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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Business of Food

Watch: Chef José Andrés Video Chats with Dr. Fauci About How to Re-Open Restaurants

What kinds of masks should staff wear? Should they use gloves or hand sanitizer? What should you do if a positive case of COVID-19 hits your business? These are just some of the questions that Chef José Andrés had for Dr. Anthony Fauci about safely re-opening restaurants during the pandemic.

Chef Andrés hosted a video chat with the epidemiologist today on Instagram and asked a bunch of straightforward, practical questions for the now-famous epidemiologist. It’s a good watch for any restaurant owner looking to open back up and even for restaurant goers to better educate themselves before heading back out to eat.

It also covers a lot of what we’ve been wondering about ourselves here at The Spoon as we begin the slow process of emerging from the pandemic.

Just Salad’s Latest Menu Innovation: Adding Your Carbon Footprint to Your Meal

One of our favorite topics here at The Spoon right now is the reinvention of the restaurant menu. Social distancing and new guidelines around restaurant reopenings are forcing businesses to forgo the standard reusable menu and adopt digital versions customers can view on mobile devices. It’s a big switch and not without its operational headaches. But it also opens up a lot of doors in terms of the kind of information that could eventually be available on the restaurant menu. 

For example, the carbon footprint of your lunch.

Fast-casual chain Just Salad announced today it will now label all of its menu items with a corresponding carbon footprint. The score for each menu item is calculated in partnership with a team at the NYU Stern School of Business, and will reflect “the total estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of ingredients in each menu item,” according to a press release from Just Salad.

These carbon footprints will first rollout on the chain’s website. Since digital menus are becoming the norm, it’s unclear if those changes will make it to physical menus, or indeed if those will even be in stores in the future. An exact date for the carbon footprint info on online menus has not yet been set.

Just Salad’s online menu is already fairly robust in terms of the nutritional information it provides customers about their meals. Hovering over an item pulls up the same nutrition facts one might read on the label of a box in the grocery store, and, for build-your-own salads and wraps, updates itself based on each ingredient you add to the mix. 

Since the carbon footprint scores for Just Salad’s menu items aren’t yet live, we don’t quite know what they’ll look like in digital format. I imagine they’ll be merged with the ingredients interface in some way so that a customer can view the nutritional and sustainability info of their meal in a single place. And while there was no mention of it in the press release, one imagines food traceability information could also eventually make its way into this new format. 

The carbon scores are a small step in menu development, but very telling in how this mandatory push to digital menus could welcome a new era of transparency when it comes to knowing where our food comes from and how our eating impacts the planet. In the ongoing quest for silver linings to come out of the current restaurant industry upheaval, this is definitely one of them.   

Allset’s Tech Gives New Meaning to the Concept of Quick Service in the Restaurant

Not so long ago, the idea of ordering your food before you got the restaurant then sitting down in the establishment’s dining room to eat it felt unnecessary. Why go to a restaurant dining room at all if you’re in that big of a hurry? Why not hit the quick-service chain down the road if you’re that badly in need of quick service?

Flash-forward to now, and being able to order ahead is becoming a must-have for restaurants, in or out of the dining room.

This is what Allset, a company based out of San Francisco, wants to address. In addition to currently offering a bundle of contactless features restaurants can use during this current restaurant industry upheaval, the company also allows customers to order food ahead of time for any type order, whether they’re eating in the dining room or taking it to go.

More than ever, restaurants are finding they need to offer high-tech order-ahead features for both in-house and off-premises meals, and that both speed and minimized human-to-human interactions are important parts of that process. Some companies — third-party delivery services and a slew of restaurant-tech products — offer these things for pickup and delivery orders, but they typically come at a high cost and don’t include any solution for the actual dining room.

Allset doesn’t have any significant competitors when it comes to offering a package that addresses every restaurant experience, which is probably a big reason demand for the service is up. Over the phone this week, CEO Stas Matviyenko said the company has been busier than ever as restaurants scramble for solutions to help them navigate the new normal. “[The pandemic has] changed the way people dine, the way people want to dine. The way restaurants have to serve people [has] changed dramatically.”

Allset, which was founded in 2015 by Matviyenko and Anna Polishchuk, started as a service for dine-in restaurant experiences. Users could choose a restaurant via the Allset app, order and pay for their meal ahead of time, and have their meals ready within about five minutes of their being seated at the restaurant. The company added a takeout component to the business in 2019, a fortuitous move considering the entire industry went off-premises a few months ago. 

