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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Deep Dives

Brightloom’s Adam Brotman on the Vital Role of Data in Today’s Restaurant Industry

“Ordering was becoming something of a commodity,” Adam Brotman, CEO of Brightloom, told me over a recent video chat. Data, he said, is “a bigger, more interesting opportunity than just ordering, so we decided to focus on just the opportunity to design an easy to use affordable data science as a service.”

But information about customers is only one type of data restaurants need to be concerned with nowadays. In this video Brotman also talks about the overall role data will play in advancing the restaurant industry and how smaller businesses can better harness it.

You watch our full conversation below and read along via the transcript. Note that the transcript has been very lightly edited for clarity. 

The following interview is available for Spoon Plus subscribers. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

Video: Alex Canter on the Evolution of Restaurant Tech Before, During, and After the Pandemic

Among the things in the restaurant industry COVID-19 changed forever, businesses’ relationship to technology is a big one.

Historically, many restaurants have been slow to adopt much, if any, technology for their day-to-day operations. That worked so long as the bulk meals served were going out to dining rooms. When the pandemic shut those down, businesses were suddenly scrambling to accommodate the sudden demand for takeout and delivery formats as well as the industry-wide shift towards digital ordering. 

Of restaurant tech’s evolution over the last year, Ordermark cofounder and CEO Alex Canter says, “10 years of progress maybe happened in a couple of months, not out desire, but really out of necessity.” 

I recently got the opportunity to chat with Canter over Zoom. A longtime restaurant industry veteran (his family owns Los Angeles’ famous Canter’s Deli), he’s no stranger to the concept of either running a restaurant or improving its operations and margins through technology. Ordermark, meanwhile, was helping restaurants manage their delivery orders long before Covid-19 hit, and NextBite, the newest entrant to the family, assists businesses with launching virtual restaurant concepts.

All of which is to say, if you want a glimpse into the concepts and technologies that will matter moving forward for restaurants, Cater’s brain is a good one to pick. Below you can watch our full conversation, and also read along with the transcript.

The Spoon Interview: Alex Canter of Ordermark from The Spoon on Vimeo.

Jenn Marston
Hi, everybody, I’m Jenn Marston with The Spoon. I’m here today with Alex Cantor from Ordermark and NextBite, and we’re going to talk some restaurant tech today.

About the middle of March in 2020, restaurants had to close because of state regulations and health and safety concerns. Over the last year, we’ve seen the most incredible shift towards new technologies towards new dining formats. Alex and I are going to have a conversation about that evolution and specifically, what’s the technology driving these changes? What can we really expect to be around for the long term? So, Alex, thanks for joining me today. And before we get into all that, why don’t you give us a little bit of what happened and what it’s like now for you and your companies.

Alex Canter:
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having me. I’m happy to share my thoughts here. And I think everything is moving so quickly that, you know, it just feels like we’re in this the fastest changing market we’ve been in as a restaurant industry. And I want to start by just saying this has been a devastating year for restaurants. There’s no denying how challenging this has been for restaurants, from mom and pops to large chains and everything in between. We’ve already seen over 120,000 restaurants go out of business in the last 12 months, which is a crazy large number.

There are a lot of predictions around what was coming over the next 10 years in terms of technology and advancements shifted digital ordering. And COVID really accelerated a lot of that shift forward. I think, you know, 10 years of progress maybe happened in a couple of months, not out desire, but really out of necessity. And it was because restaurants had to really scramble to figure out, How am I going to keep up? How am I going to have to change my business to accommodate this new reality where dining rooms are shut down, and cities are going into lockdown. There are a lot of restaurants that were set up well for [that]. Think the Wingstop world that already had so much of their digital tech stack figured out and already had a very solid plan in motion and team members dedicated to the digital experience.

But for the majority of the industry and particularly most of the mom and pops, it feels like it was an all-out scramble to try to very quickly get creative, figure out new ways to reach customers rethink menus, rethink technology in general. And that has been a very fascinating thing to watch happen in such a short amount of time because there’s so much to learn for a lot of these restaurants that were newer to this experience.

We started Ordermark four years ago to help provide technology solutions to restaurants to be able to adapt to this new digital off-premise diamond world that we live in. And Ordermark has worked with thousands of restaurants to aggregate all of their incoming online orders, giving restaurants the single device in their kitchen to power orders from Doordash and Postmates and all the channels that they’re utilizing.

