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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Business of Food

The 5 Questions Big Green Egg’s New CEO Asked 86 Employees When He Took The Job

How does an outsider step into leading a company that has only had two previous CEOs over its half-century existence?

For Dan Gertsacov, who became CEO of Big Green Egg last summer—the barbecue company renowned for its devoted following and signature green ceramic kamado-style grills—the answer is straightforward: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

Gertsacov adopted this mantra from author Stephen Covey, spending his initial months speaking extensively with people across the company, asking them the same five questions to gain deep insights about the business and shape its future direction.

“I interviewed eighty-six individuals and asked every one of those people the same five questions over a four-month period,” Gertsacov explained.

He borrowed these questions from his former Harvard business professor, Michael D. Watkins, who published them in his influential book, “The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter.” Those questions are:

  1. “What is the company’s biggest challenge?”
  2. “Why is that the biggest challenge?”
  3. “What are the untapped opportunities for our company?”
  4. “How would you approach those opportunities?”
  5. “If we were to switch places—if you were in my shoes—what would you focus on?”

After conducting his extensive interviews, Gertsacov distilled his findings into a concise one-pager, summarizing key insights and charting the strategic direction under his leadership. His primary message emphasized growth, cultivating a mission-driven team, and continual innovation.

This innovation intrigued me, especially since Gertsacov previously built his career at tech giants like Google and assisted global brands like McDonald’s with digital transformation. Now, he leads a company distinctly known for its traditional, low-tech ceramic grills—products that, apart from their iconic green color, would fit comfortably into culinary history a century or more ago.

Yet, according to Gertsacov, innovation at Big Green Egg must respect and leverage its greatest strength: the passionate and loyal community of users that has driven the company’s success for decades.

“Big Green Egg has grown through word of mouth and the community,” said Gertsacov. “Preserve the core and stimulate progress.”

So, what does meaningful innovation look like for a company whose products have remained relatively unchanged since founder Ed Fisher began selling them in the early ’70s to supplement his pachinko import business? Gertsacov believes innovation lies in solving practical consumer problems—specifically, making food preparation easier—without unnecessary complications like digital connectivity.

“Rather than adding digital connectivity for its own sake, [we’re] focused on customer experience enhancements—such as enabling the grills to reach cooking temperatures more quickly—without compromising the integrity of the grilling experience,” he explained.

Improving how quickly the grills heat up directly benefits users by fitting the Big Green Egg seamlessly into more everyday cooking occasions. Gertsacov believes that simplifying the user experience will sustain and amplify the powerful word-of-mouth marketing that has always propelled Big Green Egg’s growth.

“We need to make it less intimidating and lower the barriers so it feels more accessible,” Gertsacov said. “We need to make the tent of Big Green Egg bigger to fit more folks, all while preserving the core beliefs of the community already inside.”

You can listen to our full conversation below or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

CookUnity Acquires Cookin to Accelerate Growth As it Nears $500 Million in Annual Revenue

CookUnity has acquired Cookin, an online chef culinary commerce platform based in Toronto, the two companies announced this week. CookUnity, a New York City-based platform that delivers chef-created meals to consumers, will integrate Cookin’s 1,500 creators—ranging from home cooks to restaurant chefs—operating across 40 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces into their network of chef creators to power the company’s delivery service.

The deal will also bring Cookin’s SaaS technology to CookUnity’s chefs, providing a turnkey storefront that enables home cooks and chefs to create “Drops”—essentially short-term pop-ups without a big capital investment—as well as sell à la carte meals.

According to Cookin CEO Morley Ivers, the seeds for the deal were planted last summer when he met CookUnity founder and CEO Mateo Marietti.

“We immediately recognized the powerful synergy between our visions and the vast potential of combining our strengths,” wrote Ivers in a post on LinkedIn. “Together, we represent an unparalleled ecosystem that will make the food industry better, forever.”

While Cookin launched with a focus on smaller culinary creators, such as home cooks making meals out of their home kitchens (in this way, it was similar to the now-defunct Josephine or the Cook Alliance, a non-profit that launched last year to act as a marketplace for home cooks to sell meals), CookUnity focuses on chefs looking to launch an online business from their commercial kitchens. CookUnity’s expertise in logistics, ingredient sourcing, packaging, and delivery will bring additional services to the home chef community currently operating on Cookin’s platform.

