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Connecting Demand to Supply: 2021 Food Supply Chain Tech Outlook

This is a guest post written by Seana Day and Brita Rosenheim, Partners at Culterra Capital, an advisory firm focused exclusively on tech-driven innovation across the food system. You can also find their 2020 Farm Tech and Food Tech Industry Landscapes and analysis at Culterra Capital.

We have been covering the Food Tech and AgTech sectors for the past decade, yet COVID-19 thrust the food supply chain into the spotlight as we could have never anticipated. Against the backdrop of the current pandemic, as well as nearly $500 billion in annual food waste occurring from food harvest to distribution and retail globally, it was time for a dive deep into the technology that will shape the food supply chain in 2021 and beyond. 

For those also following the tech-driven food sector it is no surprise that, to-date, most investment and innovation fanfare have been focused on the food system end-points of AgTech and Food Tech. However after our recent odyssey into the Food Supply Chain Tech category, it is quite clear to us that there is a tremendous, untapped opportunity for vertical-specific technology companies which are focused on serving the unique needs of the food supply chain.

It is with this sense of urgency and optimism about new frontiers of innovation, agility and investment that we launch Culterra Capital’s inaugural 2021 Food Supply Chain Tech Landscape:

Click image to enlarge.

For the purposes of this analysis we have highlighted a handful of predictions for the year to come, as well as emerging themes and key innovation trends that we believe will continue to impact the four supply chain pillars (Supply, Production, Logistics/Distribution, Demand).

While we cover a number of digitalization-driven opportunities for food system participants to strengthen their resilience, profitability and agility, we will reserve deeper dives into the sector-specific drivers and practical adoption obstacles in later reports. But first, a brief primer on navigating the landscape before we dig into our key takeaways below:

How to Navigate the 2021 Food Supply Chain Tech Landscape

  • “Food Supply Chain Tech” here generally refers to the technology enabling the processes and movement that occur between the farm gate and the loading dock/back door of the grocery retailer/food service provider. 
  • This is a heatmap, not a comprehensive catalog: While clearly not exhaustive, this map is meant to illustrate the layers and variety of technology solutions, early stage to mature, and primarily enterprise or B2B-focused. We have generally filtered the companies based on their food and ag customer base, and while mainly US-focused, have included a handful of global companies. Our FarmTech (inside the farm gate) and Food Tech (retail/food service/D2C) landscapes cover the other end points of the food system.  
  • IT-Driven Focus: The landscape focuses predominantly on digital technology-related companies, and although hardware is (mostly) unplugged from this landscape, there is a strong recognition that hardware is an essential part of the technology landscape, especially as it relates to key trends around Industry 4.0 and networked equipment.

In order for us to drive down and understand the many, extraordinarily complex functions involved in the food supply chain, we have organized the market around four key pillars of activity: 

  1. First Mile (Supply)
  2. Production / Food Processing (primary and secondary)
  3. Distribution and Logistics
  4. Retail / Food Service / D2C (Demand)

Across the bottom of the landscape, we included value chain players which integrate across multiple pillars.  

Is Data Automation Bringing Sexy Back?

The overall food and ag industries are among the lowest penetration of digitalization relative to every other sector of the global economy. And while it is well understood across the food industry that modernization and investment in data infrastructure represent a necessary and essential first step, the challenge of “going paperless” is still a real hurdle.

Yes, we understand that “going paperless” is less sexy than, perhaps, micro-fulfillment robotics. But increased workflow and data automation solutions in the food supply chain holds significant power to help the food supply chain leapfrog into digitalization.

Data automation leverages ML/AI to digitize and automate document processing and manual back office processes like managing vendors, suppliers, contracts, key communications, appointments, and so on. Because of the highly fragmented nature and sprawling ecosystems, data automation brings critical resource management, accuracy and most importantly, an underlying digital foundation to the food supply chain. 

Examples of workflow and data automation solutions focused on the food sector include Proagrica, Big Wheelbarrow, and Wholesail. 

