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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Virtual Events

Meet the Experts and Innovators Inside the Foodverse and Web3

Our second virtual event looking at the intersection of food, restaurants, agriculture and all things Web3 starts today.

SimulATE Spring Summit will tackle the impact of Web3 on the food, restaurant, agriculture and CPG industries and talk to experts and entrepreneurs in the space, including:

Join us at 9:00 am PT for a day of discussions, networking + talks on the impact of Web3 on various aspects of the food space; and if you miss a session or can’t join us live, grab a VIP ticket for full on-demand digital access to sessions after the event.

Hope to see you inside!

We’re Bringing Food and the Metaverse Back Together This May

We’re in the business of finding and reporting what’s happening on the bleeding edge of food and technology. Discovering invention and innovation and bringing together the people doing this work to talk about it and help others whose business and work will eventually be impacted — this is what we did in early February at SimulATE Food Metaverse & NFT Mini-Summit.

Want more future food? Join Spoon Plus.

Watch SimulATE mini-summit sessions like “Building a Crypto Powered Food Future” and “Making an NFT Restaurant with Gary Vee’s Flyfish Club” by joining Spoon Plus here.

And we were blown away at the response. Not only in registrations but in requests after the fact for the recorded sessions after the fact when recaps were being shared. Each session generated many questions and follow-ups and mentions of other work that we wanted to learn more about too.

That’s when SimulATE Spring Summit was born. Happening May 4, 2022 on our virtual platform, we’re coming back with even more sessions, talks and demonstrations to help shed more light on the metaverse, NFTs, cryptocurrency (and all Web3 technology) and their impact, disruption and role in food and related industries.

To take a look at more details and early-bird ticket options, visit the SimulATE Spring Summit registration page. For more info on how to get involved with speaking or sponsorships, email events@thespoon.tech for more details.

Tomorrow: Learn about the food metaverse at SimulATE 2022

Tomorrow (Feb 1st) we’re kicking off our first virtual event of the year, tackling a fast-growing area of food tech: the metaverse. We’re bringing together those helping to build the food metaverse and experts in crypto, NFTs and mixed reality to discuss the seismic shifts coming to the world of food tech.

SimulATE: the Food Metaverse + NFT Mini-Summit will kick off The Spoon’s virtual event series in 2022 and host speakers like David Rodolitz, the CEO of Flyfish Club who is working with Gary Vaynerchuk to build the world’s first NFT restaurant.

Another session with Amber Case from Unlock Protocol and Shelly Rupel from Devour Token will focus on cryptocurrencies and the role non-fungible tokens, the blockchain, DAOs and crypto overall will play in the future of dining, food retail and delivery.

We’re going to talk with Supreeet Raju, co-founder of OneRare about the work happening to build the “foodverse” and what it looks like to create a gamified and immersive food experience for users.

What does a Web3 burger chain restaurant look like? Co-founder of BurgerDAO Al Chen will discuss the work of building and funding a completely new operational model for quick service restaurants and the role NFTs will play in supporting the opening of each chain.

Register for SimulATE tickets + use SPOON for 25% off

Between sessions, you’ll have the chance to network with professionals across the channels and industries involved in Web3, crypto, blockchain, NFTs and mixed reality.

If you don’t work in those spaces but you’re trying to put your finger on the pulse of the “food metaverse” and need a crash course in the future disruption of food with metaverse tech, SimulATE is the place to be.

Check out the full agenda for SimulATE here and get your tickets; the event starts at 9:00 am Pacific on Tuesday, February 1, 2022 and runs until 1:00 pm Pacific. But, if you can’t make it live, grab a VIP pass that gives you total digital access to each session after the event.

We’re running a last-day sale — just click “TICKETS” in the upper right corner and use code SPOON to get 25% off both live and VIP tickets.

Restaurants Are ‘Always Blamed’ When It Comes to Bad Delivery. Here’s How Tech Can Help

Who is responsible when something goes wrong with delivery?

A succinct-yet-apt answer to that question recently came from fast casual chain Wow Bao’s President and CEO Geoff Alexander, who spoke at The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit this week: “As the restaurant brand, you are always blamed.”

