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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Are We Entering a Frozen Food Renaissance?

Let’s be honest: frozen food does not have the best reputation. From French bread pizzas to bland microwaveable TV meals, the freezer section is usually full of meal options that are unhealthy, mass-produced, and overall subpar.

But lately a few companies are trying to reverse the frozen food stigma — and keep the convenience — with high-quality, healthy meal offerings.

It’s a good time to be in the frozen food market. According to RBC Capital markets, frozen food volume growth recently turned positive for the first time in 5 years. While the slump was blamed on millennials who tend to opt for whole, fresh foods, the rebound is most likely due to the exact same demographic.

“A lot of consumers, especially millennials and students, are looking for an easier [dining] option that they can stick in the microwave,” Zoe Lloyd, founder and CEO of Zoni Foods, told me over the phone. Her frozen meal kit company that offers three healthy, plant-based frozen meals.

Lloyd came up with the idea for Zoni Foods while a student herself at Yale business school. She wanted to find natural, easy to prepare food in the frozen aisle of the grocery store, and was struck by the whopping lack of innovation. So she developed a line of healthy, plant-based frozen meals with ingredients sourced from local farms.

This hits the sweet spot for busy millennials: the frozen meals are convenient, healthy, and offer nearly instant gratification. “People want to feel like they’re preparing a healthy dinner for themselves, but doing it in a way with no prep and very little cleanup,” explained Lloyd. They’re also capitalizing on rising demand for locally sourced ingredients. And at an average price of $6.99 for a single-serving meal, they’re cheaper than takeout or a shopping trip at most organic grocery stores.

Belgian Mealhero also makes frozen meal kits, but they’ve taken the operation a few steps further with a recipe app and connected countertop steamer. In our interview with their CEO Jeroen Spitaels for the Smart Kitchen Summit Europe blog (where they’ll be competing in the Startup Showcase), he emphasized the convenience of frozen food. “Because they’re starting with frozen food (with a long shelf life), our community is able to plug and play Mealhero food into their schedule whenever they need it the most,” he told me.

There are a few other companies edging into the high-end frozen meal market. Daily Harvest, a startup that delivers flash-frozen soups, smoothies, and meals, is putting a millennial-friendly face on frozen food. Eat Local stores provide gourmet, fresh-made frozen meals to Washingtonians. And just this week, Earth Fare announced that it will carry Seal the Seasons products, which sells frozen local produce from family farmers in North and South Carolina, all year round.

In addition to convenience and ease, frozen meals (or at least frozen produce) might be straight-up healthier for you. Studies have shown that it has the same amount or more nutrients than fresh food, especially if it’s flash-frozen. And while fresh food is often picked before it’s ripe to account for its shipping journey, frozen food can be harvested when it’s at its ripest.

As we start getting more and more of our groceries delivered, however, frozen foods can make things tricky. After all, you don’t want Amazon to leave your weekly shop in the car or on your kitchen table if it contains frozen meal kits or — god forbid — ice cream. This is where packaging insulation could come in handy, especially if it’s sustainable.

By capitalizing on the millennial-driven trend for convenient, home-cooked meals and adding new, local, and healthier options, frozen foods could be on the cusp of a Renaissance. No matter what, though, I’ll always have a soft spot for DiGiorno pizza.

Food Tech News Roundup: Meal Kits, Produce Initiatives, and Cookie Dough

This week’s food tech news was all about two things: meal kits and food (and grocery) delivery. From Kroger’s acquisition of Ocado’s technology to Good Eggs’ $50 million fundraise to Chef’d’s partnership with Byte, they kind of dominated the news cycle.

So it’s only fitting we have a few of those stories in our weekly roundup as well! We’ve got the download on Munchery’s downsizing and Blue Apron’s brick-and-mortar stores, as well as a new fresh produce purchasing incentive. And, to round it out, cookie dough.

Blue Apron goes brick-and-mortar

Meal kit company Blue Apron announced a series of pop-up events across seven cities. They’ll have an experiential retail location in NYC, as well as mobile pop-ups (food trucks?) in L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle and movie nights (???) in Austin, Dallas, and Minneapolis. At the NYC pop-up, open May 29th until the end of June, shoppers can check out Blue Apron’s latest products, listen in on panel discussions, and pay a small fee for cooking classes (proceeds are donated to City Harvest). Meal kits are transitioning from a delivery model to retail, and Blue Apron seems to be taking this trend one step further with these pop-up experiences. We’ll try to check it out when they come to Seattle and let you know if the experiment is paying off.

 


JUST Foods debuts new vegan cookie dough

From lab-grown meat to egg-free scrambled eggs, JUST Foods is working to create vegan versions of our favorite foods. Next up: cookie dough. In flavors like Birthday Cake, Chocolate Mint, and classic Chocolate Chip, this egg-free, butter-free dough will be sold in 14 oz jars, as well as single-serve cups and 5 lb tubs for foodservice. Just Cookie Dough first launched in 2016, but JUST Foods (then Hampton Creek) had difficulty keeping up with demand. They’re hoping their new co-manufacturer will help them meet customers’ growing appetites for plant-based foods. Bonus: You can eat it raw, no salmonella qualms!

