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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Delivery & Commerce

Join The Spoon and ReFED for the Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum

By now, you know the stats: Each year, over one-third of our food produced is wasted.

That translates to about $285 billion (or 54 million tons) worth of food each year in the US alone. That’s more than a quarter trillion dollars worth of food, produced from or with scarce inputs like water, land and animals that are slaughtered — food that won’t end up on the plates of people who go hungry every day. Food that will be tossed aside and become trash.

It’s a big problem, but the good news is there’s a huge movement across the food system to find innovative ways to reduce the amount of food waste. One of the strongest voices at the center of this movement is ReFED, a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to ending the food waste crisis. ReFED’s efforts to create awareness through a data-driven approach to catalyze change is something we’ve covered here at The Spoon and one of the reasons we’re big fans of what they do.

All of which is to say, when we decided to do an event focused on highlighting innovation in reducing food waste, ReFED was our first choice for a partnership.

Today we’re excited to announce the event and share details with the food tech community.

The Food Waste Insights + Innovation Forum is a free-to-attend half-day virtual event on June 16th from 9 AM to 1 PM PT (12 PM to 4 PM ET) and will feature some of the leading companies and organizations. We’ll dive into their work and progress in building a less wasteful food system and hear about how they overcame barriers through leveraging innovation.

We’ll hear from leaders within companies like The Wonderful Company and Hellmann’s about innovative approaches they’ve taken to reducing food waste. We’ll talk to investors like S2G Ventures and Cultivian Sandbox about the ways in which capital can be deployed to scale impactful solutions. Finally, we’ll also hear from innovators like Spoiler Alert and Smoketown building new technologies and systems to reduce food waste.

We’ll also highlight emerging innovators chosen by ReFED and The Spoon who are creating technology-driven solutions to reduce waste across the food system, whether that’s at the farm, in the supply chain, at the restaurant or grocery store or in our own fridges.

If you have ideas you want to share about how to reduce food waste, are looking for a new partner to help supercharge your own company’s efforts in this area, or just want to learn more about this growing movement, register today for this half-day event on June 16th (it’s free!, thanks in part to our sponsors Google and FoodX Technologies).

We’ll be keeping you updated over the next several weeks as more speakers are added and the full agenda is released. In the meantime, reserve your ticket today, and get ready to help us further the conversation around how we can innovate to fight food waste.

Food Delivery Service Zomato Files to Go Public

Zomato, one of India’s leading and largest food delivery startups, announced today it has filed for an IPO from which it plans to raise $1.1 billion. 

To date, the 12-year-old company has raised $2.1 billion in total from the likes of Kora Investments, Tiger Global, and Ant Group, among other investors. Once public, it plans to list on the Indian Stock Exchange as NSE and BSE.

The company said it plans to invest 75 percent of its IPO proceedings into further building out its Zomato Pro subscription program as well as its business-to-business supply operation called Hyperpure.

Like most other restaurant-related companies, Zomato saw its fair share of ups and downs in 2020, including having to make cuts to its workforce about a year ago. However, the company has largely recovered from that, though its paperwork notes that the COVID-19 pandemic “has had and could impact our business, cash flows, financial condition and results of operators.” 

According to its filing documents, Zomato has more than 350,000 active restaurant listings on its platform across 24 different markets. The company says it faces “intense competition,” citing Prosus-backed food delivery service Swiggy as its competition along with cloud kitchen operator Rebel Foods and restaurant chains like Domino’s and McDonald’s. Amazon entered the Indian food delivery market last year but is not named as a competitor in Zomato’s filing. Uber Eats, meanwhile, sold its India business to Zomato in March of 2020 for $206 million.

Earlier this month, chief rival Swiggy raised a whopping $800 million and is now valued at $5 billion. As yet, Swiggy has made no announcements around a potential IPO.

The CEA Food Safety Coalition Launches a Food-Safety Standard for Indoor Ag

The CEA Food Safety Coalition announced today what it says is the first-ever food safety certification program designed for leafy greens grown in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings. As of today, members of the Coalition can opt to have their crops assessed by the new Leafy Greens Module, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Upon passing inspection via the module, those growers can then include a “CEA food-safe” seal on their packaging. 

