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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Next-Gen Cooking

Fighting Consumer Food Waste at Home Means Rethinking the Refrigerator

What’s the most effective way to fight food waste in the home? Take a look at your fridge.

Most consumers at this point are aware of the world’s multibillion food waste problem. A great many more now understand that, at least in North America and Europe, the bulk of that waste happens at consumer-facing stages of the food journey, including our own homes. What we’re less certain of is how to curb that excess.

Researching solutions for “The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report,” which you can read on Spoon Plus, I came across a number of different methods for reducing food waste in the home. But after sifting through the many storage and preservation options out there, the meal-planning and meal-sharing apps, I’m left wondering if the trick to reducing at-home food waste isn’t just re-envisioning the refrigerator itself.

The appliance hasn’t changed much over the last several decades. But in 2020, the pandemic is keeping more folks at home, we have more information about how much food we’re actually wasting (it’s a ton), and more investment in the food tech sector in general. The convergence of those factors makes now an ideal time to change that point and introduce more innovation into the world of refrigerators. Here are a few ideas:

Smarter Features That Are Actually Affordable

By now, many consumers are at least aware of high-tech refrigerators that can track items placed in the fridge, alert owners when those items are running low, and scan and identify foods to help consumers plan meals and find recipes. LG’s ThinQ and the Samsung Family Hub are two appliances that lead the smart fridge market.

They also cost thousands of dollars, making them out of reach for most consumers. True, having cameras and image-recognition technology inside the fridge is a relatively new concept, so a higher price point is to be expected. But in order for the new applications of those technologies to be most effective, they’ll need to get cheaper. By that I mean, we’ll need to see options for them build into most fridges.

Another option is add-on tech for the fridge. As we note in the report, Smarter makes a device can be retrofitted for any fridge and recognize the items inside. Fridge Eye has a similar device.

Smaller Fridge, Bigger Freezer

“Everyone loses something in the back of the fridge,” food waste expert Dana Gunders told us when interviewed for the report. Her point is that the sheer size of most modern refrigerators means older items will get pushed out of view and forgotten as newer ones are placed in the fridge.

High-tech fixes like the ones mentioned above can help, but the fridge design itself seems ripe for an upgrade. Or downgrade, as it were, since a smaller fridge compartment with a bigger freezer might be a surefire way to reduce food waste. Much of our food, even items like milk and bread, can be frozen until we need to use them. And research shows that things like frozen fruits and vegetables maintain more or less the same nutrients as their fresh counterparts. 

Better Storage to Accompany the Fridge

Back in the 1930s, when the electric refrigerator was just starting to get popular, General Electric sold fridges by promoting the then-newish concept of leftovers to consumers. Along with tips and cookbooks, the appliance-maker sold food storage containers designed to stack up in the fridge and hold leftovers. 

Maybe to curb food waste, we need a kind of rebirth of that concept, this time geared towards curbing food waste and with a high-tech twist. Major appliance manufacturers could team up with startups like Mimica, BlakBear, or Silo to sell smarter storage options — think smart labels and temperature sensors — alongside their appliances. They could also find ways to integrate some of those new technologies into fridge doors, drawers, and other compartments.

For more thoughts on the reinvention of the refrigerator as well as how else we can fight food waste at home, check out the full “Consumer Food Waste Innovation” report at Spoon Plus.

Kickstarter: CUPPLE Churns Ice Cream on Your Countertop

One of the wedding gifts I got lo’ those many years ago was an ice cream maker. Between the heating of the cream, getting the ingredients just right, storing the churn bowl in the freezer overnight, we used the machine all of two times before deciding ice cream was just much easier and tastier, to buy it from the store.

So I’m curious about the CUPPLE, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, which promises to let me make fresh-churned ice cream directly on my countertop anytime I want.

Think of the CUPPLE as a Keurig for ice cream. You put a shelf-stable cup of base ingredients in the countertop machine and push a button. The CUPPLE automatically chills and churns the base to produce ice cream and sorbet in roughly three minutes.

The advantages of this system, according to the CUPPLE creators, is that you get better ice cream because it isn’t stored frozen for weeks (the self-contained ingredient cups don’t need to be frozen), and you get a denser, more velvety ice cream because air isn’t whipped into the ice cream.

