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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Alt. Protein Round-Up: Smoked Salmon, Funding Rounds, and Brave Robot’s Cake Mix

Alternative protein news has been dropping in faster than fall leaves, and so we’ve gathered some of this week’s top stories, including Revo Foods’ product launch, Aquacultured and Daring Foods’ funding rounds, and Brave Robot’s new cake mix.

Revo Foods launches plant-based salmon in Austrian grocery stores

This week, plant-based seafood startup Revo Foods launched its alternative salmon product in the Austrian supermarket chain Billa Plus. The product now available on retailer shelves is Revo’s plant-based smoked salmon, made from a base of pea protein and algae oil. Additionally, Revo Foods recently appeared on the Austrian show “2 Minuten 2 Millionen” (similar to Shark Tank), where the company garnered interest from potential investors. In 2022, the company has plans to launch plant-based tuna, smoked salmon spread, and sashimi products.

Aquacultured raises $2.1 million in oversubscribed seed round

Alt-seafood startup Aqua Cultured has raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding. Unlike many other alt-seafood startups using a straight plant-based or cell-cultured approach, Aqua Cultured uses microbial fermentation techniques to create whole-muscle cut seafood alternatives. The company has developed formulas for tuna, whitefish, squid, and shrimp that leverage its novel fungi as the primary ingredient. Investors include Supply Change Capital, Aera VC, Sustainable Food Ventures, Hanfield Venture Partners, Lifely VC, Conscience VC, Kingfisher Capital, Big Idea Ventures. $2.1 million, a nice pre-seed raise, is even more impressive considering the company only started last month.

Brave Robot releases cake mix

Brave Robot, the first consumer products spinout of precision fermentation platform company Perfect Day, unveiled a new product this week, the “Climate Hero Super Cake.” The yellow cake mix uses the same animal-free milk protein found in the company’s ice cream and replaces the equivalent of three eggs. The mix – which is packaged in a compostable bag – contains other standard ingredients like wheat flour and sugar and requires added oil and water to prepare. One bag of the mix makes two 8-inch round cakes and costs $18.

Daring raises $65 million, launches in Walmart

Daring Foods, a plant-based chicken brand, announced this week that it has closed a Series C round totaling $65 million, and that it will launch its products in Walmart. The round was led by Founders Fund, with D1 Capital Group, and celebrities such as Naomi Osaka, Cameron Newton, Steve Aoki and Chase Coleman participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $120 million. Daring’s plant-based chicken will be available in 3,000 Walmart locations nationwide.

The Week in Food Tech Funding: AI-Powered Future Food Attracting Lots of Venture Capital

When it comes to AI meets food, it’s easy to think of food robots, precision farming, or even restaurant tech. But over the past year or so, we’ve seen a parade of new startups emerge that use machine learning and other forms of AI to develop new food building blocks.

Take Kingdom Supercultures. The company, which raised $25 million a couple of weeks ago, uses machine learning to explore the properties of existing cultures to create what it claims is the world’s largest biobank. From there, they mine to explore potentially new and interesting microbial combinations called supercultures that provide new functionality, flavors, and more.

And this week, a company called Shiru, which uses machine learning and precision fermentation to create analogs to animal-based ingredients, raised $17 million. Like Kingdom, Shiru is using AI to rapidly develop a massive proprietary database, only Shiru’s dataset is the first to focus on “protein identity with protein-related food function.” The company mines its database with machine learning to identify novel ingredients that replicate “the taste, texture, gelation, foaming, emulsification, and binding abilities of animal proteins.”

In short, both companies are using AI to build next-generation ingredient platforms and, in doing so, are hoping to accelerate the process of ingredient development by an order of magnitude over a purely wet lab approach.

And they’re not the only ones. Climax Foods, led by Google’s former head of data science, is building plant-based cheese by analyzing data sets using machine learning to figure out what novel tastes and textures a set of particular raw ingredients and isolates will yield. Brightseed is analyzing plant molecules using AI to understand and isolate new phytonutrient compounds and, you guessed it, build a database from which they make predictions about how these new compounds may impact health.