Founded in 2019, the goal of the Coalition is to provide science-based food-safety certification for those growing leafy greens indoors. The Coalition is not a government entity. Rather, it’s a group of leaders in the CEA space that pay membership dues and work together to provide guidance for the entire industry. The Leafy Green Module is meant to be an add-on to existing compliance standards from the Global Food Safety Initiative.  

Founding members include AeroFarms, Bowery Farming, BrightFarms, Little Leaf Farms, Plenty, Revol Greens, Superior Fresh and Vertical Field. The Coalition is also led by Executive Director Marni Karlin, the former head of government affairs and general counsel for the Organic Trade Association. 

“Current food safety standards were written for the field, and many do not address the unique attributes of controlled, indoor environments,” Karlin noted in today’s press release. “This new certification process and the accompanying on-pack seal helps to unify CEA growers while also differentiating them from traditional field agriculture.”

For example, controlled-environment farms that generally rely heavily on technology also favor circulating water systems via hydroponics. On the flip, there are elements CEA farms do not usually have to factor in, such as contamination from animal byproducts.

The Coalition’s entire certification process looks at four main areas:

  • Hazard analysis, which is the use of water, nutrients, growing media, seeds, inputs, site control and other relevant factors
  • Water that comes into contact with all plant and with food contact surfaces. “The use of recirculating water will require a continuing hazard analysis. Will also require zone-based environmental monitoring based on company-specific risk assessment.”
  • Site control, infrastructure, and system design, including all food contact surfaces and adjacent food contact surfaces, such as plant containers. This area also assesses potential physical hazards from lighting, robotics, sensors, equipment and utensils.
  • Pesticide Use and Testing, or the use of pesticides or herbicides during the plant life cycle. Generally speaking, though, CEA farms don’t use pesticides.

The new certification comes at time when both investment and consumer interest in CEA is on the rise. Leafy greens are still the most prominent crop to be grown in these farms, hence the Coalition’s focus on that produce type in this initial certification. However, other plants, including and especially strawberries, are becoming more popular with indoor vertical growers. No doubt indoor-specific safety certification for that crop is not far away.

Minnow Picks Up $3M in Seed Funding for its Pickup Pods

Minnow Technologies, which creates smart lockers for food delivery and pickup, announced today that it has raised an additional $3 million in Seed funding. Branded Strategic Hospitality led the round, which also saw participation from Elevate Capital and Portland Seed Fund. This brings Minnow’s total funding to date to $6.4 million.

Seattle, Washington-based Minnow has certainly had a twisty-turny startup journey . The company started out in Portland, Maine in 2017 as Veebie and made a mobile lunch pickup locker system. In 2018, the company moved to to the West Coast, changed its name to Kadabra and pivoted to making stationary pickup lockers. In 2020 the company, now called Minnow, launched its first pickup pods in Portland, Oregon.

Minnow’s smart lockers can be installed in residential buildings, office buildings, college campuses and other locations. The units are like an Amazon locker for restaurant delivery. Instead of needing to be home when a delivery driver arrives (or come downstairs if you live in a tall building), orders are placed inside a Minnow pod cubby. When the customer is ready, they go to the locker, enter a code and retrieve their food.

Minnow’s pod system took on greater importance last year because it provides a contactless method of delivery. Customers and delivery people don’t have to interact with one another, and food can be securely stowed until pickup. Solving these issues around convenience and safety helped Minnow win the Startup Showcase at our Smart Kitchen Summit last year.

Minnow says that is has installations across the U.S. and in Japan, and that the first batch of Pickup Pods is already sold out. (The company is accepting pre-orders for batch two.) With its new funding, the company is accelerating the production of its first commercial model, the M8.

DoorDash Launches Tiered Commission Fees for Restaurants

DoorDash announced today that is has launched a new pricing structure to deal with its historically controversial restaurant commission fees. Via these “Partnership Plans,” as the service calls them, U.S. restaurants can now choose between three different commission price points.

