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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Packaging

Big Idea Ventures’ GFRP Fund Acquires Edible Packaging Startup DisSolves

Today, Generation Food Rural Partners I, LP (GFRP), a member fund that is part of the food tech investor Big Idea Ventures (BIV) family, has announced its acquisition of DisSolves, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based maker of biodegradable and edible packaging solutions.

With this deal, GFRP gets a patented technology that utilizes GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) biodegradable and edible components to create films and packaging materials. That technology is what’s behind Dissolves’ first product, a polysaccharide-based film that can be used to package up individual servings of powders, baby formula, and instant coffee, which can then be dropped into liquids (like water, milk, or coffee) where it will dissolve and not alter the taste.

“Our partnership with GFRP will accelerate our efforts, allowing us to implement pilot programs with leading food producers and move towards scaled manufacturing of all-natural dissolvable food packaging,” said DisSolves founder Jared Raszewski. You can see Raszewski explain how the product works in the video below.

DisSolves Duquesne New Venture Challenge - Round 2

If a fund acquiring a startup to commercialize and scale sounds a little different than the typical way a venture deal works, you’re right. However, according to BIV Chief Investment Officer Tom Mastrobuoni, GFRP was created to build companies from scratch and commercialize them. The only difference with DisSolves, said Mastrobuoni, is that they didn’t need to start from zero, validate the technology, or find a founder. DisSolves provided all that off the shelf.

The typical BIV model “is we are starting a company from the ground up,” said Mastrobuoni. “The Investment Committee usually approves the first million dollars to be deployed into that company, and that’s done because we’re bringing on a new CEO, we’re doing techno-economic analysis of IP. We want to make sure what we’re actually building is what we thought we were going to be building during the IC (investment committee) process.”

Mastrobuoni says from there, the GFRP IC has a second phase where it will approve a $3-$5 million capital investment that enables it to take that initial company and product foundation and get it from sort of prototype to minimally marketable products, all the while utilizing shared resources across the BIV family such as fractional CFOs and manufacturing expertise. Since DisSolves already accomplished what is usually done with the first round of capital, GFRP and DisSolves will be able to move right away to this second phase of capital deployment to enable commercialization scale-up.

DisSolves appealed to GFRP and BIV because the fund saw an opportunity within a growing space of more sustainable packaging where there haven’t been any established winners, particularly in the single-serve segment. Mastrobuoni says that as bigger food brands begin to realize the difficulty of reaching their corporate sustainability pledges over the next 5 to 10 years, they’ll begin to embrace technologies like those from DisSolves, which can solve a lot of the single-use serving packaging that ends up in the waste stream.

“A lot of these corporates have made 30 by 30, 25 by 25 promises,” said Mastrobuoni. “And it’s going to be interesting when those years hit to see how many of them have actually hit those numbers, not by buying carbon offsets but actually achieving reductions in their footprint.”

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Mastrobuoni’s guidance suggests the company was probably valued at around $1 million or so. Raszewski will continue with the company as Founder & Chief Product Officer, and GFRP will install Scott Bolin, the founding CEO of another BIV portfolio company in Terrasafe (which also makes sustainable packaging), as president of DisSolves. Bolin will also continue in his role with Terrasafe.

This Company is Using Baker’s Yeast to Create Invisible Barcodes That Track Food Through the Supply Chain

In a world where food-borne illnesses and food fraud are happening at ever-greater frequencies, tracking food provenance through the supply chain is becoming increasingly critical. The challenge, however, is that the further an ingredient travels from the farm to our plate, the harder it becomes to determine where it came from.

Enter the barcode made from baker’s yeast. A company out of Canada named Index Biosystems has developed a way to use nothing more than the single-cell microorganism and water – combined with its proprietary tracking software – to trace the point of origin for pretty much any type of food product.

According to Index, the company can create a BioTag – the company’s name for its baker’s yeast barcode – by mixing baker’s yeast in extremely trace with water, then spraying or misting it onto a product such as wheat. The spray equipment that applies the water/BioTag mixture varies, but Index says it’s usually just a simple nozzle. The company says that BioTags are incredibly sticky once applied and remain attached to the surface of the grains, withstanding the milling process while remaining detectable in flour. To detect the BioTag, the company or one of its customers uses molecular detection techniques such as PCR and DNA sequencing (because the “bar code” is essentially the unique DNA sequence of the baker’s yeast).