But since Day One, Ordermark has always been in the business of helping restaurants drive incremental orders into their underutilized kitchen. And we at the end of 2019 we started developing and bringing to market a newer product offering that we launched called NextBite, which is our portfolio of delivery-only turnkey brains, virtual restaurant brands. So we’ve basically created [the platform] from scratch based on you know data of what’s performing well in which markets and what time of day. We’ve really built these menus that are designed for an off-premise experience and we’ve been working with restaurants to to basically train them on how to become a facility partner for for additional menus and drive an extra 10, 20, 30 orders a day. [Many of] these kitchens are underutilized. They have extra capacity [and] fixed costs already running. Like, the rent is fixed, the lights are already on, the staff is already in the kitchen of these hundreds of thousands of restaurants across the U.S. Why not do more out of one kitchen by launching three to five additional virtual restaurant brands.

That was really the premise for NextBite. We built it with a with a in a pre-COVID world with full dining rooms in mind. And the operational complexity of running the restaurant is already very challenging that we knew when we were building these concepts and these menus, we didn’t want to build anything that was going to come in and disrupt the restaurants existing operation. But rather, you know, be incremental and additional in a way that that’s lighter for the restaurant to adopt.

In a post-COVID world, there’s been a massive adoption of restaurants who need these additional orders more than ever. And as a company, we’ve been able to make a very big impact for these restaurants when we come in and layer on top of their existing business a couple extra $100,000 a year in annualized gross sales. So we you know, we’ve been really focused as a company on what can we be doing right now to help make sure that our restaurant customers and partners that we’re working with can make it through and come out even stronger. And you know, we have gotten love letters, restaurants saying these orders really [make the difference of] keeping the doors open or not. And I think that’s really been motivating for our team specifically. And it’s helped bring a lot of business into our company and attract a lot of investor attention, which is why we at the end of last year, we ended up raising a Series C led by SoftBank, which was $120 million financing to do what we’re doing on a much bigger scale. I’m trying to really advance more restaurants forward into this new digital era.

So it’s been a roller coaster of a year, we’re incredibly grateful that as a business, we ended up on the right side of all of this, to be in a position to really help these restaurants. Because I know that there, there are a lot of restaurant technology companies that, you know, unfortunately ended up on the wrong side of this as well. And a lot of what was happening from you know, in-store applications like reservations and catering businesses that that just became irrelevant overnight in such a short amount of time with no notice. It’s really hard when things are moving so fast. But we did see a lot of new technologies emerge such as the QR code making a massive comeback in the restaurant industry. Just just a lot of experimentation with curbside and restaurants turning their menus into grocery shops, which are like restaurants that offer groceries and obviously the old versions of virtual restaurants. It’s been a really crazy last 12 months. So there’s so much to talk about. I have a lot of ideas for where things are headed as well. But but that’s that’s basically an overview of what what we’ve seen happen over the last 12 months.

Jenn Marston: I’ll echo that it’s been really devastating for a lot of restaurants out there. To me, one of the really attractive things about what you all are doing with NextBite is it, it seems like you’re in some way showing restaurants that there can be digital options, there can be strategies for doing delivery, and takeout and virtual restaurants without them having to go off and invest a bunch of upfront capital or sign, you know, really long leases with traditional commissary kitchens. But this seems like a, for lack of a better word, a more frictionless way for your average restaurant to be able to introduce another revenue stream without having to really overhaul what they’re already doing.

Alex Canter: I think you’re thinking about it correctly. When I think about what’s happening right now I see these vacant dining rooms that are that are way too large. You think about fine dining restaurants, full service restaurants. I felt this way even pre-COVID, but I felt like the restaurant market in general was already very oversaturated and very difficult to even be successful. First place because there are so many options. And as more and more people enjoy the convenience of delivery, the need for those large seating capacity diminishes over time. And the need for larger kitchen spaces actually is even more in demand than ever.

In order to produce food for both in-store and takeout, you need to have the means to have more kitchen space to have more staff to be able to produce work in the back of the house from the front of the house. And so I think over time, we’re going to see dining rooms getting smaller with a bigger emphasis on the size of the kitchen, which I think we’re starting to see a little bit with these new ghost kitchen facilities and commissary kitchens that are designed specifically for an off-premise and delivery and takeout experience.

But the desire to dine out at restaurants will never go away. People will always want to enjoy restaurants and hospitality, in the experience of celebrating a birthday going on a date, going out to eat with friends, that’s something that will never go away. But it’s tough for restaurants to even hit three to 5 percent margins on an annual basis. And that’s why a lot of restaurants fail in their first or second year. Even in a pre-COVID world, there was there were too many options. And now, you know, I’m hoping that this, this is somewhat of a market correction that’s happening, we’re coming out of this, the restaurants that do survive and make it out will be stronger. And, you know, it’s hard to know how long that’s going to take. But there’s still a very exciting restaurant market ahead of us that, you know, is gonna just be a little bit more advanced for from a tech perspective, from a digital family perspective. We saw a lot of restaurants, resisting off-premise and delivery for a long time. And now, you know, it’s their lifeline. It’s where more than 50 percent of their orders are happening. And even as they open up their dining rooms and make shift back a little bit, [off-premises] will be a strong part of the off the experience. I don’t see there being many restaurants who don’t have some sort of off-premises experience coming out of this.

