Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Delivery & Commerce

Deliverect Raises $65M for Its Delivery Integration Software

Belgium-based restaurant tech startup Deliverect announced today it has raised $65 million in Series C funding. The round was led by DST Global Partners and Redpoint Ventures, as well as existing investors OMERS Ventures, Newion and Smartfin. Deliverect’s founders also invested in the round. To date, Deliverect has raised a total of $86.8 million including this round.

The Deliverect platform manages orders from third party delivery services, funneling them into a single ticket stream that goes into a restaurant’s main POS system. This eliminates the need for a restaurant staffer to manually input these orders from the third-party delivery service’s tablet into the POS. That in turn saves time and can lessen the likelihood of order inaccuracy. 

While this class of technology has been around for years now, the move towards more delivery and takeout orders, brought on by the pandemic, has made this type of software something of a must-have for businesses using multiple third-party providers (e.g., Uber Eats, Deliverroo, etc.). 

Deliverect’s software services single restaurants, chains, and ghost kitchen operations. The company said today it will use the new funding for more R&D as well as to expand further. Right now, Deliverect’s software is in more than 10,000 restaurants around the world, including high-profile chains like Pret a Manger, Taco Bell, and Le Pain Quotidien.

Numerous other startups, including Ordermark, which raised $120 million last year, and Olo, which recently filed to go public, offer a similar product to restaurants. Which is to say that Deliverect will face its fair share of competition as it continues to expand.

The company raised €16.25 million (~$17.63 million USD) in Series B funding last year. It said today it has processed more than 30 million orders, and is now processing an average of 1 million orders per week.

Amazon Adds Pay-With-Your-Palm Service to Whole Foods Store in Seattle

Amazon announced today that it is bringing the Amazon One palm-scanning payment technology to Whole Foods stores in Seattle. The move marks the first use of the biometric system at a non-Amazon branded store.

Launched last September, Amazon One allows people to connect a credit card (and Amazon Prime account, of course) with a scan of their palm. Once scanned, customers can then pay for items at Amazon One-enabled stores simply by waving their hand over a special terminal at checkout.

As of March 2021, Amazon One was available in 12 Amazon stores in the Seattle area including Amazon Go, Go Grocery, and Amazon 4-Star. Starting today, Amazon One will be available at the Madison Broadway in Seattle Whole Foods, and the company says it will be expanding the program to seven more Seattle area Whole Foods locations in the coming months.

The addition of Amazon One at Whole Foods isn’t a surprise, given that Amazon owns Whole Foods. But it’s further illustration of how Amazon is leveraging its deep technological capabilities to reshape shopping experiences — and putting pressure on other brick-and-mortar retailers to up their own checkout experiences.

Amazon has developed a number of different systems to make checkout more frictionless. Famously, Amazon Go kicked off the era of “just walk out” cashierless checkout technology, which lets customers go into the store, grab what they want and get charged automatically upon exit. Amazon has also developed its Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that allows for cashierless checkout at its stores.

Amazon also aims to license its various technologies to third parties. For instance, the company created a cashierless airport convenience store with the Hudson’s brand. And in the FAQ accompanying today’s Amazon One news, the company says it is in active discussions with several potential customers to use the palm payment system.

There are a number of startups looking to bring their own brand of cashierless checkout to retail (and help stave off Amazon). Companies like Zippin and Grabango install cameras and sensors to re-create the same type of just walk out shopping experience. And there are a number of smart shopping cart companies including Caper, Supersmart and Veeve.

If you want to learn more about the future of frictionless checkout at retail, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual summit on May 18th. We’ll have speakers from Zippin, Nomitri and many more, so get your ticket today!

Misfits Market Raises $200M Series C, Will Expand into Proteins

Misfits Market, an online marketplace that sells imperfect foods at a discount, announced today that it has raised a $200 million Series C round of funding. According to a press release shared with The Spoon, the round was co-led by Accel and D1 Capital, with participation by existing investors including Valor Equity Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Sound Ventures, and Third Kind Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Misfits to $301.5 million.

Misfits Market started out selling subscriptions to boxes of “ugly” produce back in 2018. This allowed customers to buy misshapen but perfectly edible fruits and vegetables at a discount while rescuing food from going to waste. Since then, Misfits has expanded to offer a wide range of other imperfect pantry and packaged items that might otherwise be discarded. These include products with misprinted labels and products that are shipped to the wrong location.

