Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Startups

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.

Odeko AI-Driven Platform Aims to Boost the Supply, Demand, and Lifespan of the Indie Coffeeshop

A lot of us dread the idea of a world where speciality coffeeshops are gone “going for coffee” means getting a Starbucks latte delivered via DoorDash. 

Dane Atkinson, CEO of tech startup Odeko, clearly doesn’t want that day to happen either, which is why his company has developed a mobile ordering and supply chain management system that is, for now, specifically geared towards keeping specialty coffeeshops in business. 

Speaking on the phone this week about his company’s overall mission, he said “the really important message [is that] if we don’t sustain this industry, it really will become Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. They will consolidate in smaller locations and the community and neighborhoods will suffer.”

NYC-based Odeko, which closed a $12 million Series A round in August, recently merged with fellow coffee tech company Cloosiv, has since the start of the pandemic looked for ways to help businesses make both the front and back ends of the coffee shop more efficient, less wasteful, and more financially sustainable over the long haul.

The consumer-facing side of Odeko’s business functions similar to those of mainstream coffee retailers. Customers order and pay for pickup through the company’s mobile app or website. At the moment, Odeko has about 10,000 coffeeshops on the platform across multiple U.S. states. Atkinson says the benefit for customers is its current focus on speciality coffeeshops, which simply means less sifting through irrelevant options to find a high-quality espresso. (Odeko vets its potential merchant partners in order to ensure they actually are specialty coffeeshops.)

The coffeeshops themselves get perhaps the most benefit from the platform. Listing a business on the platform means the coffeeshop itself doesn’t have to come up with the resources to create a mobile order app from the ground up. Odeko charges a 5 percent commission fee per order, which small compared to others, including third-party aggregators a la Grubhub.

Sales data is then used, via AI, to predict volume so that coffeeshops know how much to order in terms of paper supplies, baking ingredients, beverages, and other items needed to run a coffeeshop. Businesses can browse the company’s Cafe Supply Catalog to find all of these items, which Odeko then delivers as a single shipment. 

Atkinson said this supply side of the business is “exploding” now that restaurant industry margins are so tight that any amount of money lost through inventory waste or inefficient supply chain processes can spell the end for a business. “Previously, as a shop, you could get away with some waste in your inventory,” he noted. Now, throwing out unused inventory is akin to “your own salary you’re throwing out.” He says the system is “90 percent accurate” in terms of predicting inventory needs for a week.

The need to digitize the back of house and make it more efficient is a theme that comes up a lot nowadays, with companies like Galley and Souszen applying software, automation, and IoT to change how the back of house is run. Odeko stands somewhat apart from these companies because of its accompanying consumer-facing tech, and also its focus on independent and specialty retailers. It’s main competitor in the coffee-specific mobile order space is Ritual, though Ritual does not have a supply chain side of its business.

Odeko doesn’t necessarily want to solely commit itself to coffee for the long haul. Atkinson says the system could actually work for other types of food businesses, including juice bars or full-service restaurants, and that at some point down the line the company will expand in terms of the types of food businesses on its platform. For now, keeping the independent coffeeshop, the connective tissue of many neighborhoods, alive is its main mission. 

New Report Calls Fermentation The Next Pillar of Alternative Proteins

A new report released today by the Good Food Institute adds a third pillar to the alternative protein sector alongside cultured meat and plant-based proteins: fermentation. 

In the last five years there’s been a “Cambrian explosion” of companies in this segment, Nate Crosser, start-up growth specialist at GFI and author of the report, told me in an interview this week. By mid-2020 there were 44 fermentation companies globally working on alternative proteins, up from 23 companies in 2018. 

“I was surprised to see how much traction was behind this segment, in terms of investment in particular,” Crosser said. Cultured meat gets all the press, but in 2019 fermentation-based protein companies raised 3.5 times more capital than cultivated meat companies, and in 2020 they’ve already raised $435 million of the total $1.5 billion invested in alternative proteins. 