A digital foundation is also a key enabler of business innovation for participants up and down the Food and Ag system, like data-driven demand prediction. For example, today our food system is fundamentally supply-driven. Crops or livestock are harvested at a point in the season, and the producer is a price taker. Producers have long sought to overcome this risk / reward imbalance by vertically integrating, and we continue to see that from all sides whether it is Kroger or Walmart integrating their dairy supply chain, or Driscoll and Naturipe branded berries.

Those players who have access to demand data from the retailers, consumers and foodservice outlets, and can control several steps in the supply chain, can better understand when and where to sell, as well as how to maximize their profit through demand insights. 

Similarly, with better demand data flowing into the distribution, logistics and production pillars, companies can better manage over / underproduction and reduce waste, while also improving the utilization of their own assets (equipment, labor, utilities, storage, etc.). 

MOM Knows Best?

Mostly overlooked by venture capital investors, there has been a dearth of significant outside investment in food production and manufacturing business tools, like Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) software, which represents a collection of systems for managing end-to-end manufacturing processes and automation. The core MOM subsystems include: 

  • MRP (Material Requirements Planning):  packaging, raw material planning, procurement scheduling, etc.;
  • MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems): used to track and document the transformation of raw materials to finished goods; and
  • Other categories of Enterprise Asset Management which fall into this broader manufacturing tech category. 

Largely the domain of established and legacy software companies, vertical, food-focused MOM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are becoming increasingly recognized for their potential to supply foundational, batch-level data for AI/ML-driven analytics, more nimble food production processes, greater workflow automation, optimization of procurement, and so on.  

At the same time, the broader technology landscape is shifting from a traditional manufacturing automation stack (ERP/MOM) to a IIoT stack (Industrial Internet of Things) which leverages a combination of app development, platform cloud, connectivity, and hardware. This intelligent manufacturing stack will be central to unlocking the promise of a more agile, visible and collaborative food supply chain.  

In looking ahead, it is important for tech innovators to understand both the complexity and opportunity stemming from ERP/MOM/IIoT stacks, as the critical data captured in these subsystems has multiple beneficiaries and is also poised to enable business model innovation across the value chain, from ag producers, to manufacturers, distributors and beyond. 

As an example, it is generally a challenge for ag producers to track and trace raw materials once they hit the processor (both primary and secondary). In food value streams like protein (animal) processing, automation and batch processing are hard to achieve given the nature of tracking disassembly (“primary” – one carcass that turns in hundreds of cuts or many SKUs) vs. assembly (“secondary” – a dozen ingredients combined into one product or SKU). 

However, increasingly sophisticated and connected MOM systems are beginning to deliver batch-level tracking which makes verification of farming practices (regenerative, non-GMO, organic, etc), genetics / genealogy or origin claims easier to authenticate.  

This is one of many examples that reinforces our belief that domain-specific manufacturing software and systems for the food and beverage sector are essential. The level of tracking complexity and data integration can be dizzying, but there are a handful of innovative companies that are building solid, scalable businesses such as Dairy.com, ParityFactory, Wherefour, and Food ID, among others in the space. 

The Cold Chain is Heating Up

As noted in The Spoon’s coverage, the pandemic shifted a large number of people to online grocery shopping, and many of those new online shoppers will continue to shop online. Notably, this surge in digital grocery orders also included more online fresh / perishables purchases, both in retail environments as well as direct to consumer (D2C). This growth is expected to continue even as grocery shoppers migrate back to in-store shopping. For context, e-commerce grocery is now expected to account for at least 21.5% of US grocery sales by 2025, (up from a pre-Covid prediction of 13.5%). 

We believe this increased demand will catalyze cold chain suppliers and 3PLs to meaningfully bolster their digital infrastructure and investment in tech solutions, as we have seen with high flyers like Lineage Logistics. They will feel greater pressure to adapt to the dynamic demands of buyers, such as faster speed of delivery, decreased waste, real-time inventory visibility and traceability of products. 

