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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Delivery & Commerce

Javits Center Opens Up Cashierless Cafe Powered by Amazon Tech

There’s a new cashierless checkout cafe opening at the Javits Center convention center in New York this weekend, and it’s going to be powered by Amazon’s Just Walk out technology.

According to press materials sent to The Spoon, the new Fresh and Fast cafe lets users swipe their credit card to gain entry, upon which they can grab the pre-packaged items they want and leave. There’s no need to checkout and the bill is automatically charged to their card.

More important than the actual opening of the cashierless store is the fact that Amazon is powering it. Amazon kicked off the whole cashierless store movement with the launch of its Amazon Go stores back in 2018. Since then, a number of startups such as Grabango, Trigo, Zippin and AiFi have sprung up to offer their own cashierless checkout services. This year in particular has seen a lot of activity in the cashierless checkout space with funding pouring in from investors and new cashierless stores opening.

But as all these companies duke it out with each other to win contracts to retrofit retailers’ stores, the looming threat in the background is Amazon licensing out its own cashierless solution. The opening of Fresh and Fast at Javits follows Hudson News opening up an Amazon-powered cashierless store at the Dallas Love Field Airport in March of this year. Much like IBM was to the business PC back in the 80s, could Amazon do the same with its cashierless checkout tech today? Will “you don’t get fired for buying IBM,” become “you don’t get fired for licensing Amazon’s cashierless checkout?”

The analogy is a little different because with its massive online business, Amazon takes revenue away from brick-and-mortar retailers. So real world store brands may not want to give Amazon more money by licensing its technology. But at the same time, Amazon’s technology has proven itself in public longer than its competitors. The sheer size and staying power of Amazon could actually be an incentive for retailers to pick Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology over younger startups. Retailers know Amazon’s technology works and that the company isn’t going to disappear overnight.

For those in NYC that want to check out Fresh and Fast, it’s located on the north concourse of the Javits Center.

DoorDash Users Can Now Add C-Store Items to Their Restaurant Orders

DoorDash this week launched a new feature, DoubleDash, that lets users bundle items from different businesses like convenience stores together into a single transaction. DoorDash customers can add c-store items to their original restaurant order and checkout with a single transaction and no extra delivery fees, according to a company blog post.

DoubleDash is currently available for 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Wawa, QuickChek, and The Ice Cream Shop. It is also available for orders placed at DoorDash’s DashMart convenience store operation.

Customers placing a restaurant order can look for the DoubleDash option to add items from these stores. Available stores are indicated on the app inside the DoorDash app. Theoretically, orders from these different stores and restaurants are supposed to arrive at the same time, though a line at the bottom of today’s blog post notes that “deliveries may arrive separately.”

In certain cities, DoorDash is also offering DoubleDash for local restaurants. In these markets, users can add “complimentary items” from other restaurants to their existing order. 

All of this is further evidence that DoorDash is very serious about becoming a go-to service for more than just restaurant food. Besides launching DashMart last year, the San Francisco-based company has also launched a grocery delivery service and has existing deals in place with some c-stores. As of this week, DoorDash is also said to be in talks to invest in Germany-based service Gorillas, which offers speedy grocery delivery from small “dark stores” located in dense residential areas.

At the end of last month, DoorDash also opened a new location of its ghost kitchen facility. For now, that operation only delivers restaurant food.

JOKR and Too Good To Go Team Up to Help Eliminate Food Waste with Mystery Boxes

When it comes to fighting food waste, every little bit helps. So while the new partnership between speedy delivery grocery service JOKR and food rescue app Too Good To Go may only impact a small geographic area, it will perhaps inspire others to make a big impact.

JOKR, which launched in New York City this past May, operates a network of small, dark grocery stores that promise to deliver your food in just 15 minutes. The Too Good To Go app is an online marketplace that connects consumers with surplus food from restaurants, bakeries, cafes and grocery stores to prevent it from being thrown out.

