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Newsletter: Why Blue Bottle Coffee is Like the Tesla Cybertruck

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The new Tesla Cybertruck is a polarizing vehicle. People seem to either really like or hate the triangle-shaped truck. (I’m squarely in the like side because I’ve always wanted a vehicle from Megaforce.) Tesla CEO Elon Musk is definitely a polarizing figure in his own right, but between electric cars, solar powered roof tiles, and hyperloops, Musk isn’t waiting patiently for the future to arrive. He’s shooting it full of harpoons and trying to drag it towards us right now.

I thought of Mr. Musk when I read about Blue Bottle Coffee’s big announcement last week that the coffee company was trying to make its locations have zero waste by the end of 2020. Not 2024 or 2022. But twelve months from now.

As my colleague Jenn Marston wrote, Blue Bottle is achieving this by having people bring in their own containers for coffee beans, their own reusable cups for coffee (or pay a “modest deposit” for one of Blue Bottles reusable cups), and packaging grab and go items in reusable containers.

This is a bold move that even Blue Bottle’s CEO concedes is risky. In a blog post last week announcing the change, Bryan Meehan wrote: “We are proud to announce an experiment that may not work, that may cost us money, and that may make your life a little more complicated.”

Good for him for not sugar-coating this experiment. Also kudos for pushing the plastic-free movement forward. Big companies have been doing little things to reduce their plastic waste output over the past year: Burger King phased out cheap toys in kids meals in the U.K., Live Nation banned single-use plastics at music festivals, and Ben & Jerry’s eliminated single-use plastic cups and spoons.

But Blue Bottle is going one step further and actually “inconveniencing” its customers by pulling them out of their normal routine. As Jenn wrote, the result could wind up being that busy people get pissed and take off for Starbucks. But I’m hopeful that people and other businesses will be inspired by Blue Bottle’s actions, and buy a Cybertruck-load of coffee from them.

Nomiku’s new RFID-scanning circulator

RIP Consumer Sous Vide?

Spoon Founder Mike Wolf broke the news last Friday that Nomiku, one of the early pioneers of the home sous vide movement, was shutting down all operations.

Last year Nomiku had pivoted from a hardware company to become a meal delivery service that used the company’s sous vide technology. But while growth in that sector was strong, it wasn’t enough.

As Mike pointed out, Nomiku’s demise isn’t an isolated incident:

The exit of Nomiku from the market marks the end of what has been a fairly rough of couple years for the first wave of startups in the connected cooking market. Sansaire, which started around the same time as Nomiku, shut down in February of 2018. Hestan Cue, maker of a guided cooking system, downsized its team in April, and just a few weeks later ChefSteps, another sous vide startup, had to layoff a significant portion of its team before it got acquired by Breville.

The bloom is definitely off the consumer sous vide rose at this point. The only question is whether the carnage will continue and expand into other parts of the connected cooking appliance market in 2020.

The Year in Kitchen Tech Crowdfunding

Speaking of hardware: If you are an entrepreneur looking to crowdfund an idea, may we suggest creating some gadget around beverages? I took a look back at our 2019 coverage of Kickstarter projects and there were five drink-related projects that crowdfunded more than $100,000 this year:

Mosi Tea mobile tea brewer – $458,200
uKeg Nitro cold brew coffee maker – $643,498
Stasis Glycol homebrew chiller – $184,369
Travel Decanter cocktail tumblers – $377,071
Ode coffee grinder – $609,094 (with 55 days to go in the campaign)

However, it hasn’t been all good news for the companies that made a bunch a moola on Kickstarter. Mosi Tea will miss its Dec. ship date, Stasis has encountered production issues, and some people who have received their Travel Decanters have complained about it leaking.

Crowdfunding food tech will surely continue through the next year. Hopefully those inspired by the Kickstarter successes will learn from the crowdfunding failures.

Postmates’ Serve Robot Spotted (and Filmed) Making Deliveries in LA

From the looks of it, Postmates’ Serve robot is ready to roll into action, almost exactly a year after the delivery service unveiled it.

