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NFT

March 11, 2022

Slim Jim is creating a “Meata-verse” and a marketplace for virtual food

Last year, the meme-based cryptocurrency dogecoin got its first public earnings callout from the company that owns meat stick brand Slim Jim. Conagra Brands CEO Sean Connolly pointed to the social engagement from active dogecoin and Shiba Inu meme coin communities as big factors in Slim Jim’s win in the Adweek March Madness-style brand competition.

And now, it seems the company’s interest in Web3 technology goes beyond the gimmicky marketing campaign. Coindesk reported yesterday that Slim Jim had recently filed for trademarks under “Slim Jim,” “Meataverse,” and “Long Boi Gang” that announce plans for a virtual marketplace comprised of NFTs, virtual food products and virtual goods.

The filings also discuss “providing a metaverse for people to browse, accumulate, buy and sell virtual food products” and seem to indicate that the meat snack food brand will try and take a leading role in leveraging virtual environments to extend its reach and engage the next generation of consumers in immersive experiences.

Slim Jim joins other food brands like Nestle and McDonalds with forays into combining food and Web3 technology as consumer interest in crypto and NFTs continues to rise.

To understand what the food metaverse might look like and why food brands across industries including restaurant, grocery, and CPG are planting their flags in Web3, join The Spoon community on May 4 for Simulate Spring Summit: Food Metaverse + Web3 virtual event. Early bird tickets start at $75 – register here.

March 10, 2022

The Halal Guys NFT Contest is a Fast Casual Amazing Race For a Lifetime Supply of Falafel

I’ve never eaten at The Halal Guys, but I think the food looks great. I love gyros, falafel, baba ganoush. All of it, right up my alley.

But as much as I like this food, there’s no way I could envision traveling around the world to eat at every single The Halal Guys location. Unfortunately, this puts me out of the running for the NFT the chain is awarding to whoever eats at all 100 locations first. According to the announcement, the owner of this NFT will be able to eat for free at The Halal Guys for the rest of their life.

So how close is someone to winning this food for life pass, which would require not only traveling around the US but heading overseas to South Korea, Indonesia, and The UK? According to the company, the worldwide leader in The Halal Guys visits is “Michael P. from California,” which has visited 12 locations so far.

“Keep going, Michael, only 88 more to go,” says the announcement.

It’s a fun idea, but I’m not sure there is anyone crazy enough to complete the round-the-world in 100 falafels competition The Halal Guys have set up. That’s probably why they set up a lesser “Century Club” for superfans who may not have enough time or resources to travel the globe but have managed to eat at a The Halal Guys 100 times. These Century Club members get a free hat, a Century Club Coin, a 3D printed cart desk ornament, and an NFT.

That second package isn’t nearly as enticing as a lifetime of free food, but maybe just being a member of a club is enough for some The Halal Guy customers. And who knows, maybe there is a bigger community of Halal Guys enthusiasts than I ever imagined and we could see an Amazing Race finish for a lifetime supply of gyros and falafel.

March 10, 2022

Emily Elyse Miller Wants to Reinvent Breakfast Cereal. That Means Vegan Ingredients, Edgy Mascots, and (Of Course) NFTs

Emily Elyse Miller knows a thing or two about breakfast.

Not only has the one-time journalist and fashion trends forecaster written a book on the topic (complete with 380 recipes from 80 countries), but she’d also run a consulting company that helped world-renowned chefs like Enrique Olvera develop breakfast events.

But after years of writing and teaching about first-meal, Miller realized that cereal, the centerpiece of the American breakfast for generations of kids and adults, had gone stale. So she decided to start a cereal company of her own to reinvent the category.

Called OffLimits, Miller’s company created a line of irreverent brands like Dash and Zombie, each with its own ‘moody mascot’ and a clean ingredient list.

The funky mascots were important for Miller, because while she loved the rainbow-colored pop culture she grew up with in the cereal aisle, she felt it was time for something new.

