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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Personalized Food

AI, Voice Tech, and a $4B Delivery Business Are Turning McDonald’s Into a Tech Company

Traffic may have been sluggish and continued growth a challenge during the last few months, but, McDonald’s shows no signs of slowing when it comes to technology initiatives. On the company’s Q3 earnings call this week, CEO Steve Easterbrook emphasized McDonald’s existing achievements as well as future ambitions for digital initiatives like delivery, the drive-thru, self-order kiosks, and mobile ordering.

Delivery remains the centerpiece of McDonald’s digital growth strategy — and its biggest driver. Easterbrook said on the call that the company expects delivery to drive $4 billion of global systemwide sales — up from $1 billion just three years ago.

On average globally, customers place 10 delivery orders per second, and Easterbrook, and McDonald’s saw an increase in those orders when it added DoorDash as a delivery partner in July, ending its longstanding exclusive deal with Uber Eats.

On this week’s earnings call, McDonald’s also highlighted its efforts in the drive-thru lane, where the chain has been deploying its Dynamic Yield technology that uses machine learning to personalize suggestions for customers based on data like weather, time of day, and popular menu items. McDonald’s acquired the tech in March of this year. Dynamic Yield is now installed at more than 9,500 McDonald’s drive-thrus in the U.S., with deployment plans for nearly every U.S. location with an outdoor digital menu board “expected by year-end,” Easterbrook said. The company will also roll out Dynamic Yield across all of Australia by 2020 and is currently evaluating future locations as well as the role of the technology in things like self-order kiosks and the McDonald’s mobile app. “Ultimately Dynamic Yield will facilitate a range of personalization benefits where we can leverage knowledge of the customer and order patterns to provide a tailored experience in restaurants at the drive-thru and on our app,” Easterbrook said.

Also fueling this drive towards more personalization for customers is Apprente, the Silicon Valley-based voice-ordering tech startup McDonald’s acquired in September of this year. Easterbrook said on the call he expects the technology to reduce complexity for McDonald’s workers — a known factor is longer wait times at the drive-thru nowadays. “Apprente talent and technology comes with the promise of more efficient and accurate ordering at the drive-thru, and a better experience for our customers.”

For the drive-thru, especially, efficiency remains an ongoing challenge. According to recent numbers, drive-thru wait times have significantly lengthened over time thanks to more complex menus as well as restaurants trying to accommodate the rising number of mobile orders their employees juggle in addition on those made onsite. Multiple QSRs are using different methods to combat this slowdown, from Chipotle’s “Chipotlans,” which are dedicated drive-thrus for mobile orders, to KFC’s drive-thru of the future, which is primarily designed to serve mobile orders.

While these efforts and others tackle some aspects of the drive-thru lag, they currently lack one of the key elements to the future of the drive-thru: using AI to predict both customer preferences and future demand, so that restaurants can be better prepared. Thanks to its efforts around Dynamic Yield and Apprente, McDonald’s still leads the QSR industry on that score — though others are bound to follow, and no doubt soon.

SKS 2019: Naveen Jain Thinks We’re 5 Years Away from Making Sickness Optional

Back in 2010, entrepreneur Naveen Jain co-founded Moon Express, a privately held company gunning for the Moon. “When you have literally taken the moon shot, what do you do for an encore?” he asked the audience at the Smart Kitchen Summit 2019.

For Jain, the answer was, tackle healthcare. (No big, right?) To do so, he started personalized nutrition company Viome in 2016. Last week Jain told SKS attendees that he believes we’re just five years away from making sickness “optional.”

If you want to hear Jain’s vision for curing some of society’s most persistent diseases, you can watch the video of his conversation with moderator Brian Frank at SKS 2019 below. But for you impatient folks out there, the (very) short solution to curing chronic disease is to eat better.

Easier said than done, of course. You may think you know what “eating healthy” means — greens, lean proteins, etc. — but as Jain says, “What is healthy for one person is actually maybe toxic for someone else.”

Jain gives an inspiring argument for why we should all take a much closer look at what’s going on in our gut, and why personalized nutrition could help make disease a thing of the past. Check out the video below to hear why and keep an eye out for more content from SKS 2019 coming your way!

