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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Foodtech

Rise Gardens Raises $2.6M in Fresh Funding for Its At-Home Hydroponics Platform

Chicago-based startup Rise Gardens has raised $2.6 million in seed funding for its indoor grow system, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by True Ventures. 

Rise is one of a growing number of companies making self-contained indoor farms designed not for mass production of leafy greens, but for the average person’s home or apartment. The hardware-software system looks like a piece of furniture, requires minimal setup by the user, and is controlled via a smartphone app. In theory, at least, that means you don’t need a degree in agricultural studies or even a good track record with gardening to grow herbs and lettuces for your own personal meals.

That’s where the Rise Gardens app comes into play. When we spoke in January of this year, Rise’s Head of Product and Strategy, Diego Blondet, explained how the app automates tasks in the growing process a farmer would normally do, such as calculating the temperature of the farm, determining nutrition and pH levels, and figuring out when to water. Rise’s app works with a sensor that automates those calculations and notifies users when it’s time to water or feed their plants.

Blondet also said he believes automated indoor farming will make its way into the design of most kitchens at some point in the future. In fact, that’s already happening, with 2020 so far being a year when startups and large appliance-makers alike have unveiled indoor farming devices designed for the average home. Seedo, Verdeat, the Planty Cube, LG, and GE are all on that list. 

As The Spoon’s Publisher Michael Wolf pointed out not long ago, the COVID-19 pandemic could accelerate average folks’ adoption of indoor farming. The recent panic buying spree reminded us that grocery store supplies aren’t infinite, and that there are glaring issues with our current food supply chain. As Mike said:

“As the coronavirus has forced all of us to think more about our food supply, some consumers have gone beyond just buying a little extra food to store away. Now they are thinking about how we could ensure access to food independent of breakdowns in the system.”

Rise Gardens’ founder Hank Adams told TechCrunch that since shelter-in-place orders landed in the U.S., the company has seen a 750 percent increase in sales. 

Heads of lettuce won’t feed a family of four, of course, but according to Adams, Rise looks at itself as more of a supplement to your weekly groceries, rather than a replacement. Which is, frankly, one of the more honest takes on indoor vertical farming, an industry that’s often been praised as being the future of agriculture but still can’t grow a root vegetable. 

Since leafy greens are difficult to ship because of their delicate nature, they’re an obvious area for vertical farming to target. Few at-home systems currently allow for the volume of greens the average family, or even the average person, would need in a given week. Since Rise’s system is a little bigger as well as modular (you can add shelves to it over time), it could provide a good blueprint for what at-home vertical farms should look like when they start to become the norm in kitchen design.

IntegriCulture Raises $7.4M for Cell-based Meat Development

Cellular agriculture startup Integriculture has raised a ¥800 million (~$7.4 million USD) Series A round to further the development of its cell-based meat, according to AgFunder News. The round was led by AgFunder, Beyond Next Ventures, Hiroshima Ventures, Hiroshima Venture Capital, NH Foods, Real Tech Fund, and VU Venture Partners. It also included participation from several other investors, including Caygan Capital CEO Naruhisa Nakagawa. This brings IntegriCulture’s total funding to date to ¥1.1 billion, or about $10.2 million USD.

The company will use the new funds for further research and development around its cell-based meat and also for building a production facility and the company’s first commercial-scale bioreactor. 

Integriculture’s first edible product will be its cell-based foie gras, which is grown in a bioreactor rather than in, well, an animal, thereby eliminating the ethical issues surrounding foie gras. Last year, company CEO Yuki Hanyu told my colleague Catherine Lamb that it plans to launch the cultured liver in restaurants by 2021 and in retail by 2023.

Hanyu is also the founder of DIY cultured meat community Shojinmeat which he started with the idea of “democratizing meat.” The aim was to give every household the ability to grow their own cultured meat in their own homes. IntegriCulture spun out from Shojinmeat in 2015. IntegriCulture’s new CulNet system, which it unveiled earlier this month, is geared towards that, allowing businesses and even (very ambitious) individuals to culture their own animal tissue.

While that sounds a little more involved than, say, growing a garden or even making your own yeast at home, it’s possible the pandemic will accelerate this idea of democratizing meat. 

In the future, IntegriCulture hopes its CulNet system will be able to culture any type of animal cell, so that they can branch out into other types of alt-meat production and even move into non-food industries like medical and skincare. 

