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Smart Kitchen Summit

November 2, 2021

SKS 2021: Meet Castiron, a Turnkey Commerce and Community Platform For Artisanal Food Entrepreneurs

It’s time to meet Castiron, one of the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase finalists.

So who is Castiron? Castiron is building a turnkey commerce platform for independent food entrepreneurs. The company’s solution gives food makers everything they need to run an online business, including website creation, product management, invoicing, inventory management, and marketing, as well as other access to discounted insurance and other business benefits.

You can hear from company CEO Mark Josephson in the video below. Josephson, who is the former CEO of Bitly, talks with The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela about the importance of the artisanal creator to the broader economy and what pain points Castiron solves for them.

If you’d like to connect with Mark at the Smart Kitchen Summit, head over to Hopin where we are hosting our virtual event, and pick up your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Castiron [a Shopify for Artisanal Food Entrepreneurs]

October 26, 2021

SKS 2021: Meet Clew, a Startup Making a Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

We’re heads down in preparation for Smart Kitchen Summit 2021, but we couldn’t be more excited to showcase some of food tech’s more innovative startups as part of the 2021 Startup Showcase.

To whet your appetite, The Spoon team is going to be rolling out almost-daily video interviews with the leaders of these startups over the next two weeks.

First up is Clew. Clew makes a countertop appliance that grinds, heats, and dries all residential food waste (including animal bones, fruit pits, and coffee filters) in under 2 hours into a shelf stable and consistent output that is over 80% mass-reduced. The output can then be easily-refined into compost, gifted to a local garden, or put into an appropriate organics recycling stream for further processing.

You can watch our interview with Clew’s Chief Experience Officer Spencer Martin below.

If you’d like to connect with Clew or any of the other startups pitching at SKS 2021, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interview With Clew, Maker of a Smart Home Food Waste Recycling Appliance

October 22, 2021

Meet the Innovators Selected as Finalists for the 2021 SKS Startup Showcase

Every year, we put out a call for innovators who are using tech to disrupt and ultimately improve the way we eat, prep and interact with food. We receive Startup Showcase applications from all corners of the global food system and get to learn about the ideas that will spark change and help shape the future of food and the kitchen. In the end, our editorial team selects 10 or so finalists who represent the most unique and transformative ideas in food tech.

In its 8th year, the SKS Startup Showcase has served as a launching pad for some of today’s most interesting food tech startups. With companies as diverse as smart stove and food delivery startup Tovala, food delivery packaging startup SavrPak, and upcoming Shark Tank contestant IncrEDIBLE Eats, alumni of the Showcase are making an impact across the food innovation landscape.

Each finalist will get a chance to pitch on stage at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, happening virtually in just a few weeks on November 9th and 10th.

If you want to see the finalists pitch and have a chance to network with some of the top leaders and newest startups in food and kitchen tech, grab your ticket to SKS here.

Let’s meet the 2021 Startup Showcase Finalists.

