage of their slowest hours, or even when they might not be open (such as the early morning or late night).

According to Canter, while many restaurants are slowly making their way back from the challenges of COVID-19, most are still not operating at full capacity. “Out of all the restaurants in the U.S., the only restaurant I can say confidently is operating at its full potential is In-and-Out,” said Canter. “They have a line out the door from the moment they open to the moment that they close.”

But this could all change in 2022, in part to new opportunities created by virtual brands. In 2022, “restaurants are really starting to understand their potential,” said Canter. “If you think about the kitchen as a manufacturing facility for food, I would say the average kitchen is probably operating at 30% output of what it could what it can do at peak.” After seeing the spike in virtual kitchens and delivery-only brands, restaurant establishments realize that they can cash in on this too. By streamlining online ordering and offering multiple menus and concepts, restaurants can reach new customers and different demographics.

In total, Nextbite has 17 brands that Canter said have been carefully created to consider emerging dining trends both inside and outside the U.S. People’s tastes and cravings change quickly, and can be easily influenced by social platforms like Tik Tok.

So what food categories and concepts will be successful in the virtual kitchen space in 2022? According to Canter, Pizza and Chinese food – the original delivery food categories – remain very popular. He also said breakfast foods for delivery are on the rise as illustrated by Nextbite’s survey which showed that forty-five percent of consumers ranked breakfast sandwiches as one of their favorite breakfast items to order. Nextbite’s celebrity taco concept, George Lopez Taco, does really well in suburban areas where it can be difficult to find an authentic street taco.

Wiz Khalifa and Nextbite’s restaurant concept, “Hot Box”

According to Canter, Nextbite works with celebrities like Wiz Khalifa and George Lopez because a small independent restaurant would never be able to connect with a high-profile celebrity. By using one of Nextbite’s celebrity-driven brands, they can tap into a celebrity brand’s following and demand.

Finally, Canter says food preferences vary depending on where you sell and who the consumer is.

Food preference and demand “change a lot when you go from major cities to the suburbs to college campuses. Depending on the demographic, some of our brands absolutely crush it on college campus markets and some do just okay in the suburbs. There’s a lot of variety happening, but I think people’s tastes are changing so faster than ever and we’re keeping up with that by constantly innovating and launching new concepts that are meeting that demand.”

Five Plant-Based Meat Predictions for 2022

Food tech prediction week continues here at the Spoon, and today we’re looking into our crystal ball to predict what 2022 holds for plant-based meat.

After you’re done reading this, make sure to check out my predictions for restaurant tech and food robotics!

Let’s do this.

The Year of the Whole Cut

After years of countless plant-based burgers and other minced alt-meat product introductions, the plant-based meat industry will see lots more whole cut analogs make it to market in 2022 and beyond.

We first got a hint at CES 2019 that Impossible was interested in whole cuts when The Spoon broke the story the company was working on a steak, but since that time we’ve seen a bunch of companies announce they are working on building whole cut alternatives.

Juicy Marbles, Novameat and Redefine Mean are also working on whole cut steak analogs. Others like Atlast are offering mycelium-based whole cut bacon. Then there are those making whole-cut seafood analogs like that from Plantish.

Many of these companies are looking to deliver their products in 2022, and you can expect a wave of new plant-based whole cut concepts introduced throughout the year.

Fungi-Powered Meat Alternatives

As we enter 2022, a whole crop alt-meat startups are rolling out a variety of meat analogs powered by fungi. One is Meati, which has developed prototypes of steak and chicken using mycelium grown using a submerged fermentation technique. Then there’s Nature’s Fynd, which debuted its breakfast patties which use its novel mycelium last fall. And in early January, MycoTechnologies debuted its meatless crumble brand Goodside Foods at CES.

The rise of myco-powered meat products shouldn’t be all that surprising since fungi, after all, is a lot closer in its molecular makeup to mammals than plants. For this and other reasons, fungi-based meat products don’t need as much high-tech trickery and processing to create a realistic meat analog. I predict this is only the beginning and we’ll see more fungi-based meat products debut throughout 2022.