SKS 2019: The Power of Personalized Nutrition

Newsletter: Mapping Food Tech in 2019, Startup Accelerators to Watch

It was less than 100 years ago that the food industry figured out how to mass produce things like baby carrots and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

Nowadays the buzz is around robots that make pizza and cashierless food stores, but that drive to reinvent food has fundamentally remained the same. They may have more technologically sophisticated tools now, but engineers, scientists, food producers and upstarts alike still look for the same thing Krispy Kreme did in the 1950s: how to cost-effectively create consistently good (tasting) food at scale.

Brita Rosenheim, a Partner at Better Food Ventures, captured the current spirit of innovation in food tech this week with an enormous market map she published at The Spoon. Her map lays out the dozens of early-stage startups, mature companies, corporations, B2B technologies, and consumer-facing tools changing the way we eat in the home, at restaurants, in the grocery store, and across many other areas of the supply chain.

Brita included a number of important takeaways from the map around things like the role of personalized eating, whether we need connected content in the kitchen, and where investors are currently funneling their cash. But if there’s one major takeaway from her map, it’s that the food tech landscape is . . . absolutely enormous. And getting bigger every month.

Now we’re at a point where we’re starting to see the landscape shift to be less about tech for tech’s sake and more companies coming to market with solutions that address some of the world’s biggest food challenges. Brita’s belief that “technology will prove to be the single biggest catalyst to solving critical problems across the global food ecosystem” and her inclusion of categories on the map like Food Waste, Sustainability Tracking, and Nutrition suggest we’re slowly but surely trekking towards a more productive future for food tech.


Flavors of the Future
One thing food companies did not have in the 1950s was an AI-powered crystal ball to tell them exactly what consumers were interested in buying.

We don’t have the actual crystal ball yet, but Spoonshot came pretty darn close this week by announcing its AI-powered flavor recommendation platform, which combines data science and machine learning to understand what flavors are currently popular with consumers all over the world (though the company is currently focused on North America) and which ones will be popular in future. The goal? Get this information to CPGs so they can use it for new products and stay ahead of the competition in terms of what consumers want.

Spoonshot is actually one of a few companies now riding the flavor-prediction wave, among them Analytical Flavor Systems and Tastewise. We’re bound to see many more players come to market over the next couple of years, as CPGs look to skip the cost of hit-or-miss product development.


Startup Accelerators to Watch in October
Startups, of course, are a vital part of the food tech landscape, and as Brita’s map above shows, there’s a seemingly endless number of them these days. Part of the reason for that is the huge number of food tech accelerator and incubator programs out there that mentor early-stage companies (and line their pockets) as they develop prototypes, products, and solutions for the food industry.

Like lots of areas of food tech, many of these programs now look for companies grappling with major issues in the food system: reducing waste, finding cleaner meat, and tracing food safety, to name a few. And while the end of the year is a little quieter, there are a handful of these programs taking applications in the month of October. Check them out here.

Last Chance to Snag SKS Tickets
We’re less than one week out from The Spoon’s SKS North America show in Seattle. If you want to attend on October 7–8, now’s your last chance to grab a ticket. And if you want to talk about the evolution of Krsipy Kreme and other restaurant-tech-related topics, hit me up. I’ll be running around the show with the rest of The Spoon crew next week.

Stay cool,

Jenn

Naveen Jain Says for Perfectly Personalized Food, Trust Your Gut. Literally

What if the food you ate could not only help you feel better and lose (or gain) weight, but also cure chronic health conditions, make you more alert, or even clear up your skin?

That’s exactly what personalized nutrition company Viome is trying to do. Viome’s CEO Naveen Jain will be onstage at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} next week to talk about biomapping your menu and the power of personalized diets.

We spoke with Jain recently to learn more about how he’s trying to reinvent individual nutrition, starting with the gut. Read a little teaser about our conversation on Viome’s capabilities below, and be sure to get your tickets to SKS (there’s only a few left!) to hear him talk about the future of nutrition and personalization onstage.

You might not know it, but there are over 40 trillion microbes currently living in our gut. These microbes help us break down food and absorb nutrition, but, as living organisms, they differ person to person. So why isn’t the food we eat attuned to our specific gut microbe breakdown?