These objectives are not possible without integration and interoperability solutions which create the linkages necessary to overcome the massive amounts of existing siloed data. These solutions layer on top of existing supply chain planning, execution and equipment control systems, integrating them to further optimize for analysis and real time planning / visibility across various parts of the supply chain. 

Without harmonized data, the cold chain can’t truly unlock efficiency or capacity, nor adequately respond to supply-demand volatility. Tightly linked systems to share this data can have a significant impact on the shelf life of perishable products (reducing waste), the assurance of quality (product, producer or marketplace differentiation), and support agility in demand-driven forecasting. Examples of startups focused on providing innovative solutions in this sector include AgroFresh’s Fresh Cloud, Backbone AI, and Afresh.

Looking Ahead to 2021 

The food supply chain differs in some respects from our traditional understanding of Food Tech and AgTech because it encompasses industries with relatively well-established players and technologies, many of which are horizontal software (with a multi-industry offering) and logistics companies. Due to this, as well as the highly-regulated and labor intensive nature of the supply chain, historically it has been a more difficult industry for nimble start-ups to penetrate. 

Today, we see the majority of participants across the food supply chain setting the table with foundational data and digitizing basic workflows. This is the essential first step. Basic digitalization, strengthening collaboration tools, automating some data sharing, and looking for ways to streamline labor will be key themes in 2021.

To be sure, COVID-19 revealed accelerating demand for tech ready to scale (vs. new innovation). Yet that is not the end of the story. We see most of the exciting food supply tech innovation springing up around the perimeters of the landscape, particularly from analytics and strategy plays within First Mile (Supply) and Retail / Food Service / D2C (Demand).

For start-ups, those that can differentiate themselves with proprietary, unique data cleansing tools have an important edge. As we know from AgTech and Food Tech, this is one of the principal activities that many innovative companies spend vast amounts of time working on. The same holds here in the Food Supply Chain.

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Seana Day and Brita Rosenheim are Partners at Culterra Capital, and Venture Partners at Better Food Ventures, each with 20+ years of investment, M&A, and strategy experience within the food, ag and tech verticals. Their analysis on the Agtech and Food Tech sectors are regularly used by participants in the space to understand the quickly evolving landscape.

Capital One Ventures Makes First Impact Investment in Food Waste Specialist Goodr

Capital One Ventures, the venture arm of financial services giant Capital One, has invested in food waste specialist Goodr. The investment, the amount of which was not disclosed, was announced via a Medium post by partner Adam Boutin.

From the post:

Jasmine and her team are tackling one of the most baffling paradoxes — 80 billion pounds of food is ending up in our landfills every year, meanwhile 40 million Americans are food insecure. While most of us are aware that food waste and hunger are massive problems (with both environmental and societal implications), the scale & complexity of the issues is astonishing….

The investment marks the first move by Capital One Ventures into impact investing. According to Boutin, who is leading the impact investing efforts for the venture arm, they plan on making more in coming months in the areas of financial inclusion, environmental sustainability and future of work.

We’ve been writing about Goodr here at The Spoon for some time, in part because the company is one of the first startups to utilize blockchain as a way to better track food and help reduce waste. Here’s how company CEO Jasmine Crowe described the company’s platform back in a 2018 interview:

Goodr is a sustainable waste management platform that leverages technology to reduce food waste and combat hunger. We provide an end-to-end solution for businesses seeking to reduce their overall waste, save money and empower their local community.

Our technology coordinates the collection and distribution of food donations. Unlike our competitors, Goodr’s platform also provides an IRS audit-friendly donation record, real-time food waste analytics, and community impact reports thanks to blockchain.

In addition to providing a technology forward platform for helping corporations reduce how much food they throw out, Goodr’s also extremely active on activating partnerships in communities of need to make sure the food ends up in the right place. It’s been inspiring to watch Crowe and her team spring into action over the past year to help those hit hard by COVID-19 with efforts like their pop up stores and emergency meal kits.

Goodr is one of a number of startups in the food waste and sustainability space that are getting extra attention nowadays from investors. While food waste reduction and innovation hasn’t always gotten as much investor attention some of the other food tech spaces, COVID-19 shined a light on the fragility of the food system and made it even more clear how reducing waste made good economic sense.