Plans are priced according to how much area a restaurant wants its delivery radius to cover and how much marketing it needs from DoorDash. 

The DoorDash Basic plan has the smallest delivery radius and the highest cost for customers, since most of the delivery costs are shifted to them. The commission fee for restaurants with this plan is 15 percent. It does not include in-app marketing.

DoorDash Plus has a 25 percent commission fee, offers a bigger delivery radius, and includes the DashPass loyalty program. DoorDash Premier has the biggest delivery radius and, in addition to DashPass, also offers what it calls a “growth guarantee.” Via this feature, restaurants will be reimbursed their full commission for the month if they receive fewer than 20 orders for delivery, pickup, or DoorDash subsidiary Caviar.

DoorDash also announced a new and reduced commission fee for pickup orders, which is 6 percent across all plans. 

The new tiered pricing structure is very clearly a response to the commission fee caps dozens of U.S. cities implemented last year. With dining rooms closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants were forced to rely more heavily on third-party delivery services like DoorDash. We weren’t too many months into restaurant restrictions before many across the restaurant industry started to decry commission fees, which often go as high as 30 percent per transaction, as detrimental to restaurants’ bottom lines. 

DoorDash and others oppose fee caps, saying they hurt order volumes and result in the service having to raise prices for customers. 

Granted, with a plan like DoorDash Basic, customers will still pay more for their meals to be delivered. From the looks of it, bringing those costs down will mean hiking commission fees for restaurants back up, so it remains to be seen if this new pricing structure is truly beneficial for businesses or if it’s more of the same old story.

Amazon Expands In-Garage Grocery Delivery to 5,000 Cities and Towns Nationwide

Amazon announced today that its Key by Amazon In-Garage Grocery Delivery is expanding to more than 5,000 U.S. cities and towns. Key In-Garage Delivery launched in five cities last November, and with today’s expansion will become available everywhere Amazon delivers groceries.

Amazon Key In-Garage delivery is available to Prime members shopping through Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market. To use Key, the customer must have a compatible connected smart garage door opener. When the order is placed, the customer selects “Key Delivery” for no extra charge. When the order arrives, delivery people open the smart garage door, place groceries inside, close the door and notify the customer.

Placing grocery deliveries inside a garage can have a number of benefits for the customer, including keeping food out of direct sunlight and other weather-related elements, as well as helping prevent theft by porch pirates. It also adds flexibility for customers who don’t have to be at home to wait for a delivery.

In-garage delivery followed a previous attempt by Amazon to offer in-home delivery when customers weren’t there. But customers weren’t too keen on letting strangers open their front doors and placing packages inside their homes while they were out. In-garage delivery was a bit of a social compromise. Amazon could still securely deliver packages inside a domicile while customers were out, but weren’t granted access into someone’s actual house.

Grocery delivery experienced a record year in 2020 as the pandemic pushed people into grocery e-commerce. As a result, all the major grocery retailers invested heavily in systems to meet that accelerated demand and provide faster service to customers. Amazon’s chief retail rival, Walmart, for instance, launched its Delivery+ subscription service last year and is trialing delivery to connected smart lockers that sit on a customer’s porch.

While Key In-Garage Delivery is probably not a resource-intensive program for Amazon to implement, one has to wonder if the company shouldn’t be focusing more attention on curbside pickup. Recent data from Brick Meets Click show that the majority of grocery e-commerce customers choose curbside pickup over delivery or ship-to-home options. And during its earnings call yesterday, Albertsons said that curbside pickup was up 865 percent over the course of 2020.

Prime members interested in trying out Key In-Garage Delivery can check its availability by visiting www.amazon.com/key-grocery.

Yum Brands to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by ‘Nearly 50%’ by 2030

Restaurant operator Yum Brands announced today its plans to cut greenhouse gases 46 percent by 2030 in partnership with its franchisees, suppliers and producers. The company, which operates Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, and the Habit Burger, also said today it plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

In a statement, Yum said it is “working closely” with its brands, franchisees, and suppliers on these goals, with a plan to focus on emission reductions at both corporate and franchise restaurants, as well as throughout its supply chain. 

