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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Personalized Food

How THE.FIT Uses AI to Better Meet Your Dietary Needs at the Restaurant

Two phrases are getting a lot of airplay in the food industry nowadays: “artificial intelligence” and “personalized menus.” Put them together and you’re supposed to get a restaurant experience where customers see menu choices based on their specific needs and restaurants earns bigger tickets because they’re selling items people actually want to eat. Or can eat, for that matter.

Scott Sanchez, founder and CEO of THE.FIT, calls this “dietary optimization,” and it’s the guiding principle behind his company and the tech it makes and sells to restaurants.

THE.FIT bills itself as “a menu personalization engine” that provides restaurant menus based on a customer’s individual dietary needs (or preferences). To do that, THE.FIT uses AI to ingest a restaurant’s menu and nutritional information into its system, then validate that information against specific criteria (e.g., steak is OK for Keto) to better match foods with customers’ needs. In offering this more personalized food experience, a restaurant can increase its ticket sizes and, hopefully, overall margins, because it’s offering customers a more satisfying restaurant experience.

Sanchez, who is very open about his own struggles with fitness and weight loss, got the idea for THE.FIT after experiencing his own frustrations with finding meals he could eat out that also matched his dietary needs for his fitness program. “It’s this stress and anxiety that would often keep me home so that I didn’t have to deal with that,” he told me over the phone this week.

Seeing no existing fix to this problem, he decided to create software that would address the challenge of sticking with your diet while still enjoying a meal out with friends or family.

For customers, using THE.FIT’s tech to do that is a very simple process. You simply use your phone to scan a QR code on the restaurant menu, then select your dietary preferences. THE.FIT matches your preferences with the information in its system and uses it to generate a version of the restaurant’s menu.

For example, if someone on a Keto diet goes to a Mexican restaurant, the menu can suggest a burrito bowl with no rice and no beans. The system will already know a) what someone on a Keto diet can or cannot eat and b) the ingredients of each dish on a restaurant’s menu and. Using AI features, the system can adjust the menu accordingly. These preferences can be saved in the system so that they automatically come up on the guest’s next visit.

Right now this is a partially automated process, and also relies partially on expertise from dietitians and other food professionals. In future, Sanchez says the system will be able to act in accordance with true AI and learn information itself.

THE.FIT comes as a few different integrations for restaurants. In its simplest form, the technology is simply menus and signage that include the QR code and costs restaurants $100/month.

The company’s SaaS offering is where things get interesting, though. THE.FIT’s system can integrate with existing hardware and software in the restaurant, like native mobile apps, self-serve kiosks, and POS systems. Sanchez said the company is in talks with major POS vendors who would like to see THE.FIT more intimately integrated with their technology.

The hope is that improving the guest experience will help restaurants improve their razor-thin margins. Sanchez walked me through an example of what this might look like: If a user is eating a low-carb diet and wants a burger, the obvious choice would be to offer it without the bread. But instead of simply offering a “no bun” option, THE.FIT’s AI capabilities could offer an upsell, say, a bed of spinach for the burger for an extra $2. The cost of providing that spinach, according to Sanchez, doesn’t really go up, but it provides a 95 percent profit margin in the process. And it’s hopefully making the customer happier.

Using AI to personalize the restaurant experience is only going to get bigger as a topic. Most notably, McDonald’s introduced it to the drive-thru earlier this year when it acquired AI company Dynamic Yield; over 700 McDonald’s locations now use Dynamic Yield’s tech to make real-time recommendations to customers based on external data (e.g., the weather). And just earlier this week, a company called Clinc announced a Series B round that will help the company take its tech into new markets, including the restaurant industry.

However, as The Spoon’s Mike Wolf pointed out recently, there’s personalized and then there’s personalization. Imagine a future where, “instead of getting just an updated list of food based on what’s trending that day or if it’s hot or cold outside, you would get a menu that was created specifically based on your taste profile, biomarkers, allergies and more. This menu would be an entirely new thing to the world, something made for you and your unique characteristics.”