Jenn Marston: Yeah, I would I would agree with that. Let’s talk for a minute about those big dining rooms that are currently sitting empty, because we were seeing some, there is some trickling back to the dining rooms, I mean, different states have different relax different regulations. At the same time, obviously, vaccines are slowly but surely getting distributed. So at some point in the near(ish) future, the option to go out and eat at a restaurant is going to be less less scary for folks, basically. But where do you see? And you could you kind of already alluded to this, but you don’t see this need for delivery, and takeout and curbside, and all these other formats going away.

Alex Canter: You know, I think I think the ordering demographic has really shifted over the last year. It used to be a lot of 18- to 34-year olds who were using these apps and placing orders on Doordash. That has really expanded to all generations, from teenagers to you know, my grandparents [use] Doordash because they can’t go out and don’t feel safe going to restaurants anymore. But now that they’ve gotten used to this platform, they have the Dashpass they have their address saved on file, their favorite order restaurants are order history. This is a convenience that’s not going away anytime soon.

That larger demographic is naturally going to mean that a larger percentage of orders volumes can happen [off-premises]. Also with business travel changing. You know, many offices have committed to hiring remotely and not going back to centralized workplaces. And therefore I think, you know, opportunities with catering are going to permanently shift. And I foresee more of the happening through delivery and takeout. Restaurants have to adjust and get used to that. There were so many restaurants that were that were largely dependent on big catering orders. I think the event spaces will return your weddings, large parties, stuff like that will start to open back up again, but probably not the same levels that we’ve seen in the past.

Depending on what type of business you are, you’re probably coming out of this a little bit different. You have to rethink the consumer experience. And you see companies like Sweetgreen implementing drive-thru [and] examples of restaurants understanding that their customer base wants to interact with them differently than maybe before. And that that’s where it’s really hard to adjust and make those changes, I think, you know, many, many SMB operators and mom-and-pop restaurants don’t have digital teams. People have marketing teams, traditionally, sometimes maybe the owners do need some of the marketing themselves. But there’s so much technology that’s available now. And it’s up to the restaurants to figure out, to experiment and figure out what works and what doesn’t work in a very quick way. And we’ve seen some really, really impressive restaurants, you know, very quickly understand that they can’t just sit around and wait for things to get better and change. But they have to go out and make the really hard adjustments. So their business models to their staffing to their to their tech stack to really embrace what’s happening rather than sitting idly by hoping that things are gonna get better.

Jenn Marston: I know you and your family obviously are in the restaurant industry. I don’t think we’ve mentioned that yet. But, and I know Canter’s was already pretty savvy before the pandemic, you all were doing the ghost kitchens and the off-premise and things like that. But just from your own personal experience and your family’s experience, you know, what is Cantor has had to kind of deal with in terms of this adjustment you’re talking about?

Alex Canter: Yeah, so Canter’s is one of the largest and oldest restaurants in Los Angeles. And we had a very devastating start to this whole COVID experience where we had to lay off almost 90 full-time employees, from from waiters, the busboys, dishwashers, some that have been working in the restaurant for 30, 40, 50 years. It was, you know, incredibly challenging to make that that common decision and we as a, as a restaurant, we knew that this was not going to be a sustainable operation in a delivery-only format. Until, you know, until we start to get more creative. Luckily, funding definitely helped, we probably would not be open today without it. But that’s kind of a short-lived solution.

We ended up having to rethink many reasons pricing rethink the the entire physical experience when you walk in, to cater to an off-premise-only demographic and, and you know, we luckily were able to make those pivots and changes very quickly. LA did allow outdoor dining, but we decided not to invest in converting our space to accommodate that because it was quite an investment for so much uncertainty of like, how long is this gonna last? And luckily, we didn’t because shortly after outdoor dining became that thing, they actually pulled it back again. And it’s it’s been an emotional roller coaster for all these restaurants trying to figure out how to make this work.

Especially in the beginning, there was so little notice [around when] these changes were going to go into effect. From an inventory standpoint, we prepared for full dine in service and then we’d get a notification tonight at midnight [about closing].