As Matviyenko explained to me, Allset was actually working with a contactless pickup solution before the pandemic hit. Seeing inefficiencies in the usual pickup order process — flagging a staff person down to notify them of your arrival, waiting around for the order — the company started offering a way for restaurants to streamline that process. The “ideal” experience, he said, would be for a customer to order and pay for their meal, find their food in a designated pickup area, and be able to grab it and go without ever interacting with staff. Allset actually raised $8.25 million to further develop this concept at the end of March, just as dining rooms were shutting down.

But just because the industry is leaning heavily on off-premises nowadays doesn’t mean Allset is forgetting about the dining room. Matviyenko suggests that a technology like theirs is actually more important nowadays. Restaurants — which have always operated off thin margins — now have to contend with lower sales because of reduced capacity requirements in their newly reopened dining rooms. They will want to turn tables faster in order to get more transactions on a day-in, day-out basis, and one way to do that is to cut down the time a customer has to wait between sitting down and actually getting their food. As well, there are people who would just prefer to grab a quick bite for lunch without eating it from a takeout box, and this is an area Allset has always served. 

It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant menu format is also changing, thanks to reopening guidelines that suggest businesses use digital menus. Baking pre-order into that digital format seems just mere steps away, rather than the giant leap it would have been pre-pandemic.

Currently, Allset is waiving all commission fees for restaurants, and the app is free for customers to use. Matviyenko said since the COVID-19 crisis began, they’ve been getting much more interest from restaurants large and small. Moving forward, he says he expects to see the company grow much faster than before.

Impossible Launches Direct Consumer Sales So You Can Buy its Plant-Based Burgers in Bulk

As the company hinted at last week, Impossible Foods officially launched its first direct-to-consumer online store today. This means anyone in the lower 48 states can order packages of the plant-based burger for direct home delivery.

According to the press announcement, Impossible’s D2C site will sell the following packages:

  • Impossible Convenience Pack includes four 12-oz. packages for $49.99
  • Impossible Combo Pack includes two 12-oz. packages and ten quarter-pound patties for $59.99
  • Impossible Family Pack includes a single, 5-lb bulk package for $64.99
  • Impossible Grilling Pack includes 20 quarter-pound patties for $69.99

Shipping is free with a two-day delivery window. Impossible also says that its packaging is compostable and recyclable, though the company didn’t provide many specifics. Lots of food delivery companies make similar claims nowadays, though the extent to which their packaging is truly compostable and/or recyclable depends on the types of waste facilities available to each consumer.

The addition of a D2C channel is welcome news to flexitarians like myself, and would seem to mark an entirely new chapter for Impossible. When we first started writing about the company, its products were only available in select restaurants. Last year it started its methodical rollout at grocery retailers, and Impossible meat is now sold in more than 3,000 stores nationwide.

However, it’s still not available in stores up near my neck of woods outside Seattle, so this flexitarian is happy to be able to buy in bulk directly from Impossible. (I’ll just add it to the ways in which my life is migrating to mail order.)

Impossible’s D2C play also ups the ante in its rivalry with Beyond Meat, the other leading plant-based burger company. Beyond enjoyed a healthy lead with its retail footprint, but Impossible’s news today suggests it can now leapfrog the store altogether (and get all kinds of consumer data in the process).

As weird as it is to say, Impossible is launching this direct channel at quite possibly the perfect time. The COVID-19 pandemic drove people into buying food online (and kept them doing so for months). Plant-based meat sales have skyrocketed during the pandemic. And the pandemic has shone a bright light on the logistical and ethical issues surrounding the consumption of animal meat.

Will all this interest in online grocery shopping and plant-based meat outlast COVID-19? That remains to be seen, but at least now we can see how much of the country (at least the lower 48) shops directly from Impossible, now that it’s possible.

Mercato Partners Launches a $90M Fund for New Restaurant Concepts

Investment firm Mercato Partners announced today the launch of its inaugural food- and beverage-focused fund. Called Savory, the $90 million fund will invest in “compelling, up-and-coming restaurant concepts,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Specifically, the fund will focus on “emerging multi-unit concepts,” according to the announcement, and the Savory website says the fund is investing in restaurant operators with 2–20 units to help them with further growth.

That’s no small feat nowadays, with the restaurant industry still flailing from statewide dining room closures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with reopening guidelines in place and many businesses operating dining rooms again, no one is 100 percent sure how to proceed forward or, for that matter, keep growing. Even huge brands are shuttering locations, laying off staff, and filing bankruptcy. Smaller restaurant chains are even worse off.