 

Munchery cuts staff in 3 cities

Online meal delivery company Munchery has stopped operations in Seattle, New York, and L.A. They’ll still operate in San Francisco, their first and largest market, but are cutting around 30% of their staff, according to GeekWire. Unlike other food delivery services which partner with local restaurants, Munchery cooked their packaged meal offerings in their own kitchens, and also gave customers the option to order for multiple days.

 


Non-profit increases access to produce for low-income families

Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit which aims to increase underserved communities’ access to fresh produce, is launching a Reward Card to incentivize fruit and vegetable purchases. Low-income families in NYC will receive cards preloaded with $20, and if they spend it on produce at one of six participating supermarkets, they’ll receive more money put back on the card. Participants can get up to a total of $180 on their card through December 31st, 2018. Wholesome Wave has focused chiefly on doubling SNAP (food stamps) benefits at farmers markets since its launch, but their cards will help them reach a larger audience.

Did we miss any food tech news stories? Tell us in the comments, or tweet us @TheSpoonTech. 

Mucho Makes Shoppable Meal Planning More Dynamic & Efficient

“You do the cooking. We do the rest.” That’s the tagline of Mucho, a London-based startup which aims to create personalized, convenient meal plans that can be customized a whole slew of ways. And they really do take you pretty much ALLLLL the way through the meal journey.

Customers can use the Mucho app to select recipes based on dietary preferences (low sugar, vegetarian, etc.), budget, and how people they want to feed. The app then builds a customized shopping basket around the recipe(s), which users can either transfer into a printable shopping list or, if they’re in the U.K., they can also have their shopping list delivered through grocery delivery service Ocado. Users can also add on bits and pieces like cleaning products or snacks to their delivery list.

As of now, Mucho has over 1000 recipes in their database, culled from 40 online influencers and 20 brands — most of whom focus on healthy recipes. 

When I first heard of Mucho, I thought “Isn’t this just emeals, but British?” Both services offer personalized recipe selections, both create shopping lists, and both are linked up with grocery delivery companies so users can have their meals’ ingredients delivered straight to their door.

According to their cofounder Shanshan Xu, however, Mucho differs from emeals — and existing shoppable recipe services in general — quite a bit.

First of all, it’s more flexible. “We’ve found that people’s mood changes all the time,” said Xu. While emeals requires a subscription that locks users into a set number of dishes from the get-go, home cooks can use Mucho as much — or as little — as they’d like. They update their dietary profile and the number of people they’ll be cooking for every time they open up the app.

Emeals does allow their users switch between plans, but you can’t customize day-by-by. Which can be a hassle if you’re someone that, say, wants to eat vegan one week and flexitarian the next, or isn’t consistently dining with a partner or family. 

Mucho can also be cheaper — depending on how much you use it. Jenn Marsten reported for The Spoon that prices for emeals vary based on how long you choose to commit, but it costs $29.99 for three months or $59.99 for a full year, not including the cost of ingredients and grocery delivery. Mucho’s app is free to use, and if customers choose to have groceries delivered through the app they add a 5% fee to the final bill.

Do a little high school math, and we can determine that if you’re buying less than $1,200 in groceries per year, Mucho costs less than emeals. While $1,200 isn’t much at all to spend on groceries, especially for families, emeals also requires users to sign up for grocery delivery services (such as Amazon Prime or Instacart) separately, whereas Mucho builds Ocado delivery into the service. Xu told me that they’re hoping to soon shift the price burden away from the consumer and onto the grocery retailer.

To me, Mucho is a good option for people who want a more dynamic meal-planning service than emeals, but who need more hand-holding than is offered by shoppable recipes.

I’m betting the app will be popular with young, single folk (read: millennials) who want to cook more (and more adventurously), but also value the convenience of grocery delivery — and are willing to pay for it. Plus, Mucho’s bright, poppy graphics seem like they were made with this audience in mind.

Speaking of millennials, I tried the app myself; it was fun and easy to use, and while I couldn’t use the delivery capabilities (because I’m in the U.S.), I could definitely see myself incorporating Mucho into my grocery routine, especially when, as Xu reassured me, the delivery option comes over the pond.

The app has over 10,000 downloads so far. The Mucho cofounders put together money themselves to create the beta version of their app, and their roughly 10-person team is working to perfect their product before raising their seed round.

Amazon Cashierless Stores are Go-ing to SF and Chicago

The Seattle Times reports that Amazon will be expanding its Amazon Go store locations into San Francisco and Chicago.

The cashier-less Amazon Go stores let you walk in, grab what you want, and leave. The first location opened in Amazon’s home city of Seattle earlier this year. There had been hints about Amazon expanding to SF and Chicago, but The Times noticed job listings for store managers in the two cities, and recently received confirmation from Amazon. Reportedly, the stores will go in the Loop District in Chicago and near Union Square in SF. No word on when these new locations will open.