Luckily, you know, Canter’s is a very big name that has a big following in LA. And so we’ve done very well on a delivery only capacity. But it’s because we’re getting a couple 100 orders a day through these third party marketplaces. Not every restaurant has that kind of volume to be able to generate enough through these platforms to sustain a delivery-only operation. And I think, the sooner that more of these cities will open up person, even if it’s just for outdoor dining, 25 percent capacity, the more likely restaurants will come out of this. But I think there’s also something to be said for, you know, the staff and feeling safe. And I’m glad that I think as of today, people who work in the food industry, at least in LA County, can now get the vaccine, which I’m sure is happening more and more cities. And I’m, I’m hopeful that that will happen. That rollout will happen faster than anticipated. Because, you know, if if these restaurant employees were showing up every day and putting themselves at risk, aren’t feeling safe at work, it’s a very hard situation to navigate for an owner to try to, you know, keep the doors open. Restaurant staff is like family, and you don’t want to put anyone at risk or expose anyone to any dangerous situation. So even even in the beginning, when we wanted to stay open for delivery and takeout, there was some hesitation.

It’s been a journey to get to this point. But for my family’s restaurant, I think we’ll come out stronger again, just like we have for the last nine years, we’ve survived wars and recessions. It’s all because of this mentality of like, we have to adapt or die, we’ll have to make changes, embrace change, embrace new technology. And, you know, I think that’s been the key to our success over the years.

Jenn Marston: I think that’s a great point. What would you say to restaurants out there in terms of what are some of the most important things that they can do for themselves right now, to continue adapting, or if they haven’t done that much to get the ball rolling?

Alex Canter: First and foremost, if you have extra capacity in your kitchen, you should absolutely be experimenting with creating virtual brands, licensing other people’s virtual brands, but really trying to maximize the output of your kitchen. That’s a very low-hanging fruit in my opinion, which we’re seeing a lot of the chains starting to embrace now. We’ve seen announcements from everyone from Chili’s to Bloomin’ Brands to Applebee’s. Denny’s have experimented with luxury, several different menus, several different concepts running out of their kitchens, and those incremental orders are so critical right now. And you know, whether you try to do a virtual restaurant brand yourself or you partner with a company like NextBite or any others in the space, I think that is that is such an obvious way to to drive more orders into your restaurant every single day. So if you’re not doing that, or you’re hesitant for any reason, I highly suggest you try it and just see what happens. You know that there is a big learning curve to understanding how to get it right. And how to, you know, create the right menu and price it and promote it and optimize the placement within the platforms. It’s not as simple as just lighting up a menu on these platforms. But you know, start that process of understanding what works and what doesn’t work, because there’s a lot of opportunity just sitting there. And if you’re not, if you’re only running one, your own restaurant, every kitchen, I think you’re probably you probably have a lot more need for growth, unless you’re in and out of alignment your door every moment of every hour of every day. I think virtual restaurants can benefit everyone who doesn’t have that situation.

Jenn Marston: Any any thing else in terms of I know, we’ve talked in the past about? Also, it’s not a matter of just taking your existing menu and plunking it online, right? It’s, you know, maybe thinking about scaling it back or thinking about which foods might be best suited to this, these kind of newer formats and things like that.

Alex Canter: Yeah, well, you know, one, one strategy that I think every restaurant should be focusing on is shifting as much of your order volume from off-premise from third-party delivery to your own website or your own app. It’s easier said than done, for sure. But at a baseline, you should have an ordering button link on your website, whether it’s powered by ChowNow or Lunchbox or any of these companies that that allow restaurants to take orders directly. It is, you know, every order that’s happening on those platforms, you don’t have to give up as much of a percentage is it’s better. But the reality of the situation is that a disproportionate amount of the volume will still happen on third-party marketplaces. But there are a lot of companies focusing on restaurants creating their own digital strategy to get people to convert through their own service platform. So that’s something that everyone should be looking into as well.

Jenn Marston: I wanted to end just by asking a question, you put it really well, at the beginning of this conversation, we you talked about the just the sheer pace of acceleration and how we’ve, you know, in, what did you say we basically did 10 years in two months, in terms of just adoption and these changes. So as we move away from these widespread lockdowns and dining room closures and things like that, do you see this pace of tech adoption and delivery and takeout adoption slowing down significantly in the near future? Do you think we’ll kind of continue quickly for some time?

Alex Canter: Well, from pace perspective, I don’t think the percentages will remain the same. Look at the third-party marketplaces, all the ordering channels, they grew their businesses in some situations three to 5x last year. I don’t think any of those companies will experience the same kind of growth in 2021, just because so many restaurants were scrambling to implement delivery last year. But I see all of these these companies continuing their growth, just not the same pieces as maybe what happened last year.