First, Serve made an appearance on The Ellen Show last week in a staged bit about delivering chips and guacamole. And almost immediately after that, Chris Reilly posted an Instagram video of Serve out in the wild making a delivery in “#Hollywood” by the “#CNNBuilding.”

It’s not exactly thrilling footage, but it does show that Serve is real and making rounds around La La Land.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5tJXUxlN6b

In addition to being cute and cool, Serve’s apparent public debut party, as it were, is a bright spot for what has otherwise been a bummer of back half of 2019 for Postmates. The company delayed its IPO following the WeWork debacle and a general souring on third-party delivery services that have yet to prove their profitability. Then last week, Postmates shut down its Mexico City office and laid off dozens of employees across multiple offices in the U.S.

But Postmates continues to ride the robot delivery wave. Serve is just one of the delivery rover robots that have rolled into the market this year. Starship is being used by a number of colleges now, Refraction AI is proving its hardiness by making deliveries in snow covered streets, and Kiwi just announced a reinvention of its own robot that will make the device more rugged and give it the ability to retrieve items from vending machines.

Los Angeles is an interesting test case for Postmates’ delivery robots. It’s very spread out, which typically works against rover bots with their slow speed and smaller delivery range. However, Los Angeles has nice weather year round and is pretty flat (making it easier for the robot to get around), plus it has a ton of celebrities who order via Postmates.

Postmates seems to be focusing Serve’s, errr, service in California right now. The company announced it August that it was given a permit for sidewalk robotics operations from the City of San Francisco.

Study: Online Grocery Shopping Could Help Alleviate Food Deserts

A study out from Yale University this week found that online grocery shopping could help people in food deserts get access to more healthy food choices.

The study, led by Eric, J. Brandt, MD and titled Availability of Grocery Delivery to Food Deserts in States Participating in the Online Purchase Pilot, looked at the eight states that are part of the Online Purchase Pilot (OPP) provision of the 2014 Farm Bill that allows people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to purchase groceries online. That online buying provision could go nationwide after the trial ends in 2021.

From Yale’s study:

Among 8 states participating in the USDA’s OPP, online grocery purchasing and delivery services were available to more than 90% of urban food desert census tracts and SNAP households within them, but these services were rarely available in rural food desert census tracts. Our results suggest that existing grocery delivery networks, when combined with online grocery-purchasing, could potentially strengthen access to groceries in many areas where it is most lacking. However, grocery delivery fees are not covered by SNAP and may deter online purchasing.4 To help maximize OPP benefits in food desert census tracts, the USDA could consider extending SNAP benefits for both online grocery purchasing (as in the OPP) and delivery, although rural areas may be least affected.

The eight states examined were Alabama, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington.

Brandt’s study is coming out at the same time the Trump administration is looking to tighten rules around who can receive SNAP benefits. Just today, the Department of Agriculture gave final approval of that would kick 755,000 out of the federal food stamp program. As The New York Time reports:

The rule, which was proposed in February, makes it more difficult for states to allow able-bodied adults without children to receive food assistance for more than three months out of a 36-month period without working.

Thankfully, for those on the SNAP program living in a food desert, All_ebt is a startup that can help facilitate online grocery shopping. All_ebt uses a combination of Facebook Messenger and virtual Visa cards that allow people to purchase SNAP approved items online (though there is still the matter of the delivery fee). Earlier this year, during the government shutdown, All_ebt also released budgeting tools to help those on SNAP manage their money.

While online grocery shopping is still a small part of overall grocery purchases, retailers are putting in the infrastructure to make ordering and fulfillment faster and more automated. Things like robotic micro-fulfillment promise to turnaround online orders for delivery faster. If more people in food deserts can get groceries delivered same day, that’s more revenue for the retailer. More importantly, it can mean an easier way to a healthier life for those living on SNAP.

As Brandt told Yale News “If you live in a food desert, online grocery delivery really stands out as a way to get healthy food that potentially can save your life.”

How Will Winter Affect Autonomous Delivery Robots? Snow Problem!