On the ingredient side, the newly combined entity is launching the Ingredients Club, which will provide home chefs with access to wholesale food supplies. According to Ivers, CookUnity is responsible for spending around $100 million annually on ingredients for its chefs.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ivers says all 52 Cookin shareholders approved the agreement, giving them equity in CookUnity. According to CookUnity, prior to the deal, they were approaching half a billion dollars in annual revenue and growing at 80% year over year.

Meet The Reimagining Restaurants Podcast, and Check Out The First Episode With Wow Bao’s Geoff Alexander

Here at The Spoon, we’ve covered hundreds of restaurant operators over the past half-decade, in part because we love restaurants and restaurant tech, but mostly because restaurant operators are some of the most creative and hard-working entrepreneurs in the food business.

The truth is they have to be. There’s no business changing faster than the world of food service, with the advent of ghost kitchens, digital ordering, automation, and AI, all against a backdrop of high food costs, changing consumer tastes, employee turnover, and more.

All of which is why we’ve decided to start a new podcast focused on entrepreneurs who are finding new ways to run a restaurant in today’s modern world. We wanted to hear their journey into restaurants, hear how they are rethinking how to do business in today’s world, and where they see the restaurant business going in the future.

For our first episode, we knew no one better to discuss approaching the restaurant business in new and innovative ways than Geoff Alexander. The CEO of Wow Bao got his start in hospitality with a college job as a bartender, where he discovered his talent for connecting with people, and he hasn’t looked back.

He joined Lettuce Entertain You shortly after graduation and rose through the ranks over the next three decades, gaining operational expertise and eventually overseeing his own division. In 2009, he took the reins at Wow Bao, where he embraced technology as a way to turn the business around and innovate on new business models. He introduced self-ordering kiosks, mobile ordering, and partnered with third-party delivery platforms early on, which laid the foundation for Wow Bao’s unique model that spans over 500 locations with a mix of virtual kitchens and centralized food production.

Alexander shares insights on Wow Bao’s approach and how a lack of capital fostered a culture of creativity and efficiency. This approach led to successful innovations like centralized production and distribution, which he says has kept cost low while ensuring quality. Alexander also discusses scaling with hot-food vending machines and dipping the company’s toe into the metaverse.

It was a fun episode, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts!

The Thimus T-Box Will Measure Brain Waves to Tell You if Someone is Lying About That New Casserole

So you think you’re a good cook, do ya?

Let me let you in on a little secret: If you’re basing that impression on what people told you about that new casserole recipe or side dish you brought to the potluck, there’s a good chance folks are just being polite.

Sure, not always. Many Spoon readers can no doubt make their way around a kitchen. But the reality is that not everything we cook is a winner, and often times, folks are trying not to hurt your feelings.

But what if we could actually read their brainwaves to determine how they feel about food? With a new system by a company called Thimus, we can now measure brain activity as people try out food to determine how they respond to it.

The new system, called the T-Box, monitors brain activity with a headset decked out with four frontal electrodes. It collects data from the brain’s electrical activity, which the company calls ‘implicit data,’ and then analyzes it alongside survey response data (which they call ‘explicit data’) to determine how a subject feels about a certain food product. They claim they understand how each sense contributes to the final customer perception of a specific food.

Thimus believes that measuring a person’s brainwave activity alongside their responses to survey responses will give a more accurate understanding of how a person really feels about food. The reason for this is it’s often hard for humans to put into words how they feel about a specific food and to articulate whether they like it or not.

Interestingly, the company also claims that its proprietary system can inform and interpret neurological data with a qualitative understanding of the participants’ cultural heritage.

“Our methodology connects the dots of sensory, neurophysiological, and cultural data. Because it is true that our brains all function alike, but they all live experiences in unique ways.”

The Thimus T-Box is being rolled out in partnership with flavor company Kalsec, which will offer it to commercial customers for testing and at a new facility called House of Humans at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, one of the world’s leading food and ag research universities.

