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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Curious What’s in That Faux Sausage? You’re Not Alone: Consumers Want Greater Transparency With Alt-Protein Ingredients

The past few years have been explosive for the entire plant-based and vegan market. Particularly so for the plant-based meat sector, which was valued at $1.06 billion USD in 2020. Most people don’t strictly follow a vegan or plant-based diet; however, nearly all consumers are at least willing to try alternative protein products. The rise in novel plant-based protein products has also coincided with the rise in consumers desiring more transparency in the products that they consume. Now, customers want to know what exactly goes in the vegan burgers they’re gobbling up.

C.O.nxt and Menu Matters recently conducted a survey to analyze consumer opinions and alternative protein trends. One of the main takeaways of this survey was that almost half, or 41.3 percent of consumers, want total ingredient transparency before committing to alternative proteins. Before replacing meat products with alternative protein products, consumer desire to know how exactly alternative products are produced and what goes in them.

Where does this skepticism arise from? Many processed alternative protein products contain ingredients like pea protein isolate or methylcellulose that are not commonplace in the average consumer’s kitchen. Many turn to plant-based or vegan food for health reasons, and it is unclear whether these ingredients are healthy or not.

Some consumers, especially older generations, have health concerns around alternative protein products. Specifically, the survey makes clear this demographic has questions about the long-term health impact concerns from these products. They also were not clear on if these products are “natural” and are actually better for the environment.

Overall, younger generations are most open to trying all different types of alternative products, including cultivated and precision fermentation products. Environmental concerns are also a motivator for trying plant-based proteins, and 91 percent of consumers reported that planned on reducing some of their consumption of animal proteins in the near future.

The Spoon recently published a piece analyzing why plant-based product sales have been taking a nose dive as of lately. This could be because consumers satiated their first-taste curiosity with plant-based products, or possibly because not enough consumers fully transitioned to a plant-based diet.

If this survey is any indication, increased ingredient and production transparency may be crucial for this category to continue to grow.

7-Eleven & Nuro Launch California’s First Autonomous Delivery Service

7-Eleven announced today they are launching an autonomous delivery pilot program in Mountain View, California, in partnership with autonomous delivery tech startup Nuro.

While the Golden State has been a hotbed of activity for autonomous delivery for sidewalk bots, California has trailed Texas in the rollout of autonomous on-street deliveries. All that changes today with the launch of the Nuro pilot, which will be the first commercial autonomous delivery service in the state of California. The path for the program was paved late last year when Nuro received the first-ever Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit from the California DMV.

As with other Nuro rollouts, the 7-Eleven deployment will eventually use both the company’s proprietary R2 robot and Toyota Prius’s equipped with Nuro’s self-driving hardware and software. However, according to the announcement, the pilot will begin with outfitted Priuses that include a human driver in the driver’s seat. These “autonomous vehicle operators” will monitor the technology and ensure an optimal delivery experience, but will not bring the delivery to the door of the customer so as to make the service feel as ‘human-free’ as possible. Eventually, the two companies plan to introduce the Nuro R2 bots (without human drivers) into the pilot.

Customers in the Mountain View area who want to try out the service can start by placing an order with the 7-Eleven 7NOW app. After choosing autonomous delivery, customers should see a Nuro-powered Prius pulling up with their Slurpee and cheese dog order within 30 minutes. The service will be available to those nearby the 7-Eleven at 1905 Latham Street in Mountain View. Deliveries will be available from 8AM–9PM, seven days a week.

You can watch a video of how the 7-Eleven/Nuro pilot service below:

7 Eleven and Nuro Pilot Autonomous Delivery in California

What The Heck is Causing The Plant-Based Meat Slowdown?

No two ways about it: Plant-based meat has hit a sales slump.

According to recent data from market watcher SPINS, sales in the overall plant-based meat market dropped 1.8% year over year for the four-week period ending October 3rd. This follows an even bigger drop in the category earlier in 2021 starting around April, when the plant-based category dropped over 15% year over year.

The drop in overall plant-based meat sales jibes with what some industry bellwethers are seeing. According to Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, his plant-based meat sales dropped in every channel the company sells into in the third quarter of this year. McCain was perplexed as to the reason and said the company is reevaluating their “investment thesis”.

Maple Leaf wasn’t the only one. Beyond, where company CEO Ethan Brown came out and said the plant-based meat company had seen its sales drop 13.9% year over year and forecast a potentially bumpy road ahead.