PepsiCo Is Taking Applications for Its Fifth Annual Greenhouse Accelerator Program

PepsiCo is now taking applications for the fifth installment of its Greenhouse Accelerator Program, which looks for young startups reinventing in the food and beverage industry. One major focus for this year’s cohort will be on food innovations and technologies that “improve the aging process through wellness and health management,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

The program selects 10 companies to participate in the six-month-long program. Each startup gets a $20,000 grant and the opportunity to work with mentors, who will advise on product and brand development, supply chain management, customer acquisition, and other areas of running a food business. One company will be rewarded a $100,000 grant at the end of the program. 

Companies worldwide are eligible for the program. They must have a product or service currently available in the market, and have more than $1 million.

This year, PepsiCo’s program is looking for companies addressing issues around health, wellness, and aging. According to the Greenhouse Accelerator website, some focus areas include products that assist with tracking and managing wellness, functional ingredients, wearables that promote health awareness, and other innovations that encourage healthy diets and lifestyles.

The focus makes sense, given the ongoing global health crisis that has disrupted the way people both shop and eat for food. Snacking may be on the rise, but so too is a need for healthier food choices. Making health and wellness more accessible is in turn becoming a priority for many companies in the food industry.

PepsiCo will select the 10 companies for this cohort in January 2021. The application process is open until December 9.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that the Greenhouse Accelerator Program was only open to companies in the U.S. and Canada.

The DFA CoLab Accelerator Is Now Taking Applications for All Things Dairy Tech

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) announced this week that applications are open for its 2021 accelerator program, newly renamed the DFA CoLab Accelerator. Any early-stage food product company working in some portion of the dairy supply chain is welcome to apply, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The DFA, a decades-old cooperative of U.S. dairy farms, has run the accelerator program for the last five years, using it as a way for startups to get a foothold in agtech and for the dairy industry to keep an ear to the ground when it comes to new technologies and processes. The solutions that come out of this program showcase just how much milage the food industry could actually get out of dairy products. The 2020 cohort, unveiled last May, included, among others, a company that makes sustainable fashion from excess milk and one brewing up premium alcoholic spirits from whey.

“On the food front, the sky is really the limit as long as one of the main ingredients is dairy,” Doug Dresslaer, director of innovation at DFA, said in this week’s press release. 

To that end, the 2021 program is looking for early-stage companies that are “dairy-focused or dairy-based” and using “applications or technologies related to any portion of the dairy value chain.” Some areas include supply chain optimization, traceability, data management, herd health management, and sustainability. 

The 90-day program will be a mix of virtual and onsite training that takes place from April through June, 2021. Participants get mentorship opportunities with DFA executives as well as training around business development, finance, product development, brand building, supply chain logistics, and several other areas of running a business. 

Applications are open through December 29, 2020.

NapiFeryn’s Technology Upcycles Post-Processed Rapeseed Into Usable Protein Powder

Rapeseed, also known as canola, is one of the largest sources of vegetable oil in the world.

The seeds are pressed to get the oil, which becomes the final consumer product. Let behind is a byproduct referred to as rapeseed “cake”, chunky greenish clumps that are sometimes used in animal feed.

Beyond that, however, rapeseed cake has had little functional use as a human food product, but thanks to technology by Polish startup NapiFeryn, rapeseed processors can now upcycle the leftover rapeseed cake into a human-consumable protein powder.

The process developed by NapiFeryn to convert the leftover cake into a usable protein involves several steps and is currently in the scale up phase. Once converted into human-consumable protein powder, the neutral flavor and odor profile of rapeseed protein powder means it can be used in a variety of foods types such as bread, protein bars or as a meat or egg substitute.

This move to create higher-value outputs from agricultural byproducts is just another example of the momentum around upcycling. The market, which now has its own industry association and is sized at $47 billion, has startups creating products from inputs ranging from from cacao pulp to spent beer grains.