So, for now, If you were hoping to strap one of these contraptions on your dinner guests to see how they really feel about your cooking, you’ll have to wait until Thimus releases a home version (or somehow coax your test subjects to take a trip to the Netherlands).

You can watch a video of Thimus using neurosensing technology (pre-T-Box) to gauge subjects’ reactions to alternative proteins below to get an idea of how this technology works.

Thimus & KM ZERO on Alternative proteins - #thimustested

Cookware Darling Great Jones Gets Scooped Up by Meyer. Is the DTC Home Goods Wave Over?

This week, Fast Company broke the story that Great Jones, a popular DTC cookware maker for the millennial set, had been acquired by cookware giant Meyer. In Meyer, Great Jones joins a portfolio of brands that includes Farberware, Anolon, Hestan (including the tech-powered products under Hestan Cue), Circulon, and Rachael Ray. According to Fast Company, Great Jones’s six employees will join Meyer, and cofounder and CEO Sierra Tishgart will become Meyer’s executive creative director.

Meyer is an interesting destination for Great Jones, a startup that experienced rocketship growth early on through viral social marketing through Instagram for products such as its “The Dutchess” Dutch oven. From there, the company rode a bit of a roller coaster through the pandemic, some internal strife, and ultimately ran into an icy fundraising environment as investors cooled on DTC startups in recent years.

The DTC cool-off struck across all consumer goods categories as it became clear, particularly after pandemic restrictions lifted, that growth would ultimately be limited unless brands established some brick-and-mortar channel strategy. DTC OG Warby Parker realized this fairly early, opening its first retail storefronts over a decade ago, which management has admitted have been so successful they have plans to open 900 of them.

But glasses aren’t cookware – you don’t need to try a pan on to see how it looks, after all – so why would the company need to show up on retail storefronts? Part of the reason is rising digital marketing costs, which have increased by 20% since 2021, and growing costs of direct shipping goods to consumers.

But perhaps the biggest reason is customer conversion in-store is often much higher than online, particularly as more and more brands have popped up across the cookware category in recent years. While Great Jones had already entered retail in places like Nordstrom, Meyer’s access to a vast array of brick-and-mortar retailers will no doubt accelerate the brand’s growth as it gets significantly more exposure to customers who primarily buy things through retail.

Still, even as one of the early success stories for DTC home goods gets scooped by a legacy home goods brand like Meyer, other DTC cookware startups like Caraway and Misen continue on. But word that Misen had a significant layoff last year shows that the high-flying DTC cookware brands of the past decade may continue to struggle unless they combine forces with a big, established retail-oriented brand or invest in building their own retail channels.

With the acquisition of Great Jones, Meyer – an admittedly staid brand outside of its venture into connected cooking with Hestan Cue – hopes to inject the DNA of an online native brand across the company, signaled by making Great Jones’ Tishgart the company’s new executive creative director. Smart move because, in the future, the companies that succeed will likely be those that have strength at retail and can also navigate social media and online channels.

2023 Restaurant Tech EcoSystem: Nourishing the Bottom Line

In collaboration between TechTable and Vita Vera Ventures, we are pleased to share an updated 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem map.

We all saw that the pandemic brought a wave of experimentation in the restaurant tech space, but we also know that tech-driven change is not always linear. 

In early 2022, we made bold predictions about the restaurant tech environment in 2023, as we anticipated numerous acquihires ahead (acquisitions primarily driven by tech talent vs strategic tech value). This was due to the tight tech labor market (at the time) and the increasingly challenging funding and interest rate conditions. 

However, with the recent wave of macro tech layoffs, the tech labor market is no longer tight, and we believe more restaurant tech companies may be forced to shut down rather than finding a soft landing through acquisition. We’ve already seen a strong reset on requirements for capital efficiency and valuations of startups in the sector. This macro shift may create potential for rollup opportunities, but many early-stage assets across the sector are overfunded single-point solutions and still subscale.

This is ironic as the need for tech-driven solutions has never been stronger, but companies without the right growth metrics will likely struggle to survive. The inflationary environment is also forcing harder decisions for operators, which may further dampen their willingness to engage with new solutions.

With that in mind, we are pleased to share our 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem, which serves as a current heat map of the broader ecosystem within the US (and is clearly not exhaustive). 