If you’ve ordered via third-party delivery with any frequency, you’ve likely dealt with the following scenario: The order is late or does not arrive. The customer calls the delivery service and gets an automated response. The customer calls the restaurant itself, who may not know where the food is because it left the the building ages ago. If and when the meal finally arrives at the consumer’s door, it will be cold, soggy, dry, or all of the above. It’s usually not DoorDash, Uber Eats, or any other delivery service that gets blamed for these problems. 

By way of example during the event, Alexander brought up Fargo, North Dakota, where Wow Bao operates one of its dark kitchen locations. For these kitchens, other restaurants cook some of the Wow Bao brand’s signature items and sell them on the usual third-party delivery channels as a way to make incremental revenue. Wow Bao has about 350 dark kitchen locations around the country right now, with a “moonshot goal” of reaching 1,000 by the end of the year. 

Brand integrity is always something to watch for with these kitchens. “When an issue happens there, it’s not Wow Bao,” Alexander explained at the event. “It’s somebody running one of our dark kitchens. And [the food is] delivered via one of three or four delivery platforms. I get the phone call. Wow Bao corporate gets the phone call, we get hit on Instagram or social or Google Reviews. That whole brand transfer hast to be the most guarded and respected piece by the brand itself and by the operator to work together. At the end of the day, the way that guest is handled is what’s going to decide if the guest is going to come back and who they’re gonna tell.”

As to how tech can help restaurants guard this brand transfer, the other panelists pointed to tools that can optimize operations. Ava Ghaiumy, Delivery Hero’s regional director for global foodservice operations, pointed out that there is “almost no bigger KPI than speed.” Her company, which is investing heavily in various tech initiatives, is working on things like improved dispatching and rider-tracking features that can help with speed of service when it comes to delivery.  

Olo’s Marty Hahnfeld, who was also on the panel, said it’s all about “precision in operations.” That includes improving order accuracy, making sure menus are up to date across all ordering channels at all times, and that pricing is correct on those channels as well. Olo offers its Dispatch service that allows restaurants to order directly from a restaurant’s own website or mobile app. Though in most cases, there is still a reliance on third-party delivery to handle the last mile.

At the end of the day. the most important technology to keeping brand integrity intact may be one that’s been around for quite some time: the POS integration.

Such an integration connects, among other things a restaurant’s main POS system with the many different channels through which customers buy meals nowadays, including third-party delivery. Whereas in the old days (two years ago), delivery services provided an external tablet and restaurant staff manually key’d in orders to the main POS system, more restaurants are now directly connecting delivery to that main system. Panelists were unanimous in their belief that this is an extremely important technology when it comes to improving order accuracy, timing, and a generally smoother experience for everyone.  

Q&A: Euromonitor’s Michael Schaefer Talks Restaurant Tech

Those with an eye on restaurant tech may remember that this time a year ago, Euromonitor predicted that the ghost kitchen market would be worth $1 trillion by 2030. 

That’s an enormous number to pin on what was then still quite a nascent sector. But Michael Schaefer, the Euromonitor analyst who made that prediction, wasn’t just talking about ghost kitchens for restaurants. He was talking about ghost kitchens that house ready-made meals and pantry/fridge staples, deliver groceries, and service other parts of the food sector in addition to restaurants. Turns out, he was right. Those lines between grocery, restaurant, ghost kitchen, and convenient store are fading as we speak, as much recent Spoon coverage can attest.

Michael is the Head of Beverages and Foodservice Research at Euromonitor International, tracking consumer trends, product innovations, and market evolution across the F&B industries. Needless to say, he’s hyper tuned into the state of the restaurant industry in 2021. Along with food tech investor Brita Rosenheim, he’ll help open The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, a day-log virtual event that will discuss the state, present and future, of restaurant tech. 

As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from Michael about where the industry is headed. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the show here.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic? 

Michael Schaefer: There’s certainly a greater willingness to experiment in the restaurant industry. Some technologies, which were adopted out of necessity — such as QR codes for ordering — offer long-term benefits without compromising the guest experience. This will drive further experiments, particularly with technologies that can offer labor savings. 