A lot of work in autonomous robots is done in places like Scottsdale, Houston and the Bay Area. What places like Scottsdale, Houston and the Bay Area have in common is that they have mild-to-nonexistant winters. But up north in Michigan and Wisconsin, where it’s already snowing, autonomous delivery bots from Refraction AI and Starship are being put to the test.

Refraction is based out of Ann Arbor, MI, and it’s three-wheeled REV-1 robot has been designed to travel in bad weather. As we wrote around the time of its launch:

…Refraction AI combines software and hardware to battle bad weather. First is the environmental scanning provided by a 12-camera setup as well as ultrasound and radar sensors on the REV-1. To make the robot less expensive, the REV-1 foregoes the LIDAR systems popular with other autonomous robots. And according to Johnson-Roberson, Refraction AI’s camera rig also allows the robot to track things not on the ground like buildings and cars to navigate even when road lines are not visible. The other way the REV-1 takes on bad weather is rather low tech. “We’re using fat bike tires a low PSI so they are squishy,” said Johnson-Roberson. “They can run in snow and rain.”

But it’s one thing to describe how a robot will work in inclement weather; it’s another to see it in action. Thankfully, the folks at Refraction shot a video of its robot on a snow-covered road a couple of weeks back and shared it with The Spoon. Check it out:

Refraction.AI’s REV-1 (Pity the cyclist following it)

While that video doesn’t show it taking turns or hills, or having to deal with traffic, it certainly looks like the REV-1 can handle slushy conditions. Which is actually good news all around. Barring the arrival of a blizzard, hungry folks can order meals for delivery guilt-free because they aren’t forcing someone to drive or ride in the snow, and restaurants can still earn delivery revenue when the weather turns.

Elsewhere in the midwest, the students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are just now learning whether or not that town’s snowy weather will keep the newly arrived Starship robots from making food deliveries. The Wisconsin State Journal’s Just Ask Us section fielded this question this week: Will UW-Madison’s food delivery robots get stuck in the snow?

The answer was pretty straightforward and filled with the type of common sense you’d expect from a Midwesterner:

On days when there are blizzards or icy conditions that would make the sidewalks unnavigable for people, the delivery robots will not operate. When students go on the app to order food, it would show that the marketplaces are closed

A spokesperson for the university goes on to say that since the robots were designed with a low-profile and traction tires that could handle Estonian weather, they should be able to handle a Wisconsin winter. (If you go to UWM, send us a photo or video of the robot in snowy action).

The weather outside may be frightful, but putting robots through these harsh weather paces means that they’ll be available in more places beyond Houston, Phoenix and the Bay Area in the near future.

Sony Sets up AI Unit to Work on Food

Sony announced this week that is has launched Sony AI, a new organization that will research and develop artificial intelligence specifically for games, imaging and sensors, and “gastronomy.” The new initiative will have offices in Japan, Europe and the U.S.

There aren’t many details around what exactly Sony will be working on, but Sony spokesman Shinichi Tobe told AlJazeera yesterday that “AI and robotics will not replace chefs. We are aiming to offer new tools to expand their creativity with AI and robotics.”

This isn’t Sony’s first foray into food. In April of last year, Sony teamed up with Carnegie-Mellon University to work on food robots. As we reported at the time:

Sony said they were starting off with food-related robots because the complexities involved with food could later be applied to a wider range of industries. Specifically, it cited the ability to work with fragile and odd-shaped materials, as well as the ability to operate a robot in small spaces.

AI and robots are like peanut butter and chocolate with AI being the “brain” for the robot “hands.” Things like computer vision, deep learning and synthetic data help form the AI so the robot can determine objects to grab and manipulate, etc..

Sony’s motivations may also be more societal in nature as the company’s home country of Japan is facing an aging population. Robots and other forms of automation could help with a potentially diminished labor force.

Food is a popular subject for robotics and AI researchers. Nvidia’s Lab in Seattle built a kitchen to train its robots to do everyday tasks. IBM partnered with spice company McCormick to use AI to develop new food products. And Korea’s Woowa Bros. hooked up with UCLA to work on food robots as well.