So what’s going on here? Fast-growing nascent markets are supposed to go up, not down and down some more.

While there’s no way to know for certain without more data. it’s worth taking a stab at potential causes for the drop in plant-based meat. Here are a few ideas:

Consumers Satiated Their First-Taste Curiosity.

Let’s face it, most of us were curious to sink our teeth into our first Impossible or Beyond burger to see what all the fuss about. Yet, a year or two later, that early curiosity has been satiated, and only some of us are regular plant-based meat-eaters.

Which brings us to…

Not Enough Consumers Have Switched to Plant-Based

While many of us have tried our first plant-based meat, most of us aren’t buying it on a regular basis. According to a recent survey by the Food Information Council, two-thirds of Americans surveyed have tried plant-based meat over the past year, while only 40% of Americans are eating plant-based meat with any regularity. Of those that consume plant-based meat on a regular basis, only about half eat it once a week or so.

Meat Industry Counter-Messaging May Be Working.

I recently suggested that Beyond’s troubles might be a sign that the animal-based meat industry’s negative counter-messaging might be taking hold, and this latest news could be an additional confirmation of that.

While it may be true that while products like Beyond and Impossible are plant-based, the reality is they are also highly processed food with pretty science-forward ingredients. This reliance on a future-forward ingredient list provides an opening for criticism from the legacy meat business, which uses negative messaging to suggest their animal products are the natural and healthier alternative compared to the high-tech competitors.

Looking at survey data, the incumbents are smart to beat this drum as there are concerns among consumers about what is in these new alternatives. According to a recent study by Menu Matters of 1,025 US households, about half (47.9%) of consumers suggest they want more information about plant-based meat before trying them, and 43.1% want complete transparency of ingredients before they try them.

At this point, it’s hard to tell how much of the concerns about plant-based meat’s ingredient list is driven by top-down talking points or if the message-crafters of the legacy meat business are only echoing what they hear among the meat-eating hoi polloi. It could be a little of both, but no matter where it’s coming from, the plant-based meat industry is seeing the rise of a more skeptical consumer.

Less of Us Ate at Home In The Second Half of 2021

As many Americans got their vaccinations in the first half of this year and governments lifted rules against convening indoors in the spring and summer, people started to eat out more. Early data suggests many people eat most of their plant-based alternatives at home, meaning that more meal occasions outside the house could translate to less plant-based meat consumed overall.

Some Are Down, While Others May Be Up

Last week, Impossible raised a $500 million round while claiming “record growth.” While the release itself focused more on expanding Impossible into new markets, if Impossible’s growth also came on the top line, it would provide a counter-narrative to what we have heard from Beyond, Maple Foods, and SPINS.

As I wrote in early November, the reality is unlike animal-based meat, plant-based meat is not a commoditized product category where one can be easily interchanged with another. Instead, plant-based meat products are more akin to something like cola, where some may prefer Coke while others prefer Pepsi.

In other words, some companies may be seeing sales growth, while others are seeing market share decline.

At this point, we don’t have enough data to say with certainty which factor or factors are contributing to the plant-based meat slump. What we do know is some companies are beginning to at least reevaluate their original assumptions about the market. I have to wonder if this reevaluation of the plant-based market might result, at least in the near term, a slow down seemingly unrelenting flow of venture investment into this category.

With New Funding Mustard Adds More Relish to the Food Ordering Experience

For hungry L.A. diners unable to decide between the Caliente Burger from Tommy’s in Van Nuys and Yukdaehang from a Korean restaurant in Los Angeles, Mustard may be the perfect video condiment. The Mustard app allows users to browse, compare, select, order, and have their food delivered from a vast cornucopia of eat-it-now options. And one cannot deny the mukbang element of watching others salivate over their spicy ramen bowls.

“People are discouraged by the food ordering process,” Mustard CEO Diana Might said in an interview with The Spoon. “The format of menu ordering is outdated.”

Inspired by an uptick in food delivery during the pandemic, Might and her co-founder Chief Product Officer David Currant recognized an opportunity to give social media users an easy soup-to-nuts process to order food. It starts with a video showcasing a given menu item and ends with the ability to select a delivery service to bring it to their home in short order. The videos are uploaded by what Might call “influencers” to the Mustard platform where the content is “Mustardized” and then, for now, returned to the author for uploading to social media. The result is a clip that allows the customer to see the duck meat, Wagyu beef, or bagel up close and personal with a narration from the video creator. An icon allows the viewer to click and order what they see on the screen.