Its restaurant brands have already kickstarted a few different initiatives that support its goal. Right now those include:

  • Investing in green buildings: KFC is investing in green buildings in Malaysia, South Africa, and the U.K., with “promising results.” For example, KFC reported 18 percent overall energy savings in Malaysia. 
  • Accelerating renewable energy: By the end of this year, Yum will transition 1,000 of its restaurants to renewable energy. The company has not yet specified which restaurants and where, though it has piloted renewable energy programs at KFC Australia in the past, and in 2020, it moved corporate offices in the U.S. to renewable energy.
  • Collaborating with climate-forward partners: Yum said it joined the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA), an alliance of large energy buyers, energy providers and service providers this year. 

Yum is just the latest high-profile restaurant company publicizing its sustainability goals. Back at the start of 2020, Starbucks announced its own plan to cut carbon emissions, water usage, and landfill waste in half by 2030. (The company is also trialing a reusable cup program in Seattle.) Chipotle just diverted 51 percent of its waste, according to the company’s latest sustainability report. It’s also tying sustainability goals to some executive compensation. Dunkin’, meanwhile, introduced food waste and composting programs in March of this year.

The sheer reach of Yum’s restaurant brands — over 50,000 restaurants in more than 150 countries and territories — means its efforts could have significant influence on the restaurant industry as a whole as sustainability becomes a more urgent priority to address.

A Plant-Based Restaurant Redefines the QSR

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I’ve been writing a lot about the plant-based QSR lately, so when I recently got the chance to visit the new location of Copper Branch, a plant-based restaurant company from Canada, I jumped at it. 

Across its franchise locations, which span Canada and are now making their way into the States, Copper Branch offers quick-service food that’s entirely plant-based. The company’s latest location to open, and its second in the U.S., is in Nashville, Tennessee — conveniently down the street from my house. 

Upon visiting, however, it became clear that food is only one part of Copper Branch’s mission. The company is, it seems, less about selling plant-based foods and more about reinventing what it means to be a quick-service restaurant (QSR). 

Despite the popularity in recent years of items like the Impossible Whopper and the Beyond Taco, the average QSR is better known for greasy burgers, salty fries, and sodas drunk out of non-recyclable cups. I love an occasional trip to the drive-thru as much as the next person, but those indulgences come with health and planetary costs that are becoming increasingly more problematic in light of climate change and chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity.

Copper Branch’s model is compelling because the company’s goal is bigger than simply making plant-based foods accessible to mainstream consumers’ palates. Over a recent call, CEO Trish Paterson talked about the company’s “triangular focus” when it comes to sustainability. The goal is to strike a balance between human health, animal welfare, and planetary health when it comes to food, packaging, operations, and everything else it takes to run a restaurant. The bigger-picture mission is to “change people’s mindsets of what fast food really is.”

In the case of Copper Branch, fast food means partnerships with companies like Eat Just (eggs) and Field Roast (cheese, meat) to recreate scrambles, burgers, chili, and other dishes made entirely from plants. At the same time, the company also prioritizes local partnerships for certain items, which is itself a form of sustainability. For example, the Nashville location serves coffee from Bongo Java, a beloved local roaster and one of the oldest independent coffee shops in town. Paterson says the local partnerships are intentional and a means of supporting local business and communities surrounding each Copper Branch location. Franchisees are expected to spend “a percentage of their revenue on local activities and giving back to their own communities,” which includes sourcing coffees, desserts, and other items from around town.

Packaging is another important part of the operation. Copper Branch has used compostable straws and cutlery for years, as well as compostable water bottles. A little more challenging are the to-go boxes for the food, which have to be lined with plastic to keep food hot during transport. Paterson said the company has considered a “bring your own container” program, though for the moment that’s on hold due to the pandemic. 

All of this sustainability doesn’t come cheap, though. Paterson said right now the biggest challenge for her company is the price point of menu items. For instance, a “Copper Burger Deluxe” at the restaurant costs $8.95. An Impossible Whopper is $5.89 by comparison.