Chipotle Announces the Eight Ventures for Its Second Aluminaries Project Accelerator Program

Chipotle today unveiled the eight ventures selected for the second class of its Chipotle Aluminaries Project, the food-focused accelerator program the company does in partnership with non-profit Uncharted. This year’s company’s are all growth-stage startups addressing the problems currently facing young farmers and small farms, reliable access to farmland being a major one.

Around the U.S., the average price of farm real estate has more than doubled, according to the National Young Farmers Coalition. The Coalition also notes that over the next five years, almost 100 million acres of farmland will change hands, and that at least some of it will go towards non-agricultural uses. 

Given that diminished access to land, the bulk of the companies and organizations chosen for Chipotle’s Aluminaries Project 2.0 are developing solutions to address the land access issue:

  • Agrarian Trust is a land trust working to acquire and hold farmland and provide farmers access to it through long-term leases.
  • American Farmland Trust helps new farmers gain access to land through national and localized networks and services in order to transfer farms from one generation to the next.
  • Demeter Mobile uses an app to pair growers with service providers (harvesting, sweeping, etc.).
  • Farm Commons provides legal resources to farmers.
  • F.A.R.M.S also offers legal services to the farming community.
  • Rogue Farm Corps provides farm-training programs in agricultural communities across Oregon.
  • Sustainable Iowa Land Trust protects Iowa’s farmland.
  • Viva Farms provides bilingual training in organic farming practices, as well as access to land, infrastructure, equipment, marketing, and capital.

The selected companies participate in the seven-month-long program, which connects them with mentors, potential investors, and support from Chipotle executives as well as others from around the food industry. While most of the program is conducted virtually, there is a five-day in-person summit companies attend in Newport Beach, CA. There’s no cash investment involved, but participants do get free burritos. 

Chipotle launched the Aluminaries Project in 2019. It has so far seen participation from ImpactVision, Sophie’s Kitchen, and AgVoice, among others.   

 

GROW Accelerator Launches a New AgTech Program: Singapore Food Bowl

AgFunder’s Southeast Asia foodtech accelerator GROW announced this week the launch of a new program focused specifically on food security. Dubbed Singapore Food Bowl, the program invites startups working to build “more resilient, decentralized agrifood ecosystems.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed a lot of light on just how flawed the global food system is, from how we grow and raise food to how we get it across borders and into markets. “The lockdowns and disruptions triggered by COVID-19 have shown the fragility of people’s access to essential goods and services,” the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems wrote in April.

AgFunder highlighted the need for more localized food systems in its announcement this week, and that’s where Singapore Food Bowl comes in. Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world and relies almost solely on imports to feed its people. The government in Singapore launched its 30×30 goal last year, which aims to produce 30 percent of the country’s food locally by 2030. And in April 2020, the government unveiled the 30×30 Express Grant that will boost local production of eggs, fish, and leafy greens via a $21 million (USD) fund.

Given that, Singapore Food Bowl is looking for companies that can contribute to those goals. The program has initial support from both Enterprise Singapore and Dole Packaged Foods.

As far as program participants, GROW is looking for companies developing new technologies that can “materially improve productivity in the areas aligned with Singapore’s 30×30 food pillars, namely protein production and leafy greens,” according to the program’s website. Think vertical farming solutions and alternative protein methods and ingredients.

The 12-week program is completely virtual, and participants should expect to commit 1–2 hours per day, three days a week, for program work. According to the announcement, prospective applicants should be incorporated in Singapore or come from the Asia-Pacific region. They will also need a minimum viable product to be accepted into the program. 

In addition to curriculum, program participants get access to mentors and potential investors, as well as the chance to participate in a virtual demo day at the end of the program. There is also the opportunity to secure future investment from AgFunder and its co-investment partners. 

Applications are open until June 7, 2020.    

Elevate Farms Gets a $10M Investment to Build Vertical Farms in Remote, Food-Insecure Corners of Canada

Canada-based Elevate Farms has entered into an agreement with North Star Agriculture Corp. for an initial buildout commitment of $10 million (USD) to bring Elevate’s vertical farming technology to isolated parts of Northern Canada. The two companies will develop a series of large-scale automated vertical farming facilities in the Yukon and other Canadian territories. The farms will produce about 1 million pounds of leafy greens per year.

Elevate uses a proprietary vertical farming system that relies on hydroponics, patented LED technology, and automation to grow leafy greens and herbs in climate-controlled environments. Like other vertical farming companies, the company claims its indoor agricultural methods use less resources (e.g., water) and require less human labor, which is in major shortage in the agricultural industry right now.