Currant explains that Mustard’s technology uses several distinct data feeds that show the restaurant’s location, menu item, price, and delivery providers. Not willing to divulge the company’s secret sauce, which combines these varied data points, Currant acknowledges the use of computer vision and that the company’s platform is extensible to other areas such as travel.

Mustard is off to a good start, recently securing a $1 million investment from Operate Studio, Newfund, Great North Ventures, and Fund LA. “Mustard is disrupting the food industry by connecting food content consumption and IRL experiences together,” says Newfund’s Christy Wang, who believes Mustard has the potential to dominate the food vertical in the social video app space. “Food videos are mostly viewed and loved on social media, yet they are not actional and informative. Mustard closes the loop by integrating the ordering and booking process right at the moment of food content consumption, providing actionable menus and interactive food experiences within one video.”

Currently, the revenue model rewards content creators with a small affiliate fee, with Mustard getting paid based on the delivery service and their special promotions and offers. At this point, Might explains, the restaurants become the beneficiaries of the app but do not pay anything for the customer acquisition. Soon, the CEO says, that could change.

The company hopes to make its service even more user-friendly by eliminating the friction in the delivery process. Now, an influencer uploads its video to Mustard to be mustardized (tagged with price, restaurant location, delivery service, etc..). The same influencer uploads it to social media—most often Tik-Tok or Instagram. Might says it won’t be long before videos can be sent directly to Tik-Tok from the Mustard platform.

In theory, Mustard is available worldwide but is focused on the 8,000 restaurants in the Los Angeles area with more than 1,000 active users. The initial goal is to expand into other parts of southern California and grow organically throughout the United States.

MOOLESS: The First Animal-Free Whey Protein Powder Created By Perfect Day & Natreve

Perfect Day, a company that makes animal-identical proteins using precision fermentation, and Natreve, a wellness and nutrition company, have partnered to produce MOOLESS, a protein powder made with animal-free whey protein.

In 2020, the FDA approved Perfect Day’s animal-free whey protein made from β-lactoglobulin (the company’s proprietary protein) for human consumption. This GRAS letter allowed the start-up to sell its alternative dairy protein to CPG companies to create novel products – and that’s exactly what Perfect Day has been doing as of recently. Last month Perfect Day launched a cake mix with animal-free whey through its Urgent Company.

MOOLESS is the most recent product to make use of Perfect Day’s animal-free whey protein, which is molecularly identical to conventional whey protein. According to the companies, this will be the first animal-free whey protein powder on the market that also provides the same nutritional benefits of whey, while also offering a lower environmental footprint. A single serving of the alternative protein powder will provide 20 grams of protein

Whey protein is commonly found in meal replacement shakes, protein powders, and protein bars. Dairy-free and vegan products often use pea, soy, rice, and hemp to boost their protein content, but the protein content can sometimes fall short of what whey protein is able to provide. MOOLESS is a vegan product because it is not animal-based, but it is not suitable for those with dairy allergy.

Perfect Day has proven that precision fermentation is a viable technology for creating alternative protein products that are identical to their conventional counterparts. Other companies, like Formo, Imagindairy, and Change Foods, are also using precision fermentation to produce, but have yet to bring any products to market.

MOOLESS will come in four flavors: Vanilla Bean Cupcake, Cookies and Cream, Strawberry Shortcake, and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. The alternative protein powder is set to launch in early 2022 with a major U.S. retailer as well as on Natreve’s website.

Perfect Day has been on a hot streak as of late. Not only did the company launch their new cake mix last month, but their partnership with Natreve comes just weeks after the news that Starbucks would trial the company’s precision fermented milk at two Starbucks locations in the Seattle market.

The Media Was Fascinated with a TikTok Video of a Robot at Denny’s. Here’s What it Means.

Maybe it was a slow news week. Perhaps it was the sight of pancakes hitching a ride on a robot at America’s late-night diner. Whatever the reason, it seemed like every news organization wrote the same story about a TikTok video of server-robot showing up to dish out breakfast at a Denny’s.

They all had a variant of the same headline: “Viral Video of Robot at Denny’s Sparks Debate.” From there, the authors sifted through comments made by TikTok viewers, some cheering the idea of faster service and lower tips, others angry about a robot stealing a job.