Clean Label Enters Alt Protein

One criticism of some early plant-based meats is the long list of ingredients. While these alt-meats are no doubt miracles of modern food science, the unfamiliar ingredient list has scared away some customers concerned about eating exotic or genetically modified ingredients.

Enter the clean label. We started to see some startups begin to offer new plant-based meat analogs with simpler (and shorter) ingredient lists in 2021 and I expect to see more of this this year. Nowadays offered up their new pea-protein-based chicken nugget with seven ingredients, and Daring launched their soy-based nuggs that have a fairly straightforward recipe label. And then there’s No Evil Foods, which is leaning heavily into the whole plant-based clean label with a lineup of alt-meats ranging from chorizo to jerky. Expect to see these companies and other new ‘clean-label’ alt-meat startups push their simple (and understandable) recipes as a primary point of differentiation between themselves and those built with more (and more processed) ingredient lists

The Rise of the Plant-Based Meat Building Block

While many early-stage alt-meat companies have built much if not most of their end product in-house, nowadays there’s a growing cohort of new companies providing plant-based meat building blocks to enable others to get to market faster.

Take Motif. Last month, the Ginkgo Bioworks spinout announced the commercial launch of their yeast-derived heme protein HEMAMI, an umami-flavor and texture building block for alt-meat makers trying to produce a realistic alternative. This is good news if you’re a maker of alt-meat products who wants to replicate Impossible’s proprietary plant-based heme, because now instead of spending tens of millions trying to build it yourself, now you can buy a similar technology from Motif.

There are others making building blocks to get to market faster, whether that’s Jellatech and Geltor with their animal-free collagen, Hoxton, Melt & Marble and Nourish with their alt-fats, Umiami making a plant-based fibrous muscle alternatives, or Kingdom Supercultures creating the next great novel ingredient.

Forget Burgers, Let’s Eat Some Fish

While companies like Good Catch and Ocean Hugger have been at the plant-based seafood game for a while, others are diving in with new offerings: Asia plant-based giant Omnifood launched their line of plant-based seafood last summer, Plantish came out of stealth with their whole cut salmon last week, and Madrid-based Mimic recently launched its tomato-based alt-tuna. If 2021 was a big year for alt-fish, expect 2022 to be even bigger.

Bonus Prediction: Plant-Based Meat Consolidation

How many plant-based burger and chicken nugget brands can we expect to make it?

As with any market moving beyond adolesence, don’t be surprised to see some consolidation in plant-based meats. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, there are simply too many offerings in many of the same categories to survive. In 2022, I expect we’ll see some market consolidation as bigger players scoop up smaller players either to kickstart their plant-based lines or to shore up holes. And, sadly, some companies simply may not survive.

That’s it for today. Tune in tomorrow when I make predictions about the future of consumer kitchen tech!

Robot U: Bear Robotics Enrolls at UNLV To Give Hospitality Students Hands-On Experience

Suppose you’re an aspiring college student looking to enter the hospitality industry and want an education to get set on the right path. In that case, the Hospitality College at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas has to rank near the top of the list.

And in 2022, a big part of preparing for that future has to be showing prospective hospitality students how new technology like automation will change the industry in the coming years. That’s why this week’s news that the college has begun working with Bear Robotics to give students at the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality experience working with robotics is no big surprise.

According to Bear’s Instagram account, the company sent two Servi robots to UNLV, where students will get experience deploying robotics within various hospitality and casino resort scenarios.

From the post:

We are proud to announce that we are partnering with @unlv to provide the next generation of gaming and hospitality professionals with hands-on experience in curating robotic automation programs! We’ve launched 2 Servi robots to run a variety of casino resort simulations and we are so excited to see creative approaches to operational challenges.

As I wrote yesterday, one of the fastest-growing job categories in the service-industry sector will be that of robotics management. In fact, I expect many in the service industry will embrace learning new skills to help them better understand automation technology as it changes their industry. And while I expect there to be growing tension between labor and management in industries where robotics will no doubt displace some workers, it’s important that both sides – management and employee – have a better understanding of how robotics will integrate into different roles within the hospitality industry.