The company closed a $1.8 million seed round led by Brightspark Ventures in February of this year.

Elevate founder and CEO Amin Jadavji said in this week’s press release that the buildout of these new farming facilities will bring more food security and nutrition to “particularly isolated and vulnerable regions of Canada.”

Food security in Northern Canada is a major issue, as communities tend to be remote and food distribution is more difficult and expensive than it would be in more densely populated regions. There’s also the fact that you can’t grow produce outdoors 24/7 based on the climate of the area. North Star Agriculture Group, which is based in the Yukon city of Whitehorse, has been especially active in raising the volume on the dialogue about food insecurity and looking for ways to bring more agricultural infrastructure to the region.

While leafy greens by themselves can’t save an insecure food system (man cannot live by basil alone), of all the produce types, they tend to be the most delicate and perishable, which makes them a priority when it comes to providing food locally. 

At the same time, vertical farming is at a point where it needs to prove itself in terms of its ability to provide fresh, local food to surrounding communities at affordable prices. To do that, companies will need to be able to scale to the levels of producing millions of heads of lettuce without incurring astronomical expenditures themselves. 

Up to now, most large-scale vertical farming operations are in or nearby large cities and supply grocery stores and specialty food markets. If the partnership between Elevate and North Start Agriculture Corp. proves plentiful (literally and figuratively), it could be the blueprint for a new use case for large-scale vertical farming, and further evolve the technology’s role in the future of the agricultural system.

Dairy Farmers of America Unveils the 9 Companies Selected for Its Latest Accelerator Cohort

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) announced this week the companies chosen to participate in the 2020 cohort of its food-focused startup accelerator. Nine companies were chosen for this cohort, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Among them are a company that makes premium spirits from whey and one that uses excess milk to make t-shirts.

The DFA itself is a cooperative of family farmers that was formed in 1998 and now counts about 13,000 members from dairy farms around the U.S. The accelerator program works with companies using technology to improve aspects of the farming system. Past participants include ripe.io, which uses blockchain to improve supply chain transparency, and Labby, whose AI-powered smartphone app can test milk onsite and save farmers the time and money it takes to send samples to a lab.

Besides giving companies a foothold in the agtech industry, the program also connects DFA with startups, which are typically more agile and innovative than traditional agricultural companies. “[We] needed a way to partner with someone who could [get us] on the right path and get in front of some new technologies,” DFA’s director of innovation Doug Dressler told me last year.

Program participants receive mentorship and guidance around product development, marketing, and business development, connect with potential investors, and participate in a demo day at the end of the cohort.

The program runs for 90 days and is typically a combination of offsite, virtual programming and onsite work at the DFA headquarters in Kansas City, KS. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, virtual programming is particularly important to this cohort. The DFA said in its email to The Spoon that the first program will kick off remotely and rely heavily on “digital training tools and resources” for at least the start of the cohort.

It’s a tactic currently being used by other startup accelerators, including Food-X and the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator. How much of the DFA’s program will be virtual versus onsite remains to be seen. Program coordinators hope to have onsite work available by July. 

Today’s press announcement describes the nine chosen companies as follows:

  • Armenta (Ra’anana, Israel): a non-invasive technology for antibiotic-free treatment of bovine mastitis.
  • Capro-X (Ithaca, N.Y.): a sustainable solution for whey waste from Greek yogurt production.
  • Livestock Water Recycling (Calgary, Alberta, Canada): a manure treatment technology, which recycles 75% of manure into clean water while segregating manure nutrients for precision fertilizer application.
  • Mi Terro (Los Angeles, Calif.): a sustainable fashion brand that uses excess milk to make men’s and women’s t-shirts.
  • Chank’s Grab-N-Go (Millville, N.J.): a handheld snack company featuring pizza cones, philly cheesesteak cones and more.
  • GoodSport (Chicago, Ill.): a sports drink made from milk which uses only natural ingredients and has naturally occurring electrolytes and vitamins.
  • SuperFrau (Cambridge, Mass.): electrolyte drinks made from upcycling surplus whey, with real ingredients and no added sugars.
  • Wheyward Spirit (Eugene, Ore.): premium spirit made from whey.
  • Yaar Nordic Quark Bar (London, U.K.): Nordic chilled dairy snacks made with fresh quark, a mixture of cow’s milk and natural lactic acid.

The 2020 cohort is currently in session and runs until the July 30 demo day.