You think back maybe 15 years ago, most restaurants didn’t even have a point of sale system. There was like maybe a credit card terminal and a cash register. And, you know, the, the evolution of this space has historically been slow. But now, it’s not a choice anymore. It’s something you have to really embrace and take on and and experiment with. And luckily, there are hundreds of great restaurant-tech companies out there that are helping businesses in different ways. And I think it’s really important right now to be experimenting with, with as much as we can handle from a bandwidth perspective. Because there’s a lot [of technology], as a restaurant owner, I probably was pitched by over 500 different restaurant tech companies trying to bring in new services. And some some of those technologies were game changing for us way back in the early days of Groupon or Yelp, or even a third party marketplaces themselves, these were companies that really carried a lot of volume for us. And, you know, without them, I don’t know if we would have made it this far. So it’s really, really hard to navigate this space, because there’s so much happening. It’s like drinking from a firehose and when you think about your tech stack and your strategy, especially as it’s moving so quickly, but I definitely am encouraging as many restaurants to embrace that experimentation.

Jenn Marston: Excellent. Well, thank you for chatting with me, Alex. And for those of you watching and listening, hope this has been helpful and we’ll be running quite a few of these videos and pieces over the next couple of weeks on the spoon. So thanks again, Alex. And Take care everybody.

The Ghost Kitchen Deep Dive Sessions

The ghost kitchen, which had already an emerging trend prior to the pandemic, has fast become one of the most talked-about concepts in the restaurant business in 2020. Industry players ranging from well-established chains to food delivery specialists to new ghost kitchen operators are experimenting with new ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant models.

To explore the implications of these changes and hear from those pioneering these businesses, The Spoon held a day-long event discussing business models, operational strategies and lessons learned called the Ghost Kitchen Deep Dive. We talked about virtual restaurants, ghost kitchen operations and even took a tour of a next-generation ghost kitchen, delivery and take-out hub built in Boise, Idaho.

Speakers featured in these deep dive conversations include:

 

Below are the sessions from the Ghost Kitchen Deep Dive. If you are a Spoon Plus subscriber, you can watch these in full. If you would like to access these sessions, you can subscribe to Spoon Plus here.

An AWS For Protein? Scaling Bio-Manufacturing Platforms To Build Out The Next Generation of Food

But if you want to making a next-gen protein, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to raise millions of dollars in venture funding to build out your own bio-manufacturing factory.

Why? In large part because the platforms for creating fermented or cultured food products products at scale haven’t existed to the same degree that as in other spaces.

However, according to FTW Ventures lead investor Brian Frank, that may soon change. Like me, Frank comes from the world of computer tech where so many startups from the past two decades were built upon the terra firma of technology platforms in cloud computing (AWS), mobile apps (Apple) and social media (Facebook).

So, naturally, when we sat down recently to talk about the launch of his recent fund, I wanted to ask him about who are the platform builders in the world of alt-protein.

He said they are coming.

“In the bio-manufacturing space, we have had that for pharma and therapeutics, we’ve had co-manufacturing, but for food, it really hasn’t existed. And so we’re now getting to the stage where if I’m Perfect Day, and the reason that I raise a ton of money is because I need to build up my own factory because no one’s offering me services or capabilities to build this on top of their platform.

“However, the future that we see is that you can create a platform where people can ride on top of your technology, or you can create the way to allow people to make designer goods so that things can be tailored towards a specific need,” Frank said.

Frank sees these new platforms serving as a couple different roles, the first of which is in accelerating design. Much in the same way a processor design company like ARM Holdings helped an entire industry of computing companies build semiconductors around their intellectual property, new companies with IP and design expertise in key pillars of future food can be used to accelerate design in new ways.

Frank gave Geltor – a company in which he was an early investor – as an example around which a company can leverage in designing new core food components rather than starting from scratch.

“The idea of Geltor as a platform is the idea that they can make proteins, collagen and gelatin to service any number of different needs because they’ve shown they can do it for a couple different categories: in cosmetics, in nutraceuticals, and very soon, you know, in food,” Frank said.

He also pointed to a second group of companies that are starting to serve as infrastructure platforms that new food innovators can leverage as they look bring their products to market at scale. He gave Culture Biosciences – one of the Spoon’s Food Tech 25 for 2020 – as an example.

“Culture Biosciences is basically building out multiplex strain (yeast or bacteria) development rigs that are automated and analyzed,” said Frank. And so if I have a specific need of a strain to do X, they can multiplex and run a bunch of different tests to find the stream that works best. And then they can hand that back to you and say, Here you go, here’s that stream that you wanted that does x and does x at the highest volume or rate.”

Frank and I talked about a whole host of other topics, including the evolution of the future protein space into three areas of innovation, as well as the innovation happening in food packaging. If you’d like to see my entire interview with Frank, Spoon Plus subscribers can just click below. If you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus, just go here.

Human Improvement Founders Want to Make Cricket Protein Palatable for Masses

McCarty points to rapid attitude shifts towards cannabis (McCarty and Campbell were executives at cannabis startup Dosist prior to HI) in recent years and think a similar shift could be coming for crickets. In cannabis, “you’re seeing a massive of stigma shift that I’ve never seen having anything in that space, at that scale, and that speed,” said McCarty.