Fermentation uses microbes to produce proteins and functional ingredients used in animal-free meat, egg and dairy products. Part of the allure to investors is that the technology is “commercializable today,” Mark Warner, a consultant on alternative proteins who specializes in scaling up fermentation commercialization told me in an interview on Tuesday. There are already companies and facilities using similar methods to mass produce enzymes. “The tech is generally proven. It’s the organisms that are being newly introduced.”

Because there are a myriad of organisms and approaches that can be used in fermentation, GFI breaks down fermentation companies into 3 categories in their report: traditional, biomass, and precision fermentation.

Traditional, as its name would suggest, refers to a long-established use of microbes to alter flavor, nutrition or texture—like the lactic acid bacteria used to make cheese or MycoTechnology’s plant protein with improved taste and functionality.

Biomass fermentation is all about mass producing protein. It relies on fast-growing, protein-dense microorganisms like algae and fungi. Meati uses this approach to make its mycelium-based steak. And last but not least, there’s precision fermentation, the process used to make Impossible Foods’ heme protein or Perfect Day’s whey protein. This approach, which can often rely on genetic modification, is used to produce highly functional proteins or ingredients that must be very precise but are needed in lower quantities.

The report is intended to give potential or existing investors an idea of the different approaches and state of the industry, Crosser said. Several major tech and agriculture players are already backing fermentation companies, including ADM Capital, Louis Dreyfus Co., Kellogg, Danone and Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy Venture. Meanwhile major food and lifestyle companies like DSM, JBS, Novozymes and DuPont are working on in-house fermentation-derived alternative protein products.

But it may eventually take more than private funding if alternative proteins are really going to disrupt the meat and dairy industries, Warner said. Like with biofuels, alternative proteins may eventually require government funding to really take off.  “From my perspective, [this report] is going to be vital in framing the need for fermentation for investors,” Warren said, “but also public policy and any discussion around government funding.” 

While the entirety of alternative proteins industry is in a race to market, fermentation companies are expected to do more than join the contest. A high percentage of the fermentation segment is B2B, according to Crosser. They’ll be developing the components needed for cell culture and the ingredients needed for plant-based products.  “Their success is going to fuel the rest of the industry,” he said. “Fermentation serves as a force multiplier for the entire alternative protein sector.”

Spoon Plus: The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report

Nowadays, governments, grocery retailers, industries like agriculture and grocery, tech companies, and many others are working to fight food waste at both the local and international level. In the developed world, at least, much of that focus over the last 12 months has been on the consumer kitchen, which is responsible for by far the most food waste in those regions.

This report will examine why so much food is wasted in the consumer kitchen, what new technologies and processes can be leveraged to fight that waste, and the companies working to change consumers’ relationship to both food and waste.

Report highlights include:

  • One-third of the world’s food goes to waste annually. In the U.S. and Europe, the majority of that waste happens downstream, at consumer-facing businesses and in the home.

  • Food waste at home is a three-part problem that stems from a lack of awareness about waste, inadequate information and skill sets around home cooking, and the convenience economy driving consumer behavior.

  • Grocery store shopping, current recipe formats, inconsistent date labels, and a lack of smart storage solutions for grocery purchases and restaurant leftovers are the main drivers of at-home food waste.

  • The refrigerator itself may be one of the single biggest contributors to food waste. Moving forward, appliance-makers will need to consider overhauling the appliance’s entire design to help consumers fight food waste.

  • Solutions for fighting food waste will come from a range of different players. For tech companies, areas of focus will include more smart appliances and more tech-enabled storage systems as well as meal-planning and meal-sharing apps.

Companies profiled in this report include LG, Samsung, Vitamix, Smarter, Ovie, Bluapple, Mimica, Blakbear, Silo, Mealhero, MealBoard, Kitche, No Waste, Ends & Stems, and Olio.

Introduction: The Size of the World’s Food Waste Problem

In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released the first edition of its now-famous report, “Wasted, How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill.” That report proved to be a groundbreaking look at the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system that lead to massive amounts of food waste from the farm all the way into the average person’s kitchen. 

