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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Waste Reduction

Surplus Food Marketplace Too Good to Go Raises $31M to Expand in the U.S.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Too Good to Go announced today it has raised €25.7 million (~$31 million) to expand its surplus food marketplace that fights food waste. The investment was led by /blisce, with participation from existing investors and employees. 

Too Good to Go’s main mission is fighting food waste. The company partners with hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, and other businesses that have surplus food items at the end of each day. Those businesses can list food on Too Good to Go’s B2C marketplace at discounted prices. Consumers then simply browse the marketplace via the Too Good to Go app or website, place an order, and retrieve their food from the merchant at a designated time.

Too Good to Go already operates in 15 countries around the world, including several in Europe, including the U.K., Spain, and Italy. The expansion enabled by this new funding will focus mainly on the U.S., where the company has a smaller presence. It launched in New York City and Boston in September 2020, and has since also moved into parts of New Jersey. Specific cities and locations for this latest expansion were not named, though Too Good to Go’s roster of partners includes everyone from local grocers to massive chains like Hilton, Coop, Le Pain Quotidien, Yo! Sushi, and many others.

Surplus food marketplaces are not as prevalent in the U.S. as they are in other countries, despite the fact that the majority of food waste in this country happens at consumer-facing levels. Flashfood, a Canada-based company that offers a similar surplus food business, operates in some parts of the U.S. Karma is another Scandinavia-based surplus food app, but as yet it does not have a presence in the U.S.

All of which is to say, the opportunity is still wide open for Too Good to Go and other companies bringing the surplus food concept Stateside. 

Goodfish Raises $4M for Upcycled Salmon Snacks

Goodfish, a company that upcycles salmon skin by turning it into snack foods, announced today it has closed a $4 million Series A investment round. The round was led by AF Ventures and Siddhi Capital. In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it will use the new funds to “support the surging demand for its products, deepen R&D capability and accelerate product innovation.”

Goodfish was started by the founders of beverage company Harmless Harvest, and products became available for online purchase this year. The snacks resemble crunchy chips in texture and are made from the reclaimed skins of Wild Alaskan Sockeye that would normally go to waste. The idea is to create a chip-like snack with far more health benefits (clean protein and marine collagen among them) and far fewer calories. The skins are sourced from well-regulated fisheries in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Cofounder Justin Guilbert, said in today’s press release that Goodfish’s online-only distribution strategy “paid off well above expectations” and led to an earlier fundraised than expected. Hence the close of the Series A round today. 

Given that folks have been snacking their way through this pandemic, it’s no surprise companies offering healthier alternatives are getting noticed (and receiving funding). Others include Renewal Mill, which uses upcycled okara flour to make cookies, plant-based pork rind-maker Pig Out, and jerky made from jackfruit by a company called Jack and Tom.

Goodfish did not say whether it plans to eventually expand to brick-and-mortar stores for distribution. For now, products are available via the company’s own direct-to-consumer website. 

PeakBridge Commits Up to $3M in Funding for BE WTR

Investment firm Peakbridge is opening up the funding tap for Swiss hydration company BE WTR. In a LinkedIn post this week, Peakbridge Founder and Managing Director, Nadav Berger, announced that his firm “has committed to invest up to $3M in BE WTR.”

BE WTR makes a variety of hygienic water taps for offices and other businesses. The various high-tech taps can pour still or sparkling water, or heat or chill water. BE WTR taps also come with BRITA filtration built into the unit.

The B2B hydration space has been relatively quiet this year, which is understandable, given COVID shutting many business locations down. But there’s still been some activity. At the start of the year, Rocean’s sparkling water machine was getting installed in every room at the Conrad Hotel in New York earlier this year as a perk. In the midst of the pandemic, Bevi added contactless ordering features to its office smart water coolers. The pandemic also didn’t stop Pepsi from launching its SodaStream Professional water dispensers for offices this past July.

But with a vaccine on the horizon, we could see activity in office-related hydration products pick back up. Some companies are re-opening traditional offices, while others are creating smaller regional hubs that employees occasionally come into. Regardless of what shape an office takes post-COVID, a large swath of office worker employees will probably spend less time in actual buildings. As such, companies will seek to maximize that in-person time together. Part of that will be adding small touches like easy-to-use high-end water taps that not only reduce in-office waste (fewer bottles of water), but also give employees a little added comfort.

India: Potful Fights Plastic Waste By Delivering Biryanis in Handmade Clay Pots

We’re always on the lookout for companies that combat plastic waste in unique ways. Zero Grocer offers plastic-free grocery shopping. Dishcraft is working on reusable takeout containers. Planeteer makes cutlery you can eat.

Over in India, a food delivery startup called Potful is showing its love for mother earth with actual earthenware. Potful cooks and delivers Biryanis in handmade clay pots. Order a meal, keep the pot, and Poftul even includes coriander seeds with orders so the pots can be turned into planters. The Biryanis are cooked to order and cost between 560 – 660 Rupees (~ $7.59 – $9.00 USD).

The company started a few years back in Bangalore and recently launched in the Hyderabad area of India. This approach to sustainable food delivery was intriguing, so I reached out to Lokesh Krishnan, Founder and CEO of Potful. Our emailed Q&A is below and has been slightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: Can you please explain what a biryani is?
Lokesh Krishnan: Biryani is a mixed rice dish with its origins among the Indian subcontinent. It is made with Indian spices, rice, and meat, or vegetables and sometimes, in addition, eggs and/or potatoes in certain regional varieties. Biryani is popular throughout the Indian subcontinent, as well as among its diaspora. It’s a Persian dish and Mughals brought the recipe to India centuries ago. 

The beauty of the dish is it’s a meal in itself, very balanced (has carbs, proteins and fat) and affordable. Everyone in South Asia loves it irrespective of age, income groups. 

You are cooking and delivering biryanis in the same clay pot. How does this impact your ability to grow? 
Cooking biryani in claypot method is the most traditional and authentic way of cooking biryanis. The process is know as ‘Dum Cooking” and when