Savory noted as much in today’s release, also adding that the unprecedented changes brought on by the pandemic will close many restaurants for good but also open up opportunities for “brands that are fresh, nimble, and well-funded to prosper in the food and beverage landscape for years to come.” No doubt all of these challenges are baked into the various strategies Savory will work on with its portfolio restaurants.

Three concepts so far are in that portfolio: Mo’Bettahs, R&R BBQ and Swig. Savory said in the release it can profitably grow concepts at a rate “exceeding 40% year-over-year” and that it has continued to do so even during the current crisis. 

The operations team behind the fund is made up of over 50 restaurant industry vets and have expertise in everything from real estate development to supply chain logistics, facilities management, and event management. Tech isn’t specifically mentioned, though the bulk of the operations team comes from the Four Foods Group, a restaurant operator whose past portfolio brands include Little Caesars. Little Caesars has been among the brands to leverage tech to enable more off-premises orders. Kneaders, also in the portfolio, has also doubled down on off-premises orders and the tech that goes along with that during the pandemic. 

The fund was created by Mercato Partners founder Greg Warnock partnered and restaurant industry veteran Andrew K. Smith, who also started Four Foods Group.

In Sweden, Plant-based Meat Is Getting a Bit Fishy

It’s no secret the alternative-protein market is skyrocketing in terms of both growth and new innovations. Already today we’ve written about Motif Foodworks’ efforts to make better fat for plant-based burgers and Japanese startup DAIZ’s recent $6 million funding round. 

And here’s another one to watch: a Swedish startup called Hooked, which is developing the “world’s first” plant-based shredded salmon. Food Navigator ran a profile of the company today, detailing how the company wants to address the unsustainable nature of the seafood industry and why they chose shredded salmon and tuna as their first plant-based products. 

Demand for seafood is growing — and harming the health of the planet at the same time, Hooked founders Emil Wasteson and Tom Johanson told Food Navigator. 

“By consuming Hooked’s products, consumers can enjoy seafood without any of these negative consequences. We are meeting the rapidly increased seafood demand with healthy and tasty alternatives with a production that can scale without harming the planet.”

Those products include plant-based shredded salmon and tuna, which are made from soya protein isolate and meant to be used in pastas, pizzas, wraps, and more.

‘We want to mimc the real nutritional value of [conventional seafood]. Most of the plant-based meat the you see on the market…may have good texture and taste, but the nutrition is not there,” said Peter Liu, Hooked’s CTO.

Hooked is focusing on European markets to start, though they may find a greater demand for their seafood products if the salmon and tuna do indeed deliver on taste, nutrition, texture, and price point.

If 2019 was the year alternative protein infiltrated the mainstream, 2020 is shaping up to be the year companies improve these products, both in terms of taste and variety.

DAIZ Raised $6M to Become ‘The Fourth Meat’

Japanese plant-based meat startup DAIZ raised a $6 million Series A round in the second half of May. According to a DAIZ press release, the round included participation from the Fisheries Growth Industrialization Support Organization fund and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The $6 million figure marks DAIZ’s total funding to date.

While the actual funding was announced a couple weeks ago, it’s worth noting because of DAIZ’s ambitions and how the company plans to take on big-name players in the plant-based space with its so-called “miracle chips,” which are raw plant-based meat components created using DAIZ’s patented Ochiai High Pressure Method technology.

According to the press release, this germination method brings out the umami flavor of soybeans and lessens the unpleasant aftertaste that are found in a lot of vegan meat offerings right now. The soybeans are then put in an extruder, where molding technologies recreate the texture of actual meat.

With the new funds, DAIZ says it will build out one of the largest factories for plant-based meat in Japan in 2021. They also plan to raise Series B funds at some point in 2020. Initially, the company will focus on selling to major food manufacturers as well as distribution companies, and eventually wants to expand globally. 

Notably, DAIZ is aiming to become what it calls “the fourth meat” alongside chicken, beef, and pork. In other words, they have no plans to replace the real thing. Rather it aims to have plant-based meat co-exist on the table with animal-based meat. Many plant-based meat companies have similar goals that target the “flexitarian,” which means when DAIZ finally does expand internationally, it will be competing with the likes of Impossible, Beyond, Néstle, and a growing number of others in the space. 

What’s Next for Vertical Farming? Proprietary Strawberries and Other Non-Leafy Produce

Agtech investment firm AgFunder announced this week that it has added agtech company SinGrow to its investment portfolio for an undisclosed sum. AgFunder founding partner Michael Dean wrote in a post that SinGrow “isn’t just looking to be another vertical farmer selling leafy greens.” Instead, the company uses a combination of plant biology, hydroponic vertical farming, and other technologies to grow what it hopes will be a range of produce types, starting with its own novel varieties of strawberries. 