That’s a future THE.FIT seems to be headed towards. And while Sanchez says it’s not quite there yet — the system still relies on dietary experts and other food professionals to make decisions — we’re not that far away, either. “As we get dozens and thousands of restaurants to input, the system will start to make those characterizations itself. The way our system operates in a year will be very different.”

Right now The.FIT is working on pilot programs with a number of different restaurants. Sanchez can’t call anyone out by name yet, but assured me that would change over the next few months.

Newsletter: The Spoon’s Food Tech 25 Is Here. So Is the Battle for the Drive-Thru.

This the post edition of our newsletter. To get the Weekly Spoon delivered to your inbox, subscribe here. 

One of my favorite things about tech is that it starts a lot of debate. Even within our small team here at The Spoon, we’re constantly on different pages about what’s groundbreaking and what’s just hype, whether something’s progressive or just invasive, how to spell the phrase “food tech.”

So when it came time to put together our annual Food Tech 25 list, which dropped yesterday, you can bet it took a whole lot of discussion to whittle the entire food industry down to just 25 companies.

As we always do, though, the Spoon team — Mike Wolf, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb, and myself — managed to compile a list of companies we individually and collectively, believe are truly impacting the human relationship to food. That impact takes many forms, from the way Creator makes it possible for humans and robots to coexist in the kitchen to Yo-Kai’s vending machine of the future to Goodr’s efforts to use tech to keep food out of the trash and redistribute it to those in need.

I’m hoping readers enjoy this list, but I’m also hoping it sparks some healthy dispute, too. Who else should be on the list? For that matter, who shouldn’t, and why? We encourage you to email us with any additions, subtractions, rants and raves on the matter.

And, most important, congratulations to the companies who made it on this list!

Image via Unsplash.

Drive-Thru Tech Moves Into the Fast Lane

One area of food tech that’s going to raise many more questions over the next few years is the QSR drive-thru. Specifically, how AI is changing the drive-thru and what that means for both restaurant operators and customers.

We’ve been following closely the story behind McDonald’s acquisition of Dynamic Yield, a New Zealand-based AI company whose tech has already been rolled out to almost 1,000 Mickey D’s drive-thru lanes. Then, this week, Clinc, best known for its work in the financial sector, announced a new funding round that will allow the company to expand into other markets with QSR drive-thrus at the top of the list.

Clinc’s using AI-powered voice controls to facilitate more natural conversation between the customer and the ordering system in the hopes of making the drive-thru experience smoother and faster. Drive-thru order times are much longer than they used to be, and companies are betting AI will speed up the order process by making it more accurate and also making more personalized recommendations, like immediately suggesting a pastry to someone when they place their morning coffee order. There are even companies working on making those recommendations not just in real time but also based on existing customer data. One such company is 5thru, which does away with voice altogether by scanning your license plate number, which is attached to a profile stored with the restaurant and can make real-time recommendations based on your existing preferences and order history attached to that license plate number. Cue progressive-versus-creepy debate.

Join the Conversation at The Spoon’s New Food Tech Fireside Event

As much as we value the sound of our own voices over here, though, we actually want to hear more from readers on their thoughts around tech. That’s why we started a new online event, The Spoon’s Food Tech Firesides. Every month, we’ll hold a virtual sit down with one or two food industry innovators and invite the audience to join in the talk via written questions.

First up will be Tessa Price of WeWork Food Labs and Peter Bodenheimer from Food-X talking about food accelerators: what they are, what they’re not, and which companies and entrepreneurs should consider them as a path towards growth.

The event takes place May 30 at 10:00 a.m. PDT/1:00 p.m. EDT. Catch the full details here, and be sure to register early, as there’s limited space available.

May your week be filled with lively debate.

Onwards,

Jenn

Sun Basket Raises $30M in Series E Funding Round

Subscription-based meal kit company Sun Basket announced today it has raised $30 million in a Series E funding round. According to a press release sent via email, the round was led by PivotNorth Capital, with participation from Sapphire Ventures, August Capital, Founders Circle, Unilever Ventures, and others. This brings Sun Basket’s total funding to $125 million.