The report also proved to one of the biggest catalysts for change in recent years. Since its publication, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced federal targets to cut food waste by 50 percent by 2030 — the first goal of its kind in the U.S. Similarly, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 seeks to “halve global food waste at retail and consumer levels, as well as to reduce food loss during production and supply.” As NRDC noted in the second edition of “Wasted,” published in 2017, food businesses have made commitments to reduce waste, and 74 percent of consumers polled say fighting food waste is important to them. Most recently, the Consumer Goods Forum launched its Food Waste Coalition that aims, in part, to support SDG 12.3 by focusing on consumer-facing areas of food waste like home and retail. And these are just as sampling of the countless efforts happening on both international and local levels in the war on food waste.

Even so, the oft-cited figure, that one-third of the world’s food supply goes to waste, is as relevant now as it was nearly a decade ago when NRDC first published its report.

In 2020, food waste is a multibillion-dollar problem with environmental, economic, and human costs that grow more urgent as the world advances towards a 10-billion-person population. The United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates food waste’s global carbon footprint to be 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases, and that economic losses of this food waste total $750 billion annually. The United Kingdom’s Food Waste Recycling Action Plan (WRAP) notes that keeping food scraps out of landfills would be the equivalent of removing 20 percent of cars in Britain from the roads. Meanwhile, over in the U.S., rescuing just 15 percent of the food we waste could feed 25 million Americans each year, or well over half of the 40 million Americans facing food insecurity.  

Worldwide, different regions waste food in different ways. UN estimates show that per capita waste by consumers in Europe and North America totals to 95-115 kg/year. That number drops significantly, to 6-11 kg/year, in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeastern Asia. Overall, 40 percent of losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels in developing countries. Not so in developed nations, where over 40 percent of food waste occurs at retail and consumer levels.

Given the enormous amounts of waste occurring at the consumer level in Europe and North America, it makes sense that recent efforts towards fighting food waste now go towards understanding how and why food gets wasted downstream, at grocery stores, restaurants, and, most importantly, within consumers’ own homes.

The full report is available to subscribers of Spoon Plus. To find out more about Spoon Plus, click here. Use discount code NEWMEMBER to get 15% off an annual or monthly subscription. 

11 Food Tech Startups Will Join TechStars 2020 Farm-to-Fork Virtual Accelerator

TechStars today announced the 2020 class of its Farm-to-Fork program, which selects and supports companies and entrepreneurs working in the food and agricultural industries. The program is in its third year, with 2020 being the first time it goes 100 percent virtual, thanks to the ongoing pandemic.

But if there’s anything akin to a silver lining in the midst of a global health crisis, it may just be the many tech innovations now coming out of the food industry at a faster pace than ever before. “The food system has changed more in the last six months than it has over the entire five years I have been investing in the space,” Brett Brohl, Farm-to-Fork’s Managing Director, said in a press release. 

The Farm-to-Fork Accelerator looks for early-stage entrepreneurs and companies addressing major issues in the food chain around food safety and security, supply chain management, and ag tech.

The 2020 class includes 11 startups:

  • AgTools, Irvine, Calif.: A real-time data intelligence platform for the food and ag industries
  • Applied Particle Technology, St. Louis, Mo.: A data platform for automating health and safety in mining 
  • Boson Motors, Freemont, Calif.: Electric vehicles for farmers
  • Canomiks, Rochester, Minn.: A genomics, bioinformatics and AI-based platform for functional food and bev as well as skincare
  • FeedX, Madison, Wisc.: An online marketplace for the animal feed industry
  • H20kInnovations, Boston, Mass.: A contaminant management system for industrial water
  • Iamus, Dublin, Ireland: Uses AI and robotics to help poultry farmers with production safety
  • IXON, Hong Kong: Makes advanced sous-vide aseptic packaging that keeps protein stable at room temperature for up to two years
  • Milk Moovement, Halifax, Nova Scotia: A cloud-based platform for the dairy industry
  • Satis.AI, London, England: Develops AI operating systems for autonomous kitchens in foodservice
  • Toolsvilla, West Bengal, India: A digital marketplace for machinery, tools, and equipment in India

All participants to the Farm to Fork accelerator get $20,000 in return for 6 percent equity (on a fully diluted basis, issued as common stock). In addition, they get access to Techstars resources for life, access to mentors and potential investors, and the chance to participate in a demo day at the end of the program.