“Tony the Tiger is not cool,” said Miller. “Cereal is one of the only products that carry culture in this unique way, and that culture has not been updated in decades.”

Emily Elyse Miller

Miller worked with artists to design the cereal brands’ characters and boxes. Now, she sees NFTs as a natural evolution to bring the creations to life and connect directly with the OffLimits’ community.

“The mascots have moody personalities, and there are highs and lows to those personalities too,” said Miller. “They have mental health issues as much as they have kind of successes and wins, and I think that’s what makes the brand so right for building out in the Web3 space.”

New to Web3, Miller initially started small by giving away NFTs during a pop-up at the Art Basel art fair last December in Miami Beach. Attendees of the pop-up scanned a QR code to claim an NFT for what Miller describes as the first-ever “NFT cereal toy.” The giveaway was gamified, so some who scanned got an “exploding cereal” NFT and given an OffLimits cereal variety pack.

The Art Basel NFT giveaway gave Miller confidence to go bigger. “My first NFT protect was just so I could understand who would claim it and if people would care at all,” said Miller. “People very much cared, so that helped just like solidify that I get to pay a lot more attention to this.”

That extra attention resulted in a new NFT project announced this week called “Best Cereal in the Metaverse.” The project will feature a collection of 2,500 NFTs (.111 Etherium (~$290)), each with its own unique artist-created spin on an OffLimits’ mascot. In addition to unique artwork, NFT owners gain access to the private discord and can participate in the custom cereal box design process by submitting an NFT they own to be featured on a custom-designed cereal box. Each NFT holder will also get four of the custom-designed boxes of cereal shipped to their home.

OffLimits is part of a bigger trend of upstart food brands pushing into NFTs. Startups like Bored Breakfast Club, Liquid Death, and Yerb have all launched NFT projects over the past few months as a way to directly connect with their customers and create a new commerce model. For Miller, while all of this is exciting and represents opportunity, there’s still lots of work to do.

“While people were excited to learn about an NFT (with the first project) and potentially claim it, the amount of questions that we got and education that we have to do for our community who are not crypto native is a lot,” said Miller. “So brands need to take their responsibility.”

That responsibility also means talking to other brands curious about the Web3 space and conveying what she’s learned.

“I’ve been talking to so many brands about how they can be more involved in the space,” said Miller. “For me, everything’s about functionality, which is why I wanted this project to have a lot of layers. I wanted to involve our existing community to help grow a larger community of artists and just keep a circle of engagement going. That’s why I feel like there needs to be a physical product for something digital, trying to keep a good balance.”

If you want to sign up for the OffLimits NFT, you can do so here.

February 24, 2022

GourmetNFT Want to Help Culinary Creators Monetize Recipes & Food Experiences Using NFTs

The tried-and-true cookbook is dead. Long live the fractional cookbook.

The movement toward secure, one-of-a-kind recipes and food experiences are fueled by advances and acceptance of the technology surrounding Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). It could be a way to move beyond one-dimensional food presentations and feed the growing number of foodies who want more bells and whistles in their gourmet interactions. And then, there are chefs, who, faced with shrinking margins and the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses, are always on the hunt for new revenue streams.

“It has always baffled me as to why chefs and culinary creators, who are essentially IP creators and artists don’t get royalties unless they get into the whole hassle of writing and publish a cookbook,” Ruth McCartney, part of the team behind GourmetNFT, said in an interview with The Spoon. “When NFTs came along, my mind went to individual recipes and for foodies to be able to curate and compile all of their favorite recipes and cook from their iPads.”

McCartney believes those in the food industry—from three-star Michelin chefs to up-and-comers making indigenous pasta in Brazil—need to be rewarded for their skills. Like her brother—Sir Paul McCartney of that minor band from Liverpool.

“I think it’s a good way not only for chefs to be treated like rock stars,” she said. “It’s an iTunes for chefs.”