Something tells me we’ll be seeing more of these types of deal throughout next year.

Newsletter: A Space-y Bake Oven and Is the Gig Up for Food Delivery?

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Here’s an insider secret for anyone who wants the Spoon to cover their food tech startup.

Shoot something into space.

For real. We love space food here and are always on the lookout for startups that are blasting off both literally and figuratively.

This weekend was a big one for celestial food stuff as a rocket carrying wine and what is essentially a space-y bake oven docked with the International Space Station (ISS).

French startup Space Cargo Unlimited sent the wine, which sadly the astronauts won’t be able to imbibe. Rather, the wine will just sit in the ISS and astronauts will monitor the effects space radiation and a constant state of free-falling (not zero gravity) has on the beverage’s aging process. When the samples return to earth in 12 months, they will be compared with control samples kept here on terra firma.

On the more tech-y engineering side is Zero G Kitchen’s oven. Obvi if you’re floating in space you can just set cookies on a tray and slide them into an oven. They too, would float around and make a mess. Zero G Kitchen’s solution is suspending the cookie in a silicone pouch wrapped in an aluminum frame. The pouch has micro-pores to let heat and water escape, while the frame keeps it in place inside the oven.

While all this stuff is geeky and cool, it’s easy to think that instead of aging wine in space, that money might be better spent helping more immediate problems like developing plastic alternatives and solving food inequality.

I can’t argue with that, and only offer that two things can be true at the same time. Yes, more money and energy should go into solving those very real world problems, and maybe developing technologies for the most extremes of space can help us discover practical solutions for our earthbound dilemmas.

Regardless, if space is the place for your food tech startup, you should definitely launch it on The Spoon.

Food delivery isn’t an easy gig

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for food delivery. After reporting weak earnings last week, Grubhub’s stock tanked. Over the weekend, Instacart Shoppers (the workers who actually get the groceries and deliver it) called for a three-day strike over the company’s pay structure. And yesterday, while Uber Eats grew, Uber overall reported more than a billion dollars in losses.

As the food delivery industry matures, we’re seeing a number of factors crash into one big, complicated mess that are casting a pall over the sector.

First, there’s a ton of well-funded competition (Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, etc.), driving prices down in a race to grab consumers who, according to Grubhub, aren’t loyal to any one particular delivery brand. Add to that the lackluster performance of Uber post-IPO that is also turning off Wall Street and forcing delivery company Postmates to delay its IPO.

Meal delivery companies are also facing pressure from their restaurant partners, who are tired of paying exorbitant commissions to these delivery services. As my colleague Jenn Marston points out, restaurants are pulling some elements of delivery in-house to gain more control over their operations and branding.

As I noted above, delivery services are also facing internal pressures from the people who do the actual delivery work. This is the fourth consecutive year that Instacart Shoppers have instigated a walkout, while DoorDash and Postmates have had to deal with their own workers protesting unfair payment structures.

Finally, gig economy companies like the ones listed here face legal pressures from local governments. California passed AB 5, which looks to reclassify gig workers as employees, and New York is looking at a similar law. Uber and the like aren’t fond of these laws and are spending big money to fight them.

All this is to say that while 2019 was a year of tumult for third-party food delivery companies, 2020 is shaping up to be a year of reckoning and shakeout.

Photo: The Spoon

Get smarter about food tech, binge watch SKS videos
Finally, if you are looking for a new show to binge and you want to get smarter about food tech while doing so, may we recommend firing up the videos from our Smart Kitchen Summit 2019?

There was a ton of great talks, fireside chats and presentations from our conference last month and we’ve been furiously posting them online. Line ’em up and watch ’em all on The Spoon’s YouTube channel today.

I Tried a Biodegradable Straw — Made From Food Waste — that Even Trump Will Love

Remember when the President of the United States got into the plastic straw business last summer, introducing “Trump Straws” because  “liberal straws don’t work”?