It’s an exciting time in the world of future food. As advances in AI and cutting-edge biotechnology continue to merge and yield new food building blocks at a breathtaking pace, we’ll be watching for the next Kingdom Supercultures and Shiru to emerge over the next year.

If you are the next company in this space, drop us a line. We’d like to hear from you.

And now for the rest of this week’s funding news.

Agtech

Pure Harvest Smart Farms – $65 Million: UAE-based precision agriculture firm Pure Harvest Smart Farms has raised $64.5 million in funding. Today Pure Harvest operates three farms in the UAE and is developing new farms in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Pure Harvest’s crops include tomatoes, leafy greens, and strawberries. The funding brings the company’s total invested capital to USD 271.6 million, which the company claims is the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia) region’s largest agtech investment.

Grubmarket – $145 Million – Grubmarket, a B2B and B2C digital supply chain company, has raised $145 million Series E. The company, which operates an online marketplace for fresh produce, offers managed warehousing and supply chain operation services across North America, and has a variety of cloud software for food wholesalers and farms, is on track for a $1 billion annualized run rate. The company plans to use the funding to expand into new markets (and hopefully to improve its website, which does not look at all like a website of a company close to $1B in revenue).

Fermentation

Aqua Cultured – $2.1 Million: Alt-seafood startup Aqua Cultured has raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding. Unlike many other alt-seafood startups using a straight plant-based or cell-cultured approach, Aqua Cultured uses microbial fermentation techniques to create whole-muscle cut seafood alternatives. The company has developed formulas for tuna, whitefish, squid, and shrimp that leverage its novel fungi as the primary ingredient. Investors include Supply Change Capital, Aera VC, Sustainable Food Ventures, Hanfield Venture Partners, Lifely VC, Conscience VC, Kingfisher Capital, Big Idea Ventures. $2.1 million, a nice pre-seed raise, is even more impressive considering the company only started last month.

Coffee

Cometeer – $35 Million: Cometeer, a company that makes frozen coffee pucks and sells them in packs via a DTC-by-mail model, has raised a $35 million Series B. The company’s pucks consist of 10x strength frozen coffee which are dropped into hot water to make a drinkable cup of Joe. The pucks aren’t cheap at $64 for a box of 32, or $2 a pop. You can see Ashlen Wilder’s review of Cometeer here.

Fast Grocery

Gorillas – $1B: We have a few more details on the nearly $1 billion in funding for Gorillas we wrote about early this month. The company raised an almost $1 billion in funding, with Delivery Hero leading the round with $235 million in funding in exchange for 8% of the company. While that seems like a whole lotta capital, the company’s going to need it as it continues to build out a warehouse and dark store network that is already in 55 cities across Europe and the U.S.

CPG

N!CK’s – $100 Million – Better-for-you food company N!CK’s has hauled in an impressive $100 million in funding in a round was led by Kinnevik, Ambrosia and Temasek. Others throwing their hat in the N!CK’s ring include Gullspang, fellow Swedish food standout Oatly, Peak Bridge, Capagro and Nicoya. The company uses proprietary sweeteners and other ingredients to make ice cream, protein bars, and cookies. N!CK’s plans to use the money to accelerate its North American and European growth by expanding its product portfolio and doubling N!CK’S store count in 2022.

Food Robots

Fabric – $200 Million – Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced today they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion. Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

SKS 2021: Meet Mezli, Maker of Robotic Containerized Restaurants

Over the next couple of weeks, The Spoon is featuring interviews with leaders from the Smart Kitchen Summit 2021 Startup Showcase, and this time up we have Alex Kolchinski, the CEO of Mezli.

Mezli builds containerized robot restaurants they call auto-kitchens. The company’s fully autonomous restaurants-in-a-box offer a menu of Mediterranean grain bowls, sides, and drinks. Mezli’s version 2 auto-kitchen is complete and the company is getting ready to launch v3 publicly next year.