While the sudden interest in a social media post about a server robot may say as much about the modern media landscape as it does about the use of robotics at restaurants, the reality is Denny’s deploying robots is kind of a big deal. After all, as America’s most famous 24-hour diner, Denny’s holds a special place in our collective consciousness, a place where almost anyone can get a cheap meal as well as apply for – and often get – a job.

And it’s these two things that Denny’s represents – a place with affordable food and an employer of everyday Americans – that seemed to be in tension with one another when looking at both the comments on the video on TikTok as well as the framing by the media.

Media coverage of robotics in food service has been evolving over the past year, with news organizations going from gee-whiz articles about a cool new novelty to increasingly viewing the use of robotics as a direct result of hiring difficulties due to the pandemic. Of course, this new framing isn’t altogether wrong, as hiring has been difficult. Still, the reality is a bit more nuanced and has as much to do with fast-changing restaurant industry business models and changing consumer eating patterns as it does with hiring difficulties.

No matter the reason, the wider arrival of robotics at Denny’s and restaurant chains is raising the profile of these solutions and looks to be sparking a broader conversation about the impact of automation on the experience and the livelihoods of those in the service industry. This increased spotlight will also likely mean a more jaded framing of food robotics by the media, much like we’ve seen when it comes to their coverage of social media and privacy. While this isn’t necessarily a wrong reaction – it’s the media’s job to be skeptical – a pendulum swing is something the industry should be prepared for.

For the average consumer, the use of robots remains a curiosity. There hasn’t been – at least not yet – a rise of an organized Luddite anti-automation reaction to food robotics. However, the passion in some of the comments on TikTok could be the canary in the coalmine signaling one may be on the way.

As for companies like Bear Robotics – the provider of Denny’s server robot – business just continues to grow. I checked in with Bear Robotics COO Juan Higueros on how the Denny’s rollout is going.

“They have moved fairly quickly,” he said.

According to Higueros, it’s the operators on the front lines who are looking for answers. “What’s interesting is that this is a bottom-up movement by franchise owners that are really pulling for our solution.”

You can watch the TikTok video that sparked the conversation last week below.

@miabellaceo

Early morning breakfast at Denny’s I did give the server hot apple pie mini melt sample..

♬ original sound – Bob

Wine Critic Launches Jukes Cordialities, an Alcohol-Free Wine Fit for Oenophiles

If you consider the phrase “non-alcoholic wine” for a moment, it seems that this might just be referring to a glass of unfermented grape juice. Wine is defined as an alcoholic beverage made from grapes or other fruits, but a company called Jukes Cordialities has created wine – sans the fermentation process and alcohol content. Launched by wine critic and writer Matthew Jukes, the company is focused on providing the same complexities and nuances found in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

There are many reasons one might choose to avoid drinking alcohol – pregnancy, being the designated driver, religion, health reasons, or simply just not being in the mood for a buzz. We’re also entering the holiday season where alcoholic beverages are seemingly always poured, and it’s nice to take a break from the non-stop booze.

I had the opportunity to do a virtual tasting with Matthew Jukes, and try the company’s three different varieties of alcohol-free wine. The alternative wines come in small 30mL (~1 ounce) bottles, which contain two servings. To serve the wine, it’s recommended that half the bottle is mixed with 5oz of still or sparkling water.

The Jukes 1 varietal is meant to mimic a white wine with flavors of peach, citrus, herb, and cucumber. Jukes 8 is rosé-inspired, with flavors of melon, pear, rhubarb, and pomegranate. The dark purple-red Jukes 6 is fruity and spicy, with notes of berries and plum.

Matthew Jukes shows me how to enjoy Jukes 1

All of the varieties are made from a base of organic apple cider vinegar. Each flavor, or varietal, is comprised of over 20 ingredients, including various fruit juices, herbs, spices, flowers, and vegetables. For someone trying to count calories, each serving of Jukes contains 25 calories, while a glass of red wine typically has around 125.

Jukes blends all the ingredients, which are first macerated, in custom-made stainless steel tanks to produce the wines. Although the tanks look slightly similar to brewing equipment, no fermentation takes place. Other non-alcoholic wines are more complicated to create; some are produced just like a standard wine, but the last step is removing the alcohol through vacuum installation or reverse osmosis.