And now, thanks to NapiFeryn, rapeseed cake.

You can learn more about NapiFeryn’s technology via the nifty 360 degree video produced by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)’s food innovation initiative (EIT Food) for its Food Unfolded digital content platform.

Rapeseed Protein | A Sustainable Source Of Plant Protein (360 Video)

Startup CPG’s Free Databases Help Emerging Brands with 3PL, Logistics and Donations

The phrase “The Passion Economy” refers to the increasing ability for people to build real businesses around whatever they are, well, passionate about (it’s also an excellent book).

And while there are a ton of fledgling founders passionate about food and launching a ton of upstart CPG brands, those same founders probably don’t hold the same zeal for things like logistics or inventory management.

That’s where a trio of free online databases from Startup CPG can help. Startup CPG is a volunteer organization of various experts and founders that provide knowledge, networking and community to small brands. Startup CPG membership is free, and includes access to an ongoing Slack Channel as well as events where members can learn more about things like venture capital, product law and marketing (full disclosure that I have volunteered and spoken at a Startup CPG event).

Earlier this year, Startup CPG created three free databases for its members that serve as national and regional directories for direct to consumer third-party logistics companies, e-commerce retailers where goods can be sold, and places where food about to expire can be donated instead of being destroyed. Last week, the list was migrated to a Google spreadsheet to make it more accessible, and its available to any brand that provides their email address to Startup CPG.

The database was created by Startup CPG volunteers crowdsourcing information and searching the web to include the name of relevant companies/services, as well as things like what regions they serve, the types of food accepted and the appropriate contact to reach out to.

In other words, these databases can help answer a lot of the business type questions a new brand just starting out might have. And with at least some of those questions answered, founders can continue to focus on what they are most passionate about.

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.

Applications Are Open for THRIVE’s Ag Tech Accelerator Program

SVG Ventures’ THRIVE platform, which connects farmers, food tech companies, corporations, and investors, is now taking applications for Cohort VII of its THRIVE accelerator program. Typically, the program looks for seed-stage startups from all over the world whose solutions have a tech angle and aim to make the agricultural system more efficient, sustainable, and secure.

The upcoming cohort will run March through June, 2021, according to email from THRIVE sent to The Spoon. Selected companies will participate in the three-month-long program. Like other accelerator programs operating in the midst of the pandemic, Cohort VII will be a mix of virtual and onsite work, with the latter being in the Salinas and Central California growing regions.

THRIVE’s program looks for early- to growth-stage startups working in a number of different areas of food tech: robotics and automation, indoor farming, supply chain management, and biotech, to name a few. Trace Genomics, FarmWise, and Harvest Automation are a few notable alumni of the program. 

Admission to the program is competitive: THRIVE has said in the past it has an acceptance rate of less than 3 percent and pulls from an applicant pool of more than 500 startups from around the world. Of those, just eight are chosen to participate in the accelerator program.

Selected companies receive $75,000 investment ($37,500 in cash and $37,500 in program value). The program website notes there is opportunity for follow-on investment. Startups also receive mentorship opportunities and access to corporate partners and farmers via the THRIVE network. The program ends with a Demo Day at the annual Forbes AgTech Summit.

Separate from the accelerator program, this year SVG /THRIVE have also launched the THRIVE Global Initiative in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S Department of State. Through a series of “challenges” in different regions around the world, THRIVE will award startups for innovative solutions, beginning with the THRIVE Australia Challenge on December 17, 2020. Challenges in Canada and Africa will follow in 2021.

Meanwhile, the THRIVE accelerator program kicks off in March 2021. Applications are open until November 20, 2020.

Mosa Meat's steak tartare on white plate with garnishes

Cultured meat takes sides on CRISPR

In 2017, a patent assigned to Memphis Meats detailed a way to overcome one of cultured meats biggest obstacles. The startup would use CRISPR gene editing to create a small mutation in their cells. The mutation would inactivate two proteins and ultimately increase “replicative capacity of the modified cell populations indefinitely.” They had transformed unpredictable cells with a limited capacity into hyper-proliferative ones  equipped for industrial production.

