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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Podcasts

Restaurant Tech News Pod: Web3 Restaurants, Sweetgreen Robots, Subway Smart Fridge

Last week I caught up with Expedite’s Kristen Hawley to talk about some of the recent happenings in the world of restaurant tech.

Some of the stories we talked about on this episode include:

And more! You can listen to the podcast below or find it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: The State of Alt-Protein With Po Bronson

When I asked Po Bronson whether people know him more from his past as an author or by his current gig as a venture capitalist, I was surprised by his answer (though I probably shouldn’t have been).

“Everybody comes to me as Po Bronson, the author,” he told me on this week’s Spoon podcast.

Ok, sure, he was one of the go-to writers documenting the first Internet boom and later became a NY Times best-selling author of career advice and parenting books. Still, I figured that by now, almost two decades after the dotcom crash and with Bronson leading one of the food tech industry’s most well-known early-stage funds, things might have changed.

Apparently not.

“I had a call about a year and a half ago, and someone said, ‘I saw your name on the Zoom invite – Are there two Po Bronsons in the world?’ She’s like, ‘I’ve read your books.’ She nearly started crying.”

I’ve read his books as well, and while I didn’t start crying, I did have a great time talking with Po about what the heck is going on in the world of alternative protein. We talked about the struggles of companies like Beyond, how he thinks they will shake out going forward, and what he’s excited about in future food and beyond.

So what gets Bronson excited nowadays? In short, proteins that aren’t necessarily at the ‘center of the plate.’

“We have companies like Voyage Foods and California Cultured, doing chocolate and doing coffee and doing peanut butter more sustainably. There are so many products in the stores that we can reinvent and do better.”

Po had many other great insights, so you’ll want to listen to the full podcast by clicking below or finding it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And, if you want to meet Po in person, he’ll be speaking at The Spoon’s Food Tech Conference at CES!

Podcast: Navigating The World of Patents As a Food Tech Startup

Like many fast-growing industries, the world of food tech relies heavily on intellectual property.

No matter if your startup is building alternative proteins, cooking technology, automation, or some other food tech product, chances are its future success will depend on its IP. But if you’re like me, you find navigating the world of patents confusing. So, I figured why not bring an expert on the podcast to help me (and you) better understand how to navigate the world of patents?

On this episode of the Spoon Podcast, Anas Alfarra joins us to talk food tech and patents. Anas managed IP for one of the world’s biggest industrial equipment makers, has secured his own patent for a food cooking system, and advises startups on how to manage their IP.

  • Topics discussed on this podcast include:
  • What are the different types of patents?
  • What is a provisional patent?
  • How to understand patent strategies of large companies like Amazon and Microsoft
  • The process of applying for a patent
  • And much more!

If you are at all interested in intellectual property and have questions about how to manage it for your food tech startup, this is a must-listen!

You can click play below or find The Spoon podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: Building a Next-Generation Ingredient Company with Shiru’s Jasmin Hume

As the former head of food chemistry for Eat Just, Dr. Jasmin Hume thought there was a lot of white space for innovation when it came to food ingredients.

She knew food companies would increasingly need new and novel ingredients they could build plant-based food products around, but felt there wasn’t enough research being done to discover these critical building blocks.

So she decided to start a company to do just that. So far, the company has raised over $20 million and recently hired Impossible Foods’ former VP of R&D and strategic ingredients.

On the podcast, Jasmin and I discuss a variety of topics, including:

  • How the alternative protein market is evolving from early fully vertically integrated brands to companies like Shiru that build ingredients and solutions for a variety of companies
  • The new cohort of food companies utilizing AI and ML to build the next generation of food
  • How what Shiru is doing with precision fermentation is different from that of Perfect Day and others trying to create animal-identical proteins
  • Where Jasmin sees the ingredient industry going in the future
  • Plus lots more!

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below or you can find it at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: A Challenging Time for Restaurant Tech

In this episode of The Spoon, we are joined by long-time restaurant and restaurant tech journalist Nancy Luna of Insider to compare notes about what’s been a challenging few months for restaurant tech startups.

Some stories we discuss on the show include:

Click play below or find The Spoon podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: The Hard Business of Building an At-Scale Restaurant Tech Company

Anyone who’s read Jordan Thaeler’s publication Reforming Retail knows he likes to tell it like it is when it comes to restaurant tech.

No matter whether it’s the business model of payment processors or the difficulties of building an at-scale restaurant tech startup, you can find his no-holds-barred analysis on a wide variety of topics on a website he describes as, “a cathartic output to all the nonsense” he sees in the industry.

We thought it would be fun to have Jordan visit the podcast to talk about some of this nonsense and more. On this week’s show we discuss:

  • The challenges of the restaurant tech market and why there aren’t more publicly traded companies to support a restaurant industry with a total market size of over half a trillion dollars
  • Why point of sale is still the focus and starting point for digital transition in restaurants
  • The ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant market
  • Jack Dorsey’s fixation with crypto and the potential impact of Web3/crypto on restaurants
  • And a whole lot more!