Although I could tell that I wasn’t drinking wine (a good thing because I did the virtual tasting at 9 am) due to the pungency of the apple cider vinegar, it still felt like I was drinking wine. When I drink wine, I often want more of the fruity, smoky, citrusy, and oak-y flavors to shine through. With Jukes, my favorite part was how much of the distinct flavors of fruit and flowers shone through. If I were at a social function where everyone else was drinking, I wouldn’t feel left out if I was sipping on a glass of Jukes.

The alcohol-free beverage space has rapidly expanded and taken a more elevated form in the past few years. Until recent years, you might have been able to snag an O’Doul’s to drink with dinner or while at a bar, but alcohol-free wine was virtually nonexistent. The Spoon has yet to try other 0.0% wines, but a few other brands in this space include AcidLeague, SipCozy, Gruvi, and TÖST.

Jukes are available on the company’s website, and at a few alcohol-free retail stores. A box of nine bottles of Jukes costs $48.50 which is equivalent to three bottles of wine.

The Spoon Weekly: Another Shazam for Food, Alexa Debuts New Meal-Rec-Tech

Snap The Latest to Create a ‘Shazam for Food’

Haven’t we seen this episode before?

While many of us had a good laugh back when Silicon Valley’s Jian-Yang launched a Not Hot Dog app, the truth is big tech has been rolling out Shazam for food features for quite some time.

The latest company to create an augmented reality/AI-powered food recognition feature is Snap with Scan Food. Snapchat users can scan food by opening up the AR bar within Snapchat from the main camera menu option. From there, they choose to scan and click a picture of the food item. Snapchat’s AI will process the image and suggest a recipe from partner Allrecipes and other information, such as Wikipedia pages, associated with the item.

One reason for this is food is one of the easiest product categories to recognize and around which to create databases. It’s also because food recognition unlocks numerous commerce, health and nutrition tracking, and kitchen management scenarios if done right.

To read the full post and our review of Snap’s new feature, click over to The Spoon.

Food Tech Is Heading to CES!

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show

Did you know food tech will be a featured theme for the first time ever at the world’s biggest tech show in January and The Spoon is CES’s exclusive partner to help make it happen? 

There’s still time to grab a booth! If you want to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Amazon Alexa Debuts ‘What to Eat’ Feature

Amazon Alexa Expands Food Personalization Features With Launch of ‘What to Eat’

Last week, Amazon launched a new personalized meal recommendation feature for Alexa called ‘What to Eat?’. The new capability, which was part of a slate of new features for Alexa first teased at the end of September, gives users recommendations for restaurants, recipes, prepared items, and more based on their preferences.

What to Eat is an expansion of the personalized food recommendation capabilities of Alexa that the company began rolling out earlier this year with the ‘What’s for Dinner’ feature. Where What’s for Dinner offers personalized recipe ideas based on past purchase behavior, What to Eat goes a step further by recommending options based on a user’s dietary preferences and restrictions shared with Alexa.

You can read the full article about the latest evolution of Alexa’s food personalization technology at The Spoon.

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Restaurant Tech

Our Ghost Kitchen Future Will Be Automated

Back at the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2019, Adam Brotman, the CEO of restaurant tech startup Brightloom, suggested if he was a young entrepreneur and wanted to start a restaurant business, he’d create a ghost kitchen powered by a food making robot.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this comment ever since.

The combination of food produced via robots with a ghost kitchen model makes so much sense, in part because both are new approaches that help reduce two of the most significant cost drivers of the legacy restaurant business: real estate and labor.

Consider the real estate costs of starting a new sit-down restaurant. Some estimates put the typical down payment required for the commercial space somewhere between $150 to $350 thousand dollars in a market like LA. And that’s before you even get to the cost of renovation and installing a new kitchen, which can cost up to a quarter of a million bucks

You can read the full story about the symbiotic relationship between food robots and ghost kitchens, here.

Kristen Barnett Launches Hungry House, an ‘Anti-Ghost Kitchen’ Ghost Kitchen

It seems a day doesn’t go by nowadays without a new ghost kitchen concept popping up.

While all that growth can be exciting, the ghost kitchen land grab has its downsides, at least according to Kristen Barnett. The former COO of ghost kitchen startup Zuul told me today in a video call that the industry’s rapid expansion has often meant low-quality food, a lack of transparency, and, well, just way too many chicken wing restaurants.