Click here to enlarge/download image of map. Click here for downloadable PDF.

The Journey from Point Solutions to Comprehensive Tech Stacks

While single-point solutions for things like online ordering, loyalty programs, and delivery were popular during the pandemic, we have reached a moment now with perhaps too many point solutions in the market. 

Tech stacks that require too many logins are now in fact creating a cognitive burden for employees, rather than the intended promise of efficiency and ease of use. As a result, operators are beginning to seek integrated systems and smaller tech stacks that can do more. (See commentary in the previous section about rollup opportunities!) 

Restaurant tech advisor David Drinan succinctly identifies the near-term priority for most operators: “The restaurant industry is thirsty for technology innovation that will deliver high margin, incremental revenue.”

On the operational side, managers are still struggling with certain areas such as scheduling and inventory management. These tasks can be time-consuming, especially for independent restaurant owners who have limited resources. As a result, we have seen a growth category of solutions that can automate these functions and provide real-time data to help operators make informed decisions.

Help *Still* Wanted   

The labor shortage in the restaurant industry has been a major challenge for operators in recent years, and labor optimization is still at the top of every operator’s mind. The pandemic caused many workers to permanently leave the hospitality industry, leaving restaurants short-staffed. 

According to the National Restaurant Association, almost two-thirds of US restaurant operators say they do not have enough employees to support existing demand. Instead of replacing this lost workforce, many operators are turning to tech to automate more functions and reduce the need for human labor. 

From digital menus and ordering kiosks to automated kitchen equipment, there are many ways that technology can help restaurants operate more efficiently with fewer employees. By automating basic tasks such as taking orders and processing payments, operators can free up their staff to focus on more complex tasks that require human expertise, such as customer service and food preparation.

Another trend the restaurant industry is grappling with is the changing expectations of younger workers when it comes to the employer/employee relationship. With more emphasis on work-life balance, career development, and job satisfaction, younger workers are looking for more than just a paycheck. 

To meet these expectations, operators are looking for workforce management solutions that can help to improve engagement, development, and rewards for their employees. This includes tools for tracking and managing schedules, as well as innovative solutions for tip outs and other compensation mechanisms. By investing in these solutions, operators can not only attract and retain top talent but also improve the overall efficiency and productivity of their workforce.

Finally, it is worth noting that basic scheduling and labor management tools can have a significant impact on profitability by reducing labor costs and improving operational efficiency. By automating scheduling and timekeeping, for example, restaurants can reduce the likelihood of overstaffing or understaffing, which can be costly in terms of wasted labor or lost sales opportunities. 

In the end, the ability to leverage technology to optimize labor is critical for restaurants to remain competitive in a challenging operating environment. While kiosks and text ordering have shown promise in the QSR space, there are many other opportunities for technology to make a positive impact on the industry as a whole.

Ghost Kitchens: It’s Even More Complicated

In our 2021 restaurant tech retrospective, we had a lot to say about this growing subsector, including the challenges for success (a.k.a. profitability) within the confines of a ghost kitchen business model.  

Now, as the concept of virtual and ghost kitchens continues to evolve even further, it’s important for operators to understand the complexities involved and navigate these challenges to build successful ghost kitchen operations.

One major obstacle has been the potential for tension between virtual brands and existing businesses, where adding virtual brands can lead to direct competition with their own existing businesses. Finding the right tech and operational partner to balance between these two is key.

Additionally, ensuring food safety and maintaining quality standards across multiple brands can be a challenge. Many of the generic virtual brands have lacked distinct value or clear taste standards, leading to underwhelming food quality issues and removal from the major third-party delivery platforms.

Last Mile Magic

Making the economics work for restaurant delivery is a growing priority for the industry. This includes better interoperability between POS/Kitchen systems and delivery providers, better routing and batching systems, localized kitchens, and of course even the mode of transportation for delivery.

We are tracking over 20 companies in the North American unattended last mile category, but it is still early days with most (all?) of the solutions operating in limited geographies and customer trials. So we have left this slice off the infographic for 2023, but don’t forget to keep your eyes on the sky, as we’ve seen recent growth of backyard drone delivery companies which are proving to be faster and better for the environment (if they can outweigh the noise and regulatory concerns).