If you’d like to connect with Alex at the Smart Kitchen Summit, hop on over to Hopin where we are hosting our virtual event and pick up your ticket today!

The Spoon talks with Mezli, Maker of Robot Restaurants-in-a-Box

The Spoon Weekly: NFT Dinner Clubs, Robocorns & Impossible’s Burger Joint

This is the web version of the Spoon weekly newsletter where we wrap up of some of the most interesting stories in Food Tech. If you’d like to subscribe to The Spoon Newsletter, you can do so here.

The NFT-Powered Dinner Club Has Arrived

After eating at home for much of the past 18 months, most of us are itching to get out into the real world and have dinner with interesting people. If this is you, may I suggest a new way to break bread: An NFT dinner club.

That’s the idea behind Dinner DAO, a new community creating IRL (in real life) dinner clubs using non-fungible tokens.

Here’s how it works: Prospective diners become members of a club – or Dinner DAO (DAO stands for ‘decentralized autonomous organization’) – by buying a Dinner DAO NFT. The cryptocurrency raised during the sale of the NFT is pooled in a shared treasury and used to purchase meals whenever the club gets together throughout the year.

For those who’d prefer to create a Facebook group, get together with friends and split the bill with a bunch a credit cards, your old-world ways go against the central organizing principle of the virtual currency and NFT movement: decentralization. Dinner DAO members are ok with taking more time to create a crypto-based dinner club because, in doing so, they are pioneering a new way to meet for a meal without having to rely on big technology companies or banks. In other words, they are getting together in real life by putting their dinner club on the blockchain.

The Dinner DAO concept is the brainchild of artist and designer Austin Robey. Robey, who lives in Brooklyn, created the first Dinner DAO NFT for New York City, and the first meal was at a restaurant in Little Italy called Shoo Shoo Nolita.

You can read the full story about Dinner Dao at The Spoon.

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? 

Learn more here in my announcement about the partnership. If you want to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Hacking Refined Carbs? That’s Better Brand’s Plan

So many of our favorite foods contain refined carbohydrates like white flour and white sugar. These ingredients reliably produce delicious foods, but they’re also associated with health problems like Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

California-based startup Better Brand is on a mission to hack refined carbohydrates, recreating their flavor without the health consequences. The company’s first product, the Better Bagel, has the carbohydrate content of two banana slices, the protein content of four eggs, and the sugar content of a single stalk of celery.

Company founder and CEO Aimee Yang told The Spoon that she set out to develop products that would make healthy eating easier while improving consumers’ relationships with food.

You can read The Spoon’s full interview with Yang here. 

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Startup Showcase Alumni Incredible Eats Lands Investment on Shark Tank

Dinesh Tadepalli has landed his shark.

Tadepalli, the CEO of Incredible Eats, appeared on Shark Tank last night to pitch his company and ended up getting four offers from various sharks before walking away with an offer from Lori Greiner for 15% of the company.

Regular Shark Tank watchers will know four offers are a lot, but it’s not all that surprising since Incredible Eats checks many shark boxes: an easy-to-understand product, proven success, and mission-driven.

That easy to understand product is edible cutlery that replaces disposable plastic spoons and forks. IncredibleEats’ edible spoons and sporks come in both sweet and savory versions — chocolate and vanilla for desserts, oregano chili and black pepper for soups and such — and in both large and small versions.

To read the full story about former Startup Showcase contestant Incredible Eats’ showing on Shark Tank, head over to The Spoon. 

Alt Protein

BIOMILQ Raises $21M in Series A Funding With Focus on Mission-Aligned Partners

In June, The Spoon reported on North Carolina-based startup BIOMILQ’s success in recreating human milk outside of the breast. The company is working toward manufacturing cell-cultured milk at commercial scale, hoping to provide parents who cannot breastfeed regularly with a nutritionally equivalent option.

BIOMILQ announced they’ve closed their Series A financing round with $21 million. This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with company co-founder and CEO Michelle Egger to discuss the funding round and BIOMILQ’s next steps toward commercialization.