Jain thinks it should be. “We understand the human body at a biochemical level,” Jain told me. “Everything in your body is so personalized. That’s why we should change healthcare from the ‘one size fits all’ model.”

That’s why he created Viome, which uses an individual’s stool sample to check out what the microbes in their gut are doing. Based off of that data, the company can tell them which foods are good for them (and why)‚ which ones are not so good, and can also recommend dietary enzymes to help stabilize your gut or facilitate weight loss.

Viome used to be limited to analysis and supplements, but a few months ago the company acquired personalized nutrition company Habit. Jain said that they’re using Habit to add integrated recipes and meal planning into the Viome platform. Though it’s added new services, Viome has also gotten a lot more affordable. When it first launched in 2016 its test cost $400 — now it’s under half that.

All of this goes to show that personalized nutrition is getting more accessible, relevant, and better about pinpointing exactly how individuals should eat to meet their health goals. Is it the future of eating? It very well could be. The best way to find out is to join us at SKS as Jain and others do a deep dive into the potential power of personalized eating. We’ll see you there!

Barilla’s Investment Arm Launches Startup Accelerator Program

Applications are now open for Barilla’s new accelerator program for startups with sustainable food products and processes. The Italian CPG company’s venture arm, BLU1877, announced this week the launch of Good Food Makers, an eight-week program it is running in collaboration with San Mateo, CA-based food incubator KitchenTown.

Startups chosen for the program will first meet with Barilla’s team to identify challenges in their area of focus that are most in need of solutions, be that a new food item or an improved manufacturing process. From there, companies will set goals for the eight-week program and collaborate with Barilla on them throughout the program. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, applicants to Good Food Makers should already have a product or solution in market.

They should also be working in one of the three areas the program will focus on: the circular food economy, which is all about minimizing waste and making the supply chain more efficient; personalized meal solutions; and healthy snacks.

Participants need not relocate to take part in the program. Besides one week at Barilla’s pilot plant and testing facility in Parma, Italy, all work can be done remotely. While there’s no financial investment for startups participating in Good Food Makers, chosen companies get mentorship and collaboration opportunities with Barilla, as well as access to a wider industry network.

Barilla is just one of the many major CPG brands out there now hosting their own startup accelerator or incubator programs, from Chobani, which runs one of the most well-known programs of any CPG, to Mars, which launched the first-ever cohort for its accelerator this past summer. Linking up with younger, leaner startups is a way for these big-name brands to access both new technologies changing the food world as well as tap into the changing demands from consumers in terms of their relationship to food, whether that’s healthier snacks or curbing food waste in the home.

While Good Food Makers is BLU1877’s first official program, Barilla’s venture arm has worked with startups in the KitchenTown setting before, including sustainable snack company ReGrained and ingredient-tech company Planetarians.

Applications for Good Food Makers will close on November 11, 2019. Chosen startups will be notified of their acceptance by January 13, 2020.

SKS 2019 Is In Two Weeks And We Couldn’t Be More Excited

With Smart Kitchen Summit just two weeks away, we’re getting really pumped to share with you what we’ve been working on for the last few months.

We had the first SKS in 2015 in an old cannery, and every year we’ve grown to include more speakers, sponsors and attendees, and this year we are really outdoing ourselves with our biggest summit year.

I wanted to share with you some of the things we’ve been working on and why we’re so excited.

Welcome to the Waterfront

When you go to Seattle, the one place you usually want to be is on the waterfront, and that’s where we’ll be for two full days at Bell Harbor Conference Center.

But great views isn’t the only reason we moved to a new venue. Moving to our new home  allows us to really expand our content, and we have more fantastic sessions than ever. This year we explore themes like the future kitchen, next-generation interfaces, the changing eater, new sources of protein, the impact of robotics and AI on the food system, the reinvented restaurants and much much more. Heck, we’ll even be talking about space food.

Networking Goes Next Level

One reason SKS has become indispensable is because it’s where those in the world of food tech and smart kitchen come to meet new partners, find innovative startups and, in general, do deals.

And in 2019 we’re taking this next level with our first-ever networking app. We are partnering with Brella to create a customized networking experience called SKS Connect that will allow attendees to find others schedule one on one meetings at the show. Once you buy your ticket, we will email you details to sign up for Brella SKS Connect!