As Dean lays out in his post, SinGrow has developed a vertical farming solution that addresses every stage of a plant’s agricultural journey, from breeding to harvesting. (Most vertical farm solutions do not address plant breeding.) It breeds strawberry varieties adapted to humid weather, and has two proprietary strawberry cultivators specifically developed for Singapore’s tropical climate. Both of those things mean SinGrow’s system uses less energy because it needs less air conditioning pumped in to cool the facility and reach the ideal growing temperature for the strawberries.

The company also grows the plants on a strawberry-specific rack it has developed, where the plants grow outward instead of upward. That in turn allows a harvesting robot to to drive alongside the rack and simply snip the strawberries off rather than pick them. 

Why strawberries? Well, first, they’ve been a hobby of SinGrow cofounder Bao Shengjie, who has been cross-breeding strawberry seeds since 2016. That particular fruit was of interest to the founders because it’s difficult to actually get in Singapore, at least at an affordable price point. SinGrow lists expense, poor taste, and an unstable supply chain as reasons strawberries are difficult for the average consumer to buy in that region.

The company has this neat explainer video that delves more into the specifics on how it grows its strawberries.

Singapore also relies on imports for about 90 percent of its foods, hence the Singaporean government’s 30x30 initiative launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Singapore should have 30 percent of its foods produced domestically by 2030. 

On that note, SinGrow hopes to soon move beyond strawberries to grow grapes, saffron, and other crops, according to Dean’s post.

A (very small) handful of companies are also exploring what else they can grow beyond the leafy green. UK-based Phytoponics is trialing a system for plants like cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. And a while back, San Francisco startup Plenty said it wanted to grow “exotic” produce on its farm Tigris. To date, though, the company’s website still offers only leafy green varieties.

If a company like SinGrow can show others how to use biology, technology, and farming to grow a greater assortment of produce items, it could change vertical farming’s role in our system from an add-on method to a primary source for getting certain fruits and vegetables. It’s early days yet, but the technology looks to be moving in that direction. 

Third-Party Delivery Suspends Services to Comply With Curfews

Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Nashville, Philly, Atlanta . . . the list of cities under curfew goes on, and if you live in one of those places and were counting on some food delivery for your supper, you’ll have to look elsewhere. DoorDash recently told The Verge it is “pausing” operations to comply with those local curfew orders. 

From The Verge:

DoorDash, which has seen an increase in orders as restaurants have been forced to suspend eat-in dining during the pandemic, told The Verge it is pausing operations to abide by curfews. Its spokesperson did not provide details about which cities were affected as of Monday.

Uber has also suspended service in some cities, which extends to its Eats food delivery business. An Uber spokesperson told Business Insider that customers should use the app to learn more about these suspensions, and that they should use Uber/Uber Eats “for emergency purposes only during this time.”

Postmates, which is the biggest service in Los Angeles, is also abiding by local curfews. Grubhub said it is “pausing operations when needed.”

Delivery companies aren’t being specific about which cities have suspended which services. Even in places where an order goes through, they are then cancelling orders. For ones that actually go through, some drivers are having trouble actually getting the food to customers:

How long these suspensions and changes to service last will, most likely depend on when the unrest subsides. To find out if food delivery is a realistic prospect in your city, best to check for updates directly in these services’ apps.

Beyond Meat Deal Expands its China Footprint with KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

Yum China Holdings announced a deal yesterday to bring Beyond Meat’s plant-based burgers to select KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell stores in mainland China for a limited time this month. The move expands Beyond’s presence in China, which has been a priority for the company.

As part of the deal, KFC and Pizza Hut will both offer the Beyond Burger, while the Taco Bell locations will offer a taco made with Beyond meat. All three restaurants are offering the plant-based alternatives for just a limited time.

The Yum deal follows a similar partnership Beyond announced in April, when Starbucks in China added three dishes made with Beyond’s meat product. Beyond has a particular focus on Asia and has a goal of producing its plant-based burgers in the region before the end of this year.

All of these QSR deals help Beyond establish a foothold in China before its rival, Impossible Foods has a chance to do the same. China is something of a holy grail for plant-based meat companies. As we explained last year:

  • China has the largest population in the world
  • China produces the most meat in the world
  • China consumes the most meat in the world, and its hunger for protein is growing

Additionally, pork is the most consumed meat in Asia, and earlier this year Impossible debuted its plant-based pork product at CES.