“In the grand scheme of fundraising rounds in cellular agriculture, $21 million is par for the course,” says Egger. “But we’re particularly proud because we’re an all-female leadership team. It’s less about celebrating the dollar value and more about celebrating the fact that we were able to raise it with specific partnership criteria that helped us find mission-aligned partners.”

To read our interview with BIOMILQ CEO Michelle Egger, click here. 

Fruit Cells, Space Bread, and Cultured Meat Cartridges: Deep Space Food Challenge Announces Phase 1 Winners

On planet Earth, we face the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population that is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. In space, we face the challenge of feeding astronauts traveling through the galaxy for an extended period of time. Novel and innovative food technology could offer viable solutions in both realms.

For the first time ever, NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) have come together this year to host the Deep Space Food Challenge. Companies competing in the challenge must be able to offer a solution to feeding at least four astronauts on a three-year space mission. The solutions should be able to achieve the greatest amount of food output (that is palatable and nutritious) with minimal input and waste. In addition to being used in space, the solution must also improve food accessibility on Earth.

To read more about the Phase 1 winners of the Deep Space Food Challenge, head over to The Spoon.

Food Robots

Ten Chili’s Restaurants Are Now Using a Server Robot Named Rita

Want your baby back ribs brought to your table via robot?

You may be in luck as Rita the robot, a version of the Bear Robotics Servi server robot platform, has now been deployed in 10 Chili’s restaurants across the US.

The news, shared via a social media post on Linkedin, marks the latest in a string of deployments for the Bear Robotics robot over the past year. The northern California-based company has seen wins across the US in 2021, from Florida’s Sergio’s to the Country Biscuit in North Carolina to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin.

But with over 1600 locations, Chili’s is the biggest win yet for Bear Robotics, and one which looks like it’s growing quickly. Bear announced they deployed Rita to a fifth Chili’s just a week ago, and since then, new locations have been added almost daily.

Read the full story here.

Dawn of the Robocorn? Micro-Fulfillment Robot Specialist Fabric Raises $200M on $1 Billion Valuation

Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion.

Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

To read the full story and see a video of Fabric’s system, click here. 

Restaurant Tech

Impossible Foods Opens a Burger Stand in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

Nowadays, if you want an Impossible Burger, you have your choice of thousands of fast food joints or grocery stores to pick up the plant-based patty.

But last night, the Impossible Burger showed up in a new kind of place: its own.

This week Impossible and Climate Pledge Arena, the world’s first net zero-carbon sports arena, announced that the Impossible patty had been named the venue’s official burger. They also announced Impossible is opening two branded food stands in the home of the NHL’s newest franchise, the Seattle Kraken.

Called Impossible Market, the new plant-based burger stands feature a menu with the Impossible Burger, Impossible chicken nuggets, and other items made with Impossible plant-based beef like chili fries and street tacos.

Read about Impossible’s new burger stand here. 

Spyce Closes Location of First Robot Restaurant as It Turns Focus To Sweetgreen

When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.

According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.

Read about Spyce closing down its original location here at The Spoon. 

IBM Partners With McDonald’s, Acquires McD Tech Labs to Automate Drive-Thru Orders

Over the summer, McDonald’s announced that it was trialing automated ordering at 10 Chicago, Illinois locations. Now, it appears that we will be seeing automated ordering at more locations sooner than later. Today, IBM announced that it has partnered with McDonald’s to continue to develop automated drive-thru orders and acquired its proprietary McD Tech Labs. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

McDonald’s acquired Apprente, a voice technology company, in 2019, and shortly after developed McD Tech Labs based on Apprente’s tech. This technology uses artificial intelligence to process drive-thru orders and then sends the order to the kitchen, where it is fulfilled by staff.

What is the benefit of using an AI-powered ordering system? In the trial run at the Chicago locations, McDonald’s found an 85 percent accuracy rate with orders and about 20 percent of orders needing staff assistance. AI can also help reduce customer wait time and free up employees to assist elsewhere in the restaurant.