Liquid Avatar, a Canadian firm that focuses on the verification, management, and monetization of personal identity, and its subsidiary Oasis Studios, a multimedia NFT content-creation company, provide the technology and artistry that powers Gourmet NFT. David Lucatch, Liquid Avatar’s co-founder and president, believes GourmetNFT can take advantage of his company’s technology to securely and quickly allow consumers to purchase a range of recipes and culinary adventures.

One such adventure is a multisensory weekend at David Skinner’s Houston restaurant, eculent. Skinner’s reputation in the food world could have a Pied Piper effect inspiring other noted chefs.

“The road to publishing a cookbook is paved with good intentions however schedules get in the way,” said Skinner. “But with Gourmet NFT, Chefs can upload one recipe, one image, one video at a time as they are already creating a short form variant of the content for social media. Over time, they will have amassed what amounts to a digital cookbook.”

But, as the people behind GourmetNFT and others who follow the space know, using NFTs to share recipes alone will not cut it. For a recipe to be considered “copyrightable”—not to mention entertaining— “bonus material” such as inside tips or custom videos must be part of the deliverable. Beyond such individual digital assets as instructions on making George Harrison’s favorite custard, McCartney explained that goods and services could be delivered using the secure platform.

“Chefs can also make money by putting put a QR code on their dedicated Gourmet NFT website as well as put (the code) on their menus, to-go boxes, and build their own fan clubs and traffic to their fractional cookbook page,” McCartney said. She pointed out the example of Brazilian Chef David Rivillo, a man noted for his inventive pasta creations. Rivillo is signed to an exclusive deal with GourmetNFT and will sell singular pasta with his digital presence.

All of which begs the question: Will NFTs spell the end of printed cookbooks and the vast expanse of subpar YouTube cooking videos?

Ruth McCartney said she has spoken to leading publishers about the opportunity; the response, she says, is, “We don’t do NFTs—That’s art.”

February 10, 2022

Giant Black Truffle Goes Up For Sale Via NFT Auction

Renowned French trufficulteur (truffle grower) Bernard Planche has decided to use an NFT auction to sell one of the largest truffles ever unearthed.

Planche, who has been growing truffles for over 30 years, believes putting the giant fungi on the blockchain would prove the truffle’s provenance, quality, and authenticity. According to Planche, he sees the use of NFT as a well to demonstrate how new technology can be used to support and even strengthen long-standing cultural traditions.

The truffle, seen above, is one of the most sought-after edible fungi in the world: the black truffle (tuber melanosporum). With the average black truffle weighing in between 2 to 18 ounces, Planche’s truffle comes in at nearly triple the size of what is considered a typical large truffle. And while it’s not the world’s largest truffle (or even the largest black truffle) ever discovered, its big size puts it in pretty rare company.

The winner of the auction on the Opensea marketplace can pay for the truffle in crypto or everyday money. The winning bidder will not only get the giant truffle and an NFT to prove the big fungi’s authenticity but will also receive a copy of a physical certificate of authenticity (pictured above).

While the auction of a giant truffle via NFT is new, using blockchain as a way to establish food provenance is something startups have been working on for years. A Boston-based started called LegitFish has been working on blockchain traceability solutions since 2018, and Ecogistix has been developing produce traceability solutions using blockchain for at least half a decade.

If you’d like to put a bid in on the giant truffle, you better hurry since the bidding ends Friday. To sweeten the pot, Plance is throwing in a private day of truffle-hunting demonstrations (including searching for truffles with dogs or pigs) on his private estate, the Périgord, followed by a Surprise du Chef dinner.

February 9, 2022

Ready or Not, OneRare’s Supreet Raju Wants to Welcome You to the Foodverse

While we can’t (yet) enjoy food in all its multisensory glory in the virtual world, Supreet Raju thinks connecting food to the metaverse makes perfect sense.

“Food has to be eaten in the real world,” said Raju, co-founder OneRare, a food-centric metaverse. “But there’s a lot of things that can happen in the virtual world apart from tasting it.”

Raju, who spoke last week at SimulATE, the Spoon’s Web3 food summit, pointed to the popularity of Instagram and TikTok videos and how people love cooking shows, even if they can’t taste the food being made on their screens.