The CUPPLE has dual chambers to churn two servings at once. The machine itself is roughly a foot and a half long by 14 inches wide and nearly a foot high. Initial flavors being offered are Belgian chocolate, Madagascar vanilla, traditional cookies, Chilean raspberry, Colombian passion fruit and Bengal mango.

Backers can pick up a CUPPLE machine for €250 (~$300 USD, plus $44 shipping to the U.S.), which comes with 24 cups of ice cream and is supposed to ship in June of 2021. Additional cups can be purchase in multi-packs that cost between €2.5 ($2.95) to €2.10 ($2.48) per cup. The CUPPLE has already blown past its Kickstarter goal of $47,000 to raise more than $86,000, with 12 days still left to go in its campaign.

As much as I like ice cream, I don’t think CUPPLE will count me as a backer. First, that’s a lot of money for a single-use device (okay, dual use if you count sorbet as a separate thing). But more importantly, I’m not a huge fan of proprietary, Keurig-style machines. What happens if CUPPLE shuts down? What can I do with it then if there are no cups to re-order?

Additionally, as with any Kickstarter hardware project, there are concerns about whether the product will ship on time. There’s a big leap between building a prototype and building at scale (just ask Cinder and Rite Press). Plus in the Risks section of the campaign, the company says that its still perfecting the sterilization of its ice mix packaging and may only ship sorbets at first.

I’d love for a company to create an easier (and affordable) way to for at-home consumers to make ice cream, but I don’t think CUPPLE is the solution for me.

Shoppable Recipe Service Northfork Raises $1.1M

Northfork, a Swedish company that enables shoppable recipes online, announced yesterday that it has raised 10 million Swedish Krona (~$1.1 million USD). The round was led by J12 Ventures with participation from DHS.

Northfork creates a white label platform for retailers to create shoppable recipes. For example, last year Northfork provided the software that powered BuzzFeed Tasty’s shoppable recipes through Walmart. As we wrote at the time of that announcement:

The [Tasty] app maps a user’s location to the nearest Walmart and is tied into that’s store’s inventory to ensure that customers can get all the ingredients necessary. The app even lets users swap out items based on quantity needed or dietary, nutritional or brand preferences. Once purchased, the groceries can be scheduled for delivery or pickup as early as that same day.

The shoppable recipe space has actually been kind of quiet for most of this year. In July Thermomix announced shoppable ingredients through its Cookidoo platform (powered by Whisk), and in June Innit announced a shoppable recipe related partnership with product data company, SPINS.

This relative quiet in the shoppable recipe space is curious, given that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred record amounts of online grocery shopping. With so many more people eating at home, you’d think there would be more activity around connecting meal discovery through recipes and e-commerce solutions that make buying those ingredients easier.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason Northfork raised this money. According to Nordic 9, Northfork will use this new money for product development and U.S. expansion.

Welcome to Sushi Singularity. Did You Have a Reservation and Submit Your Biosample?

Just offering 3D printed sushi would be enough for a restaurant to land a story in The Spoon. But Sushi Singularity, a restaurant opening in Tokyo later this year, is taking the concept one step further by requesting you kindly submit a biosample from which they will 3D print a personalized meal created specifically for you.

Oh man, 3D printing and personalized nutrition? That’s like catnip for us.

My Modern Met reports that the Sushi Singularity restaurant is from Open Meals. You might recall that Open Meals made headlines a couple years back by teleporting sushi, which the company called “the world’s first food data transmission.”

Now Open Meals is looking for a different type of data: yours. When you make a reservation at Sushi Singularity, they mail you a home health kit to collect biosamples. According to Mashable Southeast Asia, “You’ll have to send them samples of your DNA, urine, and other bodily fluids first. They call this your ‘Health ID’.”

Okaaay… That’s a little, personal, but whatevs! You’ll be dining in the future, and how else are you supposed to get a completely personalized meal?

At the restaurant, you’ll be treated to beautiful 3D-printed dishes built bit by bit into sushi such as Cell Cultured Tuna, Powdered Sintered Uni, and Negative Stiffness Honeycomb Octopus. Aside from the eye-popping design of each piece of sushi, it will be crafted specifically for your health profile (though exactly what that means remains unclear).

Video via Open Meals

As noted, Sushi Singularity sits firmly at the nexus of two trends we follow closely at The Spoon: 3D printing and personalized nutrition.

It’s actually been a busy year for 3D food printing. Redefine Meat announced high-volume 3D printing for plant-based steaks. Legendary Vish is 3D printing plant-based salmon. And SavorEat has developed a technology that 3D prints and cooks plant-based meats.