Hydroponics Startup Phytoponics Raises £500,000 to Grow More Than Leafy Greens

Phytoponics, a UK-based company that designs and deploys hydroponic farming systems, announced this week it had completed a £500,000 (~$627,352 USD) equity financing round. The round was led by existing shareholders with match funding provided by the Development Bank of Wales, according to a brief from AgFunder News.

The company designs and manufactures deep water culture hydroponic systems for commercial farmers growing plants in controlled environments. With the deep water culture growing methods, plants’ roots are suspended in “rafts” of nutrient-enriched water, eliminating the need for any soli during the grow process. Phytoponics has its own proprietary design of this method, which the company says is suitable for large scale commercial crop production. 

Phytoponics CEO Andy Jones told AFN that one of the advantages of deep water culture is that it allows for “much more consistent control of the root zone” for plants, which helps avoid oxygen depletion and can in turn generate more plant growth.

Importantly, the company is also trialing its system for what Jones calls “energy-dense crops” such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. To date, indoor hydroponic farming is mostly used for growing leafy greens and herbs, which require less space and resources per plant to grow. That limitation, however, has long called into question the overall usefulness of hydroponic farming as a key part of the future food system. It’s all well and good to say that these controlled-environment farming systems will help feed the growing global population. But man cannot live by basil alone.

One metric that could be key to growing non-leafy-green crops is whether methods like deep water culture actually do save resources. Most companies, Phytoponics included, tout sustainability as a benefit. As yet, though, we have no extensive data about how much water and energy the method saves, nor how cost-effective it is to do at scale. If we want to grow more cucumbers indoors, we need more data about what works and what doesn’t.

Phytoponics currently has a few different controlled-environment farms where it is using its own deep water culture systems to test out growing more energy-dense crops. The company says it will use the funds for further trials of its technology. 

Farmshelf Unveils Its First Consumer-facing Vertical Farming Unit

Farmshelf, the vertical farming company best known for outfitting restaurants with its high-tech indoor farms, today unveiled its first-ever consumer-facing product, according to a company press release.

Dubbed Farmshelf Home, the new product is similar to the company’s commercial model championed by high-profile chefs like José Andrés. It’s roughly the size of a bookcase and uses a combination of sensors, cameras, software, and custom LEDs to automatically deliver the correct levels of water, light, and nutrients to each plant growing in the farm.

For the average consumer, that means once the farm arrives, it’s a matter of plugging it into a wall, connecting it to wifi, setting seeds in pods, then remotely monitoring the hydroponic system from a corresponding smartphone app.

Farmshelf Home is available to pre-order through the company’s website. Though it ain’t cheap: the company lists the “exclusive pre-order price” at $4,950, while the standard retail price will be set at $6,450. There is a $100 deposit (applied to the price and also refundable) as well as a monthly $35 fee that covers seed pods, nutrients, and access to the Farmshelf software for monitoring plants. At the moment, those interested only need to hand over the deposit to sign up for a pre-order. According to the fine print, there is no firm delivery date yet.

Three months ago, I would have called the high price point a deterrent for most people. Certainly, the average American family won’t be purchasing a Farmshelf anytime soon.

But those in higher income brackets may. A global pandemic has revealed just how out of whack our food supply chain is and what happens when people panic shop in droves and grocery stores can’t keep up, factors that might justify the price point for some folks. The Spoon’s Publisher Michael Wolf pointed out recently that “As the coronavirus has forced all of us to think more about our food supply, some consumers have gone beyond just buying a little extra food to store away. Now they are thinking about how we could ensure access to food independent of breakdowns in the system.”

Now we have to see whether consumers will pay thousands of dollars to ensure that independence. More at-home vertical farming companies were coming to market even before the pandemic, with large appliance makers like Samsung, LG, and Miele announcing high-tech gardens meant for your kitchen or living room. They range in price from the hundreds to the thousands, though not quite as high as Farmshelf.

Currently, Farmshelf is in a number of restaurants and hotels, including NYC chain Tender Greens, Marriott Marquis Times Square, and the Condé Nast offices. Angel network she1K syndicated an early-stage investment in the company at the end of last year.

Beyond Meat Debuts in China With Starbucks Partnership

Starbucks will add Beyond Meat products to its menus in China this week, marking the alt-meat company’s first foray into that country, according to AgFunder News. The partnership comes on the heels of a similar one Starbucks and Beyond debuted in Canada earlier this year.

For the China partnership, the coffee chain will add three dishes containing Beyond products: a lasagna, a Vietnamese-style noodle salad, and pesto pasta. Starbucks will simultaneously also add two new dishes to the menu using Hong Kong’s plant-based Omnipork product.