Together, the two companies have teamed up to create “surprise JOKR bags.” These mystery bags feature food, groceries and pantry items that were about to go to waste at JOKR’s store hubs. According to press materials sent to The Spoon, the JOKR bags have a retail value of $15 but will sell for just $5. Surprise JOKR bags are available through the Too Good To Go app, and can be picked up (not delivered) at participating JOKR hubs. Since the partnership went live on July 14, JOKR and Too Good To Go have already saved more than 100 bags of food.

Though the partnership is limited right now, it’s another example of how speedy grocery delivery services are looking to differentiate themselves from one another. New York City in particular is getting packed with speedy grocery delivery as JOKR, Gorillas, Fridge No More, 1520 and soon Buyk all operate there.

If 15-minute grocery delivery becomes a commodity, these services will need to figure out a way to stand apart without just engaging in a race to the lowest prices (the overall economics of speedy delivery still need to be borne out). Some speedy grocers like Food Rocket and 1520 are adding ready-to-eat meals and ghost kitchens to their services in order to stand out. JOKR being able to tout food waste reduction with a little bit of fun (surprise!) and a cheap price could help hook its service with potential customers.

Right now the JOKR and Too Good Too Go surprise bags are only available in Williamsburg and Long Island City in New York, with plans to expand to other NYC locations soon.

Q&A: Tools for the Data-Driven Restaurant, According to Sevenrooms Founder Allison Page

The restaurant industry faces a lot of question marks right now, but one certainty is that future dining room and off-premises experiences will generate and include a lot more data.

Founder and Chief Product Office Allison Page created Sevenrooms on the idea that restaurants need to be able to better understand their customers through this data. In doing so, businesses can ultimately provide a better, more efficient and enjoyable restaurant experience for everyone. The company’s front-of-house-focused software gives restaurants insights about these customers by providing data collected throughout the guest journey: from reservations and waitlists to online ordering and review aggregation, to name just a few areas.

Allison will be discussing data with other panelists at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, a day-log virtual event that will discuss the state, present and future, of restaurant tech. As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from her around the future of the data-driven restaurant. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the show here.

1. What problem does SevenRooms solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

When we started SevenRooms, our goal was to provide hospitality operators with better access to their guest data. Before SevenRooms, if you asked an operator who their biggest spenders, best tippers or brand advocates were, they would have no idea. Ten years later, access to actionable data has changed the way operators think about data (hint: it’s no longer a dirty word) and the role it plays in their day-to-day operations. 

Since the onset of the pandemic, our solution has provided even greater benefits for operators, especially in light of staff shortages across the world. We give them a platform that helps them punch above their weight class and do more with less. Over the past 18 months, we have continued to help them automate so many of the manual processes that enabled them to add headcount, without having to hire more staff. This includes guest profiles that build themselves, marketing automation to leverage that data, and, subsequently, the insight needed to provide personalized, unmatched experiences whether a guest is on- or off-premise. 

Now, as the world and restaurant industry reopens, operators realize the importance of owning their direct channels instead of solely relying on third-party platforms. With a fully integrated guest experience and retention platform like SevenRooms, they now have the tools they need to acquire, engage and retain more guests. 

2. What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic? 

At the start of the pandemic, we saw many restaurants rush to tech as a solution to many of the challenges they had to face. This led to quick, not always great, decisions, and many lessons learned over the past 18 months. The biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that operators now understand the importance of a direct relationship with their customers. 

Before COVID, restaurants were leveraging third-parties for reservations and online ordering. But when the pandemic started, restaurants began to understand the impact of outsourcing all of their customer relationships to third-party brands. For many restaurants, this meant that when they were mandated to close they didn’t have access to guest data that would allow them to email their customers and let them know they were now available for takeout only. Many months and negative press articles later, it’s been proven that the economics of a third-party-only strategy are not sustainable. 

The past year has also highlighted the importance of working with technology providers who seamlessly integrate across a restaurant’s existing tech stack. This helps create operational efficiencies, versus slowing them down and creating extra work. With restaurants more short-staffed than ever before, it no longer makes sense to use 10 different systems to do 10 different things in your restaurant. Operators want one system, one vendor, one support team and one invoice. They don’t have the bandwidth to have inefficiencies in their tech stack, especially when they’re putting out fires, navigating government regulations and keeping guests and staff safe.  