  • AIGecko is powering a touchless checkout kiosk with their AI-powered food recognition API. Customers can select food and place their selection at the kiosk and using artificial intelligence that drives both facial and food recognition at the kiosk. Guests can also get the nutritional information of their dish and get connected to a nutrition expert through the connected app.
  • Blix is a smart food maker that promises to eliminate both the preparation and the cleanup of cooking a meal from scratch. Blix includes a smart lid with an integrated blade and RFID tag to ensure consistent results each time a dish is made.
  • Castiron is a central hub and platform for independent kitchen-based chefs to sell their creations direct to customers. It also includes resources and creator community to support and grow their business. Castiron says their customers include bakers, juicers, jammers and similar culinary artisans to market and sell their goods.
  • Chocomake is a smart home chocolate maker and ingredient kit developed by a female-led startup launching in 2022. The appliance allows users to create custom varieties of chocolate in different shapes, composition and texture. Chocomake can help with allergies and dietary restrictions and can produce vegan, non-GMO and sugar-free chocolate with easy prep and cleanup.
  • Clew is a countertop appliance that grinds, heats and dries home food waste in two hours and transforms it into shelf-stable material that can be refined into compost or place into a recycling stream for further processing. After processing through the Clew appliance, the amount of waste material is reduced by mass by over 80%. Clew is working to produce an early prototype.
  • Mezli is building containerized robot restaurants called “auto-kitchens.” The “restaurant-in-a-box” business leverages automation and shipping containers to power a fully autonomous kitchen able to cook, plate and pack each dish. Mezli founder and CEO told The Spoon that their auto-kitchens can go 48 hours or make 300 meals (whichever comes first) before requiring servicing by a non-robotic worker.
  • Natufia is an integrated and automated indoor smart hydroponic kitchen garden created for at-home food growing. The smart kitchen garden can grow up to 32 simultaneously with automatic watering and lighting and gives users of 40 seedpods. Natufia customers can grow everything from leafy and microgreens to vegetables and flowers.
  • Ottonomy creates autonomous robots that enable contactless deliveries of food and retail products. Ottonomy robots require zero human supervision for navigation and can operate in both indoor and outdoor environments. The company’s proprietary software claims to allow for fully autonomous operation in crowded and unpredictable environments including in airports, malls and office buildings.
  • Culineer is a platform where farms can educate and communicate with consumers looking for locally produced foods. While consumers often don’t know how to cook everything they may purchase direct from farms, farmers don’t have resources and time to provide food level education. Culineer fills that gap with recipes, harvest updates, education and peer support; this gives farms increased customer satisfaction and retention.
  • WSVC is an appliance company that has invented a new type of multi-purpose microwave oven that features traditional microwave cooking as well as Waterless Sous Vide Cooking (WSVC). WSVC cooks food with low consistent heat similar to sous vide but without the water bath and vacuum seal. WSVC will debut for the first time at the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit.

September 28, 2021

Deadline To Pitch Your Food Tech Innovation At Smart Kitchen Summit Is Near

Each year since 2015, the leaders in food, appliances, retail, delivery, and kitchen come together to discuss and demonstrate the tech innovation that’s transforming the way we buy, cook and eat food. The 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) will remain virtual this year on November 9th + 10th but will still include an audience favorite: the Startup Showcase.

The Startup Showcase is a once-a-year competition that gives future food and food tech startups with the most interesting, cutting edge solutions a chance to pitch our executive-level audience of investors, C-Suite leaders, chef and culinary experts, food and tech journalists, retail and tech giants + more.

The applications only require basic information as well as a place to talk about your product and a place to talk about why you’d be a good fit for the SKS Startup Showcase.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 pm PST on Thursday, September 30.

The Spoon editorial team will review each application and any supporting materials that were linked in the submission; Startup Showcase finalists are selected from this group and give the chance to pitch and demo their solutions live at SKS 2021 on November 9th and 10th.

Take a look at past Startup Showcase coverage on The Spoon and videos from prior events.

For virtual tickets to the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit, visit the registration page and sign up. {Hint: if you can afford it, the VIP level will not only give you access to the entire SKS 2021 digital archive, but you get to choose from some lovely free merch!}

We hope to see you in November!

November 10, 2020

Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Sessions, Day Three

Included below are videos from the following sessions:

  • Same-Day Delivery’s Role in the Modern Kitchen, Grocery Store and Beyond – Wilson Rothman and Kelly Caruso
  • The Tech-Powered Grocery Store – Chris Albrecht and Will Glaser
  • Building Resilient Restaurants With Tech in the COVID Era – Chris Carr, Ian Christopher, Christine Schindler, Jennifer Marston
  • Designing Consumer-Centered Products For The Kitchen – Evan Dash, Jane Freiman, Nicole Papantoniou
  • The CRISPR Revolution – Brian Frank and Tom Adams
  • Off-Premise Disruption: Restaurant Delivery & Virtual Restaurants Change The Game – Brita Rosenheim, Tom Pickett
  • Food Service: Digital Transformation & Disruption – Scott Wu, Daniel Khachab, Michael Wolf
  • Ghost Kitchen Strategies for the New Restaurant Landscape – Ashley Colpaart, Nick Avedesian, Michael Schaefer
  • I, Restaurant: Let’s Talk Restaurant Robots – Clayton Wood, Linda Pouliot, John Ha
  • Table Talk: Fermentation – The next big wave in future food? – Tim West Miller Tran
  • Table Talk: Virtual Restaurants – Kristen Hawley (Wolf Assist) Lawrence Vavra, Michael Wolf
  • Table Talk: Home Cooking Marketplaces – Surj Patel Chris Fung, Akshay Prabhu
  • Into the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen – Francisco Migoya, Michael Wolf
  • The Home Food Robot: From Rotimatic to Rosie the Robot – Khalid Aboujassoum, Pranoti Nagarkar, Michael Wolf

 

If you purchased a ticket to SKS and have not received your Spoon Plus account activation, drop us a line.