The company is especially known for its use of clean, organic foods and its wide variety of meal plans from which to choose. Got a diet restriction? Sun Basket’s probably the best kit to go with, whether your goal is something as simple as losing a few pounds via the carb-conscious plan to something more serious, like managing diabetes. Meal plans range between about $10.99 to $11.99 per serving depending on the frequency and number of people eating off the plan.

The mail-order meal kit space is a challenging one at the moment, and many companies moving away from the model and instead selling kits in grocery store aisles. On the heels of Kroger buying Home Chef last year, Albertsons scooping up Plated (they laying off staff), and Giant making a deal with HelloFresh, Nielsen reported that growth in this sector came from in-store sales.

Still, those facts don’t render the mail-order meal kit irrelevant. In fact, Sun Basket CEO Adam Zbar keeps an optimistic outlook on the space. While he acknowledged to me, via email, that “there will be substantial consolidation in the space as the winners rise to the top,” he also said that, “Long-term, the meal kit and more generally the direct-to-consumer meal/grocery delivery has the potential to dramatically disrupt the $1T food system with a fundamentally healthier, more convenient, more personal, and delicious option.”

The funding will allow Sun Basket to expand its product line to include breakfast and lunch offerings, in addition to the dinner meals it already delivers to customers. Longer term, Sun Basket plans to unroll an AI-powered digital user experience. Zbar wouldn’t go into details on that, saying only we should “look for cool advancements in this area in quarters to come.”

Previously, Sun Basket raised a $42.8 million Series D round and a $15 million debt financing round in January 2018. The company is based in San Francisco, CA.

Clinc Raises $52M for Its Conversational AI Platform

Clinc, the Detroit, MI-based company known for its AI-powered voice control platform, announced today it has closed a $52 million Series B round. The investment includes cash from Insight Partners, DFJ Growth, Drive Capital, and Hyde Park Venture Partners, among others. This brings Clinc’s total funding to $57.8 million.

Last July, my colleague Chris Albrect wrote that Clinc was aiming to expand its platform, which had originally been geared towards the financial sector, into other markets. Notably, that included the drive-thru lane for quick-service restaurants. According to TechCrunch, the new funding round will help the company better expand into those new markets.

Clinc’s particular approach to natural-language understanding (NLU), which doesn’t rely on the behavioral tree structure that currently powers a lot of AI software out there, allows the platform to treat everything said it as straight data. In doing so, the system is able to conduct so-called “messier” conversations that feel more akin to a real-life interaction between two humans.

As anyone who uses the QSR drive-thru knows, those interactions can get confusing, especially when you’re ordering anything from the menu that’s complex or outside the norm, even if it’s just a half-decaf latte or a cheeseburger with no pickles or onions.

And beyond improving order accuracy, the Clinc platform is also known for being easier to use than other AI systems out there. The system features pre-built competency archetypes and can be implemented and used by anyone, regardless of whether they have a background in technology or AI. That along with a shorter onboarding process should make it appeal to a wider number of companies in the restaurant world.

Those features make the system attractive for something like the drive-thru, which of late is looking like the next great battleground for QSRs. McDonald’s raised the stakes not long ago when it acquired AI company Dynamic Yield to introduce greater accuracy and more personalization for drive-thru customers. A number of other companies have also announced their own efforts around AI, voice-ordering, and the drive-thru lane, including Valyant AI, and 5thru.

Clinc was founded in 2015 by husband-wife duo Jason mars and Lingjia Tang. The new funding round is geared towards getting Clinc to an initial public offering by 2022.

Wendy’s Doubles-Down on Its Tech Ambitions Post Earnings Call

If there’s one big takeaway to glean from Wendy’s first-quarter 2019 earnings call, which took place on Wednesday, it’s that the quick-service burger chain is ramping up its tech game in a big way.

Not that the Dublin, OH-based company was slacking. Prior to Wednesday’s call, Wendy’s had already installed self-serve kiosks in about 75 percent of its (North American) stores, accelerated its delivery program with DoorDash, and made progress on redesigning existing stores to better serve the digital needs QSRs in 2019 must meet.