The global pandemic actually created a number of new opportunities for Misftits Market last year. With stadiums, schools, restaurants and more shut down, existing supply chains needed to re-direct their products to new customers. For example, with movie theaters closed, there was a glut of corn for popcorn that Misfits could purchase and sell at a discount to its customers.

Additionally, Misfits has benefited from the pandemic-induced boom in online grocery shopping as customers limited their trips to physical stores. Abhi Ramesh, Founder & CEO of Misfits Market told me by phone last week that his company grew 5x in scale last year.

With its new funding, Ramesh is hitting the gas to accelerate Misfits’ growth. The company opened a new 250,000 sq. ft. headquarters in New Jersey and was able to double its order capacity. And while Misfits is predominantly available in the Eastern U.S. right now, it will be expanding to the West Coast with a new facility in Utah. One in the Pacific Northwest will follow after that.

Misfits is also expanding its grocery categories with the addition of protein. Most customers might blanche at the thought of “imperfect meat,” but Ramesh explained to me that there is a lot of excess in the protein supply chain as well. With something like salmon, for instance, there are often 3 oz portions leftover from trimming fillets. Misfits can bundle those leftovers and sell them at a discount.

Misfits Market’s funding is also coming during a time of big investment in grocery related startups that are aiming to upend our traditional notions of food retail. A number of smaller, delivery-only grocery stores like Fridge no More and Gorillas are popping up around the world, making groceries something more akin to a utility. Online grocer Weee! is leading the way by focusing on selling Asian and Hispanic foods. And retail infrastructure startups like Shelf Engine and Trax are developing tech to re-invent how store inventory is managed.

Most relevant to Misfits, however, is its main rival, Imperfect Foods, which has also expanded from ugly produce to become more of a full online grocer that taps into existing supply chain deficiencies. Imperfect raised a $110 million Series D round in February, which means we can probably expect a marketing blitz from both companies this year.

The question over both Misfits and Imperfect at this point however is what happens post-pandemic? Will people still want to order groceries online when they can just go to their local store? Ramesh said he isn’t too concerned about that. “Yes, there will be some sort of reversion to the mean,” Ramesh told me. But because his company is offering discounts and value on products people already buy, his customers will continue to shop with Misfits.

OneThird Raises €1.5M for Its Food-Waste-Fighting Tech

Netherlands-based food tech company OneThird announced today it has raised €1.5 million ($1.8 million USD) for its shelf-life-prediction technology that helps growers, retailers, and distributors cut down on food waste. SHIFT Invest and Oost NL participated in the round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The new funds will partly go towards further developing OneThird’s tech, which it calls a “fresh produce quality prediction platform.” The platform consists of a handheld scanner, near-infrared sensors, artificial intelligence, and data analytics used in combination to “look inside” the produce and determine its remaining shelf life.

“Our unique prediction technology allows quality inspectors throughout the food supply chain to get immediate feedback about shelf life and other quality parameters of fresh produce and take better decisions,” Marco Snikkers, founder of OneThird, said in today’s press release. 

OneThird says that its technology can work in multiple stages of the supply chain. Growers, for example, can use the platform to determine where they should ship different batches of produce. Distributors can use it to make routing decisions, while retailers can train their staff to assess the freshness of produce in the store.

The point of all this, of course, is to cut down on food waste. As underscored by the OneThird company name, a third of all the world’s food goes to waste each year, with $408 billion spent in the U.S. alone to grow, process, transport, and store food that is never consumed. The waste has a number of consequences, from environmental degradation to people going hungry to lost money for retailers, distributors, and growers.

OneThird joins a growing list of companies bringing a variety of food-waste-fighting solutions to market, from Hazel’s packaging inserts to food redistribution companies like Too Good to Go to Apeel’s edible coating.

OneThird will also use its new funds to expand retail pilots of its platform and build out its technical team by acquiring AI specialist firm Impact Analytics.

Singapore: Eat Just and foodpanda Partner for Cultured Meat Home Delivery

Alternative protein company Eat Just and delivery service foodpanda announced a partnership yesterday that will see the two companies offer the world’s first home delivery of cell-cultured meat.

The program kicks off on April 22 in Singapore, where Eat Just made the world’s first sale of cultured meat in December 2020 at restaurant 1880. For the new program, customers will be able to order dishes from 1880 featuring Eat Just’s GOOD Meat cultured chicken for home delivery via foodpanda.

Yesterday’s announcement is noteworthy because it marks the first time consumers will be able to eat cell-based meat from the comfort of their own homes. Up to now, cultured meat has only been available to consumers via exclusive taste-testings like those at Supermeat’s kitchen lab in Israel, where customers offer feedback on dishes instead of payment. 1880 remains the only restaurant in the world right now to have made an actual sale of cultured meat.