For Bear, this announcement comes just weeks after the company showed up in Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. While Bear hasn’t struck any deals with one of the big casinos, I have to wonder if this partnership could bring it closer to landing in a casino down the street from UNLV.

Five Food Robotics Predictions for 2022

It’s our second of five consecutive days of food tech predictions for 2022. Yesterday we looked into our crystal ball to predict the future for restaurant tech in 2022 and today we’re looking at food robots.

So, how exactly will robotics change food in 2022?

Front of House Automation Will Shoulder More of the Load for Workers

If there’s an area of dine-in restaurants impacted most by COVID, it’s the front of house. High turnover, social distancing and masking requirements have all put significant stress on staff who interface with consumers.

The good news is there is a new class of food robots ready to lend a hand. In the second half of 2021, we saw both Denny’s and Chili’s begin rolling out front-of-house robots from Bear robotics. Others such as Keenon and Pudu are also building robot servers to handle the load of overburdened workers.

And then there are the fully automated robots making and dispensing food that are being utilized within the confines of an existing restaurant, whether that’s robot bartender with personalities like Cecelia or cookie-making bots in Alabama.

Whether it’s waiter-bots or fully automated task-managers, expect more robots to help shoulder the load in the front of house in 2022.

Restaurants-in-a-Box Start Rolling Out

Get ready for the restaurant in-a-box. There are a number of startups with robo-restaurant concepts already in fully operational pilot tests who are looking to expand with multiple self-contained robot restaurants in 2022.

Hyper-Robotics, which makes fully automated containerized robot pizza restaurants that can pump out up to 50 pies per hour, is beginning to roll out its pizza robot restaurants in Israel. Cala, a French startup that makes fully autonomous pasta-making robots, is already operating a robot in Paris’ fifth arrondissement district. Another startup called Mezli, which is currently running its containerized bowl-food restaurant in Kitchentown, has plans to eventually launch more locations.

These are just a few self-contained robo-restaurants and we expect to see many more rollout in 2022.

Age of the Food Robocorn

One could argue that – at least for a while – that Zume hit unicorn status as it hauled in wheelbarrows of Softbank cash for its robot meets pizza delivery concept. However, the company eventually hit troubled waters and has since pivoted to sustainable packaging.

Since that time, a new wave of food robot startups has launched, but – outside of the warehouse space – we’ve yet to see any of these startups reach the same rarified valuation. I expect that to change in 2022.

As more restaurant and food delivery businesses adopt robotics and automation, we should see which robot startups hit escape velocity. My guess is we’ll see the next food robo-corns in food delivery space and restaurant robotics.

Modularized Robots and the Food Automation Integrator

One of the biggest challenges for rolling out automation tech in high-volume restaurants is how to begin the process of integrating a new robot into a kitchen. Established restaurants have their workflows and processes, which means an operator can’t just drop a robot into a kitchen and expect to see instant results.

This is why companies like Picnic, Hyphen, Miso and others are creating modularized back-of-house robots to assist workers by taking over a portion of their existing food production workflow. Meanwhile, some operators like Sweetgreen are bringing robotics expertise in-house and are trialing ways to bring food to their customers.

Finally, not only do I expect to see more food robot startups offer up modular-build approaches tailored to operators with locked-in workflows, but I also expect 2022 will see the rise of the ‘food automation integrator.’

Robot Vending Everywhere

Why eat a stale bag of chips when you can have fresh food? That’s what many office workers, university students and travelers will start to wonder as they come upon highly automated fresh food vending machines. Companies like Yo-Kai, DoorDash (with Chowbotics), and Costa Coffee’s Baristabot (formerly Briggo) are already moving towards wider deployment, while others like Basil Street are looking at significant expansion in the coming year.

Bonus Prediction: The Robot Operator Will Be a Hot New Job Category

It may seem like a dream job for a virtual reality nut, but apparently, VR-piloted delivery bots are now a thing. Also now a thing: Hospitality training programs that give prospective hospitality managers experience with deploying robots.