If you didn’t attend SKS and would like to see these sessions, you can subscribe to Spoon Plus here.

October 25, 2020

Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Sessions, Day Two

Included below are videos from the following sessions:

  • Using Innovation To Reduce Food Waste – James Rogers (Apeel), Chiara Cecchini (Future Food Institute), Alexandria Coari (ReFED), Moderator: Jenn Marston (The Spoon)
  • Doing The Impossible: In Conversation with Pat Brown
  • Let’s Print Some Meat – a demo of Novameat’s 3D meat printer
  • From The Reviewer: What Makes A Good – or Bad – Tech-Powered Kitchen Product? – Lisa McManus (America’s Test Kitchen), Joe Ray (Wired) and Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • How AI is Reshaping Food Development – Riana Lynn (Journey Foods), Oliver Zahn (Climax Foods)
  • Fermentation: The Next Frontier for Foodtech Thomas Jonas (Nature’s Fynd), Brian Frank (FTW Ventures)
  • Building The New Food Platforms Mike Leonard (Motif Foodworks), Catherine Lamb (The Spoon alum) Creating a Multi-Product Future Food Company – Josh Tetrick (Eat Just), Jenn Marston (The Spoon)
  • Meet The Authors: Decoding the World with Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta – Po Bronson (Indiebio), Arvind Gupta (Genesis Consortium)
  • The Next-Gen Microwave: AI, Precision, Personalized – Steve Drucker
  • Workshop: Building a Connected Kitchen Product – Larry Jordan (Microsoft)
  • Table Talk: Product Innovation in the Future Kitchen – Jane Freiman, Greg Fish (SharkNinja), Surj Patel
  • The Asia Future Food Market – Winnie Leung (Bits x Bites), Michal Klar
  • The Japan Food Tech Revolution – Akiko Okada and Hirotaka Tanaka, SKS Japan

 

If you purchased a ticket to SKS and have not received your Spoon Plus account activation, drop us a line.

If you didn’t attend SKS and would like to see these sessions, you can subscribe to Spoon Plus here.

October 21, 2020

SKS 2020: Watch the SKS Startup Showcase Finalist Pitches

At last week’s Smart Kitchen Summit, ten finalists made their case on the virtual stage why they should be chosen as winner of the Startup Showcase competition.

The Startup Showcase, which started back in 2015 and is one of the longest running dedicated food tech startup pitch contests in the world, had its most diverse and interesting mix of companies yet, with products ranging from cultured seafood to a food robots to a taste-enhancing cutlery.

While SKS attendees got to see the finalists from the main stage last week, we figured Spoon readers might also like to see the pitches.

Here’s how the Showcase worked: The pitch sessions were one of two portions of the showcase. After the founders pitched from the virtual stage on the first day, the next day they headed to their virtual breakout rooms where they showed off their products and answered questions from the judges.

The judges for this year’s Startup Showcase included Wired’s Joe Ray, Good Housekeeping’s Nicole Papantoniou, test kitchen expert Jane Freiman, Modernist Cuisine author/ChefSteps founder Chris Young and rlTLK/Pieshell founder Cheryl Durkee. The judges went into virtual “exhibit” areas where the founders could show off their wares and answer questions.

Since contactless pick up pod startup Minnow was declared the winner, we thought we’d also include a clip from the Minnow booth explaining how the product works.

October 19, 2020

From Food Robots to Fermentation, Innovation and Inspiration Was Everywhere at Smart Kitchen Summit 2020

The sixth annual Smart Kitchen Summit concluded last week. And while the pandemic pushed the show online, it was still as exciting and informative as ever.

There was far too much great stuff to fit into one recap post, so instead, the The Spoon team is each offering up their own highlights and trends spotted during the show.

We’ll be posting SKS video highlights over the coming week, and Spoon Plus members will have access to the full session video archive (become a member today!).