“We as audiences, we never eat that food, but we look at that food, and we are so tempted to tune in. So I think virtual food also makes a connection with people.”

Raju and her husband started OneRare during the lockdown of the pandemic. They began with the idea of food NFTs, where users would collect ingredient NFTs and would use them to claim a dish NFT. The vision grew quickly, and soon they were thinking of a full metaverse with in-world games, chef and brand partnerships, and exchanges of virtual assets for real-world utility. Adding to the momentum was the $2 million-plus raised in November via an NFT drop.

“It was supposed to be a simple project where you collected ingredients to claim your dish NFT. But from there, we’ve added layers. We started thinking about games. Then we started thinking about the utility of NFTs. And here we are, creating the first foodverse in the world.”

Part of the vision includes working with food brands, chefs, and restaurants to bring them into the metaverse and offer residents of OneRare real-world utility in the form of coupons for food, unique recipes they can use, and more.

This week, the company struck its first brand partnership with Urban Platter, an India-based ingredient provider. OneRare players will be able to use tokenized Urban Platter ingredients in in-game recipes and eventually will be able to exchange them for ingredients in the real world. Over time, the ingredient company plans to launch a virtual store in OneRare’s Foodverse where visitors learn about products and even shop.

Not surprisingly, in a world where most people still can’t explain Web3 or blockchain and virtual reality is still for early adopters, there are lots of skeptics when it comes to the idea of a foodverse.

While it may take some time, Raju thinks the skeptics will come around.

“When Instagram came in 2009, brands never took it seriously for the first two, three years,” said Raju. “And then they saw a chef who was just making recipes at home get to like 5 million followers, get his own cookbook, and then get his own restaurant. That’s when chefs and brands started saying, ‘oh my God, we need to make an Instagram account.'”

In the long term, Raju envisions the OneRare foodverse weaved into the broader metaverse, where OneRare powers virtual food experiences in other virtual worlds. The company plans to integrate with other Web3 platform companies to get there, and one example is Chumbi Valley, an NFT role-playing game the company partnered with last year.

“We look at ourselves as the food people here,” said Raju. ” We want to put it on the blockchain. You need an energy drink to train for a race? We’ll be there. You need pizza for your party? We’ll be there. That’s the kind of way we’re building OneRare.”

You can watch my full interview with Supreet Raju below.

February 8, 2022

It Started as a Meme. Now friesDAO Is On Track to Buy a Restaurant After Raising Over $4M Selling NFTs

When Bill Lee and Brett Beller started talking about the idea of using a DAO and NFTs to buy a McDonald’s, they were mostly joking around.

“There was always this joke since the beginning of crypto where if you just traded very poorly, or if you lost a lot of money, you could always work at McDonald’s,” said Lee, an advisor to friesDAO, in a recent interview with The Spoon. “And we just thought it would be hilarious if we got together and said let’s try and buy McDonald’s as a DAO so we can guarantee ourselves a future job.”

The two continued talking and became intrigued enough by the idea to start a Discord server, tell a few folks, and see what happens. Within a few days, a couple thousand had joined the Discord, and it became clear that what started as a meme was now something many were taking very seriously.

“As people started joining, we realized that the pressure is on now,” said Lee. “People are actually wanting to do this for real.”

Different members of the server offered to pitch in, and before long, they had assembled a crew to make it happen. One person started a website. Another registered a domain. Someone put together the documentation. And just like that, a Discord server that had launched after Christmas was a DAO with momentum and real money: As of this week, friesDAO has over $4 million in a treasury.

In the short time the project has been together, Lee and the rest of the team have given lots of thought to how it might work. For token holders, Lee said that while they will have a say in the oversight and direction of the restaurant and get access to real-world benefits like free food, what they won’t get is any ownership equity in the restaurant. That would essentially categorize the effort as equity-based crowdfunding and subject it to much stricter regulatory oversight.