In addition to the acquisition of McD Tech Labs, IBM will assist in the continued development of the Automated Order-Taking (AOT) technology and work on additional languages and dialects.

Consumers have traditionally voiced a certain degree of hesitancy in interacting with artificial intelligence. However, in Datassential’s AI & Menus report, it found that 43 percent of consumers found voice ordering technology unappealing initially, but after experiencing it, 68 percent were satisfied with the tech.

McDonald’s operates nearly 14,000 locations throughout the U.S, and it was not disclosed when a large rollout of the AOT technology might occur. IBM stated in the press release that it will help the quick-service chain accelerate the deployment of the AOT technology across different markets.

At Long Last, Mitte Begins to Ship Countertop Mineral Water Machine

Mitte, a maker of countertop mineral water machines, announced this week that they would begin shipping their first product, the Mitte Home, this month. The Berlin-based company will ship first to new customers and Kickstarter backers in Germany and plans to begin selling the water-mineralizer in the US in the spring of 2022.

The Mitte Home, which sells for €350, filters and mineralizes the water using a two-step process. The water is filtered using activated charcoal. After filtration, the water seeps through calcite and magnesite rocks to add calcium and magnesium. After mineralizing, the system adds CO₂ and dispenses. The system uses a cartridge system for filtration and mineralization, with each cartridge good for 250 liters. The machine also uses replaceable CO₂ cylinders to add the fizz.

The Mitte Home can be controlled by an app, which allows users to track consumption. The app also allows users order new cartridges and CO₂ cylinders.

The original Mitte product offered via the company’s Kickstarter campaign included water distillation, but this version only provides filtration. According to the company’s update on Kickstarter, a premium model called the Mitte Home Plus will include distillation and will ship in 2-3 years. The company is offering backers the option get a Mitte Home, wait for the Mitte Home Plus, or get a full refund.

While the Mitte comes to market over three years late, backers of the Kickstarter can take comfort in the product actually shipping. Hardware-based crowdfunding campaigns are notoriously high-risk, many products never ship, and those that do are usually late. The company’s ability to persist was no doubt in part due to a $10.6 million funding round in 2018. That round, led by DanonevManifesto Ventures, the New York-based venture arm of Danone, was significantly more than the $317 thousand raised as part of its crowdfunding campaign.

If you live in Germany and would like to order a Mitte, you can do so today at mitte.co, while those who live outside of Germany can add themselves to the waitlist.

Instant Brands Launches Instant Pot Pro Plus and Drop-Powered Connected App

Instant Brands, the company behind the popular Instant Pot line of multicookers, announced today it has launched a new connected multicooker, the Instant Pot Pro Plus, and an all-new Instant Brands Connect app.

The new app was developed in partnership with smart kitchen software company Drop. The two companies began working together with the launch of a guided recipes app in 2019, but that first app was strictly a recipe app with no control features. The new app allows the user to select recipes and initiate cooks, customize recipes, monitor cooking progress, get notifications, delay cooking start, and change steam venting methods. Users of the new Connect app will have access to 1500 recipes to start.

The plan is for the Instant Brands Connect app to allow cooks to eventually connect multiple Instant Brands products. Today customers can download it and will be able to pair the new Instant Pot Pro Plus. Instant has indicated it has a number of other smart products planned in the pipeline, which means we’ll see more Instant Pots, air fryers, and maybe even a coffee maker or two connected to the app. And while the app currently does not have a shoppable recipe feature, I can imagine that functionality in potential future versions.

For Drop, the new app is a strong validation for the Dublin-based startup’s smart kitchen OS. Instant Brands had previously built an app for its Instant Pot Smart Wifi pressure cooker, but with this launch, the multicooker giant is standardizing its connected device strategy around Drop’s smart kitchen platform. Instant Brands sits alongside other big kitchen brands such as Bosch, Electrolux and Thermomix on Drop’s smart kitchen OS partner roster.

The new Instant Pro Plus is available today for $169.99 and the app can be downloaded today in the app store.