According to Index’s CEO Mike Borg, the company’s technology only needs a small sample of flour – a metric gram – to determine every farm involved in producing the wheat that made that flour. He says that with the company’s BioTags and GS1 standards, they can verify the carbon footprint of a slice of bread.

Borg says that because the BioTag does not involve any genetic modification, the company has already received approval for using the tags in food products from the U.S. FDA and Health Canada. He also says the platform has been proven across various products ranging from commodities to pharmaceuticals.

The challenge of food traceability has been one of the biggest focuses in the food industry in recent years, leading to various approaches, such as NFTs for cattle to digestible food sensors. But by using a DNA-based tracking approach using something as simple as baker’s yeast, Index has essentially taken the bar code concept and integrated it into the food itself.

Google Wants to Put an End to Single-Use Plastic, So It Put Out a Call For New Ideas

We all know plastic is bad for the environment, but despite all the videos of plastic bottles and wrappers floating in oceans and piling up in landfills, billions of single-use containers are used and tossed every year.

Google has decided to do something about it, so it’s launched a call to food companies with sustainable packaging to submit their products to the Google Single-Use Plastics Challenge. According to the company, Google will test out those products that meet state and federal requirements and pass muster with Google’s Food program standards in the company’s U.S.-based cafes and MicroKitchens. Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their products to Google and “leading global food operators” to scale them across Google’s U.S. offices.

Reading the fine print, Google is prioritizing reusable serviceware and packaging but will also accept packaging concepts that are edible, fiber-based, or unlined serviceware/packaging. The company will accept some post-consumer recycled packaging for certain categories, and while it will accept glass and aluminum, it makes clear these are “not preferred.” Those with plastic, bio-based, compostable, multi-layer, or PFAS-lined products need not apply.

While big corporates have made progress in recent years in eliminating plastic in the form of straws and drink containers, a whole bunch of plastic is still being used in food service and cafeterias every day. Google’s effort goes further by emphasizing food service plastic in all forms, including plastic containers and wrappers, a huge problem that has gotten less attention than plastic bottles, straws, and cutlery.

For those interested in applying to the Google Single-Use Plastic Challenge, you’ll need to hurry since the deadline is May 30th.

Food company challenge | Single-Use Plastic

Sip & Snack? Meet The Edible Coffee Cup

While most of us experience a pang of guilt when consuming water from a plastic bottle, we don’t feel nearly as bad about drinking a cup of joe out of a paper cup. After all, they’re compostable, right?

Not so fast. A significant portion of paper coffee cups have a plastic lining that prevents them from being compostable. Additionally, the production process of these cups generates a considerable amount of CO2 emissions due to the loss of carbon-capturing trees and the energy consumption required for manufacturing and distribution.

But what if we could munch on our cup instead of discarding it in the compost bin after enjoying our morning brew?

That’s the vision of a Bulgarian startup called Cupffee, which creates an edible coffee cup that users can snack on once they’ve finished their drink. The cup, made from edible vegan components such as oat bran, wheat flour, and water, resembles a coffee cup-shaped ice cream cone that can withstand temperatures up to 85 degrees Celsius (185 Fahrenheit) and remains crisp for up to 40 minutes after being filled. Available in two sizes, 110 and 220 ml, the cup also features a relatively low-calorie content (56 or 105 kcal).

The idea behind the Cupffee edible coffee cup comes from Miroslav Zapryanov, company founder and CEO at Cupffee. As a student, Zapryanov began considering the environmental ramifications of plastic waste and disposable coffee cups and spent years developing the recipe in his own kitchen. Today, with a specialized machine and production process in place, this idea has materialized into a company capable of producing up to 2.5 million cups per day. The cups are manufactured in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

The company has collaborated with coffee brands like Lavazza, which has resulted with the introduction of the Cupffee in 18 countries. The company has been served at Wimbledon and has been used by Etihad Airways from Abu Dhabi to Brisbane on Earth Day. This traction has led to the company’s initial external investment of EUR 500,000 in a pre-seed funding round from Eleven Ventures, and a EUR 1.3M grant from the European Innovation Council.