We can expect to see Beyond make more deals like the Yum one in the coming months. And for it’s part, Impossible has been ramping up production and its retail presence here in the U.S. over the past year, and seems to be prepping a direct to consumer sales channel.

Plant-based meal sales were already skyrocketing, and that trend isn’t likely to ease up as the COVID-19 pandemic has raised new questions about the health and safety of eating animal-based meat. The business of faux burgers is very much real.

Revention Rebrands as HungerRush, Launches Off-Premises Enhancements

Restaurant tech company Revention has rebranded as HungerRush and announced a new set of features aimed at helping restaurants fulfill off-premises orders. According to a tip sent to The Spoon, new products include contactless delivery capabilities, driver tracking, and integration with third-party delivery services.

HungerRush’s focus on digital ordering and off-premises orders isn’t completely new. As Revention, the restaurant management platform already included integration with some delivery companies, mobile and online ordering, and the ability to manage customer loyalty programs. 

The new features are mostly enhancements to existing products. HungerRush Drive lets restaurant operators track drivers as they deliver orders, which is becoming a more common practice nowadays. There is also messaging system for curbside pickup orders, where customers can notify the restaurant when they arrive, as well as the addition of more integrations with third-party delivery services, including Postmates, Grubhub, and “hundreds more,” according to today’s press release.

HungerRush is rebranding and releasing these features at at time when most restaurants continue to focus on improving their digital ordering as well as the process for takeout and delivery. The pandemic forced many restaurants into the off-premises world, and though dining rooms have reopened in a lot of states, they’ve done so with reduced capacity, not to mention customer base rather wary of going out to eat. It’s pretty much assumed at this point that restaurants must continue building to-go strategies to make up for lost revenue and keep the lights on.

Many a tech company promises to help in that area. Toast, Presto, CardFree, Sevenrooms, and a boatload of others have all announced new features or product enhancements that emphasize digital ordering and contactless delivery/pickup.

How well they deliver on these promises is what will determine who has value and who’s expendable when it comes to choosing a restaurant tech platform. For example, having a system for customers to message the restaurant when they arrive for their curbside order is smart. But geofencing tech, which automatically alerts the restaurant when a customer arrives, is even more efficient. 

HungerRush is old guard when it comes to restaurant tech companies, having been founded in 2003. (It’s also very popular with pizza chains, for some reason.) Time will tell if these new enhancements to its platform will be enough to compete with the dozens of other offerings vying for dominance as the restaurant industry reinvents itself. 

Court Rules That Nestlé’s ‘Incredible’ Burger Name Infringes on Impossible

A European court ruled that Néstle must change the name of its Incredible burger because it infringes on Impossible’s trademarks, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

For now, the ruling only applies to European countries. Swiss CPG giant Néstle will change the name of its patty to Sensational Burger, which unfortunately doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily but also won’t potentially confuse customers — something the court cited in its ruling. 

According to the WSJ, Impossible claimed Nestlé was “trying to impede” its entry into the European market by using a similar name for its product.

A spokesperson for Néstle said that they believe “anyone should be able to use descriptive terms such as ‘incredible’ to explain the qualities of a product.” The company is planning to appeal the decision.

Néstle launched its Incredible meatless patty last year under its Garden Gourmet brand. The burger is made of soy and wheat protein and meat to compete with the new wave of plant-based meat companies, namely Beyond and Impossible. As of right now, Nestlé’s patty sells in 15 European countries as well as Australia, and in 2019 also landed in McDonald’s stores in Israel.

Impossible doesn’t actually sell its products in Europe yet. It filed with the EU in 2019 for regulatory approval. A spokesperson for the company last year told The Spoon that Impossible plans to “sell plant-based meat in every single region of the world.” That said, one of the hangups with Impossible getting its products in Europe is the company’s use of soy hemoglobin in its products, which is the molecule that gives the patties their “bleeding” flavor and appearance. As Catherine Lamb noted last year:

While technically heme isn’t genetically modified — it’s the output of genetically modified yeast — it could still throw up some red flags for the European Food Safety Authority.

Plant-based meat’s other major player, Beyond Meat, announced a new manufacturing facility in The Netherlands last year, and more recently said it would increase availability and speed for getting its products around Europe and the Middle East.

All of which is to say, the fight over Nestlés naming underscores how competitive the plant-based meat market has gotten recently. Even if Nestlé successfully appeals the court’s decision, the company has its work cut out in terms of carving out a dominant spot in the European alt-protein market.