Well, two Chicago entrepreneurs are now selling a “liberal” straw —100-percent biodegradable and compostable, fossil-fuel free, made from recycled food waste —that does work. 

The AVO Beginning straw could make biodegradable straws great again by using an ingenious food waste innovation: upcycling discarded avocado pits.

The avocado straw, which started appearing in the Chicago market this summer, is produced in Morelia, Mexico by Biofase, a start-up whose young founder came up with a breakthrough way of creating a polymer by extracting a molecular compound from an avocado pit.  According to Mexico Daily News, chemical engineer Scott Munguia spent a year and a half looking for the perfect Mexico-sourced bioplastic, testing mango and mamey sapote seeds, before settling on the avocado pit as the most viable, eco-friendly alternative to the fossil fuel-derived plastic straws that are discarded at a staggering rate (500 million a day in the U.S. alone, according to one estimate)

The most extraordinary aspect of the avocado straws, though, is how they work.

As the success of the “Trump straw” venture indicates, many people have issues with paper straws; although biodegradable, the colder the drink, the quicker paper straws deteriorate. For ice-obsessed Americans, this is a problem.

 Enter the avo straw.  I tested the straws in a variety of cold, iced drinks (sparkling water, hard seltzer, iced tea, Coke) at my home, and they held up beautifully— as good as any fossil-fuel based, turtle-nostril clogging plastic straw. “It holds up in water as cold as 20 degrees,” said Moses Savalza, one of the company’s co-founders. Savalza also told me that the avocado straw degrades in 240 days. (This is in contrast to conventional plastic straws, which can take more than 100 years to degrade.)

But AVO Beginning’s ice-friendly avocado straws face plenty of competition in an increasingly hot market for plastic straw alternatives.

As single-use plastic straws become increasingly taboo  or illegal (cities such as Seattle, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C. already have bans) and as more consumers complain about mushy paper straws, a wave of start-ups are vying for a slice of the eco-friendly straw market.

The alt plastic straw market includes start-ups pitching straws made from everything from hay, corn, and bamboo to pasta, rice, potato and even wild grass straws.

Although any of these straws are better for the environment than plastic, not all plant-based straws are created equal. They have varying durability in cold and hot temperatures, differing production costs, and environmental impacts.  (For example, in the environmental blog Green Matters, writer Sophie Hirsh noted that the popular Australian brand Biopak’s eco-friendly utensils are only compostable in “commercial compostable facilities,” whereas the avocado-derived plastics can biodegrade in any natural conditions, including your backyard. 

Of some of his chief eco-friendly competitors, Savalza said, “bamboo has good quality, but it’s too expensive, hay…it’s too fragile. Corn or potatoes. They use food.” 

Indeed, the reason why the AVO straw make a case for “eco-friendliest of al”  is not just because it disposes quickly (biodegrading in 240 days), it is because it’s made from waste.

AVO Beginning straws are made from the thousands of avocado pits that processors discard each day in Michoacan state, the epi-center of Mexico’s avocado industry; most of these pits come from ag giant Simplot, which has alone provided 450,000 pounds of pits for bioplastic production.  This is the differentiator, Savalza said.  “Paper straws.. you’re cutting down a tree.  Straws made from potatoes, or cornstarch.. you’re using something that could be food or feed.  With this, you’re not taking away from the supply chain.”   

AVO Beginning is one of only two distributors of Biofase’s avocado-based bioplastics in the United States; the chief distributor is California’s Nostalgia de Mexico, said AVO Beginning co-founder Hugo Villasenor.

Since launching in June in Chicago  Villasenor said, AVO Beginning has found a small group of enthusiastic early adopters, such as LYFE Kitchen, a small chain that stresses healthy and environmentally-conscious foods, and a Chicago-area catering company that works with corporate clients trying to reduce their plastic footprint.  “These are clients that are willing to pay a little more for straws for the environmental benefit,” Villasenor said.