As 3D printing evolves, it promises to open up new levels of bespoke food creation tailored to your specific dietary and health needs. For example, a company called Nourish is using 3D printing to create personalized vitamin supplements. As raw ingredient materials advance and resolution improves on the machines, even greater levels of specificity with meals and personalization will be unlocked.

Neither the Sushi Singularity website or coverage of the restaurant mentions prices, though if you have to ask, as the saying goes, you probably won’t be able to afford it. If that winds up being the case, don’t take it personally.

Anova’s New Connected Steam + Convection Oven Now Selling for $599

Anova announced the launch of its connected, countertop steam + convection oven today. The Anova Precision Oven is a wifi-enabled, multi-stage combi oven can now be purchased worldwide for $599.

Anova, which is owned by Electrolux, made its mark in food tech with its consumer sous vide circulator, which helped kick off a consumer sous vide boom a few years back. Anova is one of the only surviving companies of that first consumer-focused sous vide circulator cohort (RIP Sansaire and Nomiku), and a smart combi oven is the first new category product for the company… though the oven does have a sous vide mode.

As Scott Heimendinger explained to us at CES this past year, the oven – which was first announced at Smart Kitchen Summit 2016 – can create 100 percent humidity in the cooking cavity, which promises to keep foods juicy because there is nowhere for water inside the food to evaporate into. It’s like cooking sous vide, just without the cumbersome water bath or the need to finish cooking in another appliance. In addition to keeping precise temperatures to cook something like a whole chicken low and slow, Anova’s multi-stage cook programs will automatically drop the humidity and raise the temperature to create a crispy skin.

“This is our magnum opus,” Stephen Svajian, Co-Founder and CEO of Anova told me by phone this week. “Everything has led up to this point.”

Beyond traditional meat proteins, however, Anova’s oven can also cook everything from vegetables to crusty breads. Out of the box, the accompanying mobile app will have automatic cook programs for 100 items, with more to come.

With precise temperature controls and robust steam cooking tools, Anova seems to be carving out its own prosumer space in the connected countertop oven market. The Tovala is a cheaper ($299) and offers steam cooking, and is geared more towards Tovala’s own meals and other CPG meals like frozen entrees. The June is also less expensive ($499), and while it doesn’t have steam cooking, it does offer automated food recognition. The Brava is more expensive ($1,095), and cooks with light rather than steam, but also allows multi-zone simultaneous cooking (meat and veggies on the same tray at the same time).

While this is a new product for Anova, the company is not abandoning its sous vide circulator roots. Svajian said that Anova’s sous vide cookers have seen 100 percent year-over-year growth, partially attributable to the pandemic and people cooking from their homes more.

While purchases of the new Anova oven commence today, the devices won’t actually ship until a little bit later: Sept. 28 for North America and December 2020 for the rest of the world. Hopefully we can get our hands on a review unit to see firsthand how hot it really is.

UPDATE: A previous version of this post incorrectly listed the price of the Tovala as $349.

Cuzen Matcha Cruisin’ Through its Kickstarter Goal on its First Day

Part of the problem with this job is that I write about a lot of cool kitchen stuff. This, in turn, makes me want to buy a lot of the things I write about. Things like the Cuzen Matcha.

The Cuzen Matcha is a beautifully designed countertop machine out of Japan that grinds and mixes fresh matcha powder to create a delicious cup of matcha that you can drink straight or mix into another beverage like milk.

World Matcha, the company behind the Cuzen, launched it’s Kickstarter campaign today, and at the time of this writing had already raised more than $22,000 of its $50,000 goal. Early backers can get their own Cuzen Matcha machine, plus 40 cups’ worth of matcha leaves for $299, with a scheduled ship date of October of this year.

And therein lies the problem. I tasted the Cuzen’s matcha at our Food Tech Live event earlier this year (you can watch our video of the Cuzen in action to see for yourself how it works), and it was delicious. And the machine is more sculpture than appliance and now I want to buy one.

CES 2020: A Look at the Cuzen Matcha, a Home Matcha Making Appliance

But I don’t drink matcha with any regularity. But maybe I would if I paid $300 for a machine that makes it? I mean, colder months are coming and a hot mug of freshly ground matcha latté sounds pretty enticing. A matcha latté at Starbucks is around $3.00, and that’s for one that isn’t nearly as good. So I’d only need to drink a hundred homemade Cuzen matchas to break even? That’s not too bad…

Wait. Are we doing this? Am I buying a matcha machine?