How do you get a similar stigma shift with insects? According to McCarty, much of it will have to do with marketing.

“I’m always amazed that marketing is driving people to make bad decisions,” said McCarty. “Being ethical and responsible people, shouldn’t we be driving people to make good decisions with marketing?”

Part of that marketing and messaging has a lot to do with how the product looks. HI’s sleek and colorful packaging is a departure from the typical big tubs of protein powder found on store shelves in the health and wellness aisle. And while the packaging doesn’t scream crickets, the founders also wanted to be very clear about the ingredients list on the food label.

According to Campbell, all of this was intentional.

He notes the HI’s packaging “jumps off the shelf” and is designed to “steal [market]share from underperforming products” currently out there. Speaking of reactions to the product, he adds that the company has received everything from, “Oh my goodness, someone’s finally got it right” to “You guys have got to be crazy, no one’s ever going to buy this” and everything in between. “We’re far more impressed with the positive response we’ve had,” says Campbell.

But still, why did two executives who spent their lives at companies like Starbucks and the fast-growing cannabis space decide on crickets?

According to Campbell, the idea came in spring of 2019 when he was working with an innovation lab and looking at other alt proteins. Around that time, he started looking for the most nutrient-dense protein out there that also had a good environmental footprint.

The answer he got back: “We’ve known for thousands of years, it’s insects.”

And now, HI’s protein powder can be found in numerous grocery stores and through Amazon and the company’s website. The company has also managed to bring the product to market without raising any venture funding.

“So we’ve kept it very lean from the start, unlike a lot of companies we see in the space that go and raise millions of dollars of venture financing, have huge teams and beautiful offices,” said Campbell. “We said, ‘Let’s make sure we’ve got a product that consumers love, first and foremost, and then once we’ve got that, then let’s invest behind and build that.’ So we’ve been very diligent about our process to date.”

Spoon Plus subscribers can listen to my entire interview with Josh Campbell and Derek McCarty below. If you’re interested in subscribing to Plus, you can learn more here.

SideChef’s Kevin Yu on the Future of the Kitchen in a Time of Unprecedented Change

He ran a company called SideChef, which made a recipe app, while it was early days for connected appliances and step-by-step guided cooking, Yu was already looking for opportunities to take his recipe app and use it as a central command system for appliances.

It was just six months later Yu was on stage at the first Smart Kitchen Summit talking about how this future we discussed in Austin.

Since that time, much of what we talked about in those early days in Austin has materialized: appliance manufacturers have added connectivity and SideChef has struck deals with many of them to integrate its content and technology. They’ve created their recipe format that atomizes the cooking process and allows for them to launch things like their shoppable recipe integrations.

So in a year with so much change, I thought it would be good to once again catch up with Kevin and his US manager director Carolyn Eschbach to get a read from the front lines of the connected kitchen. We talk about the company’s Facebook Portal integration and the launch of their Premium offering, as well as the rapid changes in consumer behavior. We also talk about how the current state of the connected kitchen.

Subscribers of Spoon Plus can see the full interview below. To learn more about Spoon Plus, click here.

Restaurant Tech Roundtable: Reinventing The Back of House With Digital Technology

In this panel session, you’ll hear insights how how everyone from small operators to the country’s biggest QSR chains are using technology to improve operations, make their kitchens safer and to help roll out new menus in real-time.

Here are Jenn Marston’s take-aways from session:

More automation. Back of house automation isn’t just about robots making burgers. It has much more to do with digitizing operational processes to make them more efficient. That could mean a robotic arm doing manual tasks. But it could also mean using tech to replace paper-and-pen accounting books or taking a better, more granular analysis of food inventory to cut down costs.

More operational efficiency. Related to automation, the back of house will become more about making operational processes faster and more efficient. One of the panelists went as far as to say efficiency is the biggest thing for restaurants to get right. That’s especially true with fewer people eating in dining rooms and instead ordering takeout or delivery meals that are constantly evaluated for convenience and speed in addition to quality.

More transparency. The pandemic has arguably brought a greater desire for transparency when it comes to our restaurant food, and tech-savvy companies will respond with a variety of solutions. That could include installing software in a restaurant that can tell a customer exactly where their order is at any given moment (e.g., “on the grill,” “out for delivery”) or a tool that better informs them of a restaurant system’s security measures.

Spoon Plus Subscribers can watch the full session below. If you’d like to subscribe to Spoon Plus, you can learn more here.

How CRISPR Could Create Produce That Lasts Longer, Tastes Better, and Won’t Make Pickers Bleed

Pairwise is one of the companies making a name for itself developing new types of products using CRISPR. The company is developing consumer-facing brands of produce that offer unique characteristics created through the use of CRISPR toolsets.

