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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Publisher Note

Meet The Spoon Podcast Network

Here at The Spoon, we—like you—are big fans of podcasts.

What’s not to love? Whether we’re diving deep into a topic we’re passionate about, researching a story, or exploring new interests just beginning to take root, podcasts have become an indispensable resource for us. And we know many of our readers feel the same way.

Personally, I’ve been podcasting and using podcasts as part of my process of discovering and writing about food tech innovators for most of the past decade. As a journalist, podcasts play a crucial role in my reporting process. They’ve allowed me to open-source my discovery journey, bringing The Spoon community along as I learn from subject matter experts about how the world is changing and the industries they’ve mastered.

As both a consumer and a creator of media, I’ve found podcasts to be more essential than ever—especially in an era of AI-generated content. With so much AI-generated media flooding our feeds, it’s becoming harder to discern what’s authentic—whether in written, audio, or video form. That’s why embracing trusted, verifiable voices is more important than ever. Podcasts provide a space for genuine conversations with real people, and that’s something worth amplifying.

Podcasts were also at the forefront of the great decentralization of media. This technology, which started over two decades ago, gave independent voices a platform—no massive media infrastructure required. At The Spoon, we believe strongly in independent media, and we want to leverage our own platform to bring new voices to our community and beyond.

All of this brings us to an exciting announcement: We’re launching our own podcast network!

The idea for The Spoon Podcast Network (TSPN) came to life last year as we engaged with insightful voices across the food tech and future-of-food community. We realized there were so many stories to tell and perspectives to share. While we could certainly invite some of these great minds onto The Spoon Podcast, we started to wonder: What if we could do more? What if we could tap into these experts and leverage The Spoon (and our and their collective networks) to extend their insights, conversations, and discoveries to a broader audience?

In other words, could we open-source the explorations of smart people across food, nutrition, and modern life—so that more of us can learn, engage, and join the conversation?

So that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re launching a great slate of new podcast hosts, and we’re already in talks with more creators to grow the network. Here’s our debut lineup of new podcasts launching with our partners:

Food Truths

On Food Truths, Food scientist Eric Schulze—former head of Global Regulatory at UPSIDE Foods and a former FDA regulator—will bring on smart minds from the food world and beyond to bust myths, uncover surprising truths, and dive deep into the science of food. (Apple Podcasts, Spotify).

Watch What You Eat With Carolyn O’Neil

As CNN’s original health and nutrition contributor, Carolyn O’Neil has spent decades covering how technology and innovative changemakers are reshaping nutrition. On Watch What You Eat, she’ll explore the worlds of food, nutrition, and cuisine, tracking new trends and helping listeners embark on new culinary adventures.

My Food Job Rocks

We’re not just creating new shows—we’re also bringing on seasoned hosts with podcasts we’ve long admired. Adam Yee, one of the original food-industry and food-innovation podcasters, launched My Food Job Rocks nearly a decade ago. We’ve been fans of Adam’s insightful and fun conversations with industry leaders, and we’re thrilled to welcome him to the network as he re-launches his iconic show.

Maybe Food, Maybe Tech

In addition to relaunching My Food Job Rocks, Adam Yee is launching a brand-new show with co-host Kai-Hsin Wang. On Maybe Food, Maybe Tech, they’ll break down current events, explore innovative companies at the intersection of food and technology, and share personal insights on life and industry trends.

The Tomorrow Today Show

Mike Lee, author of MISE and a longtime food futurist, has a talent for deciphering early signals and identifying what’s around the corner. On The Tomorrow Today Show, he’ll tackle big questions about sustainability, technology, pleasure, and connection—viewed through the lens of food.

Women Innovators in Food and Farming

Award-winning journalist Amy Wu hosts Women Innovators in Food and Farming, where she interviews women entrepreneurs driving change in agri-food tech. From advancements in seed breeding and soil innovation to cutting-edge robotics and automation, Amy explores the stories and insights shaping the future of food and farming.

Everything But The Carbon Sink

Hosted by Eva Goulbourne—an experienced strategist in food systems transformation and climate philanthropy—Everything But the Carbon Sink examines how agriculture, food waste, and land use impact the climate crisis. Each episode highlights forward-thinking solutions, financing strategies, and the key players driving change at the intersection of food and climate.

Soul to Table

Join Chef Ryan Lacy on the Soul to Table podcast. he goes on a journey to explore our food systems from seed to table through the eyes of our guests, chefs, ranchers, food scientists, farmers & many more.

Spoon Full of AI

In this show, The Spoon’s own Carlos Rodela dives into the cutting-edge world of artificial intelligence. We go face-to-face with industry innovators who share firsthand how AI is transforming their industry and how they are meeting the challenge by utilizing AI in their business. In each episode, we’ll also explore the latest AI tools powering big change, complete with suggestions for leveraging them in your business.

The Reimagining Restaurants Podcast

In this podcast, I talk to entrepreneurs, chefs, and industry leaders who are redefining what it means to run a modern restaurant—leveraging robotics, AI, automation, and sustainable practices to enhance customer service, optimize operations, and drive profitability.

And, of course, we’ll continue to feature The Spoon Podcast, our flagship show covering innovators across the food system. Over the next couple of months, we’ll spotlight conversations on The Spoon Podcast with all of our new hosts so you can get to know them better and hear from them about why their podcasts are must-listens.

You can check out all of our shows on The Spoon Podcast Network page, where you’ll also find links to the podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and their RSS feeds. Please subscribe!

And if you’d like to support our podcasts and independent media through sponsorship, drop us a line—we’d love to have that conversation.