“The ingredients that we use will never lend themselves to put us on that price point,” she says of the standard QSR menu. Instead, Copper Branch sees its job as helping consumers to understand the higher price points as “investing” in their own health and that of the planet.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Getting consumers in front of actual products, preferably eating in the restaurant, are important parts of educating consumers. That education doesn’t have to be preachy, either. A good meal speaks for itself. If that meal can be got as quickly and conveniently as the experience at a place like McDonald’s, consumers may be willing to pay a little more. 

Even if they’re not, the price point for plant-based, sustainably packaged foods may yet come down. For her part, Paterson believes we’ll get closer to that point. “The more advanced research and development gets, the lower the cost structure becomes, and those products will become more mainstream.”

Restaurants ‘Round the Web

CloudKitchens, the uber-secretive startup from ex-Uber boss Travis Kalanick, is reportedly Uber all over again, and definitely not in a good way. Business Insider recently reported on tensions and a mass exodus of staffers from the company.

Speaking of food delivery, a group of food delivery workers in NYC, known as Los Deliveristas Unidos, recently took to the streets to protest working conditions. The city’s largest union of service worker supported. Eater NY has the full story.

The latest Yelp Economic Average report recently found that restaurant openings were up in the first quarter of 2021 compared to one year ago. However, they fell short of 2019 levels. 

Video: Denmark’s Bilka Shows Off Its Automated Curbside Pickup Kiosk

Here in the U.S. we have data showing that curbside pickup is the most popular option for e-commerce grocery shoppers. As such, we’ve seen companies like Albertsons and Walmart invest in new fulfillment systems to make curbside pickup easier for its customers.

Over in Europe, the biggest activity we’ve seen in the grocery space is around smaller dark stores offering super-fast (sub-fifteen minute) delivery of goods. We haven’t seen as much news around implementation of automated services. (Granted, we get a limited view from over here in the U.S.)

So when Danish superstore chain Bilka posted a video of its automated pickup kiosk this week, we perked up. The video is a brief explainer showing customers how to use the new kiosks. Customers pull up, enter a unique code on a built-in touchscreen, and a box with their grocery order is brought up robotically.

Worth noting is that in the video, groceries are packed loose in boxes, not in plastic bags. From my own personal experience, grocery retailers go a little heavy on the plastic bag use here in the U.S., oftentimes just putting one item in its own bag. That’s a lot of plastic waste.

Big retailers are at the very early stages of rolling out these automated pickup kiosks. Albertsons debuted one in Chicago in January of this year, and Walmart Canada announced last month that it will be adding automated pickup kiosks to its stores.

Because these systems are so new, we don’t have a ton of data on consumer adoption. But with curbside pickup attracting more than half of monthly grocery e-commerce shoppers here in the U.S., we’ll no doubt be seeing more automated kiosk announcements throughout this year.

If you’re curious about the future of automation, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual summit happening on May 18! We’ll have speakers from Swisslog and Tortoise talking about how robots will help you get your groceries. Get your ticket today!

Iron Ox Breaks Ground on a New Robotic Farm in Texas

Iron Ox, a company best known for its robotic greenhouses, announced this week it had broken ground on a new facility, a 535,000 square-foot indoor farm in Lockhart, Texas. This is the third farm from Iron Ox, which is based in California and operates two other farms in that state. 

All Iron Ox farms are equipped with hydroponic grow systems as well as robotics, the latter being a mobile transport system that can move trays of produce as well as tend and harvest plants via a robotic grasper. Farms are semi-autonomous, with humans still needed to inspect plants and prune them.

The company says the forthcoming Lockhart farm will grow leafy greens, herbs, berries, and vine crops, and anticipates delivering its first harvest by the close of 2021. Select chefs and food retailers in Texas will be the first recipients of that harvest. The company says the new farm will serve several cities in the state thanks to its proximity to Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. The new farm will also create roughly 100 new jobs in the region. 