Longevity and predictability are the obstacles all cultured meat start-ups face in the effort to bring production to scale. Commercial scale cultured meat will require a mass production of cells like no other project to date, but cells in question aren’t inherently capable of that kind of output. After a certain number of replications, the fat, muscle and connective tissue cells max out. They  begin to die off or lose control. Left to itself, cultured meat eventually becomes self-contaminating. 

CRISPR gene editing offers a work around, a cheap and accurate way to equip stem cells for industrial capacity and consistency. Muscle and fat stem cells that naturally peter out can be edited to divide forever. Induced pluripotent stem cells that easily veer off course can be reprogrammed to exclusively produce muscle cells, fat or connective tissue. 

“Technologies like CRISPR allow us to safely increase the quality of our cell growth, which means we will make meat that is tastier, healthier, and more sustainable than slaughtered meat,” Brian Spears, the co-founder and CEO of New Age Meats, told Business Insider last year. Ostensibly, genetic tweaks made using CRISPR could make industrial cell culture faster to market, more predictable, and more cost effective.

But while some start-ups make CRISPR gene editing intrinsic to their process, others are intentionally separating themselves from the technology. They’re concerned that genetically altering their cell lines could lead to regulatory hang-ups — if not in the US or Asia, then in Europe. They’re calling their cultured meat non-GMO.

Whether CRISPR is a GMO has been hotly debated since the technology was first adapted for research from bacterial defense systems. Unlike genetically modified organisms, which have had foreign genetic material inserted into their DNA and been edited in a way that couldn’t occur naturally, CRISPR alters an organism’s own DNA to exhibit the most desirable traits. 

“Scientifically I buy that it’s not a GMO,” Paul Mozdziak, a cell biologist at North Carolina State told me via Zoom, “but regulation is often based on more than science.” Mozdziak is also an affiliate of Peace of Meat, a B2B cultured meat company that’s decided against CRISPR. “Our profile is we are not going to do anything that can be construed in any way shape or form as GMO,” Mozdziak said.  The same is true of Mosa Meat, a cultured meat elite who produced the first lab-grown burger in 2013. The decision is partly because Mosa is in the European market which doesn’t have a favorable attitude toward CRISPR at all, said Joshua Flack, cell biologist and leader of Mosa Meat’s Stemness & Isolation team. But “It also makes scientific sense. It is a lot of work to engineer your cell lines in this fashion.There’s a lot of ground work in the beginning if you’re using CRISPR and engineering.”

For those that don’t go the CRISPR route, the key is identifying the optimal cell line, finding out exactly what those cells want, and then catering the entire process to them, Flack said. The non-GMO approach is about optimizing the process while CRISPR offers a way to “turn the thing on its head” by genetically optimizing the cell line.  

From a scientific standpoint, no one is challenging CRISPR’s potential. Mozdziak called it a “promising technology” for the entire industry and even expects US regulatory bodies to be fairly amenable to the technology. Meanwhile, Mosa Meat has invested in inhouse explorations using CRISPR for R&D purposes. “We have to understand the risks of not employing these strategies,” Flack said. “The potential upside is really massive.”

CRISPR could very well be the fastest and cheapest way to commercial scale, but it’s unclear how much that will matter in the long run. Which process will be first to market or which will be stalled in regulations? These questions are just proxies for the one question that we can’t answer yet. That is, what will people buy–and buy enough to disrupt the meat industry? Maybe this new age GMO debate ends like the last one: both sides proceed so customers have the option. But one thing is for sure, Flack said,  “if you can’t sell it at the end, the effort is wasted.”

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article contained a quote from Daan Luining, CTO of Meatable. For administrative reasons, that quote has been replaced with a quote from Brian Spears, CEO of New Age Meats, originally published by Business Insider.

Meet the Startup Showcase Finalists for Smart Kitchen Summit 2020

While much of the food world has been impacted by the pandemic, there’s been no shortage of investors, inventors and innovators looking to reinvent the food system.

