Category: News
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Brian Canlis didn’t expect to be in the restaurant business his whole life. But as with so many family businesses – especially hugely successful ones like Canlis, which single-handedly put Pacific Northwest cuisine on the map – life and careers happen before we know it. And there’s no doubt that the brothers Canlis, Brian and…
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It’s a mystery (kinda). While traditional venture and strategic capital haven’t shown much enthusiasm for backing food waste-fighting technology, the category is thriving on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Two current campaigns, in particular, are crushing it, blowing past their initial funding targets with weeks still to go. First up is the Shelfy Lite, the second fridge…
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After a multi-year boom fueled by the rise of delivery apps and the broader digital transformation of the restaurant industry, venture capital flowing into restaurant tech has sharply slowed, according to a new report from PitchBook. The report, titled Q2 2025 Tech Landscape: Restaurant Technology, shows that total VC funding in the space dropped to…
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If you’ve eaten out much over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve experienced a growing number of dining experiences that use AI and automation. Restaurants across the U.S. and worldwide are adopting artificial intelligence and automation at the drive-thru, in the kitchen, at the register, and other parts of the business. But how…
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Last week, I was in Rome at the Vatican for a workshop on the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence and automation in our food system. The workshop was part of an ongoing three-year NIH-funded project focused on the ethics of AI in food. It took place at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life,…
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“Biology is so complex, it’s like the most complex piece of technology in the entire world,” said Carl-Emil Grøn. “There’s nothing that’s remotely close. You start from one cell and then you grow into a Michael Wolf who’s now hosting a podcast together with me. That is crazy when you think about it.” When this…
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Eva Goulbourne didn’t study food systems in college – she studied the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and art history – but her lifelong obsession with food would eventually shape a career that’s taken her across the globe and put her at the center of the global food systems transformation conversation. I recently caught up…
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Combustion, the smart thermometer startup founded by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young, has acquired popular recipe app Crouton. Crouton, developed by New Zealand-based software engineer Devin Davies, is a highly rated app that lets users organize all their recipes in one place. After launch, Crouton soon began gaining traction and critical attention (Apple awarded the app…
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Fridge startup Tomorrow will not live to see another day. Last week, founder Andrew Kinzer cited the difficult funding environment for hardware startups and the headwinds around the uncertainty in tariffs in a post on LinkedIn. I knew this would be a massive challenge. Consumer hardware is notoriously difficult, and solving shelf-life extension would require…
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Back in the early days of the cloud computing revolution, my former employer, GigaOM, hosted perhaps the biggest and most influential conference on the topic called STRUCTURE. One of the phrases that has stuck with me from those days is “data is the new oil,” which I heard declared from the STRUCTURE stage more than…
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A couple of years ago, Andrew Simmons had big plans for his restaurant subscription business. And why not? After experimenting with a wide range of technologies in a San Diego-area pizza restaurant, Simmons had launched a pizza subscription model that helped him generate $30,000 in a single-day Black Friday sale. Confident in his approach, he…
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Admit it: you’ve probably played around with making recipes using AI. At this point, most of us have. If you’re like me, the early results were… rough. But over time, general-purpose LLMs have become surprisingly good at whipping up recipes. Still, there’s a long way to go before AI becomes a true sous chef in…
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