Cupffee joins other startups like Good-Edi (edible cups) and IncEDIBLE Eats (edible cutlery/straws) that believe the way to more sustainable single-use consumption is through, well, consumption. I like the idea but have to wonder how many folks are willing to eat a coffee or ice cream-soaked cup or spoon every time they get a beverage or ice cream. I also question whether coffee drinkers want to be on the clock, making sure they drink or dispose of the drink within 40 minutes or so before the cup becomes soggy.

Another challenge is cost. According to the Cupffee website, a cup costs between 45 cents and 62 cents per cup when purchased in packs of 200, which compares to about 18 cents for a paper cup. At a price of 2-3 times a typical cup, margin-constrained food service purveyors might be deterred from using these products.

But who knows? In the long run, more customers will avoid single-use containers altogether by bringing their own cups. But not everyone carries a cup at all times, so those who occasionally forget their travel mugs might be ok with buying a cup of joe poured into their mid-morning snack.

You can watch how Cupffee makes their edible coffee cups in the video below:

LOOK HOW IT'S MADE CUPFFEE 👀

GaeaStar Wants to Solve The Single-Use Plastic Problem With an Ancient Indian Solution: Clay Cups

One of the biggest problems of the food and beverage industry is the waste produced by single-use plastics. Because of this, there’s been a movement in the container industry over the past decade to create biodegradable plastics made with plant-based inputs, which suppliers claim can be put into the compost bin or recycled. While many of these approaches promise to reduce the amount of plastic in the waste stream, some experts still consider them problematic.

This is why a new company named GaeaStar is attempting something entirely different, aiming to end single-use plastics not by creating more eco-friendly plastics, but by employing a centuries-old Indian tradition: clay cups that disintegrate into dust.

The idea behind the company first emerged when Sanjeev Mankotia was walking around New Delhi in the mid-2000s. His cousin ordered a chai from a street vendor, and upon finishing her drink, she threw the cup on the ground, breaking it into pieces. Mankotia, who was born in India but spent most of his life in the U.S., pointed out that she was littering and asked her why she had done so.

“She said, ‘It’s made out of dirt, why do you care?'” Mankotia recalled in an interview with The Spoon. “And I didn’t have a response to that.”

He realized that these clay vessels and their disposal method were long-standing traditions in India, and he wondered if this could work elsewhere.

“I thought, ‘Why can’t we do this in the West instead of having these paper cups with plastic inside?'” Mankotia said. “And in reality, it’s actually a better user experience.”

At the time, Mankotia, an engineer by training, was a consultant in the finance industry. For the next decade and a half, he continued his consulting career while contemplating how to turn this container idea into a viable business. He eventually decided to pursue the idea after feeling he had achieved all he could in his consulting career.

“I felt that I had climbed that mountain in consulting, having C-suite positions,” Mankotia explained. “And I felt I was at the point where I had this idea, and I wanted to really start working on something for the next generation.”

He knew the containers in India were handcrafted by local artisans, who sourced clay from riverbeds and made hundreds of them per day to dry in the sun. However, Mankotia knew this approach would need to be adapted for the Western market, where he envisioned a company supplying restaurants and coffee shops with these containers.

Drawing on his experience as a consultant, where he had encountered additive manufacturing, Mankotia knew that a 3D printer capable of producing these containers at scale would provide a solution. However, no printers on the market were designed for the high-volume output needed to make thousands of cups daily.

So Mankotia decided to build his own.

“We developed a printer that could print one in less than 30 seconds,” Mankotia said. “And we want to try and get it to less than 10 seconds and closer and closer to the point of use.”

After Mankotia and some engineers developed the first printer, they realized they would need a system to produce the cups near the customer. So they began designing a micro-factory where they would print the cups and dry and cure them within a day using an oven.

The company’s first micro-factory launched in Berlin in 2022, and it was in the same city where they held their first pop-up and quickly sold out of the 3500 cups they made. After that, they officially launched in Berlin and are now making tens of thousands of containers per month, including ice cream cups for a German ice cream shop called Rosa Canina.