Constructions of high-tech greenhouses are happening all over the country right now, with Element Farms, AppHarvest, Little Leaf Farms, and others building or planning to build new facilities. Unlike vertical farms, these greenhouses still rely on sunlight (usually supplemented by some LEDs) as their primary source of lighting. And there’s plenty of sunlight to be had in Texas.

Technology like data-collecting sensors as well as AI systems are increasingly a part of these greenhouse operations, though robotic arms for harvesting crops are a little less common right now. However, AppHarvest recently acquired Root, which makes a crop-harvesting robot, suggesting a future for greenhouses that includes much more in the way of robotics. For its part, Iron Ox has said before that it would like its farms to one day be fully autonomous.

As with other high-tech greenhouse setups, automation in the Iron Ox farms helps to ensure consistency in the crops, better quality plants, and ultimately tasty veggies for consumers. 

Kroger Launches a Recycling Program in Partnership With TerraCycle

Grocery retailer Kroger announced today the launch of its Kroger Our Brands Recycling Program, an expansion of an earlier program developed in partnership with TerraCycle. The program aims to make it easier for consumers to recycle flexible plastic packaging. 

Flexible plastic packaging includes things like snack pouches, potato chip bags, packets of cheese, and frozen food pouches, among other items. While this particular type of packaging keeps food fresh, it’s also very difficult to recycle and not eligible for curbside pickup in most parts of the U.S.

TerraCycle, meanwhile, specializes in hard-to-recycle items such as flexible plastics. The company has several different recycling programs in operation, and also runs Loop, which offers common CPGs in reusable containers.

The Kroger/TerraCycle program means customers can sign up for free to ship them to TerraCycle using a prepaid shipping label. Users earn points for every pound of packaging sent. Points can be redeemed as donations to participating charitable organizations.

Having to take the extra steps to separate flexible plastics and actually put them in the mail might deter some customers. However, Kroger said in today’s press release that it saw “great success” with an earlier version of the program, which recycled flexible packaging from the company’s Simple Truth brand. The new program is available to schools, offices, and other organizations, in addition to individual consumers and households. 

All packaging collected through the program will be melted into hard plastic and used to make new products. 

For now, only the following Kroger brands are eligible to be recycled via the program: Private Selection, Kroger Brand, Comforts, Luvsome, and Abound. 

 

High-End Strawberry Grower Oishii to Launch ‘Everyday Berry’ via Vertical Farming

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Oishii is best known at this point for its high-end, vertically grown strawberries that cost a cool $50 for an eight-pack. That makes the New Jersey-based company’s wares pretty inaccessible for many consumers — until now. Oishii explained this week that it will be launching an “everyday berry” in the future.

Strawberries are by many accounts the next “it” crop for CEA. As Oishii explained to Vertical Farm Daily, one of the issues with traditional strawberry production is that about 90 percent of all strawberries grown in the U.S. have to be shipped from California. To ensure safer transportation, the fruits are engineered to be resilient at the expense of quality and taste. 

Oishii’s Omakase Berry, which the company grows in its vertical farm facility in New Jersey, is in many ways the antithesis of the traditionally grown strawberry. Omakase Berries typically only grow for a short part of the year in a very specific region of Japan, and they are known for their sweetness and strong aromas. They are also, as noted above, a very premium produce item and, in the case of Oishii, a very expensive one.

But now, Oishii is using its recently raised $50 million funding round to expand R&D and commercialize an everyday berry, with the goal of becoming one of the largest strawberry growers in the world. Oishii will apply the learnings and proprietary technology used to grow its Omakase Berry towards other strawberries as well as other crops, such as tomatoes and peppers.

Strawberries are one of the dirtier crops when it comes to pesticides, and more than one CEA company is now attempting to grow the fruit indoors at scale. Plenty announced a partnership with berry grower Driscoll’s last year. Meanwhile, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow is growing strawberries indoors to make the fruit more widely available in the city state without relying on imports.

Oishii said this week it will focus for now on local markets in northern New Jersey and New York, but also plans to build more farms in other cities and even countries.