The push into China is part of Beyond’s overall growth plans that the company outlined at the end of February, including expanding manufacturing to Asia. At the time, Beyond CEO Ethan Brown said his company will “continue to focus on Asia with the goal of producing in the region before the end of 2020.”

The COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t appear to have stalled those plans. In fact, Brown flatly stated back in February that the spread of the novel coronavirus would not prevent Beyond from entering China in 2020. “It adjusts some of our plans, but I am not taking my foot off the gas,” he said.

China is the ultimate market to tackle as far as most alternative meat companies are concerned. It has the world’s largest population and is one of the world’s largest meat producers. And Beyond isn’t alone in its plans for expansion in that country. Chief competitor Impossible Foods also plans to expand into that market.

Starbucks, meanwhile, set a preliminary goal at the beginning of the year to become resource positive by 2030 when it comes to carbon, water, and waste. Offering more alternative meat products is part of that, as traditional livestock farming is an extremely resource-intensive endeavor.

Starbucks has over 4,300 stores in China. Most of those closed when the country went on lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Seattle-based chain has reopened 95 percent of its locations.

Sourd.io is the High-Tech Sourdough Starter Monitor All of Us Newbie Bakers Could Use

I think my sourdough starter is on life support. I’ve discarded it, fed it, proofed it, but it still seems… anemic. I think? I dunno, like so many other trapped at home, this is my first sourdough starter so I’m kind flying blind. But maybe I don’t have to, thanks to a high-tech gizmo put together by Christine Sunu (hat tip to The Verge).

Yesteray, Sunu published a pair of posts on the Twilio (where she works) blog about a DIY device she created to check in on your sourdough starter. Dubbed Sourd.io, the device is basically a cap that fits on top of your starter jar and monitors the temperature, humidity, and rise level of your sourdough so you know when it needs to be fed.

But we’re sorry to say that this solution is not for the technological faint of heart. The instructions involve setting up a Twilio Developer Kit for Narrowband IoT (which also means you can only use it in the US), the Arduino IDE, and the use of a 3D printer. But hey, since you’re stuck at home learning new skills, why not add building electronics to your repertoire?

While there are countless awful things about this pandemic, one bright spot has been the resourcefulness of people in coming up with innovative solutions to everyday problems. Last week Adrien Hertel released a free, downloadable JavaScript program that alerts you when delivery slots at Amazon and Whole Foods open up.

If you’ve come across other DIY solutions to quarantine-induced issues, drop us a line and let us know!

Smart! FoodCloud Kitchen Cam Provides Video of Your Home Cooked Meal Being Prepared

The one thing that keeps me from getting too excited about the legalization of home cooks selling their meals is sanitation. How clean is that home kitchen and how many kids’ grubby hands are grabbing things in there? As you can imagine, the COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified those feelings, as I want to know as much as I can about my food and who has touched it.

So I was intrigued/happy to see that Indian home cook startup FoodCloud launched a new Kitchen Cam feature. The company’s Co-Founder and COO, Sanjhi Rajgarhia posted a video to Linkedin, writing, “When you place an order, foodcloud.in will send you a video of your order being prepared. Our home chefs are making food with love, just like it is at home.”

To its credit, FoodCloud already had a pretty rigorous on-boarding process in order for home cooks to get on its platform. As we wrote a year ago:

First, each home chef must be registered with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which is the country’s equivalent of the USDA, for kitchen inspection and hygiene regulation. After that, a home cook’s food is taste-tested by not just FoodCloud employees, but also local food bloggers and critics.

Adding a video check-in like the Kitchen Cam is a smart addition to those requirements. It’s awesome to be able to see the kitchen where the food is being prepped as well as precautions the cooks themselves are taking (hairnets and gloves!).

However, it’s hard to tell exactly how strict the Kitchen Cam will be. The video embedded is obviously edited and doesn’t seem like it was livestreamed, so there are gaps in there when who knows what could happen. The crew in the video seems pretty professional with nice equipment and embroidered shirts and also evidently have an extra pair of hands to video what’s going on. What do smaller home cook operations need to provide for Kitchen Cam? Also when is the video made available to the customer? Is there a livestream option? We reached out to FoodCloud to find out more. UPDATE: FoodCloud sent us the following via email: “Currently, [Kitchen Cam] is not mandatory but a feature that the home chef opts for. It is not livestreamed however, the customer can see the dishes that they’ve ordered being prepared. The videos are sent to them privately.”