But for many other prospective clients, price is an obstacle.  Although the straws are affordable for a bioplastic straw, at two-and-a-half to three cents per straw, Villasenor said that is still more than paper straws (roughly two cents) and plastic straws (less than a penny). For many small restaurants and cafes facing tight margins, this is still a deal breaker, Villasenor said. 

Another big obstacle for AVO Beginning is that so many restaurants and cafes rely on a single vendor for their food service product needs. A major goal for AVO Beginning is to get a food service company, such as Sysco or Edward Don, to include AVO straws as part of their range of eco-friendly options.  In addition to straws, AVO Beginning also sells knives, forks and spoons made from avocado pits using Biofase’s technology.

Both Villasenor and Savalza concede that another reason their early sales have been sluggish is because they’re both newbies. Villasenor has spent most of career as a restaurant server; Savalza’s background is in trucking and logistics.  They’re new to food service sales, and acknowledge there’s a learning curve in figuring out how to reach new clients and decision-makers.

But when asked about the future of avocado-derived plastics, both are confident.  “I know this straw will take off,” said Villasenor. “People understand that plastics are one of the great problems of today, and now they want to fix it.” 

Food Tech News: Base Foods to Bring Healthy Noodles to U.S., CBD is Getting Closer to Your Plate

With Halloween in the rearview mirror and Thanksgiving mere weeks away, it’s fair to say we’re officially in the holiday season. But just because some of our thoughts are occupied with costumes, favorite candy selections (Almond Joy) and turkey prep doesn’t mean that food tech news takes a pause.

Here are a few stories that caught our eye this week ’round the web, from nutrient-dense Japanese noodles to CBD developments to new funding for an African food distribution marketplace. Enjoy!

Japanese startup Base Food takes step towards U.S. launch
Base Food, the Japanese startup making nutritionally dense foods, has announced its intention to start selling in the U.S. (h/t FoodNavigator). Established in 2016, the company, which pitched at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition, uses ingredients like whole wheat flour, seaweed, and flaxseed to develop better-for-you versions of staple foods like bread and pasta. Base Food already sells its Base Bread and Base Noodles in its native Japan and is targeting San Francisco as its initial launch city for the U.S. market.

USDA announcement could catalyze CBD industry
This week the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that farmers nationwide will soon be able to grow hemp under the U.S. Domestic Hemp Production Program. CBD, a product of hemp, has become a popular “wellness” ingredient in everything from skincare products to a myriad of food and beverage items. While the extract is still not technically legal to be sold in edible products — something local governments are beginning to crack down on — this latest USDA announcement is a new step towards establishing regulatory guidelines around CBD.

Kenya’s Twiga Foods Raises $30M Series B Round
Twiga Foods, the Nairobi, Kenya-based B2B food distribution startup, has raised a $30 million Series B round in a mixture of debt and equity funding. According to TechCrunch the round was led by Goldman Sachs with participation from IFC, Creadev and others. Founded in 2014, Twiga is a marketplace that connects local farmers with a variety of foodservice vendors. The startup will use its new capital to establish a distribution center in Nairobi and expand to serve more countries in Kenya.

Newsletter: Is Equity Crowdfunding a Thing Now?

I know I should wait until there is three of something before calling it a trend, but Spoon readers: Is something going on with equity crowdfunding?

Over the course of two business days, two bits of equity crowdfunding news came across my desk. On Friday, GoSun announced it was going back to equity crowdfunding to raise $500,000 of its Series A, and today GOffee (noticing a “Go” trend here) announced it has raised $1.07 million via equity crowdfunding. Both companies used StartEngine’s platform to raise their funds, FWIW.

For those who need it, here’s a quick primer on equity crowdfunding: It’s kinda like regular idea crowdfunding you see on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Only instead of buying a product, regular (or “non-accredited”) investors, everyday joes, can buy actual shares into the company. If there is an exit for the company, investors would get a return, though I recommend reading StartEngine’s FAQ to learn more about the specific rules and risks around equity crowdfunding.