3. In your eyes, how has the emphasis on takeout and delivery formats impacted the front of house? 

Speaking from the SevenRooms perspective, we saw an opportunity to combine the data collected during takeout and delivery with in-person dining data to get a holistic 360-degree view of the customer. This has created an incredibly powerful data set for restaurant operators to provide exceptional experiences to their guests across both on- and off-premise. 

The shift to off-premise dining during the pandemic meant that operators could no longer have the face-to-face hospitality interactions they were accustomed to. This meant that they had to completely adjust their operations to provide that same level of service and hospitality via delivery and takeout instead. For some of our restaurant partners, many who had never offered takeout, this meant reimagining their operations, physical spaces and menus for delivery and pickup. 

The biggest impact to the front of house has been being able to capture and leverage more data on their customers. For the first time, operators now have a single source of truth on their guests — across both on- and off-premise. This includes who their regular or big spender online ordering customers are, whether they have any specific preferences and allergies and so much more. Data enables operators to not only personalize the experience for guests when they order delivery, but also understand the types of experiences they want when they dine in person. Most importantly, this data can be used to ‘surprise and delight’ guests and to create personalized marketing campaigns that will boost revenue and retention. 

For example, take an NYC diner that only orders from their neighborhood Italian restaurant for delivery, even though they live on the same block as the restaurant. With access to this data, the restaurant knows the customer’s address and can create specific, personalized promotions for that guest. Perhaps a Wine Wednesday experience featuring the wine they order the most, a complimentary appetizer or special treat in their bag, or a handwritten note from the general manager inviting them into the restaurant to try a new pasta dish. Data helps operators build long-lasting relationships with guests that keep them coming back for years to come. 

4. What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

Right now, the biggest challenge for restaurants when it comes to digitization is working with vendors who are on their side. In other words, working with technology vendors who are aligned with their success and 100% focused on building solutions that help them run their businesses more effectively. When business priorities are misaligned, what’s best for the restaurant falls to the wayside. Restaurant operators need to learn to ask the hard questions of their tech vendors to ensure they have their best interests in mind. 

Another challenge falls in the realm of the platforms and integrations restaurants choose to use within their tech stacks. Oftentimes, restaurants are using systems that don’t speak to each other – making it almost impossible to put together a seamless experience for guests, let alone a consistent one. The key to a good digital guest experience is in a seamlessly integrated tech stack.

5. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

When thinking about SevenRooms, I’m most excited about how we can help restaurants stay in business longer and generate more revenue. Also, how operators can use restaurant technology to impact the way someone feels and the experiences they have both in a dining room and at home.  

I’m also incredibly excited about all of the different ways data is starting to be used throughout the industry. It now touches so many areas of hospitality businesses — helping operators to be more efficient in everything they do, from inventory and menu planning, to employee scheduling and marketing, to reservations and online ordering. At SevenRooms, we are continuing to talk about the importance of data, especially from a 360-degree perspective, and how it can contribute to a restaurant’s bottom line for years to come. Today, it’s so much easier to really understand the ROI of every tech platform because the data is available and becoming more actionable and easier to digest for operators. It’s wonderful to see technology leading the charge when it comes to innovation in these areas. 

6. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years? 

Data-enabled with a human touch. Over the next five years, we’re going to see more data-powered experiences, more personalization and deeper relationships between restaurants and customers than ever before. 

On-premise operators have no choice but to think about data and the role it plays in bringing hyper-personalized experiences to the table. This largely stems from the fact that guest expectations are higher than ever coming out of the pandemic. Over the course of the past year, consumers have learned how to make gourmet meals at home, the ins and outs of baking the perfect sourdough bread, even turning to meal kits for date nights. They have more options available to them than ever before. When they dine out, they want the experience and hospitality that comes with the food, not just the food itself. If they aren’t getting the experience they need or want, there’s another option waiting right next door. 

We’re at the early innings of a data revolution for the hospitality industry. Over the next five years, hospitality experiences are only going to become more personalized and tailored to the wants and needs of guests – to the levels we see on an everyday basis from the likes of Amazon and Spotify today. The restaurant industry has been through a lot over the past year, but it’s one of the most inspiring industries to work in and be a part of every day and I’m excited to see what the next five years hold. 