To me, this excitement about food tech is especially evident from the flood of interest in our sixth annual Startup Showcase, which takes place at this year’s (virtual) Smart Kitchen Summit. We were overwhelmed with applications from companies wanting to participate at our annual event that showcases the most interesting new startups building innovative new products for the future of food and cooking.

And so we’re excited today to announce the 10 finalists that will be showcasing at the Smart Kitchen Summit Oct. 13th-15th. These startups are innovating in everything from cultured meat to food waste to restaurant robotics to taste-altering utensils.

If you’d like to watch the founders of these companies pitch and go into a virtual session where they will show off their products and answer questions, get your ticket for the Smart Kitchen Summit today!

Minnow Technologies

Minnow Technologies is making an Amazon Locker for fresh takeout food. The connected food pickup pod can house takeout meals in an antimicrobial environment. Pods can be placed virtually anywhere and restaurants, food halls and other food businesses can leverage them to provide their customers and delivery providers with a safe and way to grab and go.

Cultured Decadence

Cultured Decadence is a cell-based tech startup creating a system that can produce seafood like crabs and lobsters sustainably. It does this using cell culture and tissue engineering techniques for the high-value portions of crabs and lobsters, producing no shells or wasteful organ pieces. It can also potentially eliminate the need for wild harvesting altogether and help create a more sustainable ocean ecosystem.

Satis.ai

Satis.ai is a full-stack operating system for restaurant kitchens. The system uses live camera feeds in kitchens to analyze cooking processes and provide actionable feedback to back-of-house staff in real time as well as give owners/managers business intelligence to help increase efficiency, inventory ordering and customer order accuracy.

Zymmo LLC

Zymmo’s platform is a meal marketplace and foodie social network that gives chefs a place to connect with local food lovers and potential customers. Zymmo allows chefs to publish their menus, promote their events and facilitate ordering and payments all in one app.

Bonbowl

Bonbowl is a small appliance startup making an induction-based heating cooktop along with patent-pending cookware that can be used to cook with and eat from safely. Their induction technology enables power efficient cooking that uses half the power of electric stoves of similar size. The Bonbowl pot doubles as a bowl that consumers can eat right out of, eliminating a longer cleanup process and additional hardware.

Nymble Labs

Nymble Labs makes Julia, a domestic cooking robot that helps consumers cook healthy meals for their families. The cooking robot only requires users to select a recipe, chop up or gather the ingredients for said recipe and insert them into the device. Users press a button and Julia does the rest: heating at the right temps, adding ingredients at the right time, stirring and simmering until the meal is done and ready to be served.

Taste Boosters

Taste Boosters is the startup behind SpoonTEK, the world’s first taste-altering utensil. Using taste buds, the human body’s sensors and their patent-pending ionic technology, SpoonTEK can alter and enhance taste and flavor of any food dish.

Vobil

Vobil is a startup that’s developed a voice-based e-commerce technology platform that links food ordering to connected car interfaces, allowing for entirely voice-based ordering, checkout and navigation to the store in real-time.

Kitche

Kitche is a free app for iOS and Android phones that helps users reduce food waste at home by helping change personal habits with what they buy and consume. The app uses a connection with an OCR (optical character recognition) engine and a food ontology database to help users know what they already have at home, even when they’re on the go. The app helps users understand how much money they waste every time they throw food out at home.

Piestro

Piestro is an automated pizzeria startup that has created a standalone, fully-integrated cooking system for artisanal pizzas. From start to finish, it takes three minutes to make a pizza. Piestro will be able to press pizza dough, spread sauce and shredded cheese, add up to six desired toppings, and calculate the perfect cooking time based on the ingredients and humidity. Orders can be placed either in person at a public location (e.g., shopping malls, college campuses, movie theaters, hospitals or airports) and cooked in front of the customer. Customers can also opt to get the pizza even closer to their door by ordering through an app for delivery.

Scrum Ventures Launches a New Program, Food Tech Studio – Bites!