Unlike a lot of Kickstarter hardware projects (Rite Press, we’re looking at you), having interviewed the World Matcha team and seen the product in action, I have more faith that this crowdfunded project will actually come to market.

Now the question is whether it will come to my kitchen counter.

StoreBound’s Evan Dash Wants to Create a Housewares Brand for a New Generation

“Breville was doing incredibly well,” said Dash. “They were still fairly new. And a lot of brands were chasing them to the high end. And then you had this whole like lower end, that was just in shambles, fighting over price, price price.”

While Dash didn’t want to necessarily compete with Breville or fight over tiny margins in a brutal price competition, he saw an opportunity in between the two.

“It really left this beautiful gap in the middle that we felt like we could step into with great design, great quality, great value, and a social media strategy.”

Ten years later, he and his wife sold the company they had built after growing their revenue to $100 million by focusing on that neglected middle space with their flagship namesake brand, Dash.

While the terms of the sale to French consumer goods conglomerate Groupe SEB were not announced, a conservative revenue multiple of 3-5 times sales would easily put the acquisition within the half a billion dollar territory, which would put the deal possibly higher valuation than that of the Anova acquisition by Electrolux (but well below the Instant Brands $2 billion estimated deal size).

So how did Dash go from an idea to $100 million company in a decade? According to Evan Dash, it was in large part thanks to their focus on young consumers who didn’t feel any loyalty to the brands their parents had brought into the home.

“While everybody talks about how the ‘millennials are up and coming, but they really don’t have the money to spend,’ they absolutely do”, said Dash. “And they are so influential, they’re influencing their parents generation, even their grandparents generation and a lot of cases.”

A big part of attracting the attention of those customers was through the use of social media, primarily Instagram. According to Dash, that early emphasis on Instagram was influenced by his own kids.

“They were showing the way that they could build momentum,” said Dash. “And one of them had a sports page, and he was editing jerseys of doing jersey swaps of players. And he had 10,000 followers.”

Beyond speaking to younger consumers through social media, much of the focus by Dash was creating products that not only looked different than those he and Rachel had grown up with, but were designed to be more user-centric.

“We tended to look at products with fresh eyes,” said Dash. “For example, we launched a two slice toaster early on and my head designer for toasters came to me and they said, ‘Hey, Cuisinart has one through six on their control, and KitchenAid has one through seven on their control. Can we just say light, medium, dark, defrost and keep warm?’

Armed with the resources of a company like Groupe SEB, Dash doesn’t have any plans to slow down. The company will expand into products that focus on circular economy, and Dash also hinted at plans for bigger products like refrigerators.

Spoon Plus subscribers can read the full transcript of my interview with Dash or watch the full interview below. If you’d like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Update to June Oven App Let’s You Check Cook Programs Remotely

June, makers of the eponymous connected countertop oven, released some new features to its mobile app last week that add remote functionality, including one to help you shop for June-ready food.

The new app features access to all of the June automated cook programs. So if you’re at the store and wondering if the June has an automated cook program for asparagus and/or frozen waffle fries, you can quickly check your phone (the answers are yes and no, respectively).

For a June owner (like myself), this is actually pretty useful. I’m not a great cook and am pretty reliant on the June for meal prep. For example, knowing what type of fish the June automatically cooks would definitely influence my buying decisions while standing in the seafood section of my store.

The other remote feature that June released that makes less sense to me is the ability to remotely start a cook program. The new functionality allows you to start a cook program from your phone, but it doesn’t work unless the food is in the June. This raises the question, why do you need to use your phone to start a cook program when you are standing in front of the oven putting your food in it? And why would I even want to start up my oven when I’m not around? I’m sure there are edge cases, but it still seems odd.

In a somewhat counter intuitive manner, the June has actually become more useful during this pandemic. You’d think being stuck at home would mean I have more time for cooking, but between working from home (i.e., office hours are kind of all hours) and nice weather, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. This will probably be doubly so once school and remote-learning for my son start up again next month and there are even fewer hours in the day.

Given all that, one feature request I would like June to fulfill is for the oven to automatically and frequently clean itself thoroughly.

