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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Podcasts

The Food Tech Show: Big in Japan

Let’s talk about Japan!

We were in Tokyo this month for the third annual Smart Kitchen Summit Japan so, naturally, this podcast is all about the magical wonderland that is the Land of the Rising Sun.

Not only did the Spoon team spend two great days talking food tech with some of the coolest thinkers and entrepreneurs in Japan and broader Asia, we also ran around Tokyo checking out food robots, eating amazing food and delighting in the wonders of the Japanese version of 7-Eleven.

You can read some of the coverage of what we found in Japan here, and if you want to meet many of those who participated in SKS Japan, make sure to come to SKS North America (use discount code PODCAST for 25% off of tickets).

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download this episode directly to your phone or just click play below.

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The Food Tech Show: Mapping The Flavor Genome With Beth Altringer

Beth Altringer first became fascinated in flavor when she joined a competitive wine tasting league while in graduate school at The University of Cambridge.

While it had nothing to do with her field of study (product design and innovation), the very idea of breaking down the characteristics of wine and its flavor into highly descriptive and well understood categories was a revelation to Altringer, so much so she eventually began to think about the idea of applying this systematic and analytical approach to flavor to almost any type of food.

It was from there that the Flavor Genome Project was born, an initiative that “explores how components of flavor combine to create delightful multi-sensory, chemical, emotional, and cultural experiences.”  The goal of the project is to eventually create an “automated understanding of what people are intuitively searching for in a food or drink experience, regardless of the language they use to search for it, intelligently understanding flavor goals in context, and, ultimately, making it easier for people to discover experiences they are likely to enjoy.”

According to Altringer, the Flavor Genome Project is intended to be a platform that could be a foundation for other products, and the first of those product is a mobile game called Chef’s League.  The iOS game allows players to compete to master the usage of different flavor characteristics such as “salt, sweetness, acidity, fat, spice, and more.”

You can find out more about the Flavor Genome Project here and the Chef’s League game here. You can also learn about them from listening to my conversation with Beth on this episode of The Food Tech Show podcast. As always, you can listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or you can download direct or just click play below.

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The Food Tech Show: The Perilous Existence of Bike-Riding Food Delivery Drivers

It’s been a big week in restaurant tech news, so the Spoon gang got together to record a podcast.

In this episode of the Food Tech Show, we discuss:

  • Starbucks deal with Brightloom (formerly Eatsa) and what it means for the restaurant tech market
  • The New York Times piece about a day in the life of food delivery drivers
  • Uber’s all-in-one app for food, bikes and rideshares
  • Mike’s first-world coffee machine struggle with whether he should have waited for the Terra Kaffe, even as the Spinn nears a ship date

As always, you can hit play below or listen to the Food Tech Show podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Food Tech Show: Personalized Menus

Over the past decade, we’ve seen how big data, mobile and social media has created a wave of personalized services for consumers in everything from music and entertainment to news to financial services.

So why is it that the restaurant menu still offers a one-sized fits all offering for guests?

To discuss why the restaurant menu seems stuck in time, I am joined on this episode of The Food Tech Show by Scott Sanchez, CEO of The Fit. We talk about where the menu will go in the future, whether we’ll eventually ever see personalized food profiles and how Scott’s own personal struggles with weight led him to eventually create The Fit.

As always, you can listen to The Food Tech Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, download direct to your device or just click play below.

The Food Tech Show Podcast: A Tech-Powered Fourth of July BBQ

Ok sure, our attention spans were a bit short this week and I was at it again with the sound effects, but we managed to record a podcast on this holiday week.

So if you’re heading to that Fourth of July day party across town or just busy preparing lots of plant-based meats to throw on the grill, just load up the latest episode of The Food Tech Show and listen to the Spoon gang talk about:

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show by on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, by downloading direct to your device or just by clicking play below.

The Food Tech Show: How Will CRISPR Change Food?

Like life, the food we eat is a series of tradeoffs. Whether it’s that banana we buy at the local grocer or that cup of joe we drink at the corner coffee shop, chances are we are not eating or drinking the tastiest or most nutritious variety of the food but instead that which was able to last the longest in transit or is the most disease resistant.