To counter this, Barnett has launched a new company called Hungry House, which she describes as an ‘anti-ghost kitchen ghost kitchen.’

What does that mean?

“We are actively being intentional about some of the more negative sides of the ghost kitchen industry that the public has come to know,” said Barnett. “Hungry House really was created as a reaction to that, seeing a way to flip those maybe less than ideal characteristics of the industry on its head and say ‘No, what happens if we infuse transparency, we tell customers it’s Hungry House making the food, we have a physical storefront that people can actually order at and see the kitchen and see the team?’”

You can read the full story about Hungry House here.

Aquaculture Tech

The Kingfish Company Wants to Lead a Tech Revolution in Aquaculture

Earth’s ocean ecosystems are deteriorating. Wild fish stocks are increasingly vulnerable. And yet by the year 2050, global demand for seafood may have increased by as much as 80%, according to research from the Blue Food Assessment.

The Kingfish Company wants to help satisfy some of that demand while reducing the environmental toll of seafood production. The agtech company launched its first land-based aquaculture production facility in the Netherlands before introducing its flagship line of yellowtail kingfish products in Whole Foods Markets across the U.S. Soon, Kingfish will bring its production operations to the U.S. with a new facility in Maine.

Earlier this week, The Spoon joined Kingfish founding partner and CEO Ohad Maiman on Zoom to find out more about the company’s aquaculture technology and plans for expansion.

To read the full interview with the CEO of Kingfish, head here.

Food Robots

Meet Nommi, a Robotic Bowl Food Kiosk

Last week, Wavemaker Labs announced the launch of a new startup and bowl-making robotic kiosk concept called Nommi. Nommi will be “a standalone robotic kitchen that is able to produce and dispense any grain-, noodle- or lettuce-based dish through a fully integrated cooking system.”

Nommi is the latest robot startup concept to emerge from Wavemaker Labs, the food automation incubation studio behind Miso Robotics (Flippy, a back-of-house fry and grillbot), Bobacino (boba drinkbot), Future Acres (farm assistant) and Piestro (pizza kiosk). What’s unique about Nommi is the company is a product of a partnership between Wavemaker, C3 and chef Masaharu Morimoto, each of whom hold equity in the new company.

“As we started developing it, we really wanted to get partners to allow this to scale quickly, and really kind of stack the deck before we start playing,” said Buck Jordan, President and Co-Founder of Nommi and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, in a recent zoom interview with The Spoon.

To read the full story about Nommi, click here.

Kitchen Tech

Is Home Fermentation The Next Big Kitchen Tech Opportunity?

There’s been a fermentation boom in restaurants over the past decade. Chefs everywhere are using the age-old technique to make everything from kimchi to katsuobushi, and nowadays, it’s not out of the ordinary for high-end restaurants to have a head of fermentation on staff.

And now, thanks in part to the pandemic and the rise of experimentation in food making, more people than ever are doing fermentation at home. Anyone who’s tried to create a sourdough starter, brew kombucha or make sauerkraut has dabbled in fermentation whether they know it or not.

Still, fermenting is still viewed as something of a black art. Part of it is the weird and slightly creepy terminology (mother, anyone?). Mostly, though, it’s also because the act of farming bacteria to create tasty and healthy new foods is a far cry from the usual activity of assembling and cooking our meals in our kitchen.

Read the full story the rise of home fermentation tech, click here.

Watch Nala Robotics’ Robot Chef in Action

A restaurant that can serve millions of different dishes, is open 24/7, and doesn’t close on holidays sounds like a dream, right? After three years in the making, Nala Robotics has made this dream a reality with its fully automated robot kitchen that opened on November 11th in Naperville, Illinois.

The first automated restaurant/kitchen by Nala Robotics is called One Mean Chicken, and it serves wings and fried chicken. It is manned by multiple robots powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, which do not need human intervention to function. Without the need for humans, Nala’s restaurant can operate throughout the day and night, on holidays, and without social distancing considerations.

Watch this video to see the robots preparing food:

Recipes can be uploaded by the user to the recipes catalog, and the robots can learn to make any dish within just a few minutes. This easily gives restaurant concepts the opportunity to offer multiple cuisines under one roof.

Nala’s use of articulating robotic arms to do everything from prep, cook, and more while handling a variety of cookware and utensils is reminiscent of Moley’s chef robot, which the UK-based company announced general availability for last year. Unlike Moley, Nala is exclusively targeted for commercial foodservice applications, whereas Moley is targeted both towards high-end residential installations in addition to commercial applications.