Based on the transcript from this week’s earnings call, those initiatives have so far paid off. CEO Todd Penegor noted on the call that Wendy’s saw “system-wide sales growth” and that the company continues “to make meaningful progress with [its] consumer-facing digital capabilities.”

That progress includes further expansion of its delivery program, which Penegor said “continues to pace ahead of expectations.” The company plans to have 80 percent of its North American system available for delivery by the end of 2019, along with a more streamlined mobile app that will integrate DoorDash and make off-premise ordering an easier experience for customers. Mobile ordering will be available across the North American Wendy’s market by the end fo the year. (It currently operates in 75 percent of North America.)

A newer initiative for Wendy’s is the introduction of digital scanners, which are part of Wendy’s $25 billion investment in digital initiatives. Penegor said on the call the company plans to have scanners in all its restaurants by the end of 2019. Speed is the obvious benefit here, as the technology will allow employees to simply scan mobile coupons on orders, rather than keying them into a POS system, as was done previously.

For a QSR, however, providing speed at scale is almost important as the quick turnaround times themselves. Penegor said as much on the call, going as far as to say that scale “allows you to make investments in such things as enhanced training and tools, and that those with scale will ultimately win.”

Wendy’s celebrated its 50th birthday this year, but in terms of digital adoption, it has moved slower than McDonald’s, whose aggressive “experience of the future” redesign and foray into personalized recommendations have garnered much attention of late. That said, so has its ongoing battle with its franchisees, for whom all this new technology is sometimes more of an albatross around the neck than a revenue generator.

Wendy’s hasn’t reported any such friction as yet, so it will be important to keep an eye on the company as it scales its tech plans across the continent. They may not have a Dynamic Yield-like deal in the works yet (that we know of), but they could be creating a solid blueprint for growth worth mimicking in future.

Google Lens Could Make the Restaurant Experience Super Convenient — or Super Predictable

Yesterday at its I/O conference, Google announced new features to Google Lens, its image-recognition app for Android, and they’re all about improving the restaurant experience for customers.

Google Lens uses machine learning, computer vision, and a whole lot of data to interact with the world around you and answer your questions. For example, when Lens launched in 2017, it was touted as a way to instantly translate another language.

According to a blog post from Google published yesterday, the new features for Google Lens “provide more visual answers to visual questions.”

Like what’s popular on your restaurant menu right now. Within the Google Lens app, when a user snaps a photo of the menu and taps on an item, Lens automatically pulls up relevant information, like a photo item description, and reviews — data Google already has thanks to its Google Maps-Yelp integration.

Lens is basically automating something most of us have done at least once while out at a restaurant, which is see another table’s food arrive and, intrigued, ask them what it is. But asking Drew at the next table what she ordered only offers so much information. After all, Drew hasn’t tasted the food yet, and her preferences could be completely opposite of yours.

What Lens appears to be doing with this new feature is taking most of that guesswork out of the ordering process by not only matching a photo with its name and description, but also aggregating reviews, so a user can get a clearer sense of how the dish tastes. If nine people say the dish was super bland, those who prefer a little more kick to their meals might order something else.

It all sounds wonderfully convenient for us consumers. For example, it could be a valuable tool when you’re trying out a new type of cuisine and have no idea where to start.

What I wonder, though, is how this will affect menu planning for restaurants. On the one hand, it could provide valuable information for restaurants when it comes to figuring out what is and isn’t selling on the menu, so chefs and operators could better adjust their planning and inventory (potentially helping them avoid food waste and keep costs down).

But what this will do to the adventure of going out to eat? Part of the fun of the restaurant experience is the guesswork, which would be gone were we to rely too heavily on data-driven recommendations. This seems unlikely at higher-end restaurants and places designed for adventurous foodies, with robust appetites for the unknown. For all the places in between, though, too much knowledge might make the restaurant experience just a little too predictable.

McDonald’s Installs Dynamic Yield’s Personalization Tech in 700 Locations

McDonald’s has wasted no time in bringing personalization to its restaurants since the company’s acquisition of Dynamic Yield in March. On the company’s Q1 earnings call this week, CEO Steve Easterbrook said McDonald’s has already installed Dynamic Yield’s technology in 700 McDonald’s locations in the U.S.