Our Amazing Speakers

Every year the Spoon team searches for those who doing the most interesting work in the future of food and cooking and tells their stories. SKS is where we invite them to have a conversation with our community tell their stories live and in person.  This year we have an amazing group of founders, makers and visionaries, ranging from IBM Watson’s lead researcher to someone creating protein from thin air to the creator of Europe’s most successful connected recipe platform in the Cookidoo to India’s equivalent to Martha Stewart. We’ve got investors, hackers, inventors and makers, all coming together to help us take stock of the future of food and set the course for the next year.

Plus, the whole Spoon team will be here and who doesn’t want to meet us?

So Many Great Startups

Each year at SKS we bring together some of the most innovative new startups in the world of food tech with our Startup Showcase. This year we’ve doubled the innovation, not only bringing together amazing food tech startups but also we’ve launched a new Future Food showcase where you can see what some of today’s most innovative food startups are working on.

Touch and Taste The Future

SKS isn’t just about great content and networking, it’s where you come to touch and taste the future. Our startups, sponsors and partners will have all sorts of innovative products, food and innovations on display, including some product launches that will make news at the show. You’ll be able to taste plant-based sea food and chicken nuggets, edible cutlery, cricket protein and so much more. You’ll see new cooking robots, new types of cooktops, countertop chocolate appliances to just name a few.

So if you just attend one event of the year to help you understand where the future of food and cooking is going, make it this year’s SKS.  Whether you’re looking for a new partner, an investor, a new employee or just want to figure out your food tech strategy, SKS 2019 is where you should do it.

There are only two weeks left (and just one week left to buy double pack tickets), so hurry up and get your tickets today! Use the discount code SPOON for 15% off your ticket.

Newsletter: The Drive Thru Matters More Than Ever. So Do Farm Bots and Decaf Coffee

From self-service kiosks to mobile apps to dedicated pickup shelves and portals, there’s no end to new tech trying to speed up the order-pay-collect process for customers at QSRs.

But if the last week has made anything clear, it’s that while those pieces certainly play a role in the future of the restaurant, the drive thru is still the most important area of growth — at least for fast-food. Even as Minneapolis tries to ban drive thrus, companies are pumping enormous amounts of money and energy into improving this area, most notably with last week’s news that McDonald’s, king of all QSRs, had acquired voice-tech company Apprente. It’s the second acquisition Mickey D’s has made in 2019 of a technology company whose offerings can speed up lagging drive-thru lines and move more customers in less time. In March, the mega chain acquired a company called Dynamic Yield and has since installed its AI tech in thousands of McDonald’s drive thrus to make the order experience more personalized for customers.

Others aren’t sitting still. In 2019 alone, Dunkin’ has expanded its “Next Generation” store, which features dedicated drive-thru lanes for mobile orders, to other parts of the U.S.; KFC started testing a drive-thru-only concept in Australia; and a slew of new tech companies have emerged offering various digital and AI-powered tools to take orders at the drive thru.

It’s not hard to understand why. As of last check, drive thrus still make up over 50 percent (in some cases closer to two thirds) of all orders for many QSRs. At the same time, bigger menus and more disjointed pieces of tech in the restaurant space have slowed down the order process and made wait times in drive-thru lanes longer. As Apprente CEO Itamar Arel, Ph.D., said back in 2018, “Fast food is not always fast and bottlenecks at ordering stations result in lost sales.” McDonald’s and others can’t afford those lost sales, so anything — whether an extra lane or a full-on tech makeover — to move people through the line faster could give QSRs an edge in the rising competition. You can bet there will be plenty more news from the drive-thru lane as more major QSRs revamp to take a page from McDonald’s playbook and reinvent themselves with tech.

Weeding Out the Labor Shortage Problem
The drive-thru isn’t the only area the food world is looking to speed up production. This week a company called FarmWise raised $14.5 million for its self-driving robots that remove weeds from crops without the need for herbicides or pesticides. (We expect these machines will be able to do much more than pull weeds in future, too.)

For the agtech world, machines like these not only save time, they also pick up the slack left by a major labor shortage in farm production. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. say this labor shortage is the most limiting factor they face on their farms, and it’s not one that looks like it’ll be solved any time soon.