With a fresh infusion of capital from a $6.5M seed funding round, the company has its sites set on the U.S. market. Mankotia says the first market they will open is in San Francisco, where they will build a 200 square-meter micro-factory that will eventually feature up to 4 printers. He believes that once the micro factory is up and running at full efficiency, the company should be able to produce up to 4 million cups annually per location.

As for the cups themselves, one obvious concern is whether they can withstand the handling of a consumer because no one wants their drink container to break when they set it down or squeeze too hard. But, according to Mankotia, the containers have ten times the strength of a paper cup and are strong enough to be put in the dishwasher. The company believes some will keep and reuse the cups when they take them home. The point of it all, said Mankotia, is they now have a guilt-free choice.

In the future, Mankotia wants to continue to build printers that could eventually manufacture the cups on premise, where an operator could make cups with the push of a button. To do that, he said the company is working on eventually incorporating the technology into the printer that can cure the vessels quickly. The technology involves energy pulses similar to those used in microwaves, and the company is currently working with some German research institutes with expertise in the technology.

The company’s first partner in the U.S. is Verve Coffee Roasters. The coffee roaster will give its customers at select cafes an option to have a GaeaStar container when ordering particular food and beverages. GaeaStar says they will use this collaboration to fine-tune its original container prototype “to meet the needs of Verve and other U.S. businesses.”

Reusable Takeout Containers Gain Traction at Universities, But What About Restaurants?

Like everywhere else, colleges saw a jump in takeout food and delivery during the pandemic as students avoided the dining hall amidst stringent social distancing rules at the height of COVID. However, even as things normalize, on-the-go food options put into place during the pandemic remain popular due to the convenience they afford busy college students, resulting in a lot of single-use containers making their way toward landfills.

But the good news is that a growing number of schools are trying to find more sustainable options, including reusable containers. One such school is Texas State University, which has partnered with food service management provider Chartwells to deploy a container system built by reusable container startup Ozzi according to an announcement sent to The Spoon.

According to the announcement, Texas State has over two thousand reusable containers in circulation. The way it works is students pay $6 for an O2GO container, get their food to go, and, when they are done, students can return rinsed containers at a student dining center, where they are given tokens for returned containers. Tokens can be traded in for clean containers when the student returns to get more food.

OZZI has been at it for a while, deploying its reusable container system to universities across the country. They even have a kiosk that handles the return of the containers – each of which can be used up to 300 times – and give students credit for the return. You can see how the system works in the video below:

While systems like that from OZZI have been rolling out at places like Texas State, UC Berkeley, and Cornell over the past few years, we’ve seen comparably less action in reusable containers for restaurants. However, some companies are working on the challenge, including a startup called DeliverZero, which has been getting restaurants to deploy their reusable container system around New York City. As of early this year, the company has convinced 150 New York City area restaurants to come on board and has also signed Doordash and Caviar to trials.

Despite DeliverZero’s early success, there are several challenges in getting restaurants to adopt reusable containers compared to university diners. Unlike university dining halls, restaurant to-go customers aren’t dining at the same place on a daily or weekly basis, which makes it hard for them to return the containers. They also aren’t likely to have their daily meals charged to the same dining services account every day, which makes it hard to create a financial reimbursement system to incentivize diners to use a container system. Finally, restaurant owners have a thousand battles to fight every day to maintain profitability, and maintaining a reusable container system is probably far down the list.

Despite this, a growing number of consumers are becoming mindful of the packaging waste steam they are contributing to through food delivery and innovations to support reusable containers at restaurants. One such system is being created by Perks99, an Ontario-based company working on a reusable container system built around their food drop-off lockers tailored toward office workers. The company will work with office managers to deploy the drop-off lockers in lobbies and give workers the option to subscribe to a certain number of meals per month.

Ultimately, the success of Perks99, DeliverZero, GoBox, or individual chains like Chop’d, who have deployed reusable container programs, will be up to the diners and the delivery infrastructure providers. As more students exposed to systems like OZZI exit university and enter the workforce, there’s a good chance these student-turned-employees may opt into reusable container systems for employees. Let’s hope more third-party delivery providers like DoorDash and UberEats continue to experiment here, and maybe we’ll get something resembling the adoption rate we’re starting to see at universities.