SKS 2021: Meet Clew, a Startup Making a Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

We’re heads down in preparation for Smart Kitchen Summit 2021, but we couldn’t be more excited to showcase some of food tech’s more innovative startups as part of the 2021 Startup Showcase.

To whet your appetite, The Spoon team is going to be rolling out almost-daily video interviews with the leaders of these startups over the next two weeks.

First up is Clew. Clew makes a countertop appliance that grinds, heats, and dries all residential food waste (including animal bones, fruit pits, and coffee filters) in under 2 hours into a shelf stable and consistent output that is over 80% mass-reduced. The output can then be easily-refined into compost, gifted to a local garden, or put into an appropriate organics recycling stream for further processing.

You can watch our interview with Clew’s Chief Experience Officer Spencer Martin below.

If you’d like to connect with Clew or any of the other startups pitching at SKS 2021, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interview With Clew, Maker of a Smart Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

Dawn of the Robocorn? Micro-Fulfillment Robot Specialist Fabric Raises $200M on $1 Billion Valuation

Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced today they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion.

Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

You can see what a Fabric micro-fulfillment center (MFC) in Tel Aviv looks like in action as it processes an order below:

The World's First 1-hour Delivery Fulfilled by Robots

The funding, which vaults the company into what it describes as a ‘robocorn’ status, is not a surprise given the fast growth of the company and the broader micro-fulfillment market. Interact Analysis forecasts MFC automation and robotics market to grow from $136 million in 2020 to $5.3 billion in 2025. Revenue growth will be fueled by a rapidly growing number of MFC installations in various formats throughout the forecast; Interact expects the the total number of MFCs installed annual to grow from 29 in 2020 to over 2100 new MFCs installed in 2025.

The company plans to use the funds to grow its fulfillment solution in the general merchandise market and build a network of micro-fulfillment centers in cities across the United States. The company’s model relies heavily on building warehouse fulfillment centers that allow grocery retailers to outsource micro-fulfillment to Fabric. Fabric also co-invests and builds distributed fulfillment centers in partnership with larger players such as Instacart and FreshDirect.

That strategy makes Fabric part of a new kind of third-party logistics (3PL) player built around robotics and automation as an enabling platform for their distributed fulfillment networks. While large 3PL companies like XPO Logistics and C.H. Robinson been adopting automation in their warehouses for some time, companies like Fabric, Exotec and Attabotics are building hybrid networks of dark and retail/integrated grocery MFCs architected from the get-go with robotics in mind (rather than a bolt-on or forced integration). As more retailers invest in distribution networks tailored towards a grocery industry with 50%+ e-commerce penetration, next-gen MFC platform companies like these are well-situated to benefit.

“While we use the term ‘robocorn’ a bit tongue in cheek, we see this milestone as a real turning point in the industry, from what was once trepid exploration of micro-fulfillment to total market validation and now rapid expansion,’ said Fabric CEO Elram Goren in the release sent to The Spoon. “We’re thankful to our partners for trusting us to serve them and to our incredible team who will continue moving mountains to make our vision a reality. This is still ‘day one’ for us, and we’re extremely excited about the road ahead as we expand our offering into new markets, drive more efficiencies across the supply chain, and focus on scaling.”

Edete Precision Technologies Increases Pistachio Yields With Pollinator Robots

Many plants and trees rely on natural phenomena like bees and wind to be pollinated and produce fruit. However, bee colony collapse and climate change threaten the ability of these crops to be pollinated. An Israeli ag-tech start-up called Edete Precision Technologies addresses this mounting concern using robots and artificial pollination technology.

This week, the company announced in a press release sent to The Spoon that it has successfully used its robot pollinators to increase yields in pistachio orchards by 24 percent. 

The start-up’s robot is called the 2BeTM pollinator, and it disperses a precise amount of pollen into flowers during the pistachio tree blooming season. Normally, pistachio trees are naturally pollinated by the wind blowing pollen (male sperm) into the female ovule. However, climate change may be contributing to the desynchronization of male and female trees blossoming, which results in lower crop yields. 