According to Ajay Sunkara, the founder and CEO of Nala Robotics, “Being AI-powered, the robotic chef gets better and better every single day. The more it cooks, the more it’s going to learn and master these recipes.”

Restaurants around the country have been facing major labor shortages in 2021 due to the aftermath of the pandemic, and over 25 percent have reported that they are struggling to hire line cooks. Automated kitchens like Nala, and others such as Mezli, Spyce, and Cala may prove to be a viable solution to these ongoing shortages.

Nala Robotics will soon open two more restaurant concepts in the same location as One Mean Chicken (in Naperville’s Mall of India). The next to be launched will be Nala’s Thai 76 (Thai food) and then Surya Tiffins (South Indian food). In 2022, Nala plans to open 10 restaurant locations, and then 100 locations by 2024.

Carrefour Teams With AiFi to Launch Cashierless Convenience Store in Paris

French retail giant Carrefour announced today the company has teamed up with AiFi, a maker of machine-vision powered checkout tech, to launch a cashierless convenience store called Carrefour Flash.

Unlike Amazon Go or other cashierless platforms that require an app, smart shopping basket, or biometric check-in, AiFi’s technology utilizes a network of cameras on the retailer’s ceiling that monitors a shopper as they move through the store and pick items up off the shelves for purchase. The computer vision’s AI creates a keypoint tracking system that creates a unique digital avatar for each customer. The system identifies each avatar by measuring the unique distance between the customer’s elbow and their hand. Because the system doesn’t require a unique biometric identifier such as a palm, facial or retinal scan, it ensures customer privacy despite using biometric tracking.

As the customer picks up items around the store, the AiFi system creates a virtual shopping cart. The system utilizes a network of 60 HD cameras and over 2000 sensors built into store shelves to track a shopper’s activity and assign it to their avatar. Once done, the customer walks up to a payment terminal to see their shopping basket and total bill within a few seconds.

This move by Carrefour is just the latest example of a retailer embracing tech that frees shoppers of checking out via a cashier. The wave of cashierless shopping formats, which kicked off in earnest with Amazon’s launch of their Amazon Go store in Seattle in early 2018, has only picked up steam over the past year and a half. One reason for the surging interest is the growing expectation from customers for low-contact ways to shop during the pandemic. The other primary driver is persistent labor shortages as food retailers deal with the high turnover of frontline workers; cashierless store concepts give them a way to operate without hiring and training new cashiers.

The Carrefour innovation team incubated and fine-tuned the new concept over the past year at the company’s headquarters in Massy, France. At launch, the new Paris store will have a total of 900 items for sale.

You can get a sneak peek of Carrefour Flash in the video below:

AiFi x Carrefour: Shopping in a flash with Carrefour Flash 10/10

Kaffe Bueno Wins $2.8 Million Grant To Build the World’s First Coffee Biorefinery

According to CarbonBrief, coffee has a larger carbon footprint per kilogram than fish, poultry, or pork. At the farming stage, it’s one of the top seven agricultural drivers of global deforestation, according to the World Resources Institute. Then there are emissions associated with processing and transportation. And once coffee grounds end up in landfills, they release methane (a greenhouse gas) as they degrade.

Danish biotech startup Kaffe Bueno wants to make the coffee supply chain more environmentally friendly by giving those used grounds a second life as food, nutraceutical, and personal care ingredients. The company announced this month that it has secured new support for that goal: The team received a $2.8 million grant from the European Innovation Council, which it will use to construct its first—and the world’s first—coffee biorefinery.

Kaffe Bueno partners with a transportation service that collects spent coffee grounds from commercial and industrial businesses. Via a fractionation process, those spent grounds get broken down into different compounds.

The company’s first two products have applications in both the food and personal care industries. There’s KAFFOIL, an oil that can be used as a flavoring agent and preservative; and KAFFIBRE, a gluten-free “coffee flour” that can be used in baked goods, confections, and snacks.

In addition to selling its products directly to manufacturers, Kaffe Bueno offers a private label service with customizable formulations. The company partnered up last year with Danish hotel chain Sinatur Hotel & Konference to collect spent grounds from different hotel locations, and then return them to the hotels in the form of upcycled personal care products.