PARC Spinout EverCase Uses Electric & Magnetic Fields to Store Food in Freezers Without Ice Crystals

If you’ve ever put meat or fish into a freezer, you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t look nearly as fresh once you thaw it out.

That’s because the process of freezing food alters and damages its structure at a cellular level. As the temperature drops, water molecules slow down, and ice crystal embryos form ice nucleation sites. From there, the ice spreads to freeze the entire piece of food. Water within the food expands by up to 9% when frozen, causing food cells to rupture. When frozen food thaws, nutrients and flavors leach out from the food, often in the form of drip loss (that red liquid dropping from a warmed piece of red meat).

But what if you could store and preserve food in a freezer at sub-zero temperatures and avoid the damage incurred by traditional freezing? That’s the idea behind a new startup called EverCase, a spinout from storied research and business incubator Xerox PARC.

The new company, announced on June 15th, is the result of almost a decade of research that started when Dr. Soojin Jun, a professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, got a three-year research grant from the USDA in 2013 to research the technology dubbed “Supercooling.”

Jun’s Supercooling technology utilizes pulsed electric and oscillating magnetic fields to cause water molecules within food stored at sub-zero temperature to vibrate, inhibiting the formation of ice crystals. The result is food that, when pulled out of a Supercool equipped freezer, has almost the exact look and texture of food that is fresh and not riddled with ice crystals.

Image Above – Left: Drip Loss from thawed traditionally frozen meat. Right: EverCase’s comparison of meat using different preservation techniques

Jun would eventually take his ideas to Xerox PARC where he would get help incubating them and preparing them for commercialization. The end result of that move is EverCase, a new spinout that plans to build systems with Supercooling that can be used in existing freezers.

You can watch a demo in the video below where EverCase shows a piece of frozen meat compared with a piece of meat stored using Supercooling technology.

EverCase Demo Video

The company is pitching nothing less than a revamp of the traditional “cold chain” supply network, where freezers, from packers to the retail storefront (and possibly even to the home), use Supercooling technology. The company’s pitch deck talks of a new category of smart packaging and a new preserved food category of ‘Supercooled foods.’ They also plan to work with refrigeration manufacturers and other OEMs to build Supercooling technology into freezers and refrigerators.

It’s an ambitious plan, but there’s no doubt there could be a market for technology that helps food sidestep some of the downsides of traditional cold chain freezer technology. The company does say its technology is “inexpensive to make,” but it’s still unclear to me what the total cost of upgrades for a restaurant, retailer, or food packer would be. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that EverCase says its technology works with existing freezers because forklift upgrades for the massive amount of installed freezer systems throughout a mature cold-chain network is a non-starter.

The company is headed up by Chris Somogyi, a former co-founder of cell-cultured seafood startup BlueNalu and business development exec at PARC, and other executives from IBM, Xinova, and PARC. According to the announcement, EverCase is in the process of a Series A funding round.

Israeli Company Wants to Create a Greener Future Through Compostable Plastic

Like many transformative ideas, the genesis behind TIPA, an Israeli company with a novel way to reduce plastics in the environment, came from the need to solve an obvious problem. Daphna Nissenbaum, TIPA’s CEO, and co-founder was bothered by the mountain of plastics around her and wanted to find a solution that would benefit her son and others moving forward.

“If you think about nature’s packaging, such as an orange peel, or banana peel,” TIPA’s vice president for North America, Michael Waas, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We don’t see the Mt. Rainier of banana peels or orange peels because they all break down. And so (Nissenbaum) thought, ‘I need to do something about this for my kids’ and turned her focus on finding a compostable solution inspired by nature.”

For TIPA, it’s all about flexible plastics—those water bottles and food packaging that may wind up at a recycling center but are challenging to become part of a circular economy where materials can be reused for another valuable purpose. Founded in 2010, TIPA’s vision for flexible packaging is to create compostable packaging with the same qualities as conventional plastic, such as durability and shelf life. In particular, for food packaging, compostable material will add days to the freshness of bagged produce and other foods.