GenAI on the Menu

Tech entrepreneurs have long dreamed of personalized food recommendations, but few have succeeded in creating true personalization beyond dietary concerns, allergens, or ingredient likes/dislikes. 

However, we have now reached a unique moment where new technologies like ChatGPT will be able to create meaningful and personalized interactions with guests. This has always been the premise of a variety of AI-driven restaurant tech startups, but the ability to leverage the underlying data to engage and interact with guests in a truly personal and conversational manner is game-changing. 

By using data from previous orders and interactions alone, ChatGPT can help to create a more tailored experience for guests, from recommending menu items to offering personalized promotions. ChatGPT can become a critical part of a restaurant’s marketing team by creating content, with the ability to easily translate to different languages as well. This could give operators a crucial competitive advantage as consumers demand more personalized experiences. We have only begun to see the capabilities of ChatGPT with free templates being offered to restaurant operators already.

Moreover, conversational AI like ChatGPT can also be a valuable tool for restaurant operators seeking to understand their own operating metrics. By integrating ChatGPT into their tech stack, operators can ask natural language questions and receive real-time responses, empowering them to make informed decisions about their operations.

Emerging Restaurant Tech Concepts to Watch

  • Chat/AI across marketing and operations
  • Tech-enabled employee support and training (for example, personalized perks, tip-out options, or language choices) 
  • AI for scheduling to free up managers
  • Dynamic pricing
  • Reusable containers + tech-driven circular economy for foodservice 

Looking ahead –  As always, we welcome your thoughts and reactions, and look forward to continuing to follow this sector together in the coming years. Reach out to us: Brita@vitavc.com and hello@techtablesummit.com. 

Picnic CEO Departs Just Weeks After Pizza Robot Startup Has Significant Layoffs

Clayton Wood, the CEO of pizza robot maker Picnic, is departing the company, according to a post made by Wood on Linkedin.

Wood joined the company – originally named Otto Robotics and Vivid Robotics before it eventually settled on Picnic – in 2019 after it parted ways with its founding CEO, Garett Ochs. Since then, Wood has led Picnic through significant growth and a couple of funding rounds.

The Picnic CEO’s departure comes just weeks after Wood announced on Linkedin that the company was having its first layoffs. At the time, Wood said the company “had to make the difficult decision to reduce our company size and say goodbye to some colleagues” due to the “current economic environment.” Now Wood is saying goodbye to the company he led for over four years.

“After an amazing 4+ year ride, I’m stepping down as CEO at Picnic,” Wood wrote. “It’s been an exhilarating adventure, helping to build a new industry of restaurant automation, and I’m very proud of the work I was able to accomplish with the invaluable assistance of an amazing team of leaders and contributors.”

Wood said he does not know where he will end up next but plans to start looking for his next role after some time off. After laying off a big chunk of his team and facing the prospect of trying to raise more capital in the current VC winter, I can’t blame him for wanting to take a break.

So what does the future look like for Picnic and the broader food robotics space?

The near-term prospects for the company are tough, having to look for a new CEO and raise additional money. The company raised a $16.3 million Series A in 2021 and, according to a filing last year, was looking to raise an additional $7.75 million. Despite Wood’s success raising money previously, the company was undoubtedly having difficulty raising a significant Series B in the current funding climate. The company could now be a target for acquisition by a larger company such as Middleby, a food equipment conglomerate that has fueled much of its growth via acquisition. Middleby showed off its own pizza robot in 2020 but hasn’t talked much about it since.

As for the broader market implications, my guess is, unfortunately, we will continue to see some food robotics startups struggle over the next couple of years, given the slowdown in venture capital, particularly those looking to raise larger rounds for scaling. The pizza space is particularly competitive, and we’ve already seen some startups in the space go out of business.

We wish Clayton – who has been generous with his time for Spoon events and podcasts – good luck on his next adventure!

Eat Just Partners with Qatar Free Zones to Bring Cultured Meat Facility to the MENA Region

Eat Just announced today that it has partnered with Doha Venture Capital (DVC) and Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) to build a cultured meat facility in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region.