As of right now, the technology is being used for drive-thru menus, which it can create based on data like weather, trending menu items, and current restaurant traffic. As you start ordering, the menu will automatically suggest upsell items based on that data as well as what you just ordered. Getting a McCafe? The system is probably going to suggest you order a donut stick, too.

Easterbrook noted on the call that, “Over time using data from the millions of customers that we serve daily the technology will get smarter and smarter through machine learning.”

For now, installments of Dynamic Yield’s tech are in the drive-thru, but Easterbook said we’ll eventually see it across all of McDonald’s digital platforms, including mobile ordering and self-order kiosks.

The focus on drive-thru is in part because of a larger effort by McDonald’s to cut down the amount of time customers spend in drive-thru lines. For most quick-service restaurants, the length of time customers spend in the drive-thru line has gone up over the years, despite advances in technology. Average speed-of-service time for drive thrus was 234 seconds in 2018 compared to 225 seconds the previous year, which only goes to show you it’s not about having the tech but knowing how to use it.

Acquiring Dynamic Yield is one way McDonald’s has addressed this problem. Another effort, which Easterbrook discussed on the call, was an “incentive program,” where McDonald’s locations competed against one another “to deliver the best drive-thru service times.”

However, it’s more likely that an AI-driven platform like Dynamic Yield’s will make the real difference in speeding up service and making it more accurate and personalized — in the drive-thru and otherwise. And Dynamic Yield isn’t the only version of AI up and running. Apprente makes neuroscience-inspired AI that can enable voice-ordering and integrate with restaurant POS systems. And 5thru, which isn’t yet in restaurants but is “coming soon” to a number of large quick-service chains, will (gulp) scan your license plate and offer personalized recommendations based on your linked profile.

McDonald’s installations of Dynamic Yield’s tech seems slightly different, though. Yes, the company is focused on making the drive-thru better, but, as the company plans to expand the tech into other areas, it seems like the Dynamic Yield acquisition is about integrating the many different pieces of the digital restaurant operation to drive the kinds of customer experiences and recommendations that will generate more sales. That could well be the winning strategy for any restaurant in this inescapably tech-driven new age of business.

Viome Raised $25M for its Microbiome-based Dietary Guide Platform

Speaking with Viome CEO, Naveen Jain, it’s not hard to understand how investors, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff and Khosla Ventures among them, handed Viome a fresh round of $25 million in funding last week.

During our chat by phone, Jain was animated, proclaiming that it was a big week for him not because his company has now raised $45.5 million (and wants to raise $100 million in this Series B round) but because life is, in his words, “amazing!” and his company was working to make becoming sick a choice.

The company does this by collecting a stool sample from you (which you mail in) and running it through its software platform to analyze what microbes in your gut are doing to the food you eat. How your microbiome is treating your food can indicate what diseases you might be susceptible to, according to Jain. From there Viome applies AI to its findings to develop individualized dietary guidelines. Viome says there is no universal diet. Spinach, for example, might not be healthy for everyone because of the way your body processes it. By doing all this, Jain and company claim, Viome can help people avoid getting diseases like diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome or even insomnia and depression.

The company’s claims and services aren’t without skeptics, even Jain himself has a controversial past. But that evidently didn’t keep investors at bay, and Jain says that Viome has a dozen clinical trials with various universities, labs and hospital networks to show the efficacy of his company’s service.

Viome has been on a bit of a roll this year. Back in February, the company acquired personalized nutrition service, Habit, from Campbell’s (terms were not disclosed). Habit’s original business was creating personalized recipes based on a person’s biomarkers. These types of personalized recipes, according to Jain, were a natural fit for Viome. In addition to recommending specific foods based on the biome, the company could recommend whole meals. Though Jain didn’t bring it up, it’s not hard to see Viome taking it one step further in selling personalized meal kits to people at some point.

But first, Jain said the biggest challenge for his company is generating awareness. He said the new money will go towards acquiring new customers, which will in turn provide more data that will make its service more useful. Additionally, Jain said Viome is working on a new type of test that only requires a finger prick of blood. This, by an unfortunate bit of timing, sounds a lot like Theranos.