As noted earlier, this is GoSun’s second trip to the crowd for money; the company raised a $500,000 seed round in 2017. I spoke with GoSun CEO Patrick Sherwin about the decision and he said he liked equity crowdfunding because it allowed him to grow the company at his own pace, without a VC firm pressuring him to scale up quickly so they can get their 10x return.

But in the case of crowdfunding, cash is all you’ll get. In addition to money, the right VC brings with them industry connections, mentoring and advice. Going to the crowd, ironically, means a company is more likely to go it alone.

Things get tricky from a regulatory perspective when you talk about investing and financing and all that, so I should take a quick moment to say that I’m not endorsing equity crowdfunding as a funding mechanism or as an investment opportunity. Like with any investment opportunity (or crowdfunding!), there is no guarantee. Do your research and caveat emptor.

Like I said, it’s too early to call equity crowdfunding a trend. In addition to GoSun, there are just ten other active food and beverage companies on the StartEngine platform, most of them drink-related (spirits, CBD drinks, etc.), and seven of which have hit their crowdfunding goals.

The idea of opening up and allowing anyone to invest in your company on this type of scale is a new one. I imagine we’ll see a lot of startups try this mechanism in areas where there aren’t a lot of VC firms or other types of startup infrastructure. Like regular crowdfunding, we’ll see a lot of flameouts, but also one or two homeruns.

Cloud Kitchens are just fine, thank you very much
Last week, a TechCrunch headline proclaimed that “Cloud Kitchens is an Oxymoron.” I wrote a response outlining the ways in which the cloud kitchen business is actually good thanks to companies like Kitchen United, and exciting even with new developments from Zume and Ono Food.

I bring it up not to re-pick a fight, but because of the number of people who reached out to me after that post. It seems that both articles really struck a nerve and our readers have some thoughts. I encourage you to share them! The best way to push this industry forward is to have robust discussions about difficult topics like business models and the necessity of new technologies. You can always drop us a line, join our highly active Spoon Slack Channel, or leave a comment on a social media channel like Linkedin.

Photo: The Spoon

Smart Kitchen Summit videos are going live
If you couldn’t make our (awesome) Smart Kitchen Summit this year, or want to catch a session you missed, good news! We’ve been furiously uploading video from the panels, firesides and presentations to our YouTube channel and on the Spoon site. We’ve got a bunch up there now, and more are being added every day, so visit and subscribe to The Spoon YouTube channel and make sure you don’t miss a minute of it.

I Tried the New Impossible Burger from the Grocery Store, Here’s How it Tasted

I was once a Vegetarian. For 11 years I did not eat meat or meat products of any kind except the occasional sushi. Being a big fan of burgers and fries and steaks, the only thing I missed being a vegetarian was beef.

Back then, there were no reasonable substitution attempts. A mashed yellow disc was called a veggie or garden burger. Sometimes they were made from beans or some other dry grain – and that’s how they behaved on the grill and tasted on the bun: Dry.

Impossible Foods released its new burger product in stores today, but I dipped in to Gelson’s last night to see if by chance they had put it out already. Turns out the early bird gets the plant-based worm because they had it in stock and I bought it.

It was in the Natural-Organic-Vegan section of the Hollywood Hills Gelson’s, a perfect place for “Burger Made From Plants.” It was frozen, but there were plenty still in stock. A 12 oz. package cost $8.99, has 3 servings per package, with 240 calories, 19g of protein and 14g of fat per serving. For comparison, the Beyond Meat ground costs around $10 for a 16oz package, has 4 servings per package, with 250 calories, 20g of protein and 18g of fat per serving.

I let the meat thaw over night in the fridge and got up this morning to make breakfast burger (that’s a regular hamburger eaten at 7 a.m. with coffee).

I made the patties and noticed that the texture was meat-like and some red juices to emulate a “bleeding” burger. I like my burgers medium rare and would have to experiment a bit to get it like that with Impossible burger. Though the cooking time was about the same as regular beef, it came out a little more done than I had wanted.