But what if we could have the best of both worlds?

That’s the promise of CRISPR, a new technology that is essentially a form of genetic scissors allows scientists to “edit” DNA gene sequences. Imagine taking out the bad parts of a food’s DNA gene sequence while adding in or changing parts that help make it taste better or last longer.

That’s what scientists are already doing with CRISPR and gene editing techniques.

To discuss this topic, I caught up with the Pete Rowe, the CEO of Deepbranch Biotechnology, for the latest episode of the Food Tech Show podcast.

Rowe, a molecular microbiologist by training, gave the example of avocados as a food that could benefit from CRISPR and gene editing techniques. “Let’s say the best tasting avocados also happen to be the ones that bruise the easiest,” said Rowe. “So you had extremely tasty avocados that you couldn’t ship around the world and therefore they weren’t suited for live scale agriculture. But if you were to make a specific genetic change so that the flavor benefits you get, but you also retain the conventional longevity of this avocado on the shelf.”

But it’s not just helping food last longer, but also helping food survive as a crop.

“Think about all of these problems people are having with coffee,” said Rowe. “Coffee rust is a kinda of fungus that infects coffee plants. There’ s a big genetic component with that. if you make one genetic change within the coffee plant, the likelihood is, if you know what that change has to be, that you can stop that fungus infecting the coffee.

Whether it’s improving flavor, making food more nutritious, or helping it grow faster by speeding up the breeding process, CRISPR and genetic editing hold significant potential.  Rowe does a good job not only explaining these potential applications, but also explains CRISPR in language non scientists like myself (and probably most of our listeners) can understand.

To listen to Rowe talk CRISPR, you can listen to the latest episode of the Food Tech Show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, download direct to your device, or just click play below.

Podcast: The Sometimes You Just Want to Talk About Breakfast Cereal Episode

I love a good conversation about changing the world as much as the next person, but not every podcast has to be a TED talk, ok?

In fact, sometimes you just want to talk about cereal, and that’s what Chris Albrecht and I did in this episode as we break down the taste, ingredients and business model of Magic Spoon, a new “kid’s cereal for adults” we (mainly me) have been raving about the around the Spoon’s virtual (read Slack) water cooler.

So grab a bowl, a big spoon, and some milk and hit play below, on Spotify or download directly to your device.

Editor Roundtable Podcast: We Have Opinions on Tiny Dishwashers & Beyond Burgers

In case you didn’t already know, The Spoon team has lots of opinions. As you might guess, those opinions are especially pronounced when it comes to food and kitchen gadgets.

And so we decided to get together and get some things off our chest on this Editor Roundtable edition of the Food Tech Show.

Here’s what we talked about:

In addition to lots of opinions, we also share sound effects (or at least I do).

As always, please subscribe, play (and rate!) the podcast in Apple podcasts (or your favorite pod player), download direct or just click play below.

Podcast: Let’s Talk Restaurant Robots

As you might expect, putting a robot into the busy back of house of a fast food restaurant isn’t as easy as just setting it in front of the grill and plugging it in. That’s because restaurants are a complex mix of workflows, equipment and, yes, people, so automating a busy kitchen with robotics requires lots of planning.

For this podcast, we talk with two people building the future of restaurant robots: Shawn Lange, the head of Lab2Fab (a division of Middleby) and David Zito, the CEO of Miso Robotics (the company behind Flippy, the burger flipping robot).

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, downloading it directly or listening on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. Enjoy!

Should You Join a Food Tech Accelerator for the Money?

Here’s a question for you food tech startup CEOs out there: should you join a food tech accelerator just for the money?

Definitely not, at least according to Tessa Price of WeWork Food Labs and Peter Bodenheimer of Food-X.

Of course, funding is funding and can be hugely important for any startup’s growth, but there are more important reasons to join an accelerator say Price and Bodenheimer, both of whom joined me for a live conversation this week in what was our first Foodtech Fireside chat.

One of the main reasons a startup shouldn’t make funding the one and only reason to join an accelerator is the equity ask is going to be bigger than with other forms of funding.