Amazon Go uses combination of computer vision and in-store sensors to automatically track what customers take, then charges their credit card accordingly — without the need to interact with anyone. We here at The Spoon loved the experience of shopping there, and noted how Go’s compact, hyper-efficient, and fast shopping process is perfect for dense city environments like SF and Chicago.

In addition to typical corner store goods, Amazon Go also offers fresh sandwiches and meal kits. The latter of which is something to keep an eye on. As Amazon Go expands, how will the combination of pre-assembled meals and a super convenient shopping experience alter the meal kit landscape? The experience provides a level of convenience that mail order meal kits can’t match, and the grab-and-go technology makes Amazon a faster option for picking something up on the way home than going to a grocery store.

This certainly won’t be the last of Amazon Go’s expansion, so stay tuned here to see where new ones pop up.

Pod Foods is a B2B Marketplace for Local Food Producers

It all started with a cookie. A cookie made with pea protein, to be exact.

When Pod Foods co-founders Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee started their pea flour cookie company, they assumed the toughest challenge would be developing the perfect recipe. Instead — and despite a vocal demand for their sweets from the local Bay Area community — they struggled to get their product onto retail shelves.

These frustrations prompted them to pivot from the world of cookie-making and start Pod Foods, a two-way, B2B software platform which aims to take the hurdles out of the wholesale-food distribution business.

Consumer trends show a growing demand for local food, but it’s difficult for local cottage food producers to get their goods into stores. Using distributors can be costly, and also requires makers to churn out tons of product, all of which must be shelf stable.

Meanwhile, selling directly to stores is also expensive and involves navigating the murky waters of marketing, pricing, and distribution with no assistance, an especially tricky task for those without business backgrounds or retail connections. 

Based in San Francisco, Pod Foods aims to facilitate the wholesale process by connecting vendors wanting to carry local products with small cottage foods producers, helping both sides manage the ordering, fulfillment, and payment processes.

“Usually, small producers just have to keep their vendor relationships and commitments in their head, or else use a Google spreadsheet,” Russell told the Spoon. With a Pod Foods membership, both producers and vendors get access to a personalized analytics dashboard (accessed via Pod Foods’ website) both parties can use to manage things like ordering, delivery, and inventory.

On the producer side, the dashboard lets food entrepreneurs track which stores are selling their products and if any items need a price adjustment. They can also list their goods on the Pod Foods platform to get discovered by nearby retailers.

Vendors, on the other end, can use the dashboard to track how their products are selling and source new local foods. So if a customer comes in and requests a particular type of kombucha they’ve seen at a farmers market, the store manager can easily find the supplier and order the product.

Pod foods offers three plan levels for stores: Standard (free with a 6 percent service fee and $500 order minimum), Select ($195/month with a 3 percent service fee and no minimum), and a Premium custom plan. These prices aren’t nothing, especially for small businesses and retailers, but according to Russell, they’re worth it: “We save grocery stores a lot of operational costs associated with ordering from local vendors, and we save vendors a lot of headache and money associated with major distributors including marketing fees, data fees and more.”

Fick’s margarita mix and Community Grains: two producers which distribute through Pod Foods.

Pod Foods currently works with around 200 emerging food brands and 20 vendors, from mom-and-pop shops all the way up to bigger retailers. Russell said that smaller shops use artisanal, locally made products — like small-batch cold brew or an addictive margarita mix — to draw customers away from bigger, cheaper grocery chains. “Stores want to source these local products,” she said. “But it’s expensive to find producers, and they don’t know how to seek them out. We offer that discovery ability.”

But Pod Foods doesn’t only cater to corner stores and bodegas. Russell told me that they’re in talks with larger grocery chains.

You might be wondering how a small, local producer could keep up with the level of demand from a grocery giant. “With our platform, products can manage their own inventory and level of visibility, stock numbers, etc. They’ll be matched with stores that they can support,” Russell assured me. So if a small artisan sausage maker did get picked up by Albertsons, they might start by supplying just one location, then widen the distribution network to more stores if and when they increase production.

Cottage food production is a risky business. Companies can fail if they scale up too quickly, don’t have the right margins, or don’t know how to effectively market their product. Some incubators, like Pilotworks and Commonwealth Kitchen, offer mentorship and help small producers to get their goods into retail and dining establishments. But Pod Foods would be a helpful service for food entrepreneurs who already have their production on lock and just need help managing their distribution — or for those who want to take more control of their marketing efforts and pricing strategies.

Russell told me that Pod Foods raised a pre-seed round in December through Unshackled Ventures and Hustle Fund in the Bay Area, with participation from a few angel investors. As of now, they work almost exclusively with companies in the San Francisco area.

“For vendors, it’s about growing their business,” she said. “For buyers, it’s a way to get products that people want.” Maybe someday they’ll even bring back those pea protein cookies.