Applying technology to your microbiome is definitely a trend. Other players in the space include uBiome, Day Two and Second Genome. Whether or not all of these solutions actually work and are something to get as excited as Jain about, remains to be seen.

5Thru Is Using AI to Make the Drive-Thru Faster and More Personalized

It’s no secret that drive-thrus have gotten slower in recent years.

As the the QSR 2018 drive-thru study reports, major quick-service restaurants (QSRs) like McDonald’s and Wendy’s see about 70 percent of their sales come from the drive-thru window. But the same study also reported that the drive-thru experience for customers has gotten slower over time, with an average speed-of-service time at 234 seconds in 2018, compared to 225 seconds the previous year and 190 seconds back in 2003.

A consumer doesn’t need numbers to tell them the drive-thru needs improvement: just go to one on a Tuesday morning during rush hour, where lines are long, orders are incorrect, and the mini-van in front of you just ordered four extra-large frappucinos.

Long lines and clunky experiences at the drive-thru were Dan McCann’s inspiration for starting 5thru. The company uses a combination of AI, license-plate technology, and scanners to speed up the process of ordering and paying and also offer a deeper level of personalization for customers.

As a technology, 5thru isn’t live at any restaurants yet, but over the phone this week, McCann told me it’s “coming soon” and walked me through how it will change the drive-thru experience for both users and restaurant chains.

When a user pulls up to the drive-thru, a camera (which typically already exists at most drive-thrus) scans their license plate, which is connected to a customer profile (users will be able to opt in). A user’s payment info and order history are already stored in 5thru’s system and can be automatically processed, so they need never fumble with a wallet or phone to pay.

Inside the restaurant, the 5thru system processes the order and immediately displays an upsell recommendation the worker can offer the customer then and there. “Would you like a blueberry muffin with your coffee,” for example. McCann said 5thru is currently forecasting a 9 percent increase in average ticket size thanks to this recommendations engine, and that the company can up that number as the technology rolls out to more restaurants.

To get those recommendations, the system factors in a number of elements, from a customer’s past orders to the weather in their location. The idea is to create recommendations that are more personalized than most of us are used to getting when we order food from QSRs. Or, in McCann’s words, “a recommendation we think will fit you.” For example, he doesn’t want the 5thru system to ever recommend burgers to vegetarians, or hot chili to Albuquerque, NM residents in the middle of a blazing-hot summer.

The obvious benefit for restaurants here is the increased revenue, whether that comes from upsell items or recapping revenue that’s normally lost in the traditional drive-thru. McCann reckons that, start to finish, the process of having to get out a credit card or phone and hand it over to pay adds about 28 to 30 seconds to each customer’s experience at the drive-thru. “ If you’re cutting down 30 seconds a car, you can get more cars through,” he says.

Interestingly, there are no apps involved with 5thru, as McCann doesn’t believe that technology is especially suitable for the drive-thru setting: “The problem in a lot of cases is that a lot of [drive-thru orders] are impulse cravings,” he says, adding that, “You’re not going to pull your car over and start pre-ordering” should the craving for a bacon cheeseburger hit.

Instead, 5thru wants to bring the order experience into your vehicle eventually. The company is currently at work with car manufacturers to add voice-order capability, so that getting that bacon cheeseburger becomes merely a matter of telling Siri to order it, then heading to the nearest Wendy’s to get your license plate scanned.

That’s still a work in progress, and McCann, for security reasons, wasn’t able to name specific auto manufacturers. Restaurant chains who will be rolling out 5thru are also under wraps, though he did tell me that “some of the top well-known chains” are on board.

It also remains to be seen if a critical mass of people will take that step of opting into 5thru’s system and thus hand over their license plate info. To be sure, we’ll see some paranoia around this, as it’s yet-another piece of personal information consumers are giving away in the name of fast service and more personalized service. 5thru will need to put extra emphasis on the security of its system once it rolls out.