What do you think the restaurant industry’s biggest challenge is right now? 

Labor is without question the restaurant industry’s biggest challenge in the short term. Restaurant work is difficult, demanding, sometimes dangerous and often pays minimum wage. The pandemic exacerbated these issues while extended unemployment insurance has given workers time to consider their options. This shifting cost-benefit analysis will create ongoing staffing issues. More restaurants will need to consider investing in technology that creates labor savings and makes the average worker’s job less strenuous. 

What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

Integration is the biggest challenge for restaurants when it comes to digitization, particularly among independent outlets. There are more options than ever in terms of systems and approaches to technology. This creates challenges in terms of finding the right solution and ensuring that disparate software and equipment setups can work together in a high-stress restaurant environment. 

What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology? 

I am most excited to start seeing a range of new models that will reshape what traditional restaurants look like. A restaurant starting from scratch in 2022 will likely take a very different approach to staffing, tech, integration with third-party delivery and loyalty, among other strategies, than a ten-year-old business might. 

What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years? In the next five years, restaurants will become less synonymous with prepared food. Prepared meals will remain the primary business for restaurants, of course, and dining in restaurants will not be going away. However, the range of operators, concepts and venues for obtaining prepared meals and solving for daily meal occasions will continue to expand. Rather than a strict separation of restaurants and prepared meals on one end and grocers and packaged food and drinks on the other, we’ll see more of a spectrum, with a range of different approaches to prepared food and drinks, generally ordered via an app and often fulfilled by third-party delivery.

Are You Creating the Next Big Tech Tool for Restaurants?

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

This time last year, the restaurant biz was grappling with pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions and innovating on the fly to survive the fallout. Digital menus. Virtual tip jars. Ad-hoc drive-thru windows. These mannequins. 

As the year wore on, much of the restaurant-related innovation turned to tech, a shift more or less forced by the pandemic. By some accounts, technological shifts expected to unfold over the course of a decade happened in a matter of months. Online ordering is the norm for many, which means so, too, are the technologies that power that process, whether in-house creations or third-party platforms. Virtual restaurants run from ghost kitchens are everywhere now, including in existing restaurant locations. Someone’s revamped the automat (see above), the robots are coming, and investors have a sudden interest in funding tech that promises to make the back of house more efficient.

There are also a lot more questions than previously around which tech tools restaurants actually need, where investment is most likely headed (spoiler: it’s the back of house), and, most important, what’s going to bring the most value to everyone’s restaurant experience moving forward. 

We could debate all of that here. Instead, I invite you to tell The Spoon about your restaurant tech innovation this summer at The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit, set to take place August 17 virtually. 

Whether you think you’re the next Olo, want to entirely disrupt the drive-thru, or have a robot mannequin to track food waste, The Spoon would like to hear from you. Tell us about it by applying for the Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Innovator Showcase, which will happen as part of the aforermentioned Restaurant Tech Summit. 

The Spoon team and panel of restaurant experts will choose the 10 most interesting teams building innovative and potentially game-changing new products. Those 10 companies will then get an opportunity to do a four-minute pitch about their company that will be featured as part of the main stage at the event.

A few general guidelines apply. Companies need to be at early stage, with fewer than 10 employees and less than $1 million in funding/investment. Companies should also have an actual tech product (software, hardware, etc.)

Your pitch will be seen by attendees at the Restaurant Tech Summit and your company will be covered by The Spoon.

More Headlines

San Francisco Makes Restaurant Fee Caps for Delivery Services Permanent – San Francisco, California voted to permanently cap the fees delivery services charge restaurants at 15 percent. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution.

ResQ Raises $7.5M for Back-of-House Restaurant Tech – ResQ, whose software platform manages restaurant repair and maintenance tasks, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding thus far to $9 million. 

Grubhub and Resorts World Las Vegas Partner on New Hotel Concept – Resorts World Las Vegas has announced a partnership with Grubhub for a new mobile order service. 