Hence, the robots. Every farm in America won’t have autonomous bots to pick weeds and harvest produce at the snap of a finger, but these machines are an increasingly appealing solution to the labor issue. Robots don’t need breaks, can work in sweltering heat and humidity, and in some cases can work faster than a human. As we look to solutions for both farm labor and wasted crops on the farm, these bots hold many possibilities.

Photo: Decafino

Disrupting Decaf
Meanwhile, someone wants to reinvent decaf coffee.

Decafino, a startup based out of Seattle, launched a Kickstarter campaign today for a tea bag-like product it claims can remove caffeine from any cup of brewed coffee. As my colleague Catherine Lamb detailed, the biodegradable pouch can be dropped in a cup of coffee (or caffeinated soda, for that matter), and within three to four minutes will remove the caffeine from the beverage.

If the product does as it claims, it could open up many more options for decaf coffee drinkers, who often face very limited selections at stores and coffee shops, and in some cases no options at all.

Personally, I’d have to be told I needed triple bypass surgery to stop drinking caffeinated coffee, and no doubt that day will come. In the meantime, there are plenty of folks out there who love the taste of coffee but for health reasons cannot drink the real thing. If Decafino is successful, these people might find a whole new world of drink choices.

Lumen Raises $8.5M, Says it Has Sold 11,000 Breathalyzers for Metabolic Hacking

Lumen, which gives you personalized diet recommendation based on your breath, announced today that it has raised $8.5 million in funding. The news was first reported by CTech, which writes that the new money was led by Hong Kong-listed H&H company and Unorthodox Ventures, with Disruptive Venture Capital and Gigi Levy participating. This brings the total amount raised by Lumen to $15.5 million.

Lumen launched its handheld breathalyzer on Indiegogo a little more than a year ago. At the time, we described it like this:

The eponymous Lumen device looks (sadly) like a vape pen. Blow into it and the device measures the CO2 of your exhale to see if you are burning carbs or body fat. According to the promotional video, you can breathe into Lumen in the morning to get a personalized meal plan for the day, adjust that meal plan with breath check-ins throughout the day, and check your breath before a workout to see if you need to carb up for additional energy.

The device was a crowdfunding hit, selling roughly 11,000 devices and generating $2.3 million in sales, according to CTech.

We checked in with Lumen cofounder Dror Ceder at CES earlier this year and learned that in addition to meal planning, the company is also working on ways integrate food ordering (meals and groceries) based on your results.

The Spoon look at Lumen, a handheld breath detector for measuring metabolism

It’s not a lot of hot air to say that several different companies are looking at your breath to help you hack your metabolism. The Keyto is another crowdfunded device uses your breath to measure acetone in your breath to determine if your body is in the fat-burning state of ketosis.

Having tried the Keyto, I’m curious to test out the Lumen as it seems to offer a broader application of useful advice. If it works as promised, I’d love to know if I’ve carbed up enough before a workout, and also get ongoing meal recommendations throughout the day based on my metabolic rate.

Lumens are available now for $249 directly through the company but the devices aren’t shipping until January, so I’ll have to hold my breath a little bit longer.

SKS Q&A: GenoPalate’s Sherry Zhang on How Your DNA Can and Should Dictate What You Eat

In Western cultures we tend to go to the doctor to get medicine, but there’s a growing movement advocating for food as the first step towards healthier bodies. (Which, when you think about it, is pretty obvious.) But determining what foods to eat to make you feel better can be tricky, especially in our age of fad diets and fast-food.

Dr. Sherry Zhang founded company GenoPalate to try and solve the whole what-do-I-eat-to-feel-better question for individuals by looking at genetics to create personalized nutrition programs. Sort of like Ancestry DNA for your diet.

Zhang will be speaking at our flagship Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} conference in Seattle this October, exploring the burgeoning trend of food as medicine. (Psst — Early Bird ticket sales end tomorrow, so grab yours before the price goes up!) We asked her a few questions to get a better sense of how exactly GenoPalate works, and what sort of role it could play in mapping out our dining future.