While there is concern among some that robotics could eventually displace workers in many of these spaces, I expect that we’ll also see many food industry employees clamoring to take on robotics operator as part of their job description. We can expect more robot operator jobs to become in demand in 2022, as we see food robots exit the pilot stage and enter full daily operation across restaurants, food service, delivery, grocery, and other food adjacent venues.

That’s it for restaurant robots. Tune in tomorrow for our alt-protein predictions for 2022!

North Carolina’s Pearlita Foods Wants to Create Cell-Cultured Oysters

While much of the world’s sea life is under duress due to climate change and acidification, oysters have it particularly bad because of where they live. Because oysters live in coastal reefs, bays, and estuaries, acidification and other problems related to global warming are extremely difficult to solve for due to a highly varied and complicated environment.

While scientists and oyster farmers are rightly worried about the long-term survival of oyster populations and are looking for ways to help them adapt to a fast-changing environment, others are trying to think of new ways to reduce how many ocean-born oysters are consumed by humans. While traditionally that has meant a focus on hatcheries, a new startup has another idea: cellular agriculture.

Pearlita Foods is hoping to create the world’s first cell-cultivated line of oysters. The company, which has received its initial funding from Big Idea Ventures and Sustainable Food Ventures, launched this month. Its two co-founders, Nikita Michelsen (CEO) and marine biologist Joey Peters, are setting up shop in startup-friendly (and coastline adjacent) North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

“Not only is North Carolina the second-largest estuarine system in the country, it is also the fastest-growing biotech and future of food hub,” said Michelsen. “We will be close to the ecosystems where Oysters thrive and amongst other entrepreneurs – both which we believe will accelerate our growth.”

Over the past year, several startups have taken aim at creating new and more sustainable options for seafood, whether that be plant-based, cell-cultured, or through fermentation. One category of fish we haven’t seen is cell-cultured mollusks, but given the size of the oyster industry, it makes sense that we’d see a startup focused on creating oysters using cellular agriculture.

Another reason to celebrate the idea of cell-cultured oysters is they won’t have all the contaminants and bacteria concerns that plague natural-habitat harvested oysters. Unfortunately, oysters born in the wild are often contaminated with metals like lead, mercury, and zinc and can also be hotbeds for bacteria. Cell-ag derived oysters would be free of contaminants.

While at this point, Pearlita isn’t giving any guidance on their timelines, my guess is it will be a year or two before we see prototypes. You can follow their progress on their website.

Five Restaurant Tech Predictions for 2022

It’s food tech prediction week at The Spoon!

Each day we’ll publish five predictions for a specific area of the food tech universe, starting with restaurant tech.

The Ghost Kitchen Market Will See Growth in Hosted Models, Consolidation in Some Other Areas

The ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant markets were white-hot in 2021, with lots of venture funding pouring into a range of different concepts. However, one of the growing realizations about the ghost kitchen market is that while many of the offerings have had tech platform valuation multiples, a good number of them are facilities-based concepts that have cost economics closer to that of real estate business.

Because of this, I expect much of the action in 2022 will be in host kitchen concepts that leverage existing restaurant brands or create wholly new ones powered by social communities. The launch of TikTok Kitchen, powered by Virtual Dining Concepts’ and their host kitchen model, is one I’ll be watching closely to see if they can replicate the success they have with MrBeast Burger.

Finally, we can also expect to see some prominent players either exit or downscale their ambitions. Reef just announced they were closing one-third of their kitchens, likely in part due to the fallout from company’s continued health department certification problems. I expect we will see more of this in 2022.

Restaurants Will Deploy More AI, Automation & Cloud-Powered Labor to Offset Labor Challenges

Like many other restaurant chains, Checkers has struggled in recent years to find enough workers to cover the various shifts. Going forward, they won’t have to worry about that when it comes to manning the drive-thru as the company rolls out AI-powered voice bots to 267 of their restaurants.