5thru isn’t discussing a specific timeframe for when their tech will be in place in restaurants. But McCann believes it’s only a matter of time before this sort of hyper-fast and hyper-personalized experience becomes the norm. Just look at McDonald’s recent acquisition of menu-personalization startup Dynamic Yield and Dunkin’s use of separate drive-thru lanes for mobile-order customers. Couple things like that with a system like 5thru, and in five years we’ll probably be looking at a very different drive-thru experience.

Corporate Catering Service EAT Club Acquires Taro, Launches Zero-Carbon Program

Corporate lunch-delivery service EAT Club announced today it has acquired Bay Area-based meal delivery service Taro. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

EAT Club, who currently serves San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles, bills itself as a “virtual cafeteria” that delivers meals to offices, among them Facebook and Postmates. Workers can log onto the digital menu and choose from sandwiches, salads, wraps, and hot entrees which range between healthy (salmon salad) and hearty (turkey club). One person can input all the orders into EAT Club’s website or app, or invite individual employees to add to an order. Once an order is placed, Eat Club will then notify users when the food has arrived, and where it’s been set up (e.g., the conference room).

EAT Club previously had operations in NYC, too, but suspended those in August of 2018, seemingly due to how saturated the corporate catering space is in that city. Prior to that, the company acquired Farm Hill, another corporate catering service.

Taro, meanwhile, is best known for its “homestyle” Indian, Korean, and Chinese fare that also prioritize healthy, fresh ingredients. The company did a $2.8 million venture round in December of 2017.

For EAT Club, Taro brings its proprietary recipes as well as some new technology to the table with this acquisition. In particular, Taro’s distribution tech attracted EAT Club, though details are few and far between as to what exactly Taro has: “They’ve built some really interesting things we want to keep competitively secret on the equipment side,” EAT Club CEO Doug Leeds told TechCrunch.

As digital tech makes it easier to facilitate, ordering, payment, and delivery of corporate lunches, the number of startups popping up to serve this demand keeps growing. Besides EAT Club, Chewse, also in the Bay Area, recently raised $19 million for its “family-style” meals. ezCater just raised $100 million in a Series D round, and Hungry, which connects companies directly to the chef, raised $1.5 million and services areas like Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland.

According to the press release, EAT Club and Taro teams will integrate moving forward.

EAT Club also announced today, via a different press release, a Zero Carbon Initiative to invest in renewable energy and support carbon recapture projects. To do so, EAT Club is teamed up with sustainability consulting firm 3Degrees, with whom it’s building a “custom renewable energy and carbon offset program.” The program will match all of EAT Club’s electricity usage with renewable energy generation. It will also make its packaging recyclable or compostable. Leeds told TechCrunch that the company’s biggest environmental impact thus far is with transportation. Given that Taro has some technology secrets aimed at distribution up its sleeve, it’s possible some of the assets EAT Club just acquired could go towards helping lessen that footprint and find a more eco-friendly way to deliver lunches to the corporate world.

Is Personalized Nutrition Losing its Shine as Industry Star Grimmer Rides Off on a Harley?

Breaking news: In one of the craziest pivots of all time, Harley-Davidson announced today it would diversify from its core business of making iconic motorcycles to launch a product line of personalized beef and pork jerky products based on an individual’s microbiome.

Just kidding.

But I have to admit, when I read the headline that Neil Grimmer, the food industry star who sold his first startup to Campbell’s and became perhaps the most well-known face in the personalized nutrition space with his second in Habit, was leaving the food business to become the President of Harley-Davidson brand, I did a double take.

I mean, a hog business would make sense, but The Hog business?

From yesterday’s press release:

Harley-Davidson announced today that Neil Grimmer will join the company’s leadership team as President, Harley-Davidson Brand.

As Harley’s first-ever brand president, Grimmer will evolve the brand to support the company’s strategy to build the next generation of Harley-Davidson riders globally. As the company expands into new segments and new geographies and seeks to inspire diverse, new riders around the globe, he will be responsible for all aspects of the Harley-Davidson brand including product planning, marketing, retail, apparel and communications.

While the news is a surprise given Grimmer’s high profile in food and, more specifically, personalized food, it’s not surprising given the context of recent developments with Habit and Campbell Soup, Habit’s main shareholder.