Tell us more about GenoPalate. How exactly does it work?
GenoPalate revolutionizes how people eat healthy based on their unique genetics. Through a simple swab test, GenoPalate’s nutrigenetic home test analyzes 100+ genetic markers that determine a person’s specific needs for 24 vital nutrients such as carbohydrates, vitamin D, and sodium, and sensitivities to lactose, gluten, caffeine and alcohol. The company combines genetic results with millions of nutritional variables to recommend the foods a person should eat more of. Then each client receives a report that includes their genetic results, what they mean, and a personalized list of the 80+ foods that benefit that specific client the most. Using its genetics-based personalized nutrition technology, GenoPalate is changing how people choose, shop for and eat food for better health.

How do consumers get access to GenoPalate’s technology? Is it offered as a solo service? Do you work with partners? A combination?
It is easy to get access to GenoPalate’s technology. Consumers can order their GenoPalate nutrigenetic home tests by going to its e-commerce platform at genopalate.com. It is offered as one streamlined experience and each service comes with GenoPalate’s genetics-based nutrition analysis, a personal nutrition and food map report followed by Activate, a 12-week digital coaching program that provides individual consumers actionable knowledge to eat for their genes.

Personalization is a growing trend in the food space. Why do you think it’s having such a moment lately?
There are definitely radical changes in the expectations, needs and wants of food shoppers lately. I think the driver behind this trend in consumer behavior is the advancements in the technology world that enables 1) the dramatically increased amount of information on sources, ingredients and manufacturing processes to the food we have access to today; 2) the level of precision in health information that we now are able to access and analyze for better understanding the impact of food and nutrition on a person’s health and wellness by the high-paced advancement in the field of clinical genomics. Consumers have always had the appetite for personalized food options for their needs but it was not possible to meet those needs at greater scale. Now we have the technologies to offer that, it is reasonable that consumers and the industry they influence cannot wait for taking it on.

How do you address the issue of privacy around the personal data you gather to create nutrition profiles for GenoPalate?
Keeping our users’ genetic and other personal information private and safe is important to us at GenoPalate.

We implement de-identification procedures along with encryption of each individual’s data to ensure secure storage and complete anonymous separate of your genetic and personal information. Only automated GenoPalate product services have access to both of this information to deliver our product to each user.

As a business, we do not sell, lease or rent users’ personal information to third-party without user’s consent. User’s genetic information may be used by our product development team to enhance our services to our users. In this case, users’ data will be de-identified and aggregated before analysis to preserve anonymity.

To learn more about our data security and privacy measures please visit, https://www.genopalate.com/legal.

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Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

Fasting App Zero Fills Up with $2.8 Million in Funding

Fasting app Zero announced today that it has raised $2.8 million in a new funding round from True Ventures and Trinity Ventures (h/t Axios Pro Rata). This brings the total amount raised by the company to $4 million.

In its press announcement Zero describes itself as:

Instead of focusing on short-term wins or specific diets, Zero’s fasting protocols are focused on when people eat, not what they eat. The app connects people who are interested in fasting to the tools, resources and community to help them find the best fasting routines for their health, in addition to tracking progress and milestones over time.

Zero says its app has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, and users have completed more than 35 million fasts to date.

Typically at The Spoon, we cover how technology is changing the way people eat. We write about using your breath to determine your diet, startups that say your biome can impact your health, or even using AI to figure out what to choose at a restaurant. But I guess that should also include technology that gets people to not eat as well.

Intermittent fasting is a hip trend with the tech bros of Silicon Valley, with acolytes like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who say it helps him be more efficient and focused, and sleep better. Zero CEO, Mike Maser, said that fasting helped him survive cancer.

While we’re not doctors and can’t advocate or reject the promises of intermittent fasting, Zero says it has an advisory team of doctors and researches that use science to guide and support the company’s fasting protocols.

One thing Zero isn’t hungry for after today, however, is cash.

What Sweden’s Quirky Food Tech Scene Could Mean for the Rest of the World

From parental leave policies to sustainability initiatives, Sweden is typically considered one of the most forward-thinking nations on earth.So it’s no surprise the country consistently pops up in food tech conversations, often for unusual projects that seem quirky at first glance but can actually tell us a lot about how tech is changing the way we eat.

Like making customers do what’s essentially a blind taste-test to see if they can tell the difference between a plant-based burger and the real deal. The famed Impossible Burger isn’t available in Europe right now, but that didn’t stop Burger King from using Vivera’s plant-based patty to create a version of its Whopper — and betting customers can’t discern the difference between it and a regular meat-based one.