Waas explains that TIPA uses polymers that are both bio-based and petroleum-based, which seems contrary to the company’s overall mission. “You’re probably thinking that doesn’t make any sense,” Waas said about petroleum-based polymers. “You can have fossil-based, petroleum-based polymers designed to be fully compostable and bio-based polymers that are not compostable. So, it’s two different challenges. One is the source of the material, whether it’s coming from oil or a bio-based source, and then what happens to it at the end of life. And so TPA uses a combination of both bio and fossil-based, but absolutely everything we produce is certified compostable.”

“We spend a lot of time working on what works and what doesn’t,” Waas added.

TIPA takes a broad approach to the business side of creating a viable system for the circular economy. The Israeli company can manufacture packaging for clients or provide the compostable film to clients or their packaging partners. “We focused on developing the IP and the technology around the solutions. Then, we work with best-in-class manufacturing partners to produce the film or the laminate,” Waas said. We’re doing that because it allows us flexibility for customers.”

The EPA points out that composting enriches the soil, helping retain moisture and suppress plant diseases and pests; reduces the need for chemical fertilizers; encourages the production of beneficial bacteria and fungi that break down organic matter to create humus, a rich nutrient-filled material, and reduces methane emissions from landfills and lowers your carbon footprint.

Creating a compostable future is an obvious path to a greener world, but are consumers ready to make an effort to go through the process of composting? Several surveys indicate that most consumers would compost if it were more accessible. More than 180 communities in the U.S. have composting programs, including such cities as Portland, San Francisco, Boulder, and Seattle have city-wide composting programs.

Even with the ready availability of municipal composting programs and consumers’ general sense they would use composting if made available, Waas believes that consumer education is critical.

“We work with our customers to help them communicate that the package is recyclable because we want this packaging to end up in the right facility, whether that’s in somebody’s backyard or at an industrial compost facility,” Waas said. “And that means consumers have to know that it’s compostable and put it in the right place.”

Dippin’ Dots Begins Roll Out of Edible Spoons from IncrEDIBLE Eats

This week, Dippin’ Dots, the maker of the cryogenically frozen bead-based ice cream sold at ballparks, fairgrounds, and pretty much anywhere else kids convene in America, announced they’d formed a partnership with edible cutlery maker IncrEDIBLE Eats to offer the startup’s environmentally friendly spoons in select locations.

According to the announcement, Dippin’ Dots has shipped samples of the edible spoons to all locations and will begin rolling out the cookie-ish cutlery in select locations across the country.

“They will start in select locations – mostly aquariums, zoos – with a goal to introduce early summer,” IncrEDIBLE Eats founder Dinesh Tadepalli told The Spoon.

According to Tadepalli, he initially approached Dippin’ Dots through Linkedin. It wasn’t long before they connected and the large ice cream company offered to share booth space at the big IAAPA amusement park industry expo in November.

Six months later, Tadepalli has come full circle. He first came up with the idea for the edible spoon after buying ice cream with a disposable plastic spoon for his kids, and now his startup is partnering up with one of the country’s biggest ice cream companies.

And what does his company have in store for the rest of 2022? One thing is introducing the second-generation product, which Tadepalli describes as “more bitable and tastier.” He also says they’ll introduce new products, including edible straws and chopsticks.

What this year won’t include is working with Lori Greiner. Tadepalli told me that despite an offer of investment on Shark Tank last fall, in the end, they ultimately couldn’t come to terms with the shark.

Despite their lack of a deal, Tadepalli says the higher awareness – aka the Shark Tank Effect – for his company of being on a hit show is well worth it.

“We are happy with the awareness after being on Shark Tank,” said Tadepalli.

Wine Bottles Can Now Be Reused Thanks to Good Goods’ Return Program

You have probably heard the popular waste management phrase, “Reduce, reuse, and recycle.” The order of these words represents the hierarchy of what option is best, and that certainly applies when it comes to glass bottles. While a glass bottle is easy enough to recycle, reuse is better since recycling requires energy, water, and other resources and can even release pollutants.