Wider acceptance of cultured meat are coming, though. Cultured protein is being heralded as a way to fight climate disaster, since it requires fewer resources (land, water) than traditional animal agriculture. And startups around the globe have received massive amounts of funding of late, including Eat Just, who recently raised $200 million. Other cultured meat startups raising funds include Future Meat, Mosa Meat and CellMEAT.

Before more sales (and deliveries) can happen, though, cultured meat needs to get regulatory approval from more governments, and ideally needs to reach price parity with animal based protein.

For those in Singapore inside 1880’s delivery radius, GOOD Meat dishes available include Chicken & Rice with coconut rice, pak choi, sweet chili, chrysanthemums, microgreens; Katsu Chicken Curry with jasmine rice, heritage carrots, micro shiso, edible flowers; Chicken Caesar Salad with kale, romaine, edible flowers, shaved radish, plant-based Caesar dressing.

GOOD Meat and foodpanda said they plan to collaborate with other restaurants in Singapore, too. Starting in mid-May, GOOD Meat selections from JW Marriott Singapore South Beach will be available.

Plant-Based Meat Maker Hungry Planet Raises $25M

St. Louis, Missouri-based Hungry Planet announced today it has closed an oversubscribed $25 million Series A round of funding. Post Holdings led the round, with participation from Singaporean investment group TRIREC, and “other leading plant-forward investors,” according to a press release.

Aided by these new funds, Hungry Planet says it will expand its line of plant-based meats across retail and foodservice, domestically and in international markets. The company’s current product line includes chicken, pork, beef, lamb, turkey, crab, chorizo, breakfast sausage, and Italian sausage alternatives.  

Hungry Planet says its products are now in thousands of venues across the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand restaurants, retail, and foodservice outlets. A broader retail launch is currently happening across the USA and Singapore, with more markets planned for the future.

Hungry Planet’s fundraise comes on the heels of the Good Food Institute (GFI) and the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA)’s recent announcement that retail sales of plant-based foods in the U.S. reached $7 billion in 2020. Additionally, an earlier report from March found $2.1 billion had been invested in plant-based foods in 2020.

The $25 million raised by Hungry Planet is just the latest in a number of recent fundraises by plant-based meat-makers, including Israeli startup Redefine Meat’s $29 million Series A round, Gathered Foods’ $26.3 million, and AtLast’s $40 million from last week.

One thing that may help Hungry Planet compete with all this competition is its partnership with Post Holdings. The deal, first announced in January 2021, gives Hungry Planet access to Post’s Foodservice and Retail units, through which the company can expand its own distribution.

Additionally, Hungry Planet CEO and co-founder Todd Boyman said in today’s press release that the Series A round will allow the company “to expand further and faster.” Boyman founded the company in 2014 with his sister Jody Boyman. With the new funding, Hungry Planet has raised a total of $25.5 million to date.

Egypt: Grocery Delivery Service Appetito Raises $450K Seed Round

Cairo-based grocery delivery service Appetito has raised a $450,000 Seed round of funding, reports Business Africa Online. Ahmed Al Alola and a group of Saudi Angel investors led the round along with Afropreneurs Fund, with participation from Jeda Capital.

Formed in March of 2020, Appetito originally started out with a chain of delivery-only (or “dark”) grocery stores that offered next-day and pre-scheduled grocery delivery service. The company recently pivoted to a more on-demand model, offering delivery of 1,000 SKUs in 60 minutes or less to certain parts of Cairo.

Appetito’s funding is the first we’ve covered for an Africa-based grocery startup this year, but it is certainly part of a larger trend we’ve been following. Grocery-related startups (grocery delivery in particular) are hot with investors all over the world right now.

In Europe, Gorillas, Getir, and Glovo have each raised nine-digit funding rounds for their particular fast grocery delivery services. In the U.S. goPuff raised $1.5 billion to scale out its chain of dark convenience stores. And in China, grocery app Xingsheng Youxuan raised $2 billion and Nice Tuan raised $750 million

A big reason for the boost in grocery app funding is the global pandemic, which pushed a record number of people into grocery e-commerce. With various lockdowns enforced in different parts of the world throughout 2020, people limited trips outside their homes. Grocery apps and delivery services became a way to help cut down on human-to-human interaction when getting food.