This is only one example of how we’ll see restaurants embrace more technology to deal with what has become a permanent labor shortage in the restaurant space. Of course, automation and robotics will also be a part of the equation, but I think we’ll also see more restaurants find help through remote labor through platforms like Bite Ninja.

Restaurant Operators Will Jump Into Membership NFTs

Last week, we saw Gary Vaynerchuk and his team raise $14 million with the auction of membership tokens for their NFT restaurant set to open in the first half of 2023. With this success of Flyfish – and the rapidly rising prices of the the token in post-drop trading – I predict we’ll see lots of others try to use a similar template. Of course, many will fail, but I can see how NFTs could become a new way to finance restaurants in lieu of traditional financing for chefs with large followings.

Rethinking of Restaurant Concepts To Serve Off-Premise Driven Demand

The idea behind PizzaHQ is fairly simple: Utilize centralized kitchens powered by automation to feed a market where the vast majority of customers never expect to come into your restaurant. As off-premise continues to grow and real estate prices continue to rise, we can expect more new restaurant concepts that embrace different elements of dark kitchens, automation, contactless pickup, and more.

Digitizing of the Back of House

Restaurant kitchen operations can be messy and low-tech, but that is beginning to change as new digital platforms are enabling operators to better optimize their business. A number of startups are combining IoT, AI and software to bring about greater efficiencies in all aspects of a restaurant’s operations, enabling them to create the type of just-in-time models for food production that has existed in traditional manufacturing and other industries for decades.

Companies like Powerhouse Dynamics and their IoT-powered resource monitoring have been at it for a while, and now companies like Perfect Company are doing real-time monitoring of a kitchen to optimize labor allocation, ingredient portion sizing and other aspects of a kitchen’s operations. Other companies like Orbisk are employing machine vision to better help restaurants monitor and reduce food waste, and Miso Robotics and Hyphen are creating providing software and automation to help employees become more efficient.

Bonus Prediction: Data-Powered Personalization

As more customers engage with restaurants through apps, QR codes, and other digital formats, restaurants better understand who their customers are and what they like. While we may be a few years away from the age of truly personalized menus, I expect we’ll see increased restaurants harness all of the data they are gathering from restaurants to create better incentive programs to ensure better customer return rates and satisfaction.

Make sure to tune in tomorrow to hear our five predictions on food robotics for 2022.

Here Are The Details About Flyfish Club, Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT Restaurant Opening in 2023

While we already knew some of the basic details about Gary Vaynerchuk and VCR Group’s NFT restaurant concept, we’ve learned more in the last week about how the whole thing will work.

Here’s some of what we’ve learned and my quick thoughts:

Token as Membership. At a high level, the Flyfish Club and its NFT membership is essentially a new, crypto-ized spin on an old idea: a member’s only dining club. To start, VCR initially made a total of 1,501 membership tokens for the Flyfish Club available to the public and reserved 1,534 for the company. Membership remains valid as long as a person owns the token. As just like most NFTs, the owner can resell the token (and many are already trying to do just that) on marketplaces like Opensea.

Flyfish Has Two-Tiered Membership. Flyfish has two types of tokens available: a Flyfish token and a Flyfish Omakase token. The Flyfish token, initially offered at 2.5 Ethereum (~$8,400), gets you into the restaurant and cocktail lounge while the Omakase token, offered at 4.25 Ethereum (~$14,300), gets you all that plus entry into the exclusive Omakase room.

Frequency and Guests: A token owner can eat at Flyfish pretty much whenever they want, but they’ll have to make a reservation first. Token owners will need to call ahead up to 14 days in advance for a table. Each token holder can make as many reservations as they’d like (capacity willing) per month, and each token member can bring the number of guests allotted for a specific table (for example, if they reserve a four-person table, they can bring three guests).

Flyfish Token Owners Still Have to Pay for Food. So you just spent $14 thousand on your new membership? That’s great and all, but you better have some left over to pay the bill. As with a traditional exclusive dining club, membership fees to Flyfish are just that, the cost of entry. Food, payable in US dollars, will be purchased for each meal just as if you were at any other restaurant.