The Spoon reported last year on Kaffee Bueno’s $1.3 million seed funding round, which the company used to begin scaling up production of its coffee-based products. Now, with the European Innovation Council grant funding and biorefinery construction plans, the company should be on track to unlock further production capacity and seek out new partnerships.

Big Idea Ventures Unveils Start-ups in Newest Accelerator Cohort

Big Idea Ventures is an early-stage investor in food technologies, and this week the firm announced the list of start-ups that are a part of its bi-annual accelerator program.

For this cohort, 17 start-ups focused on food and climate challenges were selected to receive pre-seed investment through the firm’s offices in New York, Singapore, and Paris. This is the first cohort for the Paris program and the fourth cohort for the New York and Singapore programs. The accelerator program is part of Big Idea Venture’s New Protein Fund, which invests in alternative protein products and ingredients.

Here’s more info about the selected companies:

New York Program

Fybraworks Foods – grows real animal meat proteins with microbes and is the first company to develop recombinant muscle protein for food applications.

De Novo Dairy – the first African company to use precision fermentation technology, this start-up is replicating dairy to create animal-free cheese, yoghurt, and ice cream.

Prosel Biosciences – uses microalgae to produce bioidentical food proteins and selenoprotein-modified industrial enzymes.

BetterMilk – using mammary cells and a genetic engineering platform, the B2B company will sell their alternative milk and milk ingredients to companies in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry.

Liven Proteins – produces animal-free protein ingredients through the fermentation of agriculture and food industry by-products (gelatin is the company’s first product).

Maya Milk – uses precision fermentation to produce animal-free dairy proteins and fats with the same sensory experience that animal-based dairy provides.

Singapore Program

Phyx44 – using precision fermentation, the start-up is producing animal-free dairy proteins & fats to recreate milk.

LILO Desserts – sourcing fruit waste and low-grade fruit not fit for grocery stores, LILO is creating snacks and desserts, such as plant-based cheesecake.

Fisheroo – the first to use cellular agriculture technology to create surimi, a minced fish paste commonly found in East Asian cuisine.

Mogale Meat – with its proprietary biobank of stem and satellite cell lines, Mogale is producing cultivated meat analogs, with a focus on African game meat.

Paris Program

Bright Biotech – with the goal of bringing cell-based meat to consumers quicker, this start-up has developed a plant-based technology that uses chloroplasts as chassis to manufacture large amounts of affordable growth factors.

Green-On – developing saturated fat and fatty acids to replace palm oil using only carbon dioxide, electricity, and, water. 

Little Bandits – developing non-dairy, soy-free products for children.

Luyef Biotechnologies – a cell-based meat company that has developed myoglobin protein to provide the flavor and aroma of real meat for plant-based meat alternatives.

The VERY Food co. – creating plant-based ingredients for cooking, including eggs, cream, and butter.

YOFI – creating organic plant-based milk alternatives with peas.

MOA foodtech – transforming food waste and agriculture byproducts into a “next-generation protein” through the use of artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

Maya Milk’s milk protein product

Amongst the selected start-ups, developing alternative dairy is one of the predominant focuses. The alternative dairy market is the most developed category in the plant-based space, and it is expected to reach a value of $54 billion by 2028. YOFI, The VERY Food Co., and Little Bandits are entering this crowded space using explicitly plant-based ingredients to develop their alternative products. On the other hand, Maya Milk, Phyx44, and De Novo Dairy are each using precision fermentation to create animal-free dairy products, while BetterMilk makes alternative milk using mammary cells and its’ genetic engineering platform.

In 2020, $366 million in funding flowed to companies developing alternative meat using cellular agriculture. Cultivated meat and seafood, a global market expected to be worth $25 billion by 2030, is another theme in this cohort. Fybraworks Foods, Luyef Biotechnologies, Bright Biotech, Mogale Meat, and Fisheroo fall into this category.

LILO Dessert’s packaged cheesecake made from fruit waste and damaged fruits

Global food waste is a major issue that has garnered attention in recent years, and one that companies in the food and agriculture tech space have attempted to provide solutions to. In this cohort, MOA Foodtech and LILO Desserts are each using some form of food waste to develop new products.

To date, Big Idea Ventures has invested in 65 alternative protein companies, including this current cohort. Currently, the firm is accepting applications for its next accelerator cohorts (beginning in early 2022) in New York, Paris, and Singapore.