The new facility will be located in the Umm Alhoul Free Zone in Qatar, and will at first house Eat Just’s cultured meat division, GOOD Meat. Eventually, the facility will accommodate Eat Just’s plant-based egg brand JUST Egg as well. In addition to those brands, the facility will also conduct research and development, engineering, and business development.

According to the press announcement, the Qatar Free Zones Authority and Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health have indicated that they will grant regulatory approval for GOOD Meat’s cultured chicken “very soon” and have formally granted an expert license for the cell-based meat. If Qatar does come through with this approval, it would be the second region in the world to approve the sale of cultured meat, following Singapore’s decision to do so in December of last year.

Gaining regulatory approval in more countries around the world is obviously a key milestone that needs to be reached in order for cultured meat to gain any sort of traction. Cell-based meat startups around the world have raised a ton of money over the past year, and the technology is rapidly maturing. But all the funding and the best technology in the world doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t allowed to sell your product.

While there are skeptics that doubt cell-based meat will ever be able to economically scale, a number of startups have made moves that aim to bring it to market. After two drastic price reductions this year, the production price of Israel-based Future Meat’s cell-based chicken is now $4 for 110g (check out our recent podcast interview with Future Meat Founder and CSO Yaakov Nahmias for more). Here in the U.S. Memphis Meats re-branded to the more consumer-friendly UPSIDE Foods and announced a partnership with the Altier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco.

Eat Just has definitely pushed its way to the front of the cultured meat pack, however. It is the first company to ever commercially sell its cultured meat, and now it will have large-scale production facilities in both Singapore and Qatar.

PepsiCo Bringing SodaStream Professional and Unattended C-Stores to College Campuses

In July of last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, PepsiCo introduced the SodaStream Professional connected sparkling water system for offices. At the time we noted that the machine, which reduces the need for single-use platic bottles was a good idea, but its future seemed questionable given that offices were closed. Even now, more than a year later, it’s unclear when or how workers will return to the office, so like any good company, PepsiCo has adapted, and is now bringing its SodaStream Professional to college campuses.

PepsiCo has installed its SodaStream Professional at William and Mary College and College of the Holy Cross (it’s also installed a machine at Dana Hill High School in Dana Point, California), which dispense customizable carbonated water. Customers can choose from a number of flavors, adjust the fizziness of their drinks and even offer up enhancements like electrolytes and vitamin B.

There is an accompanying QR-coded bottle and mobile app that people can use to control the machine. Users download the app and scan the QR code with their phone. At the machine, they scan the bottle’s QR code which allows users to order via the app, contactlessly dispense the drink, and remember certain flavor/fizziness preferences for future drinks. For those without the QR-coded bottle, the machine works with other vessels, and can be controlled with the on-board touchscreen. Pricing for the drinks is dependent on the arrangement made by the university.

The move to colleges is a smart play by PepsiCo, given the unknown future of office work. Schools have re-opened (fingers crossed) and are once again alive with activity on campuses.

But PepsiCo isn’t stopping with the new beverage station. The company has also launched a branded convenience store at Kansas University that features cashierless technology. The new store is powered by New Stand, and is not as high tech as the computer vision + artificial intelligence-powered Amazon Go, so students can’t just grab what they want and walk out. But it does allow users to scan their items with the New Stand mobile app at checkout.

And if that weren’t enough, during a video chat this week, Greg Herman, Sr. Marketing Director, Beverage Innovation – Foodservice at PepsiCo told me that in addition to these programs, PepsiCo is also still running its robot delivery program that it launched back at the start of 2019. That program used small, rover bots from Robby to carry around snacks and beverages that students could order. Herman didn’t provide too many details on the program, but we haven’t heard much about it since launch, so it’s nice to see it’s still going.

Between these programs, cereal dispensing robot vending machines, and 3D printed plant-based meat, colleges are fast becoming hotbeds of food tech innovation.

As Cruise Buys Solar Energy, it’s a Good Reminder that Autonomy Requires Electricity

Self-driving vehicle company Cruise announced earlier this week that it is acquiring solar energy to power its fleet of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Cruise is doing so through Farm to Fleet, a program it created with BTR Energy to buy renewable energy credits (RECs) from agricultural farms that also house solar farms.

