Category: News
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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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Back in 2017, I wrote a story exploring the idea of personalized food profiles. The piece explored whether, someday, we might walk into restaurants, shop at the grocery store, or have dinner at a friend’s house and be able to communicate our food preferences and dietary restrictions in advance, shaping our entire meal journey accordingly.…
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AI-powered restaurant forecasting startup ClearCOGS has raised $3.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Closed Loop Partners, with participation from Myriad Venture Partners and Hearst’s Level Up Ventures. The funding includes $2.3 million in new capital and the conversion of $1.4 million in pre-seed investments. The company’s software provides predictive analytics to assist…
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Vow, the Australian-based startup making foie gras and parfait from the cultivated cells of Japanese quail, announced a couple of big milestones this week, including what it claims to be the biggest ever production run of cultivated meat after harvesting 1,200 pounds of Japanese quail in a single week. This milestone was achieved using the…
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During normal times, running a hardware business is tough. Throw in a tariff-driven trade war, and it becomes a full-blown crisis. Just ask Robin Liss. When the CEO of kitchen appliance maker Suvie saw that President Trump wasn’t backing down from imposing steep tariffs on products from China and beyond, she realized she’d have to…
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Today, food recycler startup Mill disclosed (via Axios, scoop by my ex-Gigaom colleague Katie Fehrenbacher) that it has reached $20 million in trailing 12-month revenue. It also announced it is launching a new product line extension in Mill for Workplace. The company, which makes a home food recycler, made headlines when it launched over two…
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Last week, weather forecasters warned of something rarely seen in the Seattle area—a tornado—which could have meant widespread power outages and property damage across the Pacific Northwest. The first place my mind goes during extreme weather is power outages. The second? Whether it’s finally worth investing in a whole-home battery backup system. Thankfully, the tornado…
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Chef Robotics has raised $43.1 million in a Series A round to accelerate deployment of its AI-powered food assembly robots, the company announced today. The funding brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total capital to over $65 million, including equipment financing. Avataar led the round, with participation from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, and others. Founded in…
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What if the food system could be a climate solution instead of a climate problem? That’s the question Eva Goulbourne explores with Renée Vassilos, Director of Agriculture Innovation at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), in the debut episode of Everything But the Carbon Sink. Together, they unpack the role of agriculture in addressing the climate crisis—and…
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It was a year ago that Keurig announced it had begun working with CoffeeB to create its next-generation compostable coffee pod. The new pod, a puck-shaped consumable called the K-Round, features a fully compostable, plant-based container and was introduced alongside the company’s next-generation single-serve coffee brewer, the Alta. So when the company announced last week…
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Crisp, a New York-based retail data company, has acquired Seattle-based startup Shelf Engine. Founded in 2016 by Stefan Kalb and Bede Jordan, Shelf Engine specializes in using machine learning to optimize ordering processes for perishable goods, with the goal of reducing costs and minimizing food waste. The platform is now in use across more than…
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