As for the purchase structure and ongoing oversight of the business, the group’s considered a number of ways to do this. While one idea is an outright purchase of an existing restaurant through a contracted third party, another possibility they’re exploring is structuring the deal as a loan to an existing franchise operator to buy another restaurant. This would allow the DAO to rely on the operator’s expertise in running a restaurant, preserve capital, and scale to more cities, all while negotiating real-world benefits for token holders into the terms of the deal like coupons for free food.

With (as of today) over $4.3 million in the treasury, the DAO already has enough to buy a restaurant, but the question is what kind? Lee said the group has priced out everything from a Subway to different nationally recognized burger franchises, but they will likely go after a smaller franchise first, essentially giving them a “practice run” before scooping up a bigger franchise like a McDonald’s.

According to the group’s roadmap, that first purchase should take place around June of this year.

You can listen to my full conversation with Bill Lee of friesDAO below, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you missed SimulATE, The Spoon’s food Web3 summit last week where we talked with others working on restaurant NFTs (including BurgerDAO and Flyfish Group), you can watch all the sessions here with a subscription to Spoon Plus. (Also, make sure to not miss SimulATE II, coming in May).

February 3, 2022

Your Next Job May Be in the Metaverse. Here are Four Ways Web3 Will Change The Way We Work

This week at SimulATE, the first-ever event examining the intersection between food and beverage and Web3, The Spoon hosted a panel on the future of work in the metaverse.

To look at how our jobs may change in a Web3-powered world, we welcomed Amogha Srirangarajan, the CEO of delivery robot startup called Carbon Origins, and Barry Herbst, a VP and executive recruiting firm The Elliott Group.

Below are four ways our panelists saw work changing as we enter the era of the metaverse:

The Metaverse Will Become A Way to Do All Forms of Work

Srirangarajan, whose company Carbon Origins hires virtual reality experts to operate their sidewalk robots, said in the long term, the work-from-anywhere nature of the metaverse would open doors for workers who have previously been shut out of the labor market.

“You’re going to have jobs that anybody can do in the metaverse.” said Srirangarajan. “The jobs that we’re creating are from all walks of life are moms and dads, as they’re called students, people with disabilities, people from all around the world. They can choose what time they work, how long they work with who they work, and what type of jobs that they work on.”

Web3 Jobs Will Be Community Driven

According to Herbst, jobs in Web3 will be centered around communities.

“Web2 is all about profit, while Web3 is all about that community,” said Herbst. “Brands coming into this space are going to add value to their consumers in a whole different way, connecting with their consumers, their customers, their patrons.”

Srirangarajan agreed that community is essential and sees the metaverse as a great place to find enthusiastic new talent.

“This is how we found every single one of our Skipsters,” said Srirangarajan, referring to the term the company uses for their remote VR robot operators. “The technology’s there now to support large groups of people coming into this virtual world with affordable hardware, and hanging out and building communities.”

The Metaverse as The New Job Training Ground

According to both panelists, the metaverse will be used to teach us new skills we will need for our jobs.

“Training is why we started using VR at Carbon Origins,” said Srirangarajan. “Training is going to be a big application early on. Training for all sorts of industries, starting with the service industry.”

“I foresee a lot of continued training and development not only in the real world but also with the headset, which will save companies a lot of money,” said Herbst. “Having that experience, whether it’s learning how to clean or cook, or even going on a date, having that shopping experience, eating a meal in the metaverse. Humans are social animals, and while we thrive on having that connection with people whether it’s face to face, it’s also fun having just as we’re doing now.”

Meet The Chief Virtual Officer

According to Herbst, Web3 will push brands to create a new executive job role, the Chief Virtual Officer (CVO), and one of the skills required by the CVO is that of digital real estate manager.

“The chief virtual officer will have to be very fluent first in digital land,” said Herbst. “What are the best in class metaverses to buy digital land?”

Another necessary CVO skill will be an understanding of digital security and the ability to fortify a brand’s metaverse presence.

“How do you secure those assets safely? How do you handle a hardware wallet to ensure that you’re not going to get hacked, or have your assets stolen or fished?”