In a corporate blog post, Cruise said that starting earlier this spring it had been buying RECs from Sundale Vineyards and Moonlight, two farms in California’s Central Valley. Farm to Fleet doesn’t just provide cleaner energy to Cruise’s cars, but it also generates revenue for those farms in the program.

Cruise’s announcement is a good reminder that all of the autonomous vehicles we write about here at The Spoon — delivery trucks, sidewalk robots, drones — require power. On its face that may seem obvious, but the question of where and how autonomous vehicles are powered is an important one for robot startups, delivery services and local governments.

As Cruise notes, it operates its own electric vehicle charging stations, so the move to green power is one it can make entirely on its own. But what happens with smaller sidewalk robots or drones that are deployed to various businesses in dense urban areas? Space needs to be created for to vehicles re-charge, and that space can’t interfere with the natural flow of people on public sidewalks and streets. Once you have the space, then you need the actual electricity and enough of it. Robot and drone companies like to tout how their solutions are greener than having a two-ton car on the road bringing you a burrito. That is true, but that commitment to a cleaner world should ideally extend to greener power

This isn’t the most pressing issue for robot and drone companies, which have a lot more immediate concerns like regulations and economics of scale to deal with as they come to market. But thinking about basic infrastructure issues like electricity now, will help autonomous vehicle companies deploy more easily in the future.

Stop & Shop Now Accepting EBT Payments From SNAP Customers Shopping Online

The Stop & Shop grocery chain announced today that its customers on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can use their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card when placing orders online for pickup and delivery. The new program extends to all SNAP participants across Stop & Shop’s five state reach – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey as well as delivery customers in New Hampshire.

Customers shopping online will be able to filter searches for SNAP eligible products, and apply their benefits at checkout. However, EBT cards can only be used for SNAP-eligible grocery items, and not for things such as fees, taxes or driver tips.

Adding an EBT payment option is absolutely a good thing to do. Providing greater access to grocery delivery can help alleviate food deserts in certain areas. Instacart has launched EBT payment options with ALDI, Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Price Chopper/Market 32. And last year, Amazon expanded the availability of EBT payments for groceries as well.

The outstanding issue for all of these services, however, is the payment of fees. Stop & Shop, for instance, charges $2.95 for pickup and $9.95 delivery fee for orders less than $100 (orders greater than $100 carry a $6.95 delivery fee). To really help bridge inequality and bring more equity to food availability, it would be nice if big retailers and well-funded delivery services did more to offset the costs of delivery and pickup for customers.

Sweetgreen Acquires Robot Restaurant Spyce

Salad chain Sweetgreen announced today it is acquiring the robot restaurant Spyce. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, and terms were not disclosed.

Spyce was created by MIT alums and launched its first restaurant in the Spring of 2018, which grabbed headlines because of its use of robots to prepare each meal. The company partnered with chef Daniel Boulud to develop its menu and went on to raise nearly $25 million in funding. In November of last year Spyce re-launched itself, and introduced its new “Infinite Kitchen” robot, which allowed for more ingredient customization and could make 350 meals per hour. Spyce currently operates two locations in Massachusetts, one in Cambridge and one in Boston.

In the press announcement, Sweetgreen said Spyce’s automation technology will allow its workers to focus more on customers service, expand its menu into warm foods, and make meal preparation more consistent.

In June of this year, Sweetgreen confidentially filed to go public. CNBC today speculated that the acquisition of an automation company like Spyce could help Sweetgreen attract investors because the technology could help alleviate some of the labor shortage issues facing the restaurant industry at large.

Labor issues and the pandemic have accelerated interest in restaurant automation. In addition to robots being able to work around the clock without a break, robots don’t get sick and provide customers with a contactless food transaction. Sweetgreen’s acquisition comes less than a week after Creator, another robot-centered restaurant that has raised a fair amount of venture capital, re-opened its doors after being shut down by COVID last year. And just today, robot pizza maker, Piestro announced a partnership to deploy 3,600 units co-branded with pizza chain 800 Degrees over the next five years.

As the pandemic maintains a looming presence in our lives and automation technology matures, expect more announcements like this over the coming year.