As vaccinations continue to roll out in different countries, We will have to wait and see if consumers keep up with the online grocery or return once again to stores in-person. One thing is for sure, post-pandemic, there will be a lot more grocery delivery options for people than ever before.

For its part, Appetito said it will use its new funding to expand across Egypt and beyond.

Pizza: an Opportunity for Restaurant Tech Innovation

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get the latest food tech news in your inbox, and for content only available in the newsletter.

Recently, a restaurant technology company called Slice announced a $40 million fundraise, suggesting there’s a huge opportunity when it comes to making software specifically geared towards the independent pizzeria. 

Slice’s platform, developed by founders with a long history in the pizza space, includes online ordering capabilities, a pizza rewards program, a POS system, the option to build a branded website, and the option to offer delivery, among other things. From the consumer-facing view, Slice is a marketplace of local pizzerias (e.g., not Papa John’s) from which to order and build up reward points that eventually result in free food. Slice is currently up and running in businesses across all 50 U.S. states and serves over 15,000 shops. The potential market it could serve — that is, independent pizzerias — numbers in the tens of thousands at this point in the U.S.

Why, you ask, would an independent pizzeria need a pizza-specific platform to do business?

It’s all in that word “independent.”

As Slice’s Chief Product Officer, Preethy Vaidyanatha, explained to me recently, if you want to run a pizza business (or any restaurant, really), you basically have two options: open a Domino’s (or Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s) franchise or start your own business. The latter choice allows for more culinary creativity and freedom, but comes with the added stressors of running a type of business that’s low-margin even when there’s not a pandemic shutting down restaurants left and right. 

On top of that — and this is what Slice’s technology really aims to address — technology’s march on the restaurant business is unavoidable at this point for pretty much everyone. Digital ordering is a must for businesses large and small now. And after a year of shutdowns and ever-changing restrictions on restaurants, costs have to be reeled in, and digitizing the back of house (bookkeeping, inventory management, etc.) is one way to do that.

Add to this some elements very specific to pizzerias. The menu may be simple (pizza), but it has to accommodate requests like half-and-half toppings, extra cheese, and crust types. Some businesses sell both whole pies and individual slices. Digitally speaking, these choices need to be available with just a couple clicks on a phone or computer. Meanwhile, many pizzerias still handle their own delivery, which as to be accounted for when it comes to managing operations. 

Slice handles the technical logistics of all of those situations, and there is arguably plenty of room for other restaurant tech companies to also develop tools for these things.

If you’re Domino’s, you can just throw money at the problem and open an innovation center to tackle these issues. I can promise you that your average family-owned pizza shop does not have its own innovation center. Nonetheless, it and any other independent pizzeria needs the ability to also offer the kinds of digital conveniences consumers get from the big companies, and that’s where restaurant tech companies like Slice could prove hugely valuable. 

For its part, Slice’s tech offers independent shops the same digitization, process automation, and online ordering/payment tools you would get with Domino’s or a third-party delivery service, but at a far lower cost. The company did not divulge actual numbers, but did mention that restaurants pay a flat fee per transaction to use the platform, rather than the percentage-per-transaction model used by DoorDash et al.

Pizza has always been in its own class when it comes to delivery, from the food itself to the way it handles off-premises formats like delivery. Getting its own tech stack made for pizzerias by pizzerias seems like the natural next step in the segments evolution.

 

Starbucks has teamed up with Arizona State University to open a research and innovation facility that will test initiatives that support more sustainability in Starbucks stores. The facility is called the ASU-Starbucks Center for the Future of the People and the Planet, and will open at the end of 2021. 

Toast has made updates to its Order & Pay tool, including pre-authorization that lets customers start a tab, authorize a credit card, and enable group ordering, all from their own mobile device.

Atlanta-based pay-at-the-table startup sunday recently launched its QR code solution, following a $24 million fundraise. The Atlanta, Georgia-based company wants, like many others, to make it easier for guests to get and pay their bill in the restaurant.

Self-Driving Delivery Speeds Up

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Subscribe today to get the best food tech news delivered directly to your inbox!

My 10-year old son likes to outline for me the types of mischief he and his friends will get into once they start driving. Because he is 10, it usually amounts to driving over to the Jiffy Mart to load up on gummy worms.

I, of course, play along, but in my head I’ve often thought will you even need a driver’s license in six years? I mean, won’t he just get into a self-driving car? Or, more specifically for our Spoon-y purposes, won’t a self-driving delivery car just bring a trove of gummy worms to our house?