And finally, the CVO will also be the chief Web3 community officer.

“Managing that community and paying it forward is going to be a really large focus for this chief virtual officer,” said Herbst. “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships and keeping that community intact.”

You can watch the video from the panel, Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry, moderated by The Spoon’s Ashley Daigneault, below.

SimulATE Summit: Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry

December 28, 2021

BurgerDAO Wants to Create a Decentralized Web3-Powered Burger Chain

Web3 has reached the burger joint.

A new community called BurgerDAO wants to create a decentralized burger franchise. According to the announcement, the group is looking to create a ghost kitchen burger chain with funding derived from the sale of tokens for the organization via Juicebox.

Owners of BurgerDAO tokens would have a say in the operational structure as well in things such as menu creation. The group also plans to use funding from token sales to eventually hire an operational staff (and likely pay service fees to a ghost kitchen company). According to the group, the operation’s profits would go back into the treasury, which would result in appreciation in the value of the tokens.

The group lays out three overall milestones for their Web3 burger franchise, the first one being the launch of the first virtual BurgerDAO restaurant location. The group puts the cost of reaching this milestone at upwards of $1 million and details four specific deliverables for getting to this first milestone: finding a ghost kitchen partner, deliver-apps integration, branding, and menu creation, and the launch of an NFT for BurgerDAO contributors.

If you think a million bucks sounds like a lot to get a virtual restaurant off the ground, you’re right, but the group explains they may not need all of it:

Will it actually cost $1M? Probably not. But we know opening a restaurant is tough (see above) even with the advent of cloud kitchens. While the DAO will help us make decisions, we will be the ones working with the cloud kitchen, testing ingredients, pay for marketing tests, and other administrative expenses. Opening a basic deli or pizza joint (brick and mortar location) costs between $200-$500K depending on the location just to give you a frame of reference.

From there, the group lays out plans for further expansion of their decentralized ghost kitchen burger franchise, which includes the eventual opening of a brick and mortar location in a specific city and hiring a full-time staff.

On the one hand, the idea of a decentralized burger franchise is interesting, but I suspect it won’t be easy to pull off. In explaining the motivation for the concept, the group points to the inspiration of MrBeast Burger and companies like Virtual Dining Concepts (the virtual restaurant startup which is operationalizing MrBeast) but then asks why a MrBeast or VDC should take home all the profits? The group then explains much of their initial costs will be in finding and working with a kitchen operator (this type of work is what VDC does for the MrBeast Burger franchise and its other virtual restaurant concepts).

In other words, BurgerDAO is against the idea of centralized management and gatekeepers, but will likely need to find a group that has relationships with kitchen operators or build a relationship with and pay a for-profit ghost kitchen operator themselves.

They also haven’t answered the biggest challenge for virtual restaurants: brand building. The most successful virtual restaurants have been able to leverage an influencer’s reach, or they’ve been ones that have already tapped into the existing successful restaurant brand like Wowbao. While companies like NextBite have been able to spin up completely new virtual brands and get broad reach across several markets, they’ve had lots of venture capital to fund the brand-building for their concepts.

All that said, while the group has a big hill to climb, I’m interested to see if they can pull off their web3 burger concept. BurgerDAO is part of a broader movement in the restaurant and food space away from traditional operating models, which includes the move towards automation-powered centralized food production, the move away from physical front-of-house dine-in, and now the embrace of web3 and metaverse-powered digital concepts.

If you’d like to learn more, attend The Spoon’s Metaverse/NFT virtual mini-event on February 1st (Hurry, the first 400 tickets are free!).

November 1, 2021

Restaurants, Welcome to the Metaverse

Restaurants, welcome to the metaverse.

It’s not just a vision that’s 5 or 10 years away. It’s here now. 

For Halloween, Chipotle created a virtual restaurant inside the online game platform Roblox to give away $1 million in free burritos. Fans and gamers could enter the restaurant, experience a Halloween-themed Chipotle, and get a promo code for a free burrito in the real world.