In the meantime, here are some of the takeaways from SKS 2020:

MICHAEL WOLF – SPOON FOUNDER

COVID-Catalyzed Innovation
While it wasn’t surprising to hear at SKS 2020 that every part of the food world was significantly impacted by COVID-19, it did surprise me just how much the pandemic catalyzed innovation and action in those building our food future. Whether it’s the acceleration of investment in food platforms or the reinvention of the grocery or the rapid digital transformation of the restaurant business, the ingenuity and hustle built into all parts of the food system was on display everywhere at our annual food tech conference.

Future Food Innovation Is Strong
In 2020, we’ve seen an explosion in new cell-based meat companies, new attention given to the power of fermentation as a highly-scalable future food platform, and the rapid maturation of tools like CRISPR to power future food innovation. All of this was on show at SKS 2020 as leaders from these spaces talked about the challenges of scaling their businesses as the bring them out of the labs and into the marketplace.

The Future is Exciting, But There are Different Views on How to Get There
It became clear on day two at SKS that two of the most visible CEOs in the food tech space has sharply different views on the viability of cell-based meat at an alternative to traditionally produced animal meat. Pat Brown of Impossible made it clear that he felt cultured meat would never be scalable enough, while Josh Tetrick of Eat Just felt it would be a big part of food’s future, but only after 15 years and lots of work. Differing viewpoints on how to build the future are expected in the formative early days of a market, but it’s hard not to take notice of such a big difference on what many see as the future of meat.

Consumer Kitchen Innovation Requires Putting The Consumer First
Whether it was kitchen tech reviewers like Joe Ray or Lisa McManus, authors like Eve Turow-Paul or longtime industry experts like Jane Freiman, it was clear that while consumer food behavior is changing more quickly than ever, changes in home kitchens is more evolution than overnight revolution. New approaches to cooking, shopping and food storage through technology will take if they put the consumer first and are thoughtfully designed to reduce pain-points in our busy lives.

CHRIS ALBRECHT – SPOON EDITOR IN CHIEF

Daisy chaining different robots
The days of food robots existing in silos is numbered. Right now cooking robots, serving robots, delivery robots and cleaning robots all do their own thing with no interaction, but it won’t be long before they all start working together. We talked about this during my panel with Picnic, Bear Robotics and Dishcraft, and the concept was illustrated by Piestro’s partnership with Kiwibot. There are still sticky issues like standards to be worked out, but they will be, especially if there’s money to be made. And soon enough a robotic cook will hand off a meal to a server bot that brings a meal to your table and shuttles empty plates back to the robot dishwasher.

We need a new word for “vending machines”
With companies like Fresh Bowl, Yo-Kai and Chowbotics basically building restaurants in a box, it might be time to ditch the moniker “vending machine.” Founders from both Fresh Bowl and Byte Technologies remarked that they avoid using the term in presentations because it is an immediate turnoff for potential customers. Vending machines are no longer just room temperature racks of pre-packaged snacks, and a new name is needed to reflect that.

Induction is Becoming More Mainstream (in the U.S.)
Did you read that Atlantic piece on why you should “Kill Your Gas Stove?” While cooking with gas may offer precision, evidently it can also offer up a bunch of toxic fumes. Thankfully, electricity-based induction heating is here to save the day. While Europeans have been using induction for a long time, it hasn’t really caught on in the U.S. in a meaningful way. But that seems to be about to change. GE showed off its high-tech induction cooktop at SKS, and it looked pretty amazing. But you’re also seeing induction pop up in smaller form factors like SKS Startup Showcase participant, BonBowl. We could be at a tipping point for induction (and I’m all for it).

JENN MARSTON – SPOON EDITOR

“Wellness” foods will become more accessible.
When Journey Foods’ Riana Lynn said there is an opportunity for food and healthcare to work more in unison, fellow panelist Peter Bodenheimer (Food-X) replied that one way to do that is to make the so-called “wellness” market more accessible. Right now, these foods and technology platforms are “high cost and high concept,” meaning they’re conceptually and financially out of reach for many consumers. Panelists didn’t name specific companies, but two that immediately spring to mind are the delicious-but-expensive frozen meal service Daily Harvest and Viome’s microbiome-based dietary platform. Both could help fight chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes, but we need more investment in such endeavors to help bring their costs down. Even more important, we’ll need more data on what is and isn’t working when it comes to health-centric food tech solutions. 