Flyfish Has Raised $14 Million in Funds So Far. That’s right, $14 million in about a week. This is impressive and signals a potentially game-changing way to start a restaurant. Of course, there can only be one ‘first’ and not everyone has millions of followers like Gary Vaynerchuk. Still, I can certainly see a lot of celebrity chefs jumping into NFT-driven membership restaurants in the next couple of years.

The Tokens are Leasable. This is an interesting (and smart) twist: Flyfish permits token owners to lease them to others on a monthly basis. Leasing essentially turns a semi-liquid asset with a limited ability for near-term recurring revenue into a potential cash cow. Say, for example, you buy a Flyfish token for $4 thousand and lease it out to executives or curious upscale foodies for $1,000 a month. This would allow you to essentially treat a token as say you would a home you purchase to put onto Airbnb: An investment with potential for both long-term appreciation potential and near-term short-term recurring revenue.

There are a lot more details on the club’s FAQ page, which I would recommend reading. Overall, I think Gary Vee and crew have created a fairly common-sense initial framework for an NFT-as-membership concept that will undoubtedly become a template for others (of which I expect will be many).

If you’d like to learn more about how NFTs will chance the restaurant and food business, make sure to join The Spoon’s Food NFT/Metaverse mini-summit on February 1st. Registration is free (but limited), so hurry up and register today!

Watch as Serve’s Sidewalk Robot Completes a Delivery With Level 4 Autonomy

This week, Serve Robotics announced that its sidewalk delivery robot can now complete deliveries at level 4 autonomy. According to the company, this makes their robot the first autonomous vehicle to complete commercial deliveries without the need for human assistance.

For those not familiar with autonomous driving parlance, level 4 autonomy means that Serve’s robot can now navigate a trip without the intervention of a human driver. However, as seen in the video below, at level 4, a human driver can choose to intervene to ensure an extra level of safety (as the Serve driver does at a crosswalk light).

Watch as Serve Delivery Robot Achieves Level 4 Autonomy

According to the announcement, this milestone is the result of a robot built with a highly redundant navigation system employing multiple cutting-edge technologies. The navigation system “includes multiple sensor modalities—active sensors such as lidar and ultrasonics, as well as passive sensors such as cameras—to navigate safely on busy city sidewalks. Serve Robotics’ achievement required development of a wide range of market-leading capabilities, such as automatic emergency braking, vehicle collision avoidance, and fail-safe mechanical braking.”

In the announcement, the company credits a couple of their technology partners in helping to reach this milestone. One of those companies is NVIDIA, whose Jetson platform provides the Serve robot with AI-computing to navigate complex unstructured environments. Serve also gave a shout-out to lidar-maker Ouster, which provides small and power-efficient lidar to help power Serve’s self-driving capabilities.

Up to this point, pretty much all autonomous sidewalk delivery robots employ the help of human drivers to navigate their routes. And even looking forward, even Serve and other bots move to level 4 autonomy, expect remote human drivers to continue to be in demand. That’s because there will always be potential unforeseen circumstances on different routes, and companies (like Serve) will want that extra layer of safety as their bots navigate through dense city environments.

However, with these types of advancements, human robot operators will be able to handle larger fleets over time. While some robot (and drone) delivery services already operate at a multiple-to-one ratio, higher autonomy means humans to robot ratios can increase, allowing pilots to handle more and more robots as they are deployed to the field.

Mosa Meat (Kinda) Open Sources Its Method For Cultivating Meat Without FBS

In recent years, Mosa Meat has made a couple of things clear: 1) They want to get as close to creating real meat without the cow as possible, and 2) They want to achieve this goal in the most humane, animal-free way.

They’ve documented their progress towards achieving both of these goals along the way, first by making news in 2016 with the announcement they’d figured out a method for cultivating meat without the use of FBS, or fetal bovine serum. Since that time, they’ve updated the world on their progress and even shared techniques for how they make “real meat” complete with cell-cultured fat and muscle fibers.