The 2020 virtual cohort kicks off on September 8.

Ocean Hugger Has Big Plans to Re-Enter the Plant-Based Seafood Market

Plant-based seafood startup Ocean Hugger said this week it is in the midst of planning a relaunch, according to an interview with Food Navigator. 

In June, the New York-based company had to cease operations, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason. Up to that point, Ocean Hugger ran a promising business selling its “tuna” and “eel” products to foodservice businesses. As we’re all too aware these days, the foodservice industry has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and Ocean Hugger found itself facing no sales and had to stop operations.

Now, however, it appears the company is planning its comeback. An update from August 31 on the Ocean Hugger website states that, “Over the coming months, we will be exploring paths to relaunch bigger and better than ever.”

How the company plans to do that is under wraps for now. Food Navigator notes that new developments should “enable the business to relaunch next year.” Co-founder David Benzaquen suggested to the publication that Ocean Hugger is exploring ways to re-enter the market and also hinted at new products. He gave no further details.

It’s reasonable to imagine that, with the right business model, Ocean Hugger will be successful in its attempt to relaunch. Investment in alternative proteins has already reached over $1.1 billion in 2020, and both plant- and cell-based seafood startups have made many a headline recently. General Mills invested $32 million Good Catch at the beginning of 2020. BlueNalu, which grows cell-based seafood in bioreactors, nabbed a $20 million investment in February. More recently, S2G ventures said it would be investing $100 million in seafood and ocean health startups including alt-protein.

Ocean Hugger has so far raised $500,000 from a funding round in 2019. Benzaquen said in his interview this week that seafood is one of the most obvious areas of animal protein to disrupt from a sustainability and animal welfare angle. If others agree, that investment figure for Ocean Hugger could go up significantly in the future.

Galley Solutions’ Founders Talk Recipes, Data, and What It Will Take to Build a Better Food System

In the food world, San Diego-based tech startup Galley Solutions is perhaps best known for its software system that uses recipe-level data to automate the restaurant back of house. But founders Benji Koltai and Ian Christopher have much bigger plans for the role they want their company to play in creating a more efficient, accurate, and safer food system overall.

I recently hopped on a Zoom chat with Koltai and Christopher — who also happen to be brothers-in-law — to talk about their vision for the future food system, how a system like Galley’s can contribute, and what foodservice businesses can do right now to make their operations more efficient.

You can watch the full video below. Some highlights include:

  • The definition of “food business” is changing as we speak, from college dining halls now offering grab ’n’ go meals to ghost kitchens operating out of grocery stores.
  • Moving forward, restaurants must learn to leverage their recipe-level data to make operations more efficient, cut overall costs, and save on labor and time to accommodate these new formats.
  • Technology is everywhere in the foodservice world, yet for all the different devices and solutions, there is no common dataset to bring those disparate pieces together.
  • A truly efficient back-of-house system will use one source for all the business’s data. For example, a centralized data source could populate the digital order forms sent to vendors and at the same time tell the kitchen robot how long to leave a burger on the grill.

IntegriCulture Awarded $2.2 Million Grant to Build New Commercial Cell Ag Facility

Yesterday, Integriculture was awarded a $2.2 million dollar grant by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), a part of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that supports high-risk technologies that aim to resolve social issues. 

NEDO awarded a total ¥5.77 billion ( $54.7 million USD)  to eight Japanese start-ups. With each grant comes a spot in NEDO’s Product Commercialization Alliance (PCA) program, an accelerator for start-ups expected to achieve continuous sales within three years.

IntegriCulture’s will use the money for a commercial production site for cellular agriculture projects. Earlier this year the company outlined the specifics of its CultNet System, a general-purpose, large-scale cell culture technology. The system is intended to mimic the cell-to-cell communication that happens in vivo. The grow cells (muscle, fat, connective tissue) and cells that produce growth factors in adjacent bioreactors. In theory, the technology makes it possible to culture any type of animal cell in large quantities.