Visualizing cleanliness data is “table stakes” in COVID-era restaurants.
More customers want transparency into the food they order from restaurants, and nowadays, a lot of that transparency is around safety and cleanliness. On a restaurant tech panel, Pathspot founder Christine Schindler said her company has seen a huge uptick in demand for visual cues around cleanliness. Restaurants not only want the Pathspot device, which scans employees’ hands to ensure they’re properly washed, they also want to be able to show customers proof of this. Restaurants are now displaying buttons and stickers that essentially visualize the data a device like Pathspot is collecting (e.g., “2,000 verified hand washes today!”). And as more restaurants opt for the ghost kitchen model, where customers never even see the physical location, it will become even more important for businesses to document their health data, physically and digitally. Visual cues for this data will be an important part of restaurant tech going forward.

I might be able to bake with plant-based eggs in a few years.
Being a lifelong baker, I took a couple minutes at the end of my talk with Eat Just’s Josh Tetrick to ask when his company will make a plant-based egg that can be used in baking. The egg is “far and away the most versatile food ingredient,” with 22 different functionalities, he said. A plant-based egg you can bake with would mean one with binding and aeration functionalities, among others. Tetrick said the company is “about two years away” from providing the aeration functionality. To provide all 22 functionalities, he said they are “somewhere north of five years.” So find me at some point between 2022 and 2025 serving up the annual Marston Family holiday cake made from plant-based eggs.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s SKS! Hopefully next year we’ll all be able to get together in person again, but whatever form it’s in, the Smart Kitchen Summit will remain the best place to discover the future of food.

October 18, 2020

Watch as Chef Francisco Migoya Cooks a Pizza in the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen

One of the highlights from the Smart Kitchen Summit week was we got to take a tour of the Modernist Cuisine kitchen with Head Chef Francisco Migoya.

While there were lots of amazing things to see in the high tech kitchen behind Modernist Bread and the forthcoming Modernist Pizza, including the spice rack that would be the envy of any chef and a look at how they make the ultrasonic French fry, but I really enjoyed watching as Migoya made a Neapolitan pizza for us.

While work on the new pizza opus has largely wrapped up and is expected to publish in 2021, most of what’s in the book is still largely a secret. Naturally, we were pretty psyched to be behind the scenes and watch where the sausage (pizza) is made.

A few things stood out as Chef Migoya made a Modernist pizza:

Gas is better than wood-fired. According to Migoya, a gas stove is actually better than wood-fired when it comes to cooking pizza. That’s because gas-fired ovens allow for more consistent temperature, are a much more reliable and even heat source, and are cleaner.

Cooks in 90 Seconds. A pizza takes anywhere from 6-8 minutes to cook a pie in a normal pizza oven, but since Migoya cooks his pizza at 850 degrees Fahrenheit, it only takes about 90 seconds. As he finishes cooking, Migoya shows us how the “doming” technique adds more color to the pizza.

Secret Dough. According to Migoya, they’ve created one of the best doughs ever for their new book, and they use it with the Neapolitan pizza. While Chef won’t tell us what is in the secret recipe, he explains as delicious, easy to work with, and is very “production-friendly.”

So while you’ll have to wait for Modernist Pizza to learn the secret dough recipe, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy watching Chef Migoya in action as he cooks up a tasty-looking pizza.

Enjoy!

Cooking a Pizza in the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen with Head Chef Francisco Migoya

October 16, 2020

SKS 2020: Grabango Says its Computer Vision Avoids Biases Because it Doesn’t Use Facial Recognition

Grabango CEO Will Glaser said this week that because his company’s technology doesn’t use facial recognition, it can avoid some of the same types of racial biases found in other computer vision and machine learning algorithms. Glaser’s comments came during my fireside chat with him at our Smart Kitchen Summit this week.

Grabango makes cashierless (or as Grabango calls it, “lineless”) checkout technology for grocery retail. Grabango installs hundreds of cameras in the ceiling of a store, and through a combination of computer vision and AI, keeps track of what people put in their basket (or pocket). When shoppers go to check out, they choose a cashier or use an accompanying mobile app that automatically charges for the items kept.