There’s More to Food Waste Innovation Than Tech, According to ReFED’s Dana Gunders

This being The Spoon, a lot of our discussions around food waste concern the innovative technologies that could help us eventually curb the multi-billion-dollar problem and meet national and international targets to halve food waste by 2050. But as we learned today at our Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum, done in partnership with nonprofit ReFED, tech is only one piece of the solution. When it comes to food waste, true innovation is as much about new business models, behaviors, and ways of thinking as it is about advances in, say, machine learning or computer vision.  

Dana Gunders, the Managing Director and a founder of ReFED, kicked off the event by asking two important questions related to food waste: What is innovation, and what is the problem we’re trying to solve with it?

The second question is the easier one to answer, and Gunders called on some well-known stats as a way of explaining how “radically inefficient” our food system actually is:

  • 35 percent of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten
  • $408 billion annually is spent in the U.S. on food that is never eaten
  • More than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure

Food waste also accounts for 4 percent of U.S. GHG emissions (that’s 58 million cars worth’ of greenhouse gases), 14 percent of all freshwater use, 18 percent of all cropland use, and 24 percent of landfill inputs.

Citing data from Project Drawdown, Gunders pointed out that reducing food waste ranked first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change — ahead of plant-based diets, utility-scale solar, wind turbines, and other well-known contenders.

New innovations will help us reach those targets and cut down overall food waste, but as we learned at today’s event, “innovation” means different things to different stakeholders when it comes to food waste. “People talk about food waste as if it were one problem. It’s not,” Gunders said at the event. “This is a complex set of inefficiencies and we need a whole suite of solutions to address that.” Gunders is, of course, referring to the wide variety of ways in which food is wasted along the supply chain. Post-harvest food loss looks different from food thrown out at the grocery store. Both of those in turn look different than food that we dump down our kitchen drains. In all of these scenarios, food waste looks different, so it follows that the solutions will vary greatly based on which part of the supply chain they are aimed at.

Tech is one obvious tool when it comes to innovation, and at this point, companies are working with everything from machine learning and image recognition to hyperspectral imaging and sensors to fight food waste. These and other technologies can track waste, help retailers forecast more precisely, and even tell us which pieces of fruit will ripen soonest in any given crop. 

But, as mentioned above, technology is only one piece of innovation. Equally important are new processes and business models as well as what Gunders calls “cultural evolution.”

New business models around food waste have been emerging steadily over the last few years, many of them around grocery and/or restaurant services selling surplus food. This is a model popularized by the likes of Imperfect Foods, Too Good to Go, Flashfood, and many others. Upcycled products are another example, as is offering financial incentives to managers, as Sodexo is doing. 

Cultural evolution, meanwhile, refers to what Gunders called “innovation on a much simpler level.” It’s smaller actions that work together to make the public more aware of food waste and encourage changes in behavior. Signage in dining halls about food waste or allowing customers to taste a product before they buy it are two examples.

In the wake a of the pandemic, a new administration, and an increased sense of urgency around climate change and food equity, the culture in the U.S. right now is open to change. As Gunders pointed out, now is the time for businesses with food waste solutions to consider where they fit into these changes and how they might test their customers accordingly.

Witness the Many Forms of Food Waste Innovation

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Since the start of 2021, we’ve seen numerous developments that showcase how vast and varied the efforts to fight food waste have become. Sachets that slow food spoilage. Hyperspectral imaging to analyze avocados. Vodka made from old crackers. A skincare line. 

All of these examples (and many others) underscore both the need for innovation and the fact that we’re getting more of it nowadays when it comes to food waste. Food waste, after all, is a global problem with environmental, monetary, and human consequences. To mitigate climate change and build a more resilient food system, the planet needs to meet food waste reduction targets set down by the United Nations, the USDA, the EPA, and others, including the UN Sustainable Development Goal of cutting food waste in half by 2050 (UN SDG Target 12.3.1).

Even just a few years ago, both the issues and the UN goal were mere abstraction to many outside the food industry. After all, it’s hard to visualize statistics like “one-third of the world’s food goes to waste” or “food waste’s global footprint is 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases.”