New Fees are Just One Issue for Mellow as the Sous-Vide Maker Tries to Stay Afloat

It began with a comment over the weekend, when a Spoon reader told us that Mellow, the connected sous-vide appliance company, had started charging a monthly subscription. Companies charging a fee with their connected gadget is nothing new, but Mellow is now charging $5.99 to its existing owners in order for them to access formerly free features like pre-set cook programs.

But it turns out when you pulled on this thread, new fees were symptomatic of much bigger ongoing issues with Mellow.

In reporting about the new subscription fee, The Verge wrote (emphasis ours):

Late Monday evening, Mellow released a statement on Instagram explaining the justifications for its “premium” plan, citing financial hardships in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and claiming that many potential investors and acquirers interested in the company walked away, and arguing that the servers responsible for the cooker’s smart features cost too much to operate.

The Mellow statement was via an Instagram story, so it disappeared after 24 hours, but The Verge grabbed a screenshot of the post, which described the cost of running the connected service, how the company lost money, how COVID impacted its ability to get investors or be acquired and basically how the subscription was the only way to keep itself going.

The Spoon spoke with a source that has an intimate business relationship with Mellow. This person told us that while people are angered over the new fee, it is the only way to keep the Mellow functioning at all. AWS bills continue to pile up and if they can’t be paid, instead of limited functionality, the Mellow device will be completely bricked.

According to our source, the problem lies in a third-party chip and the way the original Mellow was designed. This chip prevents the company from doing something like releasing the code as open source and letting the community build a workaround. Additionally our source said that there is just one person left at the company, so there aren’t any resources to even do such a technical project.

But this new fee is just part of a larger set of problems that have plagued Mellow. According to our source, the company previously raised $3 million in funding. Crunchbase doesn’t list a specific amount raised, and only lists three undisclosed Seed rounds from Springboard, Techstars, and Hard Gamma Ventures, and a convertible note from Highway1. All of that money is gone, according to our source.

As per the Instagram story, Mellow had been involved in a number of discussions with potential investors, but when COVID hit, all of those discussions evaporated.

We reported in May that Mellow launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $1 million through the SeedInvest platform. The link to that campaign no longer works and Mellow is no longer listed as an offering on the SeedInvest platform. Our source told us that the campaign failed to reach its funding goal.

Mellow had been the beneficiary of crowdfunding its products before. The first generation Mellow ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2014, and in November of 2019, the company launched another Kickstarter campaign for the v2 Mellow Duo. The Mellow Duo cost between $149 and $299, depending on the model and when you backed. The Duo campaign was also a success and raised more than $211,000 from 892 backers with an initial ship date of October 2020.

But an update from the company on July 13 on the Duo Kickstarter campaign said that because of pandemic, that ship date has been pushed six months. Though given all the turmoil, who knows if it will make it that long.

Sadly, all of these troubles are nothing new for Mellow. It’s initial v1 product was delayed, it lost its original CEO (and just about everyone else, subsequently), and when the v1 product finally reached the market, a 1 out of 10 review from WIRED labeled the product as “too risky” and all but killed the Mellow before it had a chance to gain any traction. As we reported previously, as part of its equity crowdfunding disclosures, Mellow said that “Over 6,400 Mellow V1 units have been activated, with the average household using it to cook 1.7+ times per week.” Our source said that the number of active users is closer to 2,000.

This whole situation is another stark reminder of the downsides of crowdfunding hardware projects. Making hardware at scale is extremely difficult. It’s also another reminder of the inherent issues when buying a connected gadget. Those gadgets may offer a lot of convenience, but also run the risk of being bricked either by the whim of a company or by its downfall.

Researchers Develop Coating to Prevent the Spread of Foodborne Illnesses on Surfaces

One of the reasons I’ve reduced my meat consumption lately is hygiene. Opening, preparing or handling raw chicken or pork sends me on a frantic tizzy of spraying down every surface in my kitchen with Lysol.

New research findings out of the University of Missouri this month could eventually ensure that some of the surfaces in my kitchen are built to help prevent the spread of foodborne pathogens like E. coli and salmonella.

The study was conducted by Eduardo Torres Dominguez, a chemical engineering doctoral student, with guidance from Professors Heather K. Hunt and Azlin Mustapha. Together they developed a coating made from titanium dioxide, which, when applied to stainless steel and exposed to UV light, is highly effective at killing organisms like bacteria (more than UV light on a regular stainless steel surface). Given that, places like food processing facilities and commercial kitchens could use countertops, cutting boards and even knives made from this coated stainless steel to help deter the spread of harmful bacteria.