For pistachio farmers, this 24 percent increase in yields equates to an additional $1,850 in income per acre.

The last time The Spoon wrote about Edete, the company was addressing the problem of bee colony collapse and the role this plays in the crops that depend on this. In Australia and California, Edete uses its technology to artificially pollinate almond trees. 

Robots and automation are becoming more prevalent in agriculture. Tevel, another Israel-based ag-tech company, developed flying robots for harvesting fruit. Farmwise, Small Robot Company, and Greenfield Robotics all have different variations of autonomous weed-picking robots.

Edete completed its pilot run of artificially pollinated pistachio trees in Sacramento, California on an 82-acre orchard. Now, the company is gearing up to offer its pollination technology to other growers in California for when the pistachio blooming season starts in April 2022.

You can see how Edete’s robotic pollination works in the video below:

Edete Artificial Pollination 2020

Dinner DAO is Creating IRL Dinner Clubs Built Around NFTs

After eating at home for much of the past 18 months, most of us are itching to get out into the real world and have dinner with interesting people. If this is you, may I suggest a new way to break bread: An NFT dinner club.

That’s the idea behind Dinner DAO, a new community creating IRL (in real life) dinner clubs using non-fungible tokens.

Here’s how it works: Prospective diners become members of a club – or Dinner DAO (DAO stands for ‘decentralized autonomous organization’) – by buying a Dinner DAO NFT. The cryptocurrency raised during the sale of the NFT is pooled in a shared treasury and used to purchase meals whenever the club gets together throughout the year.

Like many NFTs, Dinner DAO uses Ethereum because of the cryptocurrency’s built-in smart contract functionality. Dinner DAO NFTs are minted using a platform called Unlock, which creates the locks and keys for NFT membership. Membership can take the form of a season pass or even one-off dinner tickets.

Dinner DAOs are location-based, meaning members join together for dinner in a specific city. Members discuss potential restaurants using the Dinner DAO Discord, which acts as the central gathering spot for the community. From there, they vote on where to eat using Snapshot.org, a decentralized voting site popular with the crypto crowd.

The Dinner DAO concept is the brainchild of artist and designer Austin Robey. Robey, who lives in Brooklyn, created the first Dinner DAO NFT for New York City, and the first meal was at a restaurant in Little Italy called Shoo Shoo Nolita. I asked Robey how his club paid for the meal since memberships are purchased in virtual currency and most restaurants want dollars or another government-backed currency. He told me that one of the members of the club had a Coinbase debit card (Coinbase is a company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange, and where many users keep cryptocurrency balances stored in the Coinbase wallet). The group transferred Ether from the pooled treasury to the member’s debit card and Coinbase converted it to US dollars when the bill was paid at the restaurant.

“I think it feels like it would defeat the purpose if everyone’s paying with a Bank of America credit cards,” said Robey.

If this all sounds like a lot of work, it is, at least for those not well-versed in cryptocurrency and NFTs. But for crypto converts, creating a Facebook group and paying for things with a regular credit card goes against the organizing principle of the virtual currency and NFT movement: decentralization. Robey and other Dinner DAO members are ok with taking more time to create a crypto-based dinner club because, in doing so, they are pioneering a new way to meet for a meal without having to rely on big technology companies or banks. In other words, they are getting together in real life by putting their dinner club on the blockchain.

“I have just have been interested in collective ownership within tech and collective governance within tech,” said Robey. “Which is part of the reason why I’ve been excited about digging into things that Unlock can do in the web three in crypto space to enable these new forms of human and corporate organization.”

Those who want to organize a new Dinner DAOs can do so by joining the Dinner DAO Discord and creating a proposal for a new city. Users vote on potential cities and, once awarded, the new Dinner DAO chapter lead will mint an NFT and put it on an exchange such as Opensea. Chapter leads are only allowed to invite two in-real-life friends and the rest must be new acquaintances. Once the eight seats are sold (each Dinner DAO club has a total of eight members), chapter members vote on a location and, finally, get together and eat a meal.