Plant Jammer Expands Its Food Waste Tech to Aldi, RIMI Baltic

Aldi Süd and RIMI Baltic are among the first large food companies to implement Plant Jammer’s new food-waste-fighting widget on their websites, according to a press release from Plant Jammer sent to The Spoon. Consumers can use the widget to track and manage food waste in their own homes.

Plant Jammer is best known at this point for its AI-powered cooking assistant that helps users create recipes from the existing inventory in their fridges and pantries. The idea is to provide consumers with more ways to use all of their at-home food inventory, so less waste goes down the drain or into the landfill.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Plant Jammer nabbed a €4 million (~$4.7 million USD) investment last year. At the time, Plant Jammer said it planned to expand by licensing its API to third parties who could then build customized experiences for their own customers.  

The Empty Your Fridge widget is an offshoot of that goal. Companies can implement the technology with a single line of code. From the end-user perspective, a person simply selects the ingredients they have at home in the fridge and receive a customized recipe from the system in return. Users can also input preferences and dietary concerns, factors that will also impact what recipe gets generated by the system. 

Worldwide, food waste at consumer-facing levels, including the home, is a multibillion-dollar problem that’s also a big contributor to global emissions. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 aims in part to halve global food waste at retail and consumer levels. Reaching that goal will be the work of governments, nonprofits, consumers, and startups building out new processes and technologies.

Helping consumers learn more about how to use their existing inventories will be a big part of this. Speaking in a statement today, Plant Jammer CEO Michael Haase noted that a “lack of cooking flexibility” in many consumers is a direct contributor to at-home food waste.

Plant Jammer says it aims to launch the widget on 100 food company websites by the end of 2021 and on 5,000 by 2023. Longer term, the company hopes to educate 1 billion people on cooking and food waste.

Q&A: Euromonitor’s Michael Schaefer Talks Restaurant Tech

Those with an eye on restaurant tech may remember that this time a year ago, Euromonitor predicted that the ghost kitchen market would be worth $1 trillion by 2030. 

That’s an enormous number to pin on what was then still quite a nascent sector. But Michael Schaefer, the Euromonitor analyst who made that prediction, wasn’t just talking about ghost kitchens for restaurants. He was talking about ghost kitchens that house ready-made meals and pantry/fridge staples, deliver groceries, and service other parts of the food sector in addition to restaurants. Turns out, he was right. Those lines between grocery, restaurant, ghost kitchen, and convenient store are fading as we speak, as much recent Spoon coverage can attest.

Michael is the Head of Beverages and Foodservice Research at Euromonitor International, tracking consumer trends, product innovations, and market evolution across the F&B industries. Needless to say, he’s hyper tuned into the state of the restaurant industry in 2021. Along with food tech investor Brita Rosenheim, he’ll help open The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, a day-log virtual event that will discuss the state, present and future, of restaurant tech. 

As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from Michael about where the industry is headed. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the show here.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic? 

Michael Schaefer: There’s certainly a greater willingness to experiment in the restaurant industry. Some technologies, which were adopted out of necessity — such as QR codes for ordering — offer long-term benefits without compromising the guest experience. This will drive further experiments, particularly with technologies that can offer labor savings. 

What do you think the restaurant industry’s biggest challenge is right now? 

Labor is without question the restaurant industry’s biggest challenge in the short term. Restaurant work is difficult, demanding, sometimes dangerous and often pays minimum wage. The pandemic exacerbated these issues while extended unemployment insurance has given workers time to consider their options. This shifting cost-benefit analysis will create ongoing staffing issues. More restaurants will need to consider investing in technology that creates labor savings and makes the average worker’s job less strenuous. 

What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

Integration is the biggest challenge for restaurants when it comes to digitization, particularly among independent outlets. There are more options than ever in terms of systems and approaches to technology. This creates challenges in terms of finding the right solution and ensuring that disparate software and equipment setups can work together in a high-stress restaurant environment. 