Beyond Burger(s): Aleph Farms Wants to Grow Steak Outside the Animal

It’s not even to market yet, and Israeli-based startup Aleph Farms already wants to shake up the cultured meat industry. They’re developing a new way to grow clean meat; one that will (hopefully) give it the same texture, taste, and eating experience as its traditional counterparts. 

Co-founders Didier Toubia (CEO) and Professor Shulamit Levenberg (CSO) started Aleph Farms in 2017. Levenburg had been researching tissue engineering for medical purposes for 15 years, but turned her attention to growing complex-textured meats in 2016. Today Aleph Farms’ scientists work out of a lab in the Weizmann Institute of Science just south of Tel Aviv.

What sets Aleph Farms apart from other cultured meat companies is their focus on two things: structure and texture. They want to go way beyond ground meat, which is what other companies like Memphis Meats and Mosa Meats have been able to make so far — Aleph hopes to produce something that has the same complex texture and mouthfeel as, say, grass-fed steak. They’re also focusing strictly on beef, partially because of its disproportionately high environmental footprint, but also because it’s much more challenging to replicate than chicken or duck.

Of course, all cultured meat companies hope to eventually make a product that replicates the texture and shape of traditional meat. But Aleph Farms is unique on how single-mindedly they approach the problem. Instead of starting with a simpler ground “meat” product and later developing 3D tissue-growing technology, they’re hoping to skip ahead and bring a fully developed product — one with the same texture, structure, and taste as beef — to market.

To do that, their scientists are working on growing four types of cells: muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue. While those last two might not sound very appetizing, Toubia said that they’re critical to replicating the texture of meat. Once they cultivate the various types of cells, they place them on scaffolds which act as a framework for the cells to cling onto. That way, the four types of cells can grow together into a finished product with the shape of steak — not just blobs of separate cell types in petri dishes that have to be manually combined.

According to Toubia, Aleph Farms is the only company developing this technology for beef.

Toubia hopes to grow meat much like farmers grow plants.

But they’re is still a ways away from making a steak that would fool anyone. Toubia said that they’re still in the R&D phase, and probably wouldn’t finish developing their first product for a few years. After that, they’ll still have to scale up production and make their “meat” affordable.

With JUST Foods aiming to make the first sale of a cultured meat product by the end of 2018, and Finless Foods and Memphis Meats not far behind (2019 and 2021, respectively), Aleph Farms won’t win the race to bring clean meat to market. But if they can achieve their goal of growing meat outside a cow that’s indistinguishable from “the real thing,” the startup might be able to convert the more hardcore carnivores who won’t be swayed by reasonable meat approximations. Slow(er) and steady might not be such a bad thing.

If cultured meat ever hopes to disrupt — or even replace — the meat industry, it has to mimic meat exactly. Mark Post, who made the first lab-grown burger in 2013 and started the company Mosa Meats, wrote that it has to “recreate conventional meat in all of its physical sensations, such as visual appearance, smell, texture and of course, taste.”

That means that a cultured steak not only has to look and taste like a steak, it also has to have the same texture, the same mouthfeel, and the react the same way as it’s cooked. And, considering that the only lab-grown meat we’ve seen so far has been made of thousands of muscle strands smushed together with added fat, flavor, and coloring, we’ve got a long way to go.

But Aleph Farms has a leg up on the competition in a few ways.

First and foremost, according to Toubia, are their connections. Specifically Professor Levenberg’s extensive experience in tissue engineering, which informs the core of Aleph Farms’ production methods.

They also have friends in quite high places. The startup partnered with Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, and participated in Israeli food-tech incubator The Kitchen, which is owned by food product manufacturing giant Strauss Group. That means that Strauss Group invested in, and has a direct stake (steak?) in Aleph.

Though Strauss Group isn’t particularly active in meat products, this relationship still brings to mind stories like Tyson Foods’ investment in Memphis Meats and Future Meat. 

Aleph Farms is also in a promising area for cultured meat. They’re based in Israel, along with other clean cultured meat companies Supermeat and Future Meat. Toubia guessed that this concentration was probably thanks to a few factors: Israel’s friendliness towards entrepreneurs, their expertise in and open laws about stem cells; and their large vegan community.

Talk of Israel brought our conversation to a question that often comes up when discussing the implications of cultured meat: will lab-grown pork be kosher? According to Toubia, the answer will depend on whether or not clean meat is considered “meat” from a religious perspective. If it is, cultured pork will not be kosher; but if it’s not, it would be. Which could radically change the diet of Jews that keep kosher, or Muslims who keep Halal, or Hindus who abstain from beef, etc.

As with most labeling issues around lab-grown meat, there’s no consensus on this issue yet. But Toubia likes this question because it gives him an opportunity to clarify what the cultured meat he’s working on actually is: “It’s really meat,” he said. “The end product is real meat cells which are not modified, just grown outside the animal.” So while the production method might differ, the end result is the same.