Fortunately, groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ReFED, the World Wildlife Fund, and others have worked tirelessly over the last several years to bring the topic of food waste closer to center stage in the conversations about our food system. In fact, ReFED estimates that the total amount of food wasted in the U.S. has leveled off since 2016, while food waste per capita has decreased 2 percent over the last three years. Meanwhile, investment is slowly but surely trickling into the space, with companies like Apeel, Imperfect Foods, and Silo closing large rounds of funding in the last several months.

Still, there is a lot of work to be done, which is where innovation can play a big role. Food waste happens at every stage of the food supply chain, from items left in the field to rot to those dumped own the drain or sent to the landfill. To curb the waste, we need more investment in the kind of infrastructure that can measure, rescue, and recycle organic waste and prevent it from going to landfills and incinerators. We also need a huge collective effort from food producers, manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, capital providers, and others, with innovation at the center of those actions. 

Many are already bringing new technologies and processes to the food supply chain to try and make waste less possible. One need only glance briefly at the level of innovation currently happening around food waste to understand the breadth of entrepreneurs, companies, and agencies using their collective brainpower to build more food-waste-fighting solutions.

But rather than read a big ol’ list of companies, I instead encourage you to join us next week, on June 16, for the Food Waste Insights + Innovation Forum. The Spoon has teamed up with ReFed for the all-virtual event, which will include chats with experts across the food supply chain as well as panels and innovator demos.

At this event, we want to highlight innovators in the food waste space, acknowledging the work of companies developing everything from biosensing technology for the supply chain to shelf-life extension tools for grocery retailers to those evolving and improving the date-labeling system in the U.S. Add grocery order automation, upcycling, solutions to at-home food waste, and many other areas to that list.

The event will also connect innovators — whether you’re onstage or in the audience — with investors and capital, and will even include a session dedicated to how companies can go about raising money for their company. An open networking/demo time will also allow investors to ask one-on-one questions to innovators and vice versa.

Got ideas you want to share about how to reduce food waste? Or maybe you’re looking for a new idea or partner to help supercharge your own company’s efforts in this area, or you just want to learn more about this growing movement. Whichever the case, register today for this half-day event.

More Food Tech Headlines

LIVEKINDLY Collective Acquires Seaweed Burger Maker, The Dutch Weed Burger – The Dutch Weed Burger makes a range of meat analogs using seaweed as the hero ingredient. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Print a Drink 3D Prints Designs Inside a Cocktail, Develops Smaller Machine for Corporations – Print a Drink has created two working robots (one in the U.S. and one in Europe) that can print out custom designs inside drinks.

NPD: Shipments of Plant-Based Proteins to Restaurants Up 60 Percent Year Over Year – Shipments of plant-based proteins from foodservice distributors to commercial restaurants were up 60 percent year-over-year in April of 2021.

Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Sessions, Day Two

Included below are videos from the following sessions:

  • Using Innovation To Reduce Food Waste – James Rogers (Apeel), Chiara Cecchini (Future Food Institute), Alexandria Coari (ReFED), Moderator: Jenn Marston (The Spoon)
  • Doing The Impossible: In Conversation with Pat Brown
  • Let’s Print Some Meat – a demo of Novameat’s 3D meat printer
  • From The Reviewer: What Makes A Good – or Bad – Tech-Powered Kitchen Product? – Lisa McManus (America’s Test Kitchen), Joe Ray (Wired) and Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • How AI is Reshaping Food Development – Riana Lynn (Journey Foods), Oliver Zahn (Climax Foods)
  • Fermentation: The Next Frontier for Foodtech Thomas Jonas (Nature’s Fynd), Brian Frank (FTW Ventures)
  • Building The New Food Platforms Mike Leonard (Motif Foodworks), Catherine Lamb (The Spoon alum) Creating a Multi-Product Future Food Company – Josh Tetrick (Eat Just), Jenn Marston (The Spoon)
  • Meet The Authors: Decoding the World with Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta – Po Bronson (Indiebio), Arvind Gupta (Genesis Consortium)
  • The Next-Gen Microwave: AI, Precision, Personalized – Steve Drucker
  • Workshop: Building a Connected Kitchen Product – Larry Jordan (Microsoft)
  • Table Talk: Product Innovation in the Future Kitchen – Jane Freiman, Greg Fish (SharkNinja), Surj Patel
  • The Asia Future Food Market – Winnie Leung (Bits x Bites), Michal Klar
  • The Japan Food Tech Revolution – Akiko Okada and Hirotaka Tanaka, SKS Japan