I caught up the CEO of Pairwise, Tom Adams, to discuss what the company is working on and to get his thoughts on how CRISPR will change the food system. Below are some excerpts from my interview. Spoon Plus subscribers can watch the interview and read the full, unedited transcript.

What are some examples of these types of CRISPR products with direct consumer benefits?

So a product that we’re interested in, sort of it’s a longer term product, is to create a cherry without a pit. You can imagine being able to just pop a cherry in your mouth and really enjoy that healthy, healthy fruit. Cherries are in season right now. They’re great, but I keep ending up with purple fingers from eating them all. I’d love to be able to just pop them over my mouth and eat them like grape. So that’s the kind of thing where we’re taking it down the barrier so that a consumer can really enjoy the cherry differently.

Now we’ll do other things that help with the overall production system. One of our ideas with cherries is to make it so you can produce cherries year round like we’ve done through 60 years of breeding with blueberries. We now have blueberries every day and I didn’t use to get blueberries every day but now I do.

How could CRISPR could accelerate the development of new forms of produce compared with traditional cross-breeding of crops?

There actually is a pitless plum that somebody isolated a few years ago. It’s not a good tasting plum, so it’s not a variety that sold. But you can cross plums and cherries, and you get chums or clerries or something. It’s not a cherry or a plum anymore. The Bing cherry was bred in 1880 and Bing cherry since then is a clone of that original tree. So if you cross them, that’s not a Bing cherry anymore.

You want to get back to the Bing cherry, you’d cross the chum back to the cherry probably 7 or 8 or 9 times until you get a little bit more cherry genome in it each time until you’re almost cherry again. That’s probably 150 years from now you’d have a pitless cherry. But with gene editing, I know what the mutation is that really resulted in the loss of the pits, so I can just go directly into the cherry and make that mutation. It’s the same endpoint that I would have gotten to through the breeding. It’s just 150 years faster.

One thing you’re working on is berries. Can you tell us more?

The blackberries I buy in the grocery store, I could take or leave. And that’s because they’re the variety that had some mutations in it that allow it to be more productive through the season. This mutation just happens to be in a variety that just doesn’t taste good. It’s very high acid. It’s not a really great berry. So we’re taking berries that taste like the ones in the Northwest and we’re putting in the same mutations that you’d see on the bad tasting ones that allow for higher productivity, and adding those to the really good tasting one. And then, just for good measure, we’re also going to get rid of the seeds. It turns out that 85% of people don’t really like the seeds in blackberries from our research. And it’s a fairly straightforward path to do that and then remove the thorns as well, so pickers aren’t bleeding.

What impact could CRISPR have on food in a decade?

10 years from now, what I’d like to picture is a lot of produce that not just that has gene editing in it, but is actually more approachable for people. We all grow up being told and taught that we should eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but only 9% of people in the United States eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. And given 5% are vegetarians, that doesn’t speak real well for the rest of us. So I want to see a variety of things that are more approachable for people.

You mentioned food waste. I think there’s an opportunity to make a substantial difference in shelf life. So when I go into a convenience store, it’s not a choice between a hot dog and a rotten banana. I can get a bowl of berries or something healthy like that as a snack and or pitless cherries. So that’s really our vision is to create a whole different marketplace of foods that fit people’s lifestyles. We eat a lot more food through snacking today than we did 50 years ago and we need to match our food up with that.

To watch the full interview of our interview with Tom Adams or to read the full transcript, just subscribe to Spoon Plus. 

StoreBound’s Evan Dash Wants to Create a Housewares Brand for a New Generation

“Breville was doing incredibly well,” said Dash. “They were still fairly new. And a lot of brands were chasing them to the high end. And then you had this whole like lower end, that was just in shambles, fighting over price, price price.”

While Dash didn’t want to necessarily compete with Breville or fight over tiny margins in a brutal price competition, he saw an opportunity in between the two.

“It really left this beautiful gap in the middle that we felt like we could step into with great design, great quality, great value, and a social media strategy.”

Ten years later, he and his wife sold the company they had built after growing their revenue to $100 million by focusing on that neglected middle space with their flagship namesake brand, Dash.

While the terms of the sale to French consumer goods conglomerate Groupe SEB were not announced, a conservative revenue multiple of 3-5 times sales would easily put the acquisition within the half a billion dollar territory, which would put the deal possibly higher valuation than that of the Anova acquisition by Electrolux (but well below the Instant Brands $2 billion estimated deal size).

So how did Dash go from an idea to $100 million company in a decade? According to Evan Dash, it was in large part thanks to their focus on young consumers who didn’t feel any loyalty to the brands their parents had brought into the home.

“While everybody talks about how the ‘millennials are up and coming, but they really don’t have the money to spend,’ they absolutely do”, said Dash. “And they are so influential, they’re influencing their parents generation, even their grandparents generation and a lot of cases.”