San Francisco-based VC firm Scrum Ventures just announced Food Tech Studio – Bites!, a food tech-focused program that looks to bring together a variety of companies innovating across the food industry.  

Speaking on the phone this week, Michael Proman, Managing Partner at Scrum Ventures, said the program is something of a reinvention of the traditional accelerator model. Instead of early-stage companies receiving investment and mentorship in exchange for equity, Food Tech Studio is more about helping companies at any stage cultivate long-term relationships across the food industry: with corporations, other entrepreneurs, and industry thought leaders alike. And since the program’s partners include several Japan-based companies (see below), building relationships in the Japanese market will be a major (though not the only) focus.

As to the types of companies Food Tech Studio is looking for, the range is intentionally broad. Applicants might include everything from supply chain management solutions to food waste companies to food producers reimagining how a CPG brand could change what we eat.  

“We’re trying to create a very diverse community of companies,” Proman said. He adds that many food tech companies nowadays fit into more than one category (e.g., food waste and food traceability), and that casting a wide net will allow the program to bring together companies, partners, and mentors who might not normally mix in a traditional accelerator setting. In Proman’s own words, it’s “bringing together folks that would otherwise not have come together but have common points of interest.”

“Anytime you have upwards of 100 startups coming together from around the world, particularly startups that are at different stages or areas of the industry, I think there are a lot of opportunities [for] conversations that wouldn’t normally be taking place,” he adds.” This in turn can lead to more collaboration between the different verticals within the food tech industry.

Adding to the diversity is the list of the program’s partners, which includes Fuji Oil, instant-noodle innovator Nissin, tea company Itoen, Juchheim, the Otsuka group, and food distribution company Nichirei. 

A virtual format helps with the program’s cross-discipline-like approach. Like other programs that have kicked off in the last several months, Food Tech Studio will be online, as the pandemic makes it difficult to conduct any in-person sessions. 

Proman said the program will choose between 75 and 100 companies to participate, though they’re not married to a specific number. (“We don’t have a quota,” says Proman.) Applications are open right now and the program is slated to begin in early 2021.

Firstchop Shuts Down as COVID Crushed its B2B Pivot

Firstchop has a special place in my food tech journalist heart. I was there when the company first launched back in the Fall of 2017, and today, nearly three years later, I’m writing about its collapse.

Firstchop started its startup life amid the consumer sous vide mini-boomlet from a few years back. Unlike Anova and Chefsteps however, Firstchop gave away its sous vide wand to get you to subscribe to its protein delivery service. The company would send you a box of chef-prepared meats that you just had to heat up in the sous vide bath.

“Sous vide really caught fire and then collapsed,” Firstchop founder Ajay Narain told me earlier this year. “Unrealistic expecations were built around what sous vide could do. People thought it would be great for all of these different use cases, but it has a lot of limitations.”

So Firstchop abandoned that business to pivot to B2B, re-launching to sell prepared microwaveable meals to offices. At first, the switch to B2B was more fruitful for Firstchop. At the time of its official launch, Narain said that Firstchop sold three times as much product in the first month than it had the entire previous year of selling D2C.

In an email exchange this week, Narain said that Firstchop had also set up distribution through KeHE and Vistar (for offices), had brokers and had meeting scheduled with retail buyers at ExpoWest.

However, those good times quickly soured. Firstchop’s new debut was at the end of February, which is right as the pandemic was starting to hit the U.S. ExpoWest was cancelled. “Getting meetings became impossible,” Narain wrote to me in our exchange. “The office vending market absolutely collapsed. Not sure when it will ever recover as people get comfortable permanently or semi-permanently working from home.”

As a result, Firstchop has shut down.

In his email, Narain wrote that he kind of wished he had stayed in the D2C market as other players in that space like Blue Apron have rebounded. Indeed, direct to consumer channels have boomed across the food tech landscape during this pandemic. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Like any good entrepreneur, Narain isn’t done with the startup game. He said he’s already working on something new and still in the food tech space. Though he wouldn’t say more, I’m sure I’ll be writing about that when it launches.