“There’s cheaper money out on the street than accelerator money,” said Bodenheimer. “The deal structures in accelerators for investment typically are different from what you’ll see from just an investor not running an accelerator.”

And while it may seem obvious on its face, another important reason, quite simply, is in the name.

“They have potential to accelerate the growth of a startup in a very compact period of time,” said Price. “The value in the ecosystem is that accelerators provide a fairly safe environment to come together and access resources in a way they aren’t able to when they are dealing with a more traditional VC or angel investor.”

Then there’s also community and connections to the food tech ecosystem that come from spending two to three months in an accelerator.

“Having a density of entrepreneurs working in similar types of businesses, that leads to good things,” said Bodenheimer. “Having a support community is really important, and so is being able to leverage the network an accelerator can bring.”

Finally, food tech accelerators give startup CEOs a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step outside of the business and look at what they are doing through fresh eyes.

“There’s a saying: sometimes you’re too busy working in your business to work on your business,” said Bodenheimer. “An accelerator gives you an opportunity to work on your business with focused effort.”

We’ve turned the fireside into a podcast you can listen the full conversation with Tessa Price and Peter Bodenheimer on Apple Podcasts or by clicking play below, or you can also listen to and download the episode directly with this link.

Podcast: Let’s Talk About the Food Tech 25

We published the Food Tech 25 this week, and so we thought it would be a great reason to get the Spoon editorial crew together to talk about the companies we think are doing some of the most interesting work in food tech in 2019. Catherine, Jenn, Chris and I talk about the trends that defined this year’s FT25, what surprised us most, and why, in the end, we couldn’t keep Amazon off the list.

We also talk about my excitement about a home chocolate making appliance and Jenn talks about the white hot drive thru tech space.

It’s a fun podcast, so make sure to click play below, get on Apple Podcasts or your favorite players or just download it directly.

Newsletter: Food Waste Innovation in 2019, Amazon Go(es) to NYC

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Food Waste Innovation in 2019

Fighting food waste is one of the next important frontiers of foodtech. In the course of just a few years, a question historically left on the periphery of the food industry has become a central issue: How do we curb the billions of tons of food that goes wasted around the world each year?

While no one’s going to solve the problem overnight, it’s encouraging that so many groups, from massive corporations to energetic startups to government bodies, are stepping forward with new ways to combat food waste. In fact, there are so many of them now we put together a market map this week to outline the different areas of food waste innovation. From new approaches to packaging to leveraging apps to the power of upcycling, these are the companies to watch in this important new sector.

Download the map below, and let us know if we missed anyone you think should be added.

Solar Foods CEO Wants to Make Food From Thin Air

Granted, if we start making food from thin air, waste could be considerably less problematic. That’s not wishful thinking on my part, either. As has been pointed out recently, Finnish company Solar Foods is using air and electricity to create a new kind of protein. It’s in a similar vein to what Impossible Foods is doing to create its “bleeding” meat.

Over the weekend, Mike dug into the details on a podcast with Solar Foods CEO Pasi Vainikka. If you’re wondering when food made from air will actually land on your dinner plate (sooner than you’d think), take a listen to Mike’s interview.

Amazon Go Debuts in NYC — With Cash

Speaking of glaringly large issues in foodtech: the fight around the cashless business model isn’t going away anytime soon, either. And, of course, Amazon’s a central figure in that fight, thanks to its Amazon Go stores, which were originally built on the cashless business model.

That hasn’t worked out so well for the Seattle giant. As more voices have risen in objection to cashless retail (citing the model’s discriminatory nature towards unbanked and underbanked populations), Amazon has felt the pressure. With restaurant chains like Sweetgreen reversing their cashless models and entire cities refusing to grant exemptions to retailers, Amazon has had to pivot away from purely cashless Go stores.

Hence, the new Amazon Go store, which debuted in NYC today. As Chris noted, “Once your shopping is done, there is a counter in the middle of the store where a person with a handheld scanner checks you out, accepts payment and will even give you a paper receipt.”

I have no doubt that at some point in our lifetimes we’ll see the country go cashless. But with digital discrimination become as big an issue as food waste, greenbacks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Onward!

Jenn