And this week, the company made news again with the publication of a paper on its method for achieving muscle differentiation through a process they describe as ‘serum-starvation.’ According to Mosa, it’s through the differentiating of cells into fibers that result in the structure and chew of meat, and it’s within the muscle fibers that the proteins and rich color of meat are produced.

The paper’s primary author, Tobias Messmer, describes how they focused on the proteins on the surface of cells to achieve this differentiation without FBS.

“By specifically activating these proteins (known as ‘receptors’), we are now able to recreate the same transition in the absence of any FBS.”

With the publication of this information, the company has essentially open-sourced the ideas behind achieving animal-free cell-cultured meat. However, the company hasn’t technically open-sourced the methods for re-use since they’ve also constructed some level of IP protection around elements of the process.

From Mosa founder Maarten Bosch: “Although the decision to publish this information could be seen as competitively sensitive, we highly value openness and transparency for the advancement of the entire cellular agriculture field. We’re also dedicated to creating a healthy business and protecting our intellectual property. Having made significant progress since submitting this paper over a year ago, we are convinced we are striking the right balance with this publication.“

It’s not that open source ideas and technologies are entirely incompatible with patent protection. In software, you can open source a technology and include a patent license grant as part of the open-source license. From the sounds of it, Mosa is specifically protecting its FBS-free feed formulation, limiting its use for commercial purposes without a license.

From the announcement: “We have filed a patent for the cell feed formulation, meaning it is publicly available but protected for commercial use for a limited amount of years.”  

Patent protection or not, the industry certainly benefits from Mosa’s sharing of their processes as they innovate towards what they call “real meat” without the animal.

Investor Look: 10 Trends to Watch in Ag + Food Tech in 2022

Food, ocean and agtech venture fund S2G Ventures released a report citing ten catalysts that will shape intersecting industries including agriculture, food manufacturing, nutrition and food retail in 2022. The report examines the trends that are driving the transition to a climate-smart, healthy food system.

S2G — investor in several food and agtech startups — looks at technology disruption in three major categories including agricultural innovation, supply chain disruption and personalized food and nutrition.

“The food transition is still in its infancy but is being propelled by seismic tailwinds: massive demographic change spurring new consumer demand, significant advancements in the biology, chemistry and physics of food production to create new choices and now capital markets anchored by ESG that want to fund high growth, disruptive companies,” commented Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer.

Farmers in the US are facing new challenges every day from nutrient-challenged soil to lack of access to capital. The S2G report describes the ways that innovation in fintech, robotics and biotech along with an increase in socially and environmentally conscious investing (ESG) will lead to the “fourth industrial revolution” in farms across the country.

The drivers of innovation in farming include:

  • Robots will increase efficiency while reducing labor needs across the food system.
  • The rise of ESG will help to digitize the farm.
  • Fintech will transform opportunities in agriculture, just as it did for the student loan and mortgage markets.
  • RNA technology that saved lives during Covid-19 will be applied to farms to save soils.

Supply chain disruptions experienced over the past two years have catalyzed both governmental institutions NGOs and the private sectors to fund and drive innovation in biotech, cellular agriculture and food waste solutions. The result according to S2G Ventures will be supply chains that are more nimble, sustainable, localized and less wasteful.

Innovations that will revolutionize supply chains include:

  • Fermentation will power the next generation of alternative protein products.
  • Cellular protein will provide consumers around the world with safe, sustainable food.
  • Adoption of food waste solutions will be recognized as both a good business practice and an essential tool for feeding the world.

Even prior to the pandemic, consumers were demonstrating a desire for better food choices and a renewed focus on ways to personalize their nutrition and healthcare. To answer this demand, food and nutrition startups are using cutting-edge bio and food science as well as AI and machine learning to develop nutrient-dense, functional and personalized food products.

Personalized food & nutrition catalysts include:

  • AI and machine learning platforms will unlock greater understanding of and use cases for plants and fungi.
  • Food will become central to the effort to prevent chronic disease and improve health outcomes.
  • Food brands and grocers will have to “personalize or perish.”

To dig into more details on areas to watch in food and agtech this year, download the full report from S2G Ventures.