The coming production site will make it possible to scale, automate and integrate quality controls into the CultNet System, according to a press release from IntegriCulture. Ultimately, the site will be the launching pad commercial scale cellular ag projects possible, starting with IntegriCulture’s own cultured foie gras expected to be in restaurants by 2021.

The PCA grant comes just after Integriculture raised a ¥800 million (~$7.4 million USD) Series A round earlier this Spring to further development of its cell-based meat and also for building the company’s first commercial-scale bioreactor.

But the goal of the CultNet System was never to exclusively produce IntegriCulture products. CEO Yuki Hanyu’s plan is to create an infrastructure that IntegriCulture clients from every sector—food, supplements, cosmetics, materials—could use to to develop and execute cell-based projects. 

Democratization of cellular agriculture has always been at the heart of Hanyu’s work. IntegriCulture was born out of the DIY cultured meat community he founded in 2015 called the Shojinmeat Project. Shojinmeat offers a step-by-guide for hobbyists who want to culture meat at home. And since IntegriCulture’s commercial scale foie gras is still a few years off, the fastest way to access to cultured meat might be growing it yourself.  

Plant Jammer Gets €4M Investment for its AI-Powered Recipe Platform

Plant Jammer, a four-year-old Danish startup building an AI-powered cooking assistant, is one step closer to its goal of reaching one billion people, thanks to a €4 million investment in its AI recipe algorithm and platform. The Copenhagen-based company plans to expand its presence in the digital food space by licensing its API to third parties who can build branded customized experiences for their customers.

The new injection of capital comes from Danish investment firm Vaekstfonden, German food processing company Dr. Oetker, and German appliance manufacturer Miele. Miele had previously invested in Plant Jammer in 2018.

”Plant Jammer’s combination of recipe creation with AI is both unique and functional. We expect that this technology will be a core pillar in the connected kitchen of the future. Therefore, we believe Plant Jammer has great business potential,” says Dr. Christian Zangs, Managing Director of Miele Venture Capital.

Plant Jammer’s application, already in use by 10,000 households in Europe, allows users to build customized recipes by factoring in their individual preferences and what they may have in their home or what may be on sale in the local supermarket. While the app is focused on plant-based and vegetarian creations, partners who license the platform are not limited to those options. The database also contains food choices that include animal products and dairy; the PlantJammer app chose not to surface those results allowing the company to focus its version on a select niche.

In an interview with The Spoon, CEO and founder Michael Haase explained that partners who license the Plant Jammer’s API will pay based on the number of “calls” or accesses by users. For example, a grocery chain in Sweden can use the Plant Jammer API to develop a branded application such as a chatbox, that could include such extras as a link to online shopping. Each time a user of that third-party application builds a recipe, based on ingredients, tastes, diet, or any number of factors, the PlantJammer AI-driven database would work behind the scenes to deliver the results.

“I like to think of the analogy of the gold rush,” Haase adds. “We are interested in being the supplier of the jeans and shovels that enable others to do their jobs better.”

Personalized data from commercial partners will not be shared with Plant Jammer, but those partners can pass on generalized information via tags to allow the Haase’s company to continue to innovate on its platform. There are several areas Haase hopes to develop focused around food waste and the increased use of the excess capacity of local farmers and vendors.
Initially, the company founder says, the goal is to focus on food waste in the home. Haase says that 50% of all food waste takes place in the home, so we want people to build recipes based on what they already have in their refrigerator or cupboard.

“Our declared purpose is to empower one billion people with food habits that increase their health and the health of the planet,” Haase added.

That said, Haase admits his goal is a lofty one. “Right now, we are in a world of what I would call ‘trickle-down gastronomy’,” he says. “There is a huge divide between those whose world is focused on things such as molecular gastronomy and the masses. If we can show people that you can make something great in 25 minutes with simple ingredients, that would be great.”