To drive that point home, BK in Sweden launched the “50/50 menu” at the beginning of July where customers order BK’s signature burger and have a 50/50 chance of getting a meat version or the plant-based version. The only way to tell which is which is to scan a QR code on the wrapper.

It’s a gimmick, to be sure, but as my colleague Catherine Lamb pointed out, it’s also a way to get better data on plant-based offerings: “It will get a record of every consumer’s reaction to the sandwiches, and be able to quantify how often people are actually duped by the vegetarian alternatives.”

More data like this could give Burger King a realistic picture of how much customers actually want plant-based fast food — a useful lesson for businesses in any part of the world.

Or you could just hand your customers a picnic blanket. That’s what McDonald’s in Sweden did earlier this summer to promote its initiatives around delivering to public spaces via geofencing technologies. Customers scan a QR code on the picnic blanket to shoot their geographic information to a third-party delivery service, who will deliver a McDonald’s meal from the chain’s nearest location.

The idea isn’t specific to Sweden: companies like Domino’s and 7-Eleven also deliver to public locations rather than a numbered addresses. But there’s something more attention-grabbing about scanning a picnic blanket than simply logging into an app. PR stunt though it may be, it suggests a whole new avenue of possibilities when it comes to using everyday objects and settings in life to ramp up the food delivery business.

On a more ambitious level, come September 3, restaurant-goers in Stockholm will be able to experience what science, technology, academic research, design, and cooking look like when bundled together to form a single sustainable restaurant.

Restauranglabbet (“the restaurant lab”) will test numerous sustainability measures under one roof, from curbing food waste to cooking with more local, sustainable ingredients to measuring carbon footprint and using only eco-friendly materials in furniture design and production.

We won’t know how successful the project is until Restauranglabbet’s doors open on September 3, but no doubt there will be pieces of restaurant innovation coming out of the lab the whole world should take note of.

Elsewhere, a company in Stockholm called Diaz & Swahn is experimenting inside and outside the restaurant with how sound can affect the way food tastes to people. And a company called Local Food Node makes a digital platform that allows users to connect with local food producers by creating nodes that function as delivery and pickup spots for the food.

Will we be seeing QR-enabled picnic loot and sound-centric restaurants in the States anytime soon? Probably in part, particularly when it comes to building a more sustainable restaurant and finding new avenues for food delivery. In any case, keep your eye on Sweden one to watch for finding more innovative, scalable ways to integrate tech meaningfully into our food lives.

Krispy Kreme Gets a Digital Makeover With Newly Redesigned Store

Krispy Kreme debuted its first store redesign in over a decade this week, and it’s all about digital enhancements to speed up ordering, payments, pickup, and delivery for the doughnut-centric business.

According to a press release, the first of these locations opened on Tuesday in Concord, N.C., appropriately just a stone’s throw away from the company’s Global Product & Innovation Center.

Besides an expanded menu and something called “an enhanced doughnut theater experience,” where you can watch the goods being made step by step, the new store design features a number of tech-forward initiatives. Online ordering is integrated into the overall format, as is delivery. In terms of physical layout, the store has a dedicated area for self-service mobile order pickup for customers and/or delivery drivers. Krispy Kreme has also expanded the store’s drive-thru to two lanes — much like Dunkin’ did in 2018 when it opened its next-generation concept store.

The similarities between Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ shouldn’t be taken as a doughnut to donut comparison, though. Rather, Krispy Kreme is merely following the direction most QSRs are traveling these days, which is all about becoming digital-first restaurants that can accommodate the growing number of sales channels (in-store, delivery, mobile app, drive-thru) customers want as options for ordering, as well as growing demand for better personalization. The news comes just days after KFC announced its digitally focused drive-thru of the future, Starbucks opened an express store concept in China, and, here in the U.S., Brightloom (formerly Eatsa) upped the ante on restaurant-tech in general by partnering with Starbucks to license the latter’s tech. Among many other developments.

According to the press release, the Concord, N.C. store is the first of 45 planned Krispy Kreme locations, new and existing, that will get the digital makeover throughout 2020.