What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology? 

I am most excited to start seeing a range of new models that will reshape what traditional restaurants look like. A restaurant starting from scratch in 2022 will likely take a very different approach to staffing, tech, integration with third-party delivery and loyalty, among other strategies, than a ten-year-old business might. 

What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years? In the next five years, restaurants will become less synonymous with prepared food. Prepared meals will remain the primary business for restaurants, of course, and dining in restaurants will not be going away. However, the range of operators, concepts and venues for obtaining prepared meals and solving for daily meal occasions will continue to expand. Rather than a strict separation of restaurants and prepared meals on one end and grocers and packaged food and drinks on the other, we’ll see more of a spectrum, with a range of different approaches to prepared food and drinks, generally ordered via an app and often fulfilled by third-party delivery.

Kroger and Kitchen United Partner to Bring Ghost Kitchens to Grocery Stores

Kitchen United (KU) will expand its ghost kitchen network to include Kroger locations thanks to a just-announced partnership between KU and the grocery retailer. KU kitchens will be located at various Kroger locations, the first of these being at a Ralphs in Los Angeles slated to open this fall. 

Participating Kroger stores will house a KU location that includes “up to six local, regional or national” restaurant brands, according to today’s press release. Customers can order meals from these restaurants via the KU mobile app or onsite at a self-service kiosk. They will have the option to bundle items from different restaurant concepts together into a single order, a concept that KU’s Chief Business Officer Atul Sood recently said was technically complex but extremely important to the future of online ordering.  

While customers can choose to have their meal delivered (via KU’s third-party delivery service partners), the bigger appeal here might be the pickup option. Since the kitchens will be located onsite at stores, Kroger customers can order food while they shop for groceries and simply pick their meal up at the end of their trip.

The partnership is another example of the lines between the restaurant ghost kitchen and the grocery store fading. A year ago, Euromonitor predicted such a shift would happen. In keeping with that, the last several months have seen companies like GoPuff, Ghost Kitchens, and Food Rocket launch initiatives that sit squarely between the grocery and the ghost kitchen.

Moving towards this gray area is intentional on the part of KU. “We are proud to have launched a number of successful ghost kitchen centers across the country, and now we are applying our experience and taking steps to expand in non-traditional ghost kitchen formats such as retail shopping centers and food halls like our newest kitchen center location in Chicago alongside our efforts with Kroger,” Sood noted in a statement. 

He added that KU’s tech stack is an important part of this setup and can optimize “any kitchen setting for streamlined and profitable off-premise business.”

More KU-Kroger locations are planned for the coming months. In the meantime, those interested in learning more about ghost kitchens and the ghost kitchen tech stack can tune into The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. The virtual event will feature KU’s CTO Jessi Moss along with many other restaurants, tech companies, and thought leaders in the restaurant space. Grab a ticket here.

Hosted Kitchens Raises €1.25M Seed Round for its Ghost Kitchen Network

Hosted Kitchens, an Ireland-based network of ghost kitchens, announced today that it has raised a €1.25 million (~$1.48M USD) Seed round of funding. In a message sent to The Spoon, Hosted Kitchens CEO Sean Murray said the round was funded by Irish private investors.

As its name suggests, Hosted Kitchens builds out multi-kitchen properties and software for other restaurants to rent to fulfill online orders. The company places its facilities in high-volume locations. Its software can process orders from multiple third-party delivery services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo.

Hosted Kitchens’ fundraise comes as the ghost kitchen space has been evolving over the past year as what a ghost kitchen is and where it’s located continues to change. For instance, third-party delivery service DoorDash expanded its own ghost kitchen program in California last week. We’re also seeing the new wave of speedy grocery delivery services like Gopuff and Food Rocket launch their own ghost kitchen programs, blurring the line between food retail and restaurant. We’ve also seen QSRs get into the ghost kitchen game with Burger King launching its own ghost kitchen in the UK. And ghost kitchens are starting to pop-up in new settings, such as C3’s move to bring ghost kitchens into residential buildings.