The newest Dinner DAO chapter is in Portland. The city lead is web anthropologist Amber Case, who was attracted to the idea of Dinner DAO because she felt the old-world way of splitting a check was such a pain. In her application for the Portland chapter, Case wrote she had at one point tried to create a dinner club, but “when we looked at the fundraising aspects of it, it quickly became annoying. My former co-founder and I even tried to make a startup to make it easier to split the check! We put that idea on ice while we waited for something better to emerge.”

Almost a decade later, Case has found her something better in Dinner DAO. If you’d like to look into creating a Dinner DAO, you can check out the group’s website.

Cometeer’s Flash Frozen Coffee is the Best Thing in My Freezer

Despite my few years of working as a barista in the past, I definitely don’t consider myself a coffee expert of any sort. In fact, I am someone who loves the flavor of a generic-tasting dark roast. What is important to me, however, is the quality of the coffee I’m drinking. I am willing to spend a few extra bucks on coffee from a local roaster, organic coffee beans, or just a quality cup of coffee made with care.

So when I caught wind of a company called Cometeer that not only works with some of the best roasters in the country, but also delivers the brewed end product using flash-frozen pucks, I was more than a little intrigued.

The company’s frozen coffee pucks contain 26 grams of coffee, and are brewed with Cometeer’s proprietary extraction process. To preserve the flavor and aroma, the coffee extract is flash-frozen at negative 321 degrees. The pucks, which are individually packed in aluminum capsules, can be stored in a freezer for up to 18 months.

Cometeer is strict with its verbiage when it comes to describing its product, and for good reason. Its coffee pucks are neither instant coffee nor coffee concentrate, but just flash-frozen, coffee extract. Instant coffees can have that old, and even burnt, flavor. Coffee concentrates, in my opinion, can be too acidic and make me feel jittery. 

The company shipped me five boxes, with each 8-puck box offering a different roast:

  • Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, Timor (decaf)
  • Counter Culture Coffee, Indido (light)
  • Equator, Mocha Java (dark)
  • George Howell Coffee, Alchemy (dark)
  • GGET, Chelbesa (light)

In total, I received 40 coffee pucks, which were kept frozen in the shipping process with dry ice. The instructions had me run hot water over the capsules for 10 seconds, peel the lid back, and plop the frozen coffee puck into a glass mug. I then poured 8 oz of boiling water over the puck and, just like that, I had a fresh cup of hot coffee.

As a dark coffee lover, my favorite roasts were the Mocha Java (dark roast) and Alchemy (medium roast). I loved how convenient and consistent the coffee was. I’ve never figured out the perfect ratio for making french press or pour-over coffee, and I enjoyed not having to measure anything except for the water when making Cometeer’s coffee.

I’ve avoided using a Keurig due to its plastic pods, but appreciated that Comeeter’s 100 percent aluminum capsules are fully recyclable. Keurig pods must be separated apart to be recycled, but the aluminum pods have no plastic and can just be dropped in the recycling bin.

When it comes to price, each puck costs $2, which ends up being cheaper than a coffee from a coffeeshop. However, using the pucks ends up being more expensive than making coffee from grounds. In my opinion, the taste and convenience make it worth the price, and see this product as something handy to keep in the freezer.

Although we have officially entered hot coffee season, the pucks would also be a great way to make a quick iced coffee or iced latte. Once the pucks are melted, they can simply be poured over ice and water, or ice and milk.

My boyfriend, the coffee snob between us, thoroughly enjoyed the light roasts and was soon making two cups of the Cometeer a day. A friend who I offered the Alchemy dark roast thought the flash-frozen coffee was freshly brewed in my kitchen. 

This week, Cometeer raised $35 million in a Series B round of funding, and plans to use the new capital will be used to increase manufacturing capabilities and expand its relationship with roasters. They’ve also dropped the waitlist from its website so now anyone can order a box of coffee pucks, so if you want to try Cometeer, the first box purchased costs $48 ($64 after your first order) for four boxes containing eight capsules and free shipping.