How’d it taste? Well, like a burger. And as a former-vegetarian-who-missed-cheeseburgers, I mean that as a compliment. It had a nice umami flavor and the texture when eaten was like beef. But that’s what it’s supposed to be. I dare say it would fool a meat eater. I would have been fooled by it.

Right now, you can only get the Impossible Burger from Gelson’s in Southern California. But given how quickly the Impossible Whopper at Burger King expanded nationwide, and how good this tastes, I can imagine that the store bought Impossible Burger will rapidly expand across California and the country as well. Assuming they don’t have another production shortage.

I can recommend buying the Impossible Burger, especially if you’re worried about the ethical and environmental issues surrounding eating meat. With Impossible and Beyond Meat now readily available at stores, being a vegetarian for 11 years (or longer) would be a lot easier.

Burger King to Stop Giving Out Plastic Toys in U.K. Kids Meals

Many children are often more excited — at least initially — about the cheap toy in a fast food kids meal than the actual food. But those little hunks of plastic will now be a thing of the past at U.K. Burger Kings, CNN reports.

Responding to a Change.org petition from British sisters Ella and Caitlin McEwan that received more than 500,000 signatures, the company said it will stop giving out the toys, saving the planet from 320 tons of single-use plastic each year. Earlier this year, the European Union voted to ban single-use plastics by 2021, which may affect the U.K. depending on the outcome of Brexit.

It will be a while until this initiative comes to the U.S. — Burger King said it plans to get rid of non-biodegradable plastic toys in other markets by 2025.

The burger company, which recently rolled out a plant-based Whopper made with Impossible Foods across the U.S., will also place “plastic toy amnesty bins” in U.K. stores for customers to bring their old toys, whether they came from Burger King or not. Burger King has partnered with Pentatonic, a circular economy company, to melt down the toys to make useful items such as play areas and trays.

McDonald’s has also announced a sustainability initiative around plastics toys. The food giant  will launch a trial program at U.K. locations where customers can choose a piece of fruit, and eventually a book, instead of a toy. The company hopes to reduce its use of about 1,000 tons of plastic in Britain per year.

While scraping plastic toys is a win for sustainability, fast food restaurants have a long way to go on the sustainability front. After all, they still use plenty of single-use tableware, straws and cups. McDonald’s has pledged to reduce its waste by 2025, while Burger King seems to just be getting started.

This New $180 Smart Bottle Tracks How Much of Its Flavored Water You Drink

If you find yourself constantly forgetting to drink or feel the need for some flavor in your water, there’s now a $180 solution: LifeFuels’ Bottle.

The Keurig Dr Pepper-backed startup, which has raised $5 million to date, on Monday introduced the Bottle, which comes with what the company calls FuelPods. Up to three pods can be inserted into the bottle to add customizable flavors to the liquid inside with the touch of a button or through LifeFuels’ app. The app, of course, allows users to set and track hydration goals and check the levels remaining in each FuelPod. 

FuelPods are available in flavors such as peach, blackberry acai and lemon-lime, and the company said in a press release that they’re packed with electrolytes and antioxidants “to provide nutrients on-the-go.” Each FuelPod apparently dispenses up to 30 beverages and can be sent back to the company to be recycled.

Carbonated and flavored water has seen a resurgence in the past few years as health-conscious consumers look for alternatives to sugary juices and sodas. Last year, sales of flavored water reached more than $3 billion, an increase from the previous year, according to Euromonitor data.

LifeFuels seems to be hitting all the checkboxes for a tech-powered wellness company: a high priced item, water flavoring that’s said to be functional, and even a subscription service: new pods can be sent to subscribers for $9.99 each, instead of the usual $11.99.

Other companies have also attempted to entice would-be water drinkers with bells and whistles. Mark One’s smart bottle Pryme Vessyl measured how much water it was holding and tracked users’ sips. The company is now closed. Meanwhile, PepsiCo’s Drinkfinity uses a special bottle and recyclable flavor pods to juice up your water, but doesn’t feature any of tech bells and whistles found in the LifeFuels Bottle.

The question for LifeFuels now is whether there are enough people thirsty for a nearly $200 water bottle.