Though we may call what they make lab-grown meat, at least for now, Aleph Farms’ finished product will not be grown in a lab. “The cultured meat that people buy in grocery stores will not be grown in a lab,” said Toubia. Instead, he said it will be grown in a facility similar to a brewery — though he views it more like a farm. “I like to think of those facilities as ‘biofarms,’ places to farm animal tissue,” Toubia said. Which is why they decided to include “farms” in the name of their company. 

Aleph Farms is currently venture backed; they raised a seed round for an undisclosed amount in 2017, and are starting the process for a Series A round this year. Which puts them quite a bit behind other cultured meat companies who have already raised millions of dollars from high-profile investors like Bill Gates, Cargill, and Richard Branson. 

However, if they can nail the texture of a steak, Aleph Farms has a real shot at converting even the most hardcore of carnivores. And that, we’re happy to wait for.

Always Wanted to Try a Blowtorch? With Cheffer, You Can Rent One

If you love gadgets as much as we do at the Spoon, your kitchen counter space is at a premium. Sure, you may want to try that blowtorch or sous vide circulator, but a cooking gadget addiction can end up costing you a lot in terms of space and money.

Boston-based startup Cheffer is here to solve that problem. Started in December 2017, they let you rent kitchen gadgets for a small fee, much like Rent the Runway lets you rent high-end clothing for a fraction of the price.

Interested folk can peruse Cheffer’s online catalog of kitchen appliances, which runs the gamut from versatile equipment staples, like KitchenAids or Vitamixes, to more niche gadgets, like pizza stones or home beer brewing kits. Each tool on the list has been vetted by their in-house chef, so users know they’re getting the best possible brand and version. Once they make their selection, Cheffer will deliver the appliance — as long as they’re within 20 miles of the Boston area. For a small fee, users can request a chef to come into their home to help set up the gadget and give a lesson on how it works.

Cheffer’s online catalog.

After their rental period is finished, someone from Cheffer will come pick up the appliance and take it back to their warehouse for a thorough cleaning before it can be rented again. If customers fall in love and decide that they want to keep their gadget, they can purchase it from Cheffer for a prorated fee, depending on how much they paid to rent it. 

Most rental periods are three days and users pay a rental fee which varies depending on the gadget. For example, a KitchenAid would cost $15 per day, while a pizza stone would only be $7 per day. 

Cheffer has ambitions to be a lot more than just a simple kitchen appliance rental service, however. “We try to focus on the experience of cooking rather than just renting,” said founder Lina Mamut.

A big part of that is Cheffer’s recipe component. The startup has a professional chef on staff to develop recipes that go along with each appliance. Immediately after customers book a gadget rental through the Cheffer catalog, they’ll get an email in their inbox with recipe suggestions based on their cooking skill level and dietary registrations — two fields they fill out during registration. So, for example, if you’re a novice cook that just became a vegan and you’re renting a sous vide circulator, Cheffer would send you relatively simple vegan recipes to make with that tool. As of now, they have a database of over 500 recipes. 

Strawberry Dacquoise made with a Cheffer-rented KitchenAid.

Mamut told us that they’re also planning on developing an app that will focus more on cooking than appliance rental. It will most likely include tutorials instructing users how to best cook with their rented gadgets. Eventually, they hope to build in a recipe progression which will build in difficulty, teaching people basic cooking skills.

Mamut, who used to work at a tech startup in NYC that focused on AI and automation, is even playing around with the idea of a holographic chef that would walk users through recipes. (If you were at the Smart Kitchen Summit last year, this concept might sound familiar.)

She’s working on an algorithm to help streamline Cheffer’s operations. She’s currently gathering information on what times of day people rent gadgets, in which neighborhoods, and what kinds of dishes they’re cooking with them. Once they have enough, they’ll be able to better predict what type of recipes to develop, as well as which appliances to purchase for which markets.

It’s too soon to say for sure if Cheffer can achieve these lofty ambitions, but they’ve certainly come about at the right time. More millennials are cooking at home than any other generation. At the same time, as we discussed at our Future of Recipes food tech meetup, convenience is key. Cheffer’s concept is an easy, low-risk way for people to get a little more adventurous in the kitchen, without having to do anything more difficult than peruse an online catalog.

While some gadgets aren’t that pricey to straight-up buy (a small blowtorch will run you about $20 on Amazon), Cheffer is a good way to test out if you actually want to add it to your cooking arsenal before you commit. It’s also a helpful service for those with low kitchen confidence; by providing customized recipe suggestions and the option of having a chef demo each product, Cheffer doesn’t just drop off a gadget and leave you to it. Which also means it might not be the most helpful service for experienced home cooks who know which kitchen tools they want and how to use them.

Cheffer is bootstrapped and currently has 6 people on staff, including delivery drivers. They’re in the process of launching a prototype in Boston, but they’re planning to expand to NYC and other cities on the Eastern Seaboard by the end of 2018. I for one can’t wait until they make it to Seattle so I can finally indulge my inner kitchen gadget dilettante without breaking the bank.