Personally, I would love to see something like this from home cooking marketplaces here in the US. It’s still a nascent industry, so if we can make it a standard practice now, it could go a long way towards more people buying meals from home cooks.

Food-X Announces Cohort 11, Its First-Ever Virtual Accelerator Program

Food-X, a hugely popular startup accelerator for food businesses, today announced the eight chosen companies for Cohort 11 of its program. While they vary in focus — food traceability, restaurant tech, pet food, and upcycling — the selected companies all share Food-X’s mission of solving some of the biggest challenges the global food system faces. And for Cohort 11, the companies share something else in common: They are part of Food-X’s first-ever virtual cohort.

While many food accelerator programs operate remotely or through a combination of remote and onsite work, Food-X’s NYC-based program has historically always been done onsite and in-person for its three-and-a-half-month duration. That was in a pre-pandemic world, though. With most states still locked down to stem the spread of COVID-19, and with NYC getting hit especially hard with cases, holding a program onsite is more or less impossible at the moment.

As far back as the beginning of March, the Food-X staff was preparing for this possibility. Program Director Peter Bodenheimer told me over the phone last week that they had initially considered pushing program’s start date back a couple weeks. When it became obvious that two weeks would be something of a drop in the bucket in terms of statewide shelter-in-place mandates, the program decided to pivot to an entirely virtual model for the first time ever.

That’s included using video chat in place of the standard office drop-ins, doing virtual “coffee breaks” with the participants, and finding alternative ways for companies to meet with potential investors in place of the usual “demo day” event.

The results, it turns out, have been a pleasant surprise. “It’s been even better than I hoped it would be in terms of engagement,” Bodenheimer said. “It feels like it’s been one of the most engaged cohorts we’ve had ever.”

That’s significant, considering this particular cohort is also Food-X’s most diverse ever in terms of where companies are located. Milk Moovement, which makes supply chain software for the dairy industry, is headquartered in Canada. Health supplement maker Rambuhealth hails from Costa Rica. Latin American restaurant tech company remotekitchen works out of Mexico City, while ingredients marketplace Fieldcraft is from Austin, TX. 

Normally these companies would all converge at the Food-X offices in Manhattan. Now, like the rest of us, they are being forced to carry out normal business in abnormal circumstances. And, as Bodenheimer sees it, they’ve more than stepped up to the task: “The companies have been incredibly active and incredibly engaged. They’ve rolled with the punches, and that’s a great signal from an investment standpoint. We’ve made a good investment because on some level these companies have barely skipped a beat.”

Food-X hasn’t yet decided if the success so far of this virtual accelerator will permanently change the program’s format moving forward. “I could see something where we do a hybrid where there’s a portion that’ sin person, a portion that’s remote,” says Bodenheimer.

In the meantime, here’s the full Cohort 11 roster, as outlined in a press release from Food-X:

  • Bramble: A fresh, 100% plant-based pet food company that aims to consciously boost your pet’s diet.
  • Ester: A startup harnessing science and AI to develop hyper-personalized customer flavor profiles for retailers of beer and wine.
  • Fieldcraft: The first B2B marketplace for commodities and ingredients built to simplify sourcing from growers to manufacturers.
  • Living Food Company: A managed consumer marketplace offering access to fresh, clean and delicious food made by world-class farmers, bakers, brewers and other food artisans.
  • Milk Moovement: A startup that is providing actionable intelligence across the dairy supply chain through its cloud-based software.
  • Nature Preserve: A sustainable food tech brand that is upcycling produce to minimize waste and maximize health via a proprietary food preservation process. First up: Lovi Smoothies, a natural plantbased mix packed with nutrients for use in smoothies, shakes, baking, and beyond.
  • Rambuhealth: A venture leveraging the antioxidant-dense shell of Rambutan for heightened health benefits, which can be found in their food bars, supplements and ingredient offerings.
  • remotekitchen: A single unified platform to empower restaurants to run, manage and grow their business effectively.

Bodenheimer suggests a point I’ve heard mentioned frequently over the last few weeks — that the pandemic’s complete disruption of day-to-day business is forcing most to rethink norms and experiment more. Startups, too, are inherently more open to taking risks typically, and those that do may actually find some upsides to this situation. “Downturns tend to be a great time for companies to start because there’s less noise, less frothy money being flopped around to companies that may not be as great,” he says.

Food-X is currently four weeks into Cohort 11, and already taking applications for Cohort 12, which will kick off in the fall of 2020. Whether that will be an in-person or virtual affair is anyone’s guess right now.