In February, Campbell’s divested itself of Habit when it sold the company to Viome, a startup that uses AI to analyze a person’s microbiome.  While Habit’s at-home test-kit doesn’t currently analyze the microbiome, it looks like that’s part of the plan as the company is integrated with Viome.  Here’s a quote from Grimmer about the transaction:

“With the advent of big data and computational biology, I believe it’s possible to provide everyone in this country and around the world a personalized blueprint to achieve their health and wellness goals,” says Habit’s Founder and CEO, Neil Grimmer. “Viome analyzes the gut microbiome at a molecular level with advanced technology from the Los Alamos National Lab, which is a great competitive advantage and great foundation for creating the ultimate whole-body nutrition solution.”

So, is this move by Grimmer (and Campbell’s) a sign the once white hot personalized food space has lost its shine?

Not really. If anything, Grimmer’s departure seem more to do with Campbell’s struggles and changes at Habit than anything. Over the past year, the old-school soup brand got more old-school as it started to sell off its more experimental businesses in a retrenchment back to its core soup and snacks business. At the same time, Habit pulled back from its original push into creating and delivering personalized meals based on a person’s specific nutritional profile to simply creating personalized meal plans.

And with Campbell’s selling off Habit, it’s not that surprising a fast-riser like Grimmer would want to try something new. The biggest surprise it he’s leaving food since he’s spent the majority of his career there, but the reality is Grimmer’s built a name as an out-of-the-box thinker and charismatic leader, traits that he could no doubt transfer to a new industry.

Unless, of course, Harley really is planning on that new microbiome friendly jerky.

You can see Grimmer’s talk about the future of personalized nutrition in the consumer kitchen from the Smart Kitchen Summit here. 

MealMe’s Instagram-Meets-Yelp-Style App Helps You Decide What’s for Dinner

The average consumer nowadays will probably use multiple different apps to figure out where to eat on any given night: discovery, recommendations, booking a reservation or ordering food for delivery. As the folks at Hypepotamus recently noted, a new company, MealMe, wants to simplify the food lover’s food journey by bringing its many pieces into one single app.

Matthew Bouchner and Will Said, both students at Emory University, created the MealMe app as a kind of Instagram-like social network for food that also integrates table booking and ordering capabilities. The idea is to offer a one-stop-shop for all your food needs by aggregating the many disparate parts of the food journey into a single interface.

When a user opens the MealMe app, they see an AI-powered feed that combines Yelp’s data (location, cost, etc.) with user-generated data such as comments and likes, and pulls the most relevant results to that user. So if you live in Indianapolis and tend to order a lot of Thai food, the app will pull up restaurant results relevant to that criteria. The app also pulls in Yelp’s mapping feature, so you can see where your restaurant of choice is and your distance from it.

Image via MealMe.

Users can also snap photos of their meals and share them, much like they do on Instagram, and restaurants can do the same to promote specific items. When a user clicks on a photo, they are given the option to access services like Opentable or Postmates, to book a reservation or order delivery.

The visual aspect of this food journey is especially important to the MealMe folks. Research has shown that the visual cortex of the brain plays a much more significant role in decision making than was previously thought, and can impact whether or not we choose an item from a menu. So in addition to making the logistical side of “what’s for dinner” easier, MealMe also bills itself as a place for people who also just “love looking at food porn,” an activity that’s so popular it’s a bonafide industry.

In fact, multiple companies are now zeroing in on the visual aspect of the food industry and trying to turn it into a business. Wine n Dine, which like MealMe lets users order from within the app, is a food-porn-lover’s dream that shows a feed of pictures a la Instagram and even breaks pictures down into cuisine. And Pinon is another group of students, this time from the University of Massachusetts, who have created “smart” menus that show videos and interactive pictures of food items, and also lets users order from within the app.

Bouchner and Said have been at work on the MealMe app since 2018; it’s currently in beta, with a launch planned for later this year and is currently free to use. The company has said it makes money by taking commissions from delivery orders, offering targeted ad space, and selling premium data packages to restaurants and CPGs. Right now the company is currently bootstrapped and seeking a $120,000 seed round.