 

If you purchased a ticket to SKS and have not received your Spoon Plus account activation, drop us a line.

If you didn’t attend SKS and would like to see these sessions, you can subscribe to Spoon Plus here.

Day Two @ SKS: Meet Impossible Foods’ CEO, Print Some Meat & Talk Asia Food Tech

Wow, what a first day at Smart Kitchen Summit. We learned that the recipe is alive and well (sorry, Tyler Florence), hacked together new kitchen products with Scott Heimendinger and saw a live debut of a new pizza robot, not to mention all the great in-person meetings, breakout sessions, vendor demos and more.

And we’re just getting started. Here are a few of the things we have in store for day two:

Impossible’s Pat Brown: Washington Post’s Maura Judkis will talk to Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown about a year of massive growth for the company, the rapidly changing alt-protein market and more.

Eat Just’s Josh Tetrick: We’ll hear from the CEO of Eat Just, Josh Tetrick, about why they are one of the very few companies trying to build both plant-based and cell-based meat products.

Food Waste Innovation: The Spoon’s Jenn Marston will talk to Apeel CEO James Rogers, Chiara Cecchini of the Future Food Institute and Alexandria Coari of ReFED about the impact of COVID on food waste innovation

Meat Printer! We’ll head to Spain for a live demo as Novameat CEO shows off his plant-based 3D meat printer in action

Startup Showcase Show & Tell: The show and tell portion of our Startup Showcase will allow you to head into the labs, home offices and headquarters of the 10 finalists where you’ll get to see things like contactless food kiosks, cellular aquaculture, food robots and much more.

Book Debut: Listen in as IndieBio managing director (and longtime tech journalist) Po Bronson and IndioBio Founder and current partner at Mayfield Arvind Gupta talk about their long journey around the world as they worked on their book, Decoding The World.

Table Talk about Cell-Based Meat With Paul Shapiro : I’ll lead an interactive conversation with the author of Clean Meat and CEO of Better Company about the market dynamics around the cell-based meat industry.

Build a Connected Kitchen Product: Microsoft principal IoT engineer Larry Jordan will show you how to build your own smart kitchen device and show off his newly open-sourced hardware and software that will help others get going.

Asia Food Tech: Join us at the end of the day as we head to Asia to talk with others about the fast-changing food tech landscape across Asia and get an update on the Japanese food tech scene from SKS Japan’s Akiko Okada.

If you’d like to join us, you can buy a discounted ticket for days two and three here.

If you missed our coverage from yesterday, here is some of the coverage from The Spoon:

What Does It Take to Build a Cell-Based Protein Business? – What can companies in the space do to help cell-based protein scale to address issues like global food security and environmental sustainability? That’s a topic FTW Ventures’ Brian Frank discussed at this week’s SKS 2020 show, where he was joined by Benjamina Bollag, the founder and CEO of HigherSteaks, and Justin Kolbeck, CEO and cofounder of Wild Type.

Middleby Unveils the PizzaBot 5000, Which Assembles a Pizza in Under 1 Minute – Lab2Fab, a division of Middleby Corporation, unveiled its new PizzaBot 5000 pizza-assembling machine at the Smart Kitchen Summit.

Should We Ditch the Term “Vending Machine?” – Megan Mokri, Co-Founder and CEO of Byte Technologies, Chloe Vichot, Co-Founder and COO of Fresh Bowl, talked with Chris Albrecht about a range of topics impacting the unattended food vending services, including COVID-19, machine vandalism, and whether “vending machine” is a good term.