I realize that high-tech scenario is a.) more than little indulgent for a pack of gummy worms, and b.) is probably on a timeline that is a little too aggressive. Six years (when he turns sixteen) is not that far off, and there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome. But, this week saw some developments that show that the self-driving delivery sector is accelerating.

Let’s start with the pizza, because everyone loves pizza. Domino’s announced this week that it has partnered with Nuro for autonomous pizza delivery in a Houston Texas neighborhood. Nuro’s self-driving R2 is a low-speed pod-like vehicle that only holds cargo and doesn’t even have room for a driver. Customers ordering from the participating Domino’s opt to get their pizza via R2, and when it arrives, they use a special pin to unlock the pod’s door and get their pizza.

Domino’s isn’t the only QSR chain taking a shine to Nuro. Last month Chipotle revealed that it had invested in the Nuro as part of the startup’s Series C round.

It’s easy to understand why Nuro is attracting big brands to its little delivery pod. Nuro has been doing the work when it comes to working with regulatory bodies. Both the federal government and the State of California gave Nuro greenlights to operate on public roads last year. On the technology side, the company showed last year that its R2 had been operating fully autonomously (no chase cars) in three different states for months.

Not to be left out, retail giant Walmart announced that it had invested in self-driving startup Cruise. The two companies had already been working together on autonomous grocery deliveries since November, so Walmart must like what it’s seen so far.

In addition to cash though, Walmart also provides Cruise with a scaling infrastructure. Walmart has more than 5,000 locations across the U.S. with millions of customers. That’s a huge pool of potential autonomous deliveries. Walmart is already working with Gatik for self-driving deliveries along the middle mile. Extending that autonomy out to the last mile wouldn’t be easy (home deliveries are more complex than doing the same middle mile route back and forth), but it appears to be definitely on the company’s roadmap.

And if all that weren’t enough self-driving news, on Monday Udelv announced a whole new line of Transporter delivery vehicles this week. The Transporter features a more pod-like shape (no room for humans) and will use Mobileye’s self-driving technology. The company plans to produce more than 35,000 Transporters by 2028, and has already received its first pre-order of 1,000 units.

Of course, even though there is all this exciting activity in the self-driving delivery vehicle space, there are still technological and state-by-state regulatory hoops to jump through. We will actually be discussing these types of issues at our upcoming ArticulATE food automation virtual summit on May 18. We have guest speakers from Gatik, Pix, Designated Driver and more who will tell us firsthand what the challenges and opportunities are for self-driving vehicles. Get your ticket today and enjoy it from the comfort of your home office. You can even snack on gummy worms during the show if you like (delivery not included).

Image via Les Nouvelles Fermes.

More Headlines

Les Nouvelles Fermes Raises €2M to Expand Its Aquaponics Farms – Fish and plants living in harmony in an enclosed system, growing food together.

Survey: Online Grocery Sales Back up to $9.3B in March, Pickup Remains Dominant – Curbside pickup is still the favorite among customers.

Element Farms Plans a New High-Tech Greenhouse Customized for Growing Spinach – This will be the company’s second farm, and will be a 2.5-acre facility designed specifically to grow baby spinach.

Atlast Food Co. Secures $40M Series A Round to Expand Whole Cut Plant-Based Meat Analogues – The company’s use of mycelium allows them to create a wide variety of meat alternatives like filet mignon, chicken breast, and even fish.

Ocado Invests £10M in Oxbotica to Develop Self-Driving Vehicles

UK-based grocer Ocado announced today that it has invested £10 million (~$13.8M USD) in autonomous vehicle (and fellow UK) company Oxbotica. The investment is part of an broader, multi-year deal to develop self-driving hardware and software.

For Ocado, autonomous vehicle tech could have a number of uses, from self-driving warehouse vehicles to delivery vans to smaller autonomous robots.

That Ocado bought Oxbotica to bring autonomy further up and down its tech stack makes a lot of sense. The grocer already makes autonomous smart warehouses filled with robots zipping along grids assembling items for grocery orders. It’s natural to extend that autonomy throughout its warehouses and into delivery vehicles. It’s easy to envision robots picking and packing grocery orders, which are then handed off to warehouse robot that places it in a self-driving delivery van that drives off to a customer’s house.

Ocado has also shown that it’s not shy about spending money on autonomous systems. Last year purchased Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics to enhance its robotics capabilities. And prior to that it led the $9 million Seed round in cafeteria robot company Karakuri.

Ocado’s investment in Oxbotica actually caps off what has been a big week for autonomous vehicles. Udelv announced its new self-driving Transporter platform. Domino’s tapped Nuro to make autonomous pizza deliveries in Houston, Texas. And Walmart announced it had invested in self-driving startup, Cruise.