A big part of attracting the attention of those customers was through the use of social media, primarily Instagram. According to Dash, that early emphasis on Instagram was influenced by his own kids.

“They were showing the way that they could build momentum,” said Dash. “And one of them had a sports page, and he was editing jerseys of doing jersey swaps of players. And he had 10,000 followers.”

Beyond speaking to younger consumers through social media, much of the focus by Dash was creating products that not only looked different than those he and Rachel had grown up with, but were designed to be more user-centric.

“We tended to look at products with fresh eyes,” said Dash. “For example, we launched a two slice toaster early on and my head designer for toasters came to me and they said, ‘Hey, Cuisinart has one through six on their control, and KitchenAid has one through seven on their control. Can we just say light, medium, dark, defrost and keep warm?’

Armed with the resources of a company like Groupe SEB, Dash doesn’t have any plans to slow down. The company will expand into products that focus on circular economy, and Dash also hinted at plans for bigger products like refrigerators.

Spoon Plus subscribers can read the full transcript of my interview with Dash or watch the full interview below. If you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

How To Take Your Food DTC During a Pandemic

For Jeremiah Kreisberg and his company Slow Up, this became a harsh reality when in March when the world shut down. The company sold its fresh snack bars through food service channels and so when everyone started working from home due to COVID-19, Kreisberg had to spin up a direct to consumer channel and fast.

But just putting up an e-commerce website wasn’t enough. Not only did the company need to find a way to sell online, but their fresh food product had a limited shelf life and required cold chain delivery.

For Vanessa Pham and Omsom, their COVID-19 related challenges were of a different sort. She and her sister had spent the last year preparing to launch a new consumer food brand targeted at early adopter Asian American’s aged 25 to 40, but when the world changed almost overnight, it was natural to wonder if they should wait.

They didn’t and, as it turns out, it was a savvy move. Their lineup of shelf-stable Asian food starters sold out almost immediately and now the company is planning new flavors and products as they eye the future.

I had a chance to talk with both Pham and Kreisberg in a recent Spoon Plus virtual event, “Building a Direct to Consumer Food Business In a Post-Pandemic World.” During the hour long sessions, the two CPG entrepreneurs shared insights on:

  • How to build a community of dedicated customers
  • The importance of communicating and reinforcing the brand’s values to its community
  • How CPG food entrepreneurs should think about product evolution and SKU lineup complexity
  • How a CPG food startup should think about and use data to hone their strategies
  • How to build a growing customer base and find higher lifetime value consumers
  • The “tech stack” needed to build a DTC business

And lots more, If you’re a Spoon Plus member, you can watch the full video of my conversation with these two founders to hear how they’re building their businesses.

Just click here if you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus.

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Geltor Raises $91 Million To Accelerate Time to Market for Biomanufactured Products

Geltor, which helps CPG brands in a variety of verticals such as cosmetics and food, is looking to scale up its biodesign capability to help these companies find more sustainable, animal-free alternatives for food and cosmetic items while also accelerating their time to market.

“We do two things,” CEO Alex Lorestani told the Spoon. “Building a portfolio of ingredients that can help brands right now, for products they’re building in the next six to 12 months. And then partner with folks that are thinking about solutions that they’d be bringing out in the next, you know, two, three years.”

Most biomanufactured products usually take a really long time to design and bring to market. Vaccines are a good example of this, where half a decade is considered fast to develop a highly scaled product with millions of units.

“Historically biotechnology has been really good at delivering on the timescale of pharmaceutical products, like many years, and that just doesn’t work for consumer product companies,” said Lorestani. “Their development cycles are fundamentally different.”

According to Lorestani, Geltor will invest the money largely in new people. “The number one thing that we invest in are the folks that develop technologies that can help us serve more and more customers with more sustainable ingredients,” he said. “We want to be able to do that faster and for more customers. That’s what we’re using the capital for.”

Geltor is part of a nascent group of companies such as Gingko Bioworks (and its spinout Motif Foodworks) that are raising significant amounts of funding to build the capability to rapidly develop engineered microbial ingredients and scale the biomanufacturing of products built around these ingredients. The transition from an industrial-centered food manufacturing to one which utilizes fermentation and other biomanufacturing processes will take time, but investors seem bullish as they start to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies.

I asked Lorestani where he thought biomanufacturing was in its development and he pointed to the early days of another science discipline which is a foundation for much of today’s industrial-based food manufacturing.

“It’s like 1900 in chemistry,” he said. “I think that we’re at the very early stages. It’s going to be 100 year cycle for biology to really become and lead as the way that supply chains and lots of other things, get get built and delivered.”

Spoon Plus subscribers can see my full interview with Alex Lorestani in the video below.