First Beer, Now Meat: How Yeast Can Help Us “Reinvent Our Food Structures”

Yeast is a hot topic of conversation these days: where to find it, what you’re baking with it, and how to create your own at home.

Sudeep Agarwala, a yeast geneticist at Ginkgo Bioworks, has you covered for that last one. He rose to Twitter fame not long ago after tweeting DIY instructions for how to make yeast out of what’s hiding in your cupboard.

But Agarwala knows a lot more about yeast than just how to hack it to make your own sourdough. For that reason, we invited him to speak at our latest virtual event, From Sourdough to The End of Meat.

Agarwala started off his presentation with a massive timeline outlining the evolution of humans. He specifically pointed to 10,000 BC — the time when we first started to use yeast to ferment food and drink. Our newfound love of yeast completely changed the trajectory of how we ate food, ushering in new foods like bread and beer. “We’re now at an age when we’re thinking about reinventing our food structures yet again,” Agarwala said.

If you’re curious about how yeast will shake up our food system, you should watch the whole conversation. You can find the recording here. Here are a few big takeaways (featuring a guest appearance by yours truly!):

Yeast could mean the end of meat
Ginkgo Biowork’s spinoff company, Motif Foodworks, uses microbes like yeast to create the flavor elements that can better mimic meat. According to Agarawala, technology can help make meat alternatives taste even more like the real thing.

Only recently, said Agarwala, has yeast technology evolved to the point where it actually has a shot at replacing the key flavors of meat. “I may get in trouble for saying this,” he said. “We’re on the verge of eliminating meat from our diets altogether.”

Yeast isn’t the only microbe out there
“I love yeast, but there are other microbes that are working for us as well,” noted Agarwala. He pointed to air protein, which can sequester carbon from carbon dioxide, as well as microbes that can fix nitrogen. These technologies leverage microbes to not only produce an output, such as protein, but also reduce the ecological cost of creating food.

Algae and bacteria are also able to make other foods (like your kombucha SCOBY). “There’s a whole microbial world sitting in your kitchen cupboard,” Agarawala pointed out.

What about my sourdough starter???
Bread makers, don’t worry — Agarwala had plenty of insight into how we’re all working with yeast during the pandemic. But he also had some thoughts on why sourdough starters could be an important tool for the future of fermentation in general.

“Yeast is a technology,” he said. “Maybe now that we’re seeing this technology growing on our counters, it is going to be more comfortable to think about, ‘What else can this technology do for us?'”

Perhaps since we’re all obsessed with yeast now, consumers will be more open to new foods grown from microbes — such as meat — down the road.

Our next Spoon Virtual Event is on May 28th at 10am PT, where Spoon founder Mike Wolf will speak with the Design for Food team at IDEO about how we design for a more resilient food system in a post-COVID world. Sign up here.

Join Us and Seattle Food Geek for a Free Virtual Workshop on Building Next-Gen Kitchen Tech

Back when I learned Scott Heimendinger (aka the Seattle Food Geek) was leaving Modernist Cuisine, I immediately wondered what he was going to build next. After all, Scott is the guy who basically invented the consumer sous vide circulator, arguably the biggest kitchen cooking creation the last decade outside of the Instant Pot.

While Scott plans to keep much of what he’s building under wraps for the time being, that won’t stop me from trying to pry as much info as I can from him next week when he welcomes us into his home workshop to show off how he thinks about and prototypes next-generation kitchen technology.

We’ll also be joined by Larry Jordan, a long-time chef and kitchen tech maker who is known for bringing crazy cool ideas like a connected salumi maker to life.

If you’d like to join us for an interactive conversation and get a peek at both Scott and Larry’s workshops as well as into how they innovate and prototype and innovate new kitchen tech, you’ll want to join us next Tuesday April 21st for our live interactive event, Building The Future Kitchen: Rapid Prototyping Your Way to A Next-Generation Kitchen Product.

Come armed with questions and ideas for Scott and Larry to react to because we’re going to set aside plenty of time to take them. And who knows, maybe you can tease a secret or two out of Scott or Larry about their next big idea.

Sign up today!