Click play below to listen. As always, if you want more Spoon podcasts you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: Talking Food Waste Reduction (and How We Can All Do More) With Andrew Shakman

Andrew Shakman had a tough job.

In May, the CEO of Leanpath was asked to give a closing message at the annual ReFED Symposium that would inspire attendees and catalyze action. After two full days of engaging talks and shared insights, he delivered, so we thought we would have Andrew come on the podcast to discuss some of what he shared and to discuss how the food waste reduction space has changed in the 20 or so years he’d been running the company he founded.

Some of the topics discussed on the podcast include:

  • How the food waste technology market has evolved in the past decade
  • Opportunities across the food value chain where innovation can make an impact in reducing overall food waste
  • How food service operators and other food organizations can make a bigger impact than they realize
  • The challenges of the home/consumer market for food waste reduction and where Andrew thinks solution providers can make an impact
  • And lots more!

To listen, click play below or listen on your device via your favorite podcast app. As always, you can find more Spoon podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

Food Tech News Pod: The Wendyverse, 15-Minute Grocery Struggles & Roku’s Big Food Play

It’s another weekly food tech new wrap-up.

The stories we discuss this week include:

As always, you can find more episodes of The Spoon Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also just click play below to listen to today’s show.

Podcast: Electrolux’s Kitchen of the Future & Other Food Tech News of the Week

Can the design of your kitchen change how and what you eat? Electrolux thinks so.

In this week’s episode of the Spoon podcast’s food tech news wrapup, we discuss Electrolux’s new kitchen concept called GRO. Other stories discussed on the show include:

As always, you can click below to listen or subscribe to The Spoon on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The Spoon Podcast: ‘Peach Tree’ Dishes & Restaurants in the Metaverse

It’s been a while, but we’re cranking up the podcast machine to bring you a weekly food tech news wrap-up.

In this week’s show, cohost Ashley Daigneault and I talk about:

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below or finding it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast: Talking Food as Medicine With NourishedRX’s Lauren Driscoll

NourishedRX provides meals, groceries, and meal kits to individuals, tailored for their individual needs and preferences.

Lauren Driscoll

The company, which recently raised $6 million in seed funding, has developed an AI platform that matches members with personalized meal and grocery offerings. It works with healthcare providers to incorporate food as part of an individual’s long-term health plan.

I caught up with NourishedRX CEO Lauren Driscoll recently to hear how the company got its start and what she sees as the current state of the current food-as-medicine market.

You can listen by clicking play below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hyphen Wants to Be The Shopify for Restaurant Robots

Imagine you’re a culinary student with dreams of owning your own restaurant.

In days past, that journey towards restauranteur would take 10 to 20 years as you cut your teeth, gained experience, and saved enough money.

But imagine if you could build a restaurant today or in the near future leveraging automation and software? There would be no big location remodel and a big loan to pay for it. Instead, you’d use a virtual restaurant model powered by fractional pay-as-you-go food robotics, food ordering apps, and third-party delivery, all allowing you to bring something to market in months instead of a decade?

That’s the kind of world that Stephen Klein wants to build. Klein’s company Hyphen announced this week that they’d raised a $24 million Series A funding round, and so I decided to catch up with him to hear about his vision for the company and the food robotics marketplace.

In short, what Stephen and his co-founder Daniel Fukuba believe they are building a Shopify for restaurant robots.

“Instead of enabling merchants to compete with the likes of Amazon, we’re enabling restaurants to compete with the likes of DoorDash,” said Klein.

According to Klein, the big delivery companies are sucking up data from smaller restaurants and using that to compete with them. He believes if the smaller and regional players – as well as new food entrepreneurs – were able to use Hyphen’s automation technology to scale up new offerings, they’d have a much better chance to compete with the big players.

“We’re basically removing the overhead of starting and scaling a restaurant,” said Klein. “You can kind of just do it from your home effectively. And that’s just a really cool place in our mind.”

That’s the vision, but the company first has to scale its own business to get there. From the looks of it, they’re off to a good start as the company has already taken preorders from 11 customers, a list which includes restaurants, ghost kitchen operators, food service companies, and copackers. The company plans to use its new funding to build its manufacturing factory, develop new capabilities, and deploy to customers.

And once they do hit scale, Klein believes Hyphen can help create that democratized food creator future by renting out food production capacity on their Makeline to aspiring food operators. He pictures everyone from culinary creators operating from their dorm to food influencers on TikTok and Instagram building a restaurant brand or multiple brands.

“You could do different categories or brands of bowls or salads and eventually burritos,” said Klein. “You can run Yum brands 2.0 from one location.”

If you’d like to hear my full conversation with Klein about his vision for the future of restaurants and food robotics, click play below or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.