It’s also been a big news week for Ocado. The company’s technology powers Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Centers, the first of which opened up in Monroe, Ohio this week. For its part, Kroger has dabbled in self-driving delivery before through a partnership with Nuro.

If you want to learn more about robotics in grocery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit happening on May 18. There will be a number of autonomous vehicle companies as well as Karakuri speaking!

Chipotle Diverting More Than Half Its Waste, Says Latest Company Sustainability Report

Chipotle has diverted 51 percent of its waste, the company said in its 2020 Sustainability Report released this week. The QSR chain said it was able to do much of this through recycling, composting, and waste-to-energy programs.

This is the third annual sustainability report from Chipotle, and it tracks the company’s progress on sustainability goals over time. For example, diverting 2,071,583 cubic yards of waste — or over half of all its waste — was a company goal laid out in the 2018 Sustainability Report. 

Waste-diverting efforts have so far included transforming used plastic gloves into trash bags, and the Avocado Dye Line, which involves dying clothing with the pits of avocados. Caitlin Leibert, Head of Sustainability for Chipotle, noted in a statement that keeping that much waste out of the landfills was “an extraordinary achievement” for a company of that size. Chipotle currently operates more than 2,500 locations.

The 2020 Sustainability report aligns with the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metric, which ties some executive compensation to annual targets around diversity and sustainability. Chipotle breaks these objectives into three categories: food and animals, people, and the environment.

Across those three categories, some results from the 2021 sustainability report include:

  • Purchasing over 31 million pounds of local produce – an investment of more than $23.3 million into local food systems
  • Donated more than $5 million to local community organizations through 26,000 fundraisers in its restaurants
  • Offered industry-leading, debt-free degrees in business for employees and recently expanded the program to include Culinary, Hospitality and Agriculture majors
  • Setting up and maintaining a composting program at 25 percent of its locations 
  • Reducing 62,582 kWh of energy, which the company says is the emissions equivalent of 10,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year or 5,300 homes powered for one year
  • Launching Real Foodprint, a digital tool that calculates the environmental impact of Chipotle ingredients
  • Upcycling 60,000 avocados for the Dye Line

In a forward to the report, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said “more work can always be done,” and along those lines, the report outlines future goals for the company. Among those are, converting more than 400 acres of conventional farmland to organic farmland, developing a Minority Supplier Development program, reducing overall waste by 5 percent by 2025, and piloting at least one initiative in 2021 that reduces plastic.

Chipotle is one of those chains that, thanks to a focus on digital prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, has not just pulled through but thrived during the last year. The brand is big enough at this point that its sustainability practices can help influence the entire restaurant industry,

Les Nouvelles Fermes Raises €2M to Expand Its Aquaponics Farms

Bordeaux, France-based indoor farming company Les Nouvelles Fermes announced today it has raised €2 million (~$2.4 million USD) to build what it’s calling the largest aquaponic farm in Europe. EU Startups was first to write about the news. The round included participation from IRDI, the Banque des Territoires, Crédit Agricole Aquitaine and the CIC. This is Les Nouvelles Fermes first round of funding.

The new farm, dubbed “Odette,” will launch at the end of 2021 in the Bordeaux Metropolitan area. Like Les Nouvelles Fermes’ current farm, also in Bordeaux, Odette will use a closed-circuit aquaponics system to grow both vegetables and fish. 

Aquaponics combines raising fish in tanks with growing produce via hydroponics. Nutrient-rich discharge from the fish is fed to the plants, which then can clean the water that goes back to the fish, creating an entirely closed-loop system. 

“Pauline,” Les Nouvelles Fermes’ current farm, grows a mixture of leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables, in addition to raising rainbow trout. The forthcoming Odette will do the same. EU Startups noted that the company’s object in opening a new farm is to “to validate an operating model and then reproduce it in the immediate vicinity of the major urban centres in France and Europe, with the possibility to restore abandoned land, while creating agricultural occupations.”

Closed-loop systems like Pauline and Odette aren’t yet widespread in the indoor farming community yet. However, given the many sustainability issues around both fishing and farming, that may change as technologies get cheaper and a little more standardized. Upward Farms, based in Brooklyn, New York, is another company producing fish and leafy greens via a closed-loop system.

Along those lines, Les Nousvelles Fermes plans to duplicate its model and technology on a much larger scale in future. The company has already signed a partnership with the company Orange to further develop its technological solution.