When it comes to wine bottles, a New York-based startup Good Goods hopes to keep the containers out of landfill and recycling bin through its wine bottle return and reuse program. The company launched its program in New York City in 2020. Two years prior, it had launched a grab-and-go food brand in reusable containers, which gave them the framework to create the model they use now.

Today, Good Goods takes a multi-pronged approach to bottle reuse. First, they work with about 60 wine producers and brands across the U.S. and sign them up for the bottle reuse program. Then, standardized bottles (branded with Good Goods’s label along the bottom edge of the bottle) are provided to the wineries. These bottles are filled with wine, and then eventually shipped to participating retailers.

Customers then purchase bottles of wine at the participating retailers. When the wine is finished, empty wine bottles can then be returned to the same store from which it was initially purchased or to another participating retailer. Good Goods operates a customer loyalty program to incentivize the bottle return, and customers receive $1 off their next purchase.

Good Goods gathers the used bottles and brings them to its facilities, and then a third-party company sanitizes the bottles. The bottles are redistributed to wineries, and the process starts again.

A visual explanation of how Good Goods operates

According to the Good Goods, customers have returned 20,000 wine bottles to date. Over 50 retailers located in New York and New Jersey have joined the program, and the company currently has a waitlist of 100 retailers wanting to sign up. By the end of 2022, Good Goods’ goal is to expand to New York, California, Texas, and Washington and onboard 600 retailers.

New York is Banning Styrofoam Food Containers – What’s next for To-Go Packaging?

Styrofoam food packaging, made from a hard plastic called polystyrene, poses a plethora of problems. First off, it takes an extremely long time to degrade, and it accounts for 10-40 percent of all litter found in streams. The production of polystyrene also releases about fifty different chemicals byproducts into the air, water, and local communities. This is exactly why the state of New York will ban the use of single-use styrofoam food containers and packaging peanuts starting January 1st, 2022.

According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, the new rule applies to restaurants, caterers, food carts, food trucks, food stores, grocers, cafeterias, coffee shops, delis, colleges, schools, and more. However, there are a few exceptions to the ban, including raw meat and seafood sold with the intention of being prepared off-premises by the customer. Non-profits and places of worship that supply food to those in need may also continue to serve food packaged in styrofoam if they qualify for a certain waiver.

There are no federal bans on styrofoam packaging yet, and all current bans are on a city or county level. In addition to New York, there are 11 other cities throughout the U.S. that do not allow food or beverages to be served in styrofoam packaging, including major cities like San Francisco (CA), Portland (Oregon), and Seattle (WA).

Without styrofoam, what is next for to-go food packaging? Companies producing and developing alternatives to traditional food packaging are focused on using sustainable and biodegradable materials that release little to no chemicals when processed.

In recent years, one of the most popular alternatives to styrofoam is using plant-based fibers to create compostable food to-go containers. Many different fibers can be used for this application, including sugar cane, corn, potato, and bamboo. Packaging made from paper, especially recycled paper, is another common choice. Although these materials are compostable, some compostable packaging contains “forever chemicals” that never break down. A Hong Kong-based company called Ecoinno uses sugar cane and bamboo to craft to-go containers without the use of any of these particular chemicals or plastics.

During this past summer, delivery service Delivery Hero launched a sustainable packaging program for restaurants it serves in an attempt to cut down on single-use and toxic packaging waste. QSRs like Burger King and Taco Bell have begun trialing various alternatives to their original single-use packaging, like reusable, recyclable, and compostable packaging.

This week, a London-based company called Notpla raised €11.7 million (~$13.1 million USD) for its seaweed-based packaging that “disappears”. The alternative packaging fully degrades within 4-6 weeks without the use of any special processing. Although NotPla’s packaging is intended to be a direct replacement for plastic and not styrofoam, this still has potential for the restaurant and food space.

Despite the awareness of the negative environmental consequences of styrofoam, not many cities or states in the U.S. have enforced a ban. Hopefully, with the rise of more packaging alternatives, we will see more places adopting legislature around single-use packaging and plastics. In the meantime, if you are interested in supporting restaurants that use sustainable packaging, check out the free app Jybe.