Pig, Out: Omnipork Hopes to Replace China’s Most Consumed Meat

Dumplings, char siu, lo mein, sweet and sour stir fries — a lot of China’s most-loved dishes feature one meat above all: pork. In fact, mainland China is the world’s largest consumer of pork; they’re projected to consume about 56 million tons of it this year alone.

David Yeung is trying to curb Chinese pork consumption by replacing it with a plant-based option called Omnipork. Made from soy, pea, mushroom and rice proteins, Yeung hopes it will exactly mimic the taste and texture of pork. It contains about a third of the calories and saturated fat of traditional pork, as well as more fiber, calcium, or iron. And, since it’s not made from an animal, it doesn’t have any antibiotics or hormones, and carries less of a risk of foodborne illness.

This isn’t Yeung’s first foray into meat alternatives. He is an investor in Beyond Meat and brought the meatless burgers over to Hong Kong to sell in Green Common, a vegetarian grocery store and casual dining chain that he founded. Green Common is one of the few places in the world to serve Just Scramble, a mung bean-based egg substitute.

Omnipork will launch in Hong Kong in June, at Michelin-starred restaurant Cantonese Ming Court. Yeung’s company Right Treat is working to get their product approved by Chinese regulators. If they succeed, Yeung hopes to start selling it in mainland China by the end of 2018. 

According to a taste test with CNNMoney, however, Omnipork isn’t fooling anyone yet. Part of the issue might be because there’s so little precedent; Right Treat is one of the first to focus on making a plant-based pork product. Sure Beyond Meat has a (still relatively new) Beyond Sausage and there are a few companies turning jackfruit into pseudo pulled pork. But compared to beef — especially burgers, “bleeding” and otherwise — there are very few examples of plant-based pig products. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make an all-in-one pork replacement — one that steams, fries, and patties like pork — and they’re going where no meat alternative company has gone before.

Which is also why Omnipork has such great potential. Since there are so few vegan “pork” products, if Yeung can successfully develop one that has the same taste and texture as the real thing, it could be massively successful. After all, pork is the most consumed meat in the world, according to the World Watch Institute — and much of it is consumed in China. 60% of all hogs are bred in China, 95% of which are slaughtered and eaten before they leave the country.

Yeung realized that if he was going to tempt China away from pork, his product would have to be tailored to Chinese culinary tastes. While the majority of plant-based meat alternative companies are developed for Western palates, he worked to create a specifically ‘Chinese’ plant-based pork product. (He did, however, team up with U.S. scientists to develop it.) Because if a pork alternative is going to make a serious dent in the meat industry, it has to make a serious dent in the Chinese pork market.

Yeung’s timing just might pay off. There are around 50 million vegetarians in China, and, thanks to growing concern for health, food safety scares, and millennial dining habits, the number is projected to rise. Pair this with the fact that the Chinese government announced two years ago that they’re aiming to cut national meat consumption by 50% and a growth in the Chinese vegetarian protein market seems inevitable. If demand for meat alternatives increases in China, as it did in the U.S., then Omnipork could soon be flying off the shelves — as long as the flavor gets a little closer to pork.

Zume to Open it’s Mobile Cooking Platform to any Restaurant

When Zume first came on the scene, a lot of people got hooked on its pizza-making robot. But what was always more intriguing to us here at The Spoon was Zume as a data and logistics platform.

Zume takes into consideration hundreds of data points, such as day of the week, weather, school calendars and more to develop predictions around how much pizza and what types of pizza will be ordered in a given location. From there a food delivery vehicle cooks up the pizza on the move and delivers it with precise timing.

Now Zume wants to license out that know-how, as today it announced a plan to open up its platform to any restaurant that wants to replicate Zume’s logistical and technical expertise. To help facilitate the cooking needs of these third-party implementations, Zume also announced that it has partnered with commercial foodservice equipment maker, Welbilt, to incorporate custom built, hyper-efficient appliances into the next generation of Zume’s customizeable food delivery vehicles.

“It’s all well and good to do pizza,” said Alex Garden, Co-Founder and CEO of Zume in a phone interview. “The truth is that we’ve developed a tech stack that will allow any restaurant to power the next generation of their business.”

The company was light on details, saying that today’s announcement is meant to spark discussions with potential customers. At first, Zume will be more like a consultancy, which works with clients individually to establish their goals and plan out an appropriate technical and vehicular solution. From there it will determine the next best steps and and offer a catalog of Welbilt appliances (steamers, griddles, broilers, etc.) that will work best in any food delivery vehicle.

Garden wouldn’t say exactly what kinds of customers Zume was targeting, but indicated that restaurants that are already at scale and feeling pressures from high wage costs, rent costs, or delivery systems digging too deeply into its margins would be a good fit.

It sounds like Zume is doing what Eatsa did towards the end of last year when it decided to pull back from running its own establishments in favor of helping other restaurants automate their businesses. Unlike Eatsa, however, Zume, which has raised $96 million in funding, is expanding its footprint instead of shrinking. As part of today’s announcement, Zume said it’s adding 26 new delivery locations around the Bay Area by the end of this year, and will completely cover the Bay Area by the end of 2019.