For it’s part, Hosted Kitchens says it will use its new funding to continue rolling out to new locations in Ireland and expand into the U.K. The company will also continue to hire out, growing its team from 4 to 20 over the next year.

Lunchbox Acquires Online Restaurant Marketplace Spread

Online ordering platform Lunchbox announced today it has acquired Spread, an online marketplace that aims to offer both restaurants and customers an alternative to Grubhub, DoorDash, and other major third-party delivery services.

Lunchbox’s online ordering software will power the transactions, while Spread will handle the deliveries. Pickup options will also be available for customers.

NYC-based delivery marketplace Spread was created to connect customers and restaurants without charging the former hefty commission fees, as third-party delivery services like Grubhub do. Restaurants that use the Spread platform can send promo codes and weekly specials directly to customers, who are then directed back to the restaurant’s own website to order. Spread charges a flat fee to restaurants (usually $1 or $2), rather than the typical percentage third-party delivery marketplaces use. 

Until recently, that percentage could reach as high as 30 percent per transaction, a figure that gutted restaurants’ already dwindling margins in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic shut dining rooms down. Many cities in the U.S. have since introduced caps on commission fees (some permanently), though the numbers still hover around 15 to 20 percent. 

Since the technical logistics of delivery are expensive and complicated, most restaurants can’t afford to to manage their own operation and more or less have to use Grubhub et. al. to reach customers. This is the cycle Spread and Lunchbox are hoping to break with their newfound partnership. 

The acquisition will also widen Lunchbox’s potential customer base to include independent, single-location establishments and mom-and-pop restaurants. (The company’s platform currently services multi-unit chains.)

The acquisition comes at time when more companies are emerging claiming to be an alternative to the major third-party delivery services. Companies like Ritual, Fare, and Inhousedelivery.com make claims similar to Lunchbox/Spread about reducing restaurants’ reliance on those services.

At the same time, third-party delivery services are offering their own alternatives to high fee caps. Grubhub debuted a “commission-free” option earlier this year, and DoorDash launched a tiered pricing structure for such fees. While these services come with their fair share of fine print, they’re nonetheless evidence that third-party delivery isn’t going to take the competition lying down.

Corona Vending Machine Only Dispenses a Drink if You Properly Order in Spanish

When it comes to automated alcohol vending, we’ve covered different ways machines could verify a person’s age, but we’ve never written about a machine that checks your Spanish pronunciation to unlock service. That’s exactly what a promotional vending machine from Corona does, asking users to properly ask for a Hard Seltzer Lemonada en español, before a can is dispensed.

Corona announced the pop-up vending machine on the Las Vegas strip last week (hat tip to AdAge). According to the press announcement, the machine asked consumers to order their drink in Spanish by saying “Dame una Corona Hard Seltzer Limonada, por favor.” The machine listens to the pronunciation and if correct (the company didn’t specify what technology is being used to determine proper pronunciation), it dispenses a sample can of the drink. If the pronunciation is incorrect, users are given a one-month subscription to the language learning app Duolingo.

This caught our eye here at The Spoon because we love smart vending machines and are curious whenever one is doing something a little different. Whether or not the idea of using free alcohol to encourage proper pronunciation of another language is a good idea is a subject for a different blog post. But the idea of a machine listening to a customer talk and dispensing drinks based on pronunciation is intriguing, to say the least.

Over the course of this year, we’ve covered a bunch of beer-pouring robots whose main job is to pump out pint after pint after pint for large crowds. But could voice recognition be used to slow down drink service? I’m not an engineer, but there is probably a way for a smart vending machine to recognize slurred words or other indications of overservice and deny drink dispensing. That would obviously require a lot of work and validation, but as we see more unattended vending machines pop up, they will need an assortment of tools to make sure they are service drinks responsibly.

Estonia: Ride Hailing Startup Bolt Raises €600M to Get Into Grocer Delivery

Bolt, an Uber-like rideshare company based in Estonia, has raised €600 million (~$713M USD) to branch out into grocery delivery, CNBC reported today. New investors in the round include Sequoia and fund managers Tekne and Ghisallo, along with existing investors G Squared, D1 Capital and Naya. With its new funding, Bolt is now valued at roughly $4.75 billion.