This type of computer vision-based system is also used by other cashierless checkout companies such as Zippin, Standard Cognition and Amazon, and could become more widespread as demand for contactless retail experiences grows.

But the problem with some computer vision + AI systems is that their algorithms can contain the human biases of their creators. As TechCrunch wrote earlier this year, “MIT researchers reported in January 2019 that facial recognition software is less accurate in identifying humans with darker pigmentation.” In a busy retail environment where a lot of people are grabbing a lot of different items all throughout the day, it’s not hard to see how this type of bias could adversely impact people of color.

Glaser recognized some of the problems that can arise when algorithms are only developed or trained on white men in a lab. He made a point of saying that Grabango’s technology does not use facial recognition, and that it has a 99.6 percent revenue accuracy rate. Grabango’s system does follow a person around store, but doesn’t personally identify them (it can, however, stay with a person even after they have put on or taken off a jacket).

Grabango’s system is also being used in real world conditions, so it continues to train its algorithms in a diverse setting. Last month, Grabango announced that it’s integration with Giant Eagle’s GetGo Market in the Pittsburgh area went live. So now we’ll be able to see in a more open environment if Glaser’s claims hold true.

October 15, 2020

Minnow’s Contactless Delivery Pods Win the SKS 2020 Startup Showcase Award

Minnow, which makes IoT-enabled lockers for food delivery, is the winner of the Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Startup Showcase. The prestigious annual award highlights independent companies doing the best and most innovative work in the food tech space.

Though this year’s showcase went virtual, it still attracted hundreds of applicants from across the food tech landscape. And while all our finalists were compelling, Minnow’s solution wound up impressing our judges the most.

Meant for residential buildings, offices (whenever those re-open) and other high-traffic locations, a Minnow pod has a number of cloud-connected cubbies. When a food order arrives, it’s placed into a cubby and held until the end customer comes to unlock the cubby and retrieve their food.

One aspect of the Minnow pod that is particularly useful during this global pandemic is that it’s contactless. There is no human-to-human interaction when delivering food. These pods can also integrate even more convenience to home meal delivery process by allowing customers to pick up their food orders when they are ready, not the exact second the food arrives. To say Minnow pods could be useful during the time of COVID-19 is a bit of an understatement.

On a more personal note. It’s fun to see Minnow win this award because we’ve been covering the company for a number of years and have watched it change and grow. We first covered them back when they started in Portland, Maine, were called Veebie and were creating a mobile locker system that would park on busy sidewalks. Then they changed their name to Kadabra and settled on the stationary locker and went cross-country to the other Portland, in Oregon. Then this year, Minnow launched its pods, raised $2.2 million and now they are crowned the SKS Startup Showcase winners.

Congratulations to Minnow and thank you to all the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase finalists this year.

October 15, 2020

SKS 2020: Shipt CEO Says Company Not Interested in Robots

Shipt’s CEO, Kelly Caruso told audiences at the Smart Kitchen Summit today that her company is not interested in implementing robot or drone technology.

“Shipt will use technology in order drive efficiency,” Caruso said, “But that technology will be more in line with machine learning, AI and VR,” as opposed to something like drone.

Caruso continued by saying that Shipt, which is an independent unit of Target, was not going to replace their human shoppers (the gig workers who go into stores and make the deliveries). “They are critical to our success,” Caruso said.

That Shipt is focused on its human workforce is not that surprising, given that just last week the company announced it was adding an additional 100,000 shoppers to its ranks in time for the holidays. The additional headcount will bring the total number of Shipt Shoppers to 300,000.

It’s also not too surprising that Shipt will rely more on people than robots, at least for right now. While the pandemic has accelerated the desire for contactless technologies, autonomous delivery robots like those from Nuro and Starship are still in their infancy. There also remain a number of regulatory and technological hurdles that need to be overcome.

What we should keep an eye on is whether Shipt’s parent company, Target, adopts some sort of robot-powered automation to fulfill e-commerce orders. Target is a bit different from other grocery retailers because it sells so much more than foods. In other words, a micro-fulifllment center using totes and rails in the backroom of a Target can’t exactly grab a bunch of bananas and a patio furniture set.

Having said that, Shipt works with a number of different retailers, grocery and otherwise. As grocery e-commerce continues to grow into a projected $250 billion sector, both retailers and Shipt will adapt to serve customers’ evolving needs.

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