This is a preview of what we can expect to see in the years to come. The next generation of diners will order their food and discover where they are going for their next night out from inside augmented and virtual worlds created by the likes of Epic, Roblox, and Facebook. And the best hospitality companies (and hospitality tech companies) will not wait too long to adapt.

Here are seven ways that restaurants will change in the metaverse:

  1. Marketplaces – apps won’t be the primary ordering channel anymore once more people begin to participate in the metaverse. Companies like Doordash, UberEats and GrubHub will need to rethink their strategy as ordering and discovery will be embedded in more interoperable experiences. Doordash moving to become a pure logistics API is smart because they will be protected if they lose the ordering portal in the metaverse — someone still has to deliver the food after all.
  2. Marketing – brands will start integrating food into virtual experiences. Instead of traditional email marketing, restaurants will be able to recreate their physical space in the metaverse and invite guests from around the world. The metaverse will create new opportunities to test promotions and loyalty programs, just like Chipotle showed by launching their Boorito promo as digital-only this year.
  3. Reservations – the interface for booking a table will completely change. Diners will do a quick virtual tour before booking the specific table they want. Pricing will be dynamic for the very best tables.
  4. Delivery – ghost kitchens will be the building blocks of group ordering in the metaverse. You’ll be able to share a meal with your friends delivered to you at the same time even if you are halfway across the globe.
  5. QR codes – QR codes will be more than just menus. They will be the access point for augmented reality. Friends from the metaverse who can’t make the night out will be able to join in on the fun and send your party a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
  6. Payments – while we expect restaurants to always take dollars, we think the metaverse will have a few different major cryptocurrencies that rise to the top over the next 5 years. The currency that a restaurant accepts will be part of its identity and marketing efforts.
  7. Membership – members-only hospitality experiences like SOHO house will extend their house into the digital realm. Members will have access to exclusive digital worlds if they own the right (non-fungible token) NFT to get in the front door. These NFTs will be traded on open marketplaces as keys to different clubs.

Most of us love sitting down with friends at a restaurant with a chill vibe and having a great conversation in the real world. The metaverse will not change that. Restaurants will continue to provide those unique experiences. But within the metaverse, restaurants will be able to reach more guests that might not always be able to show up in person.

Steve Simoni is CEO of BBot, a maker of smart ordering technology for restaurants and the hospitality industry.

October 21, 2021

Yes, Crockpot Has an NFT Too

Remember when your mom started using Facebook, TikTok or some other technology-related thing, and you thought, ‘ok, now everyone’s doing it?’ I just had that moment with NFTs. Only instead of my mom, it’s her slow cooker that’s jumping on the technology bandwagon.

That’s because Crockpot, the genericized brand of slow cooker from Newell, has released an NFT to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The NFT, which you can bid on until midnight tonight on Opensea, is basically an animated GIF that shows a bunch of different cartoon renderings of the Crockpot from its origin in 1971 up to today.

Watch for yourself:

Listen, I get it, brands that want to tap into the pop culture zeitgeist will often jump on the latest trend, and the effort by Crockpot is part of a push by the brand at what it is calling “newness.”

“We wanted to celebrate our history without getting too nostalgic,” said Christine Robins, CEO of Home Appliances at Newell Brands, via a press release. “Minting an NFT might seem like an unexpected move from the Crockpot team, but expect to see more newness from our brand as we embark on the next 50 years.” 

But unfortunately for Crockpot, NFTs are tricky. Unlike ostensibly owning something like the first tweet ever, an NFT like Crockpot’s doesn’t have a history behind it that adds to the perceived value. For most, it just appears like another animated GIF.

As I’ve written before, NFTs will find the most success in the food market if they act as a golden ticket to some unique real-world experience. So if Crockpot had created, say, a one-off unique 50th-anniversary collective Crockpot that came with the NFT, I think they may have had something.

But maybe I’m wrong, and there’s someone who wants a Crockpot’s NFT. So if that person is you, hurry up and head on over to place your bid before time expires.

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