This is especially true for the overall sanitary conditions of surfaces found in food processing and preparation facilities. A counter might not get cleaned properly every time on every square inch of its surface, allowing a pathogenic biofilm to form. Having a surface with this titanium oxide coating could help create an overall less hospitable place for bacteria to multiply.

The results of this research are still very early on, and while the material has survived an autoclave, it hasn’t gone through rigorous testing over a prolonged period of time, and there are still questions to answer. For example, researchers don’t know yet how long the coating would last when scrubbed every day for year.

“It’s incredibly stable material,” Prof. Hunt told me by phone last week, “It’s Chemically and thermally stable,” so it won’t break down if you use bleach on it or heat it.

“Titanium dioxide is a food grade material,” Prof. Mustapha said. That way, even if the coating came off, it wouldn’t be harmful if ingested the way something like silver is.

With the COVID-19 pandemic raging across the world, there is a renewed emphasis on sanitation and hygiene, especially as it relates to our food. This research from the Univ. of Missouri comes just months after PathSpot raised $6.5 million for its device that helps ensure food workers have washed their hands properly and removed pathogenic material.

Researchers still have a lot of work ahead of them before they are able to make any kind of leap from the lab to commercial applications, let alone consumer ones. But I, for one, am looking down the line and towards the day when (hopefully) my cutting boards can do some of the work in staying clean.

Groupe SEB Acquires StoreBound, the Startup Behind Dash and Sobro Brands

French home goods conglomerate Groupe SEB announced yesterday that they had acquired a majority stake in StoreBound, a New York City-based maker of stylish and sometimes tech-forward kitchen gear.

StoreBound, founded by longtime housewares industry exec Evan Dash and his wife Rachel Dash, had built a reputation in recent years as a scrappy, youth-oriented housewares brand. Their DASH product line, which usually features styling reminiscent of SMEG’s popular retro look at a fraction of the price of SMEG, sprinkles Amazon’s the top 100 kitchen category with their low cost air fryers and egg cookers. According to the release, StoreBound had hit $100 million in sales over the past year.

StoreBound also owns Sobro, which started with the company’s Indiegogo campaign for a hybrid fridge/coffee table. A year later the company launched a smart side table and before long they had a standalone brand to sell, well, bro-focused frankenfurniture.

While StoreBound’s tech-forward products were often kinda weird and kitschy (i.e. Sobro), they sometimes released interesting products like their rapid cold brew coffee maker and the PancakeBot, a pancake “printer”.

The acquisition of StoreBound marks the first exit among a new cohort of stylish, youth-focused house and cookware brands to emerge out of the New York startup scene over the past decade, including Chefman and Gourmia as well as newer venture-backed cookware brands Great Jones, Caraway and Pattern Brands.

KFC Bringing Beyond Meat Plant-Based Chicken to SoCal, 3D Printed Chicken to Russia

KFC announced a partnership with Beyond Meat today to bring plant-based chicken sandwiches to 50 KFC locations across Southern California. Starting on July 20, the Beyond Meat Chicken will be available for a limited time in select KFCs in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

This is the latest in a string of tests KFC has rolled out for the Beyond Chicken. The restaurant chain made it first available in Atlanta, GA last year, followed by tests in Charlotte, NC and Nashville, TN, as well as a one-day promotion in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. In Atlanta, the Beyond Chicken sparked long lines of customers who waited at least an hour to try the plant-based nuggets.

Today’s announcement continues the relationship between Beyond Meat and KFC parent company, Yum Brands. In addition to the previous market tests, this past June Yum China announced that Beyond’s burgers would be available at select KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell stores in mainland China for a limited time as well.

The timing of KFC’s move into California is actually coming at a good time. Sales of plant-based meat, which have been growing over the past few years, have surged even higher during the pandemic, as COVID-19 highlighted limitations of our meat supply and shone a light on the working conditions of meat packers.

But plant-based chicken wasn’t the only alternative protein news to come out of KFC today. Over in Moscow, KFC Russia announced that it was “launching the development of innovative 3D bioprinting technology to create chicken meat in cooperation with the 3D Bioprinting Solutions research laboratory.” In other words, KFC is looking to develop lab-created chicken nuggets. The company says it will receive a final product for testing this fall.