Just like Uber, Bolt saw its ride hailing business decimated by the pandemic last year. Bolt told CNBC that while its ride hailing business has recovered, the company has seen dramatic growth in its grocery delivery business. The company operates 15-minute grocery delivery and has plans to roll the service out to 10 more European countries including Sweden, Portugal and Croatia over the next few months.

But as it does expand its grocery delivery footprint, Bolt will be facing a fiercely competitive, well-funded landscape. Europe in particular has been a hot spot for grocery delivery this past year, with a number of startups bulking up their warchests with hundreds of millions in new funding. Spanish startup Glovo has raised $1.2 billion, Turkey-based Getir has raised $1 billion, Czech-based Rohlik has raised $402 million, and Germany-based Flink has raised $304 million.

The big question now looming for all these services is whether they can economically scale, a matter complicated by the fact that services such as 15-minute grocery delivery are fast becoming a commodity. If there are half a dozen speedy grocery delivery services in a city, customers will likely gravitate towards the cheapest option. This race to the bottom is driving some speedy grocery delivery services here in the U.S. to diversify more into ghost kitchens and private label ready-to-eat meals.

It’s also worth noting that here in the U.S., Uber is investing more heavily in the grocery delivery space. The company recently acquired the remaining 47 percent of grocery delivery startup Cornershop, and partnered with Albertsons to offer grocery delivery in 400 U.S. cities.

Report: S2G Ventures Talks Alt-Protein, the Digitization of Grocery, and Other Areas of Food the Pandemic is Reshaping

“We continue to see the pandemic act as a catalyzing agent to accelerate trends that were in motion before it began. We believe that food and agriculture has undergone significant structural changes that will alter the course of the industry.” 

So says a new report from S2G Ventures, a VC firm based in Chicago, Illinois. The report, titled “The Ingredients for a Food System Revolution,” analyzes eight pandemics and outbreaks throughout history to pinpoint patterns around financial and economic recovery, innovation, and behavioral changes and norms. The analysis gives a clue as to how the current COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping norms, particularly when it comes to how we produce, get, and eat our food.

As an investment firm, S2G focuses mainly on the food and agriculture sectors, and counts AppHarvest, Shenandoah Growers, and Trace Genomics among its portfolio companies. It follows, then, that the new report is largely focused on how pandemics, epidemics, and outbreaks in the past have changed our food system and how the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to do that at this very moment. “More decentralization [is] going to occur, more convergence of food and health, more decommodification as well,” Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer, tells The Spoon.

As the report notes, “While there are many factors influencing the future of our food system, the study of past pandemic economic history is starkly consistent – an innovation cycle begins, and old habits and norms do shift.” 

A couple especially compelling areas where this is happening include alternative protein and online grocery.

As traditional meat-processing facilities face challenges and the unit economics for some types of alt-protein go down, we’re seeing more of the latter make its way into the mainstream. Krishnan explains we are moving more and more towards an “all of the above” view of protein. “I think there’s going to be animal protein, plant protein, and cell protein,” he says. Production of animal protein, in particular, will see “natural momentum around more niche, regional, decommoditized” products. Plant-based proteins, meanwhile, will see an increased focus on nutrition and affordability, while more countries will follow Singapore’s lead when it comes to cultivated meat. China is another important place to watch in this area, according to Krishnan.

S2G’s report also honed in on channel digitization, and specifically on the grocery sector. The report notes that a forced transition to online grocery during the pandemic “exponentially increased penetration from 24% to 49% between 2019 and 2020. Seniors became the fastest-growing segment of online shoppers on Instacart in 2020. In future, consumers will take “a hybrid approach” to groceries, and retailers will start to slightly differentiate what they sell online versus in the brick-and-mortar store.

The report also calls out controlled environment agriculture, a convergence of food and health, and food and agriculture digitization as other key areas to watch in terms of how the pandemic is reshaping the food system.  

“We can build a more resilient and hopeful food system that both addresses planet health and human health coming out of this,” says Krishnan. “Let’s use the pain and the agony and the anxiety that occurred as a call to action.