Finally, a big shoutout to our hosts who believed in this vision, and to The Spoon team, including Carlos Rodela (our producer) and Tiffany McClurg, our head of operations (and new warm-read specialist!).

We can’t wait to bring these conversations to you. Stay tuned!

Dark Days, Resets and the Eventual Birth of Good Things

If you’re old enough to remember 9/11, you remember how crazy and upended everything felt in the days, weeks and years following that day.

There was the immediate shock of watching the planes hit the buildings – I still remember the sound of my wife’s voice when she called me into the room and pointed at the television – and then there was the long period of uneasiness in the following days of entering a time where there was no defined playbook.

It’s been a couple decades since and memories have faded, but I’ve never forgot how that moment in time not only altered things in a big societal way – politics, travel, international relations – but also how it set into motion lots of smaller changes in so many lives, changes that ultimately sprouted into new relationships, careers, and even new businesses.

One former coworker of mine quit his job as a technology analyst and went into the FBI to fight terrorism. Another woke up and realized he needed to get serious about his life and went on to start one of tech industry’s most well-known tech blogs. There are million other stories like this of lives inalterably changed across the country and around the world.

And while it’s too early to tell just how extensive the damage of the COVAD-19 coronavirus will be, it’s pretty obvious at this point that there will be many more deaths, economies will continue to slow and many jobs will be lost.

My suspicion is the impact will be big, on the scale of what we saw in 2001, and because of this we’re going to go through a reset that we’ll all have to grapple with. Resets can be bad in many ways – sickness, death and job losses are all very bad things – but I hope down the road we’ll also see some good.

We talked on this week’s podcast about the potential ways in which the coronavirus could accelerate change in the world of food, increasing adoption of fairly new technology and ways of doing things such as human-less check out, automated food dispensing and more.

But I think the bigger impact in the world of food and most other industries will be realized over a longer time horizon, in ways that only come with the way a reset makes us, societally and individually, rethink things in meaningful ways.

Forced to say home, cancel travel, and social distance? Difficult, no doubt, but such down time also means an opportunity to think about what it all means and to reassess. New business ideas, many of them taking into account our new mutual reality, will spring up and over the next year, two years, decade.

We still need to be realistic. There could be many dark days ahead. But, while many of us are going to have to grapple in the near term with potentially big disruptions to our lives, careers and businesses (I run an event business and I’m thinking about what this all means), I am still hopeful for what will be millions of inspiring stories of human resourcefulness and ingenuity that spring out of this globally shared experience in the coming years.

Why We Are Partnering With WeWork Food Labs

This morning WeWork made news by announcing a new initiative called WeWork Food Labs.

Jenn has the full story here, but as the publisher of The Spoon, I wanted to write about the news for a slightly different reason: We’re a launch partner with WeWork Food Labs.

What does this mean?

In short, we’ll work with WeWork to possibly co-create events, tap into each other’s networks and collaborate on programming and other opportunities.

More tangibly, the partnership will mean the following:

  • We have interest in doing events across the US, including the east coast. This partnership means we will have access to WeWork event facilities. WeWork Labs has also expressed interest in our ability to bring interesting food innovators together, so we will explore ways to co-produce events in the future.
  • WeWork Food Labs also recognized our strength in bringing together innovators in the food and cooking worlds through our Startup Showcase. Because of this, WeWork will offer placement in the WeWork Food Lab to a mutually agreed upon SKS 2019 Startup Showcase finalist.
  • We will help WeWork Labs to tap into our network for food and cooking innovators as well as serve as a resource for programming for foodtech.
  • Our NYC-based writer, Jenn Marston, will work in the WeWork Food Labs flagship space.

As the publisher, it’s crucial for me to be transparent about all aspects of a partnership like this. But more importantly — and because we work hard to earn the trust of our readers — we also want to make sure we put guardrails in place for our editorial coverage going forward.

More specifically, here’s what this means:

  • We will continue to cover WeWork Food Labs companies, which means we will cover both the good news and the bad news. In other words, we will call it as we see it, uncompromising and analytical, just as we always do.
  • WeWork asked us to periodically donate a couple “office hours” a month to members of the WeWork Food Labs network, which means someone from The Spoon answering questions about the foodtech market. While the core editorial team for The Spoon will not participate in office hours, as Publisher and former market analyst, this is something I felt I could do (and wanted to do). However, that means I will not write about the companies that I interact with for office hours.
  • We will disclose our membership in the WeWork Food Labs on a permanent disclosure page which we will link to when we write about any stories in the Labs.

In reality, this partnership is something new for us, but one we felt was something worth doing. Why? In part, because of all of the benefits outlined above, but the bigger reason is WeWork holds a similar view to us about the future of food. This view was best captured by a single slide in a presentation the WeWork team made to us about Food Labs. The slide illustrated how food innovation has lagged behind that of other spaces:

“The Food industry is decades behind other sectors in adopting technological innovation. Technology startups related to food systems are attracting a fraction of the capital of those in the health sector. The food sector has only attracted $14 billion since 2010. While the healthcare sector attracted $145 billion in investments.”

I made a similar point when I got on stage at the first Smart Kitchen Summit four years ago. I talked about how cooking, food and the kitchen has lagged behind that of other life spaces like the living room, where disruptive technologies have completely changed how we entertain ourselves in under a decade.

It turns out that people wanted to have that conversation as they realize that reinventing food and cooking is a 10X opportunity. Today WeWork – a company that changed the way people think about work spaces – let the world know they want to join the discussion.

That’s something I thought we should be a part of.