Given the methodical rate at which it’s expanding, powering other restaurants is a less capital-intensive way to reach a national scale. In addition to another line of revenue for the company, partnering with other restaurants would also give Zume access to lots of new geographic, customer and cuisine data sets. These new data sets could expand and improve Zume’s predictive algorithms which should, in turn, boost sales for partner restaurants and help Zume should it decide to broaden the types of food it serves.

Depending on what Zume ends up charging (and the data they demand), it’s easy to see why this could be a welcome partnership for restaurants. As delivery services like Uber Eats and DoorDash take off, more people are choosing to eat from home rather than sit in a restaurant. That’s a lot of square footage that can go unused at a restaurant, and a lot of commissions paid out to those delivery services, which eats into margins.

Additionally, hooking up with Zume would allow a restaurant to better control its own delivery destiny and better protect their brand. Instead of some indifferent third party bringing soggy fries to your door, a restaurant could take advantage of Zume’s cook on the way tech to ensure that the food arrives hot and fresh.

But it’s not all just about third parties and platforms for Zume. There’s still cool stuff like robots, and those next-gen food delivery vehicles, which come with six high-efficiency ovens that can make 120 pizzas in an hour. Now we’ll just have to see how many restaurants climb aboard.

Chef Dazzer Wants to Bring Professional Chefs Into Your Kitchen

In the past, if you wanted to book a decent caterer, you either had to find one through word of mouth, do a lot of googling, or just settle for a pre-made crudité plate with Ranch from the supermarket.

Chef Dazzer, a Boston-based startup which just launched in March 2018, hopes to change that. Its platform connects culinary professionals, personally vetted by their staff, with people for private event catering.

Chef Dazzer works in two ways: Customers can either get in touch through the company’s website, where they can chat with a staff member who acts as a personal “concierge” to match them to a chef. They can also download the app. On the app, chefs can create profiles, showcasing different menus and cuisines that they offer. Customers can flat-out book a particular menu from a chef, or they can chat via a built-in messaging platform in the app to customize which dishes they would like at their event. 

The two different platform entry points put me in mind of dating services: you can either go into an app and see what’s available, or you can go through an intermediary — like a matchmaker — to help with the selection process. In general, the website is for customers who want a little more hand-holding and want a person to talk to about their event — which, according to their CEO Mike Cormier, is one of the most popular aspects of the platform. 

After their catering event, customers have the opportunity to rate the chefs on a five-star system. When the clients pay the chefs, Chef Dazzer takes a 15 percent cut.

Chef Dazzer is not the first company trying to connect professional chefs to private clients. But it might have come along at the right time. One of the first companies to try this model was Kitchensurfing, which closed in 2016 after raising $20 million in capital. According to Cormier and Avery Gordon, who runs the chef operations side of Chef Dazzer, it’s at least in part because they launched before the Boston market was ready for this kind of model.

“Back when Kitchensurfing came out, having someone come to your house and cook for you was still a very new idea. Now with things like care.com, people are much more comfortable with the idea of having someone you don’t personally know come over,” said Cormier. 

Chef Dazzer also hopes to distinguish themselves by curating a high-quality experience, both for the chefs and the clients. They want to showcase culinary talent by choosing chefs that they know are high-quality, so you won’t book a local high schooler posing as a Michelin-star to cater your 400 person black-tie event. 

To pick which chefs will join their platform, Gordon dips into her years of experience in the Boston culinary community. The approach seems to be working for them now, since they’re new and small, but it will be interesting to see if they can keep up this vetting strategy as they grow and expand to new cities. 

Another potential issue for the company is lead time: most of ChefDazzer’s clients book chefs two weeks to one month out, though they can also contact a chef a few days before the event. At a time where people are used to ordering a slew of pizzas for a party and having them delivered in 45 minutes, it’s a risk to bet on customers being willing to plan that far ahead.

So far, Chef Dazzer has seen a good bit of demand — mostly on the chef side. They have a queue of 55-60 chefs who are interested in joining the platform, but only 10 or so are currently live on the website and app. They hope to scale up as they build their community of both chefs and clients.

Chef Dazzer is bootstrapped and hopes to create a solid user base before building their seed round. Until then, Bostonites can browse chefs to cater their next event, as long as they’re ready to plan a bit ahead. 

Plant-Based Seafood Company Good Catch Foods Nets $5.5M

Tuna melts are great and all, but they can lose some of their appeal when you hear about mercury in the fish, or how dolphins sometimes get killed by being caught in tuna fishing nets.

Pennsylvania-based company Good Catch Foods is developing vegetarian shredded tuna, crab cakes, and fish patties made of lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, and other legumes. Founded in 2017, the startup is trying to change the way we look at tuna by, according to their website, “disrupting the seafood category, not the ocean’s resources.” Last week they got a little closer to their goal when they raised $5.5 million in Series A funding from Stray Dog Capital.

Good Catch is one of many companies capitalizing on the recent consumer trend towards plant-based and flexitarian eating. Vegan burgers have been creating a lot of buzz as of late — think Beyond Meat and the Impossible burger — but there are surprisingly few players working to create seafood alternatives, especially considering the popularity of seafood and the fishing industry’s massive environmental and ethical costs.

According to Good Catch’s website, fish are the largest class of farmed animals and account for roughly 4 out of every 10 pounds of animal product consumed. 90% of global fish stocks are overfished and fully depleted, and those that are wild-caught can have high levels of mercury or other contaminants.

These sobering stats have led to the creation of startups like Aquabyte, which uses machine learning to optimize fish farming, and Hatch, an accelerator geared specifically at aquaculture companies.

But they’ve also prompted some companies to start looking at ways to replace seafood altogether. Wild Type, a cellular agriculture startup, recently raised $3.5 million to continue its development of lab-grown salmon. Finless Foods is working on culturing bluefin tuna, which they hope to have to market by 2019. And New Wave Foods recently created the world’s first plant-based shrimp alternative, while Ocean Hugger Food is making the first vegan alternative to raw tuna.

Good Catch’s is developing plant-based tuna in three flavors: original, Mediterranean, and olive oil & herbs. They’re made with their signature 6-Bean Non-GMO Plant Protein Blend, and has 13 grams of protein per serving. That’s roughly half the protein of canned tuna, which has 25g of protein per similar-sized serving.

Good Catch claims their fish-free tuna will be in the market by the end of 2018. It will be interesting to see if their product makes the same splash (sorry) as other recently-launched meat alternatives, like the Impossible burger. I guess I’ll have to wait and put it to the test myself — preferably in a tuna melt.

Cannabis Edibles Market Is Riding High — For Now

If you have ever had a pot brownie (and we’re not saying you have), more likely than not you don’t remember it as an especially pleasant ingestion experience. The brownie probably tasted bad, was from dubious sources, and might have even been given to you by an unwashed person at a house/frat party.

But today the edibles game has completely changed. Thanks to legalization and technological advances, edibles now come in a huge variety; users can choose not only how they want to ingest their weed, but also its strain and strength. And their popularity is exploding.

According to Arcview Market Research via Forbes, consumers in California purchased $180 million worth of cannabis-infused food and drinks last year, which amounted to 10% of the state’s total marijuana sales. Per BDS Analytics and Green Market report, that percentage rose to 18% in February 2018. And there doesn’t seem to be any sign of slowing.

Edibles are becoming commonplace and democratized. They are no longer a means to an end; consumers want to enjoy the consumption experience itself, not just the resulting high. They also have a wider appeal than smoking marijuana, since they’re less conspicuous to consume and don’t have the same harmful effects on your lungs.

Advances in technology enable edible makers to tweak things like the concentration of THC (the psychoactive element in cannabis) and CBD (the relaxing element) in their goods to produce the desired effect. Cannapreneurs (trademark The Spoon) can now also infuse a really wide variety of goods with marijuana, from gourmet sweets like gummy bears and truffles to stouts and IPAs. There are even marijuana-infused sodas and lattes with cannabis (think of the latte art possibilities!).

Source: Wikimedia

Edibles’ growing appeal is, obviously, a direct result of marijuana’s march towards legalization. So far, nine states plus Washington D.C. have legalized recreational weed for those 21+. This means more open access to cannabis, so producers can not only openly source marijuana, but also select the exact strain they want. As marijuana’s legalization spreads, the stigma that surrounds it is starting to decrease. It’s no longer a drug of hippies or high school dropouts; in fact, millennials increasingly view marijuana as a safer form of relaxation than alcohol.

Of course, there are still some very real obstacles standing in the way of the marijuana industry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has openly said that he wants to exert federal law that criminalizes marijuana, superseding individual state laws which have legalized the drug. If he goes forward with this, it would have a huge impact on the marijuana — and, hence, the edibles — market. There are different opinions on whether or not this news has affected investments in cannabis/cannabinoids: some sources say investors aren’t spooked, others disagree. We’ll have to wait and see if lawmakers will go the way of former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, whose thinking on marijuana has “evolved.”

While these challenges might make things difficult or unsteady for the marijuana industry going forward, within the industry the edibles market is still booming. The Specialty Food Association named cannabis edibles as one of the top 10 food trends of 2018. In Colorado, BDS Analytics reported that edible sales jumped 67% between February 2016 and February 2017.

Venture Capitalists and Big Food are noticing the growth in this sector and starting to invest in cannabis tech and edibles. Just last week Palo Alto-based marijuana edibles company Plus Products closed a roughly $6 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Serruya Private Equity and Navy Capital, only the latter of which identifies itself as a specific cannabis investment fund.

The edibles market may be in a precarious situation until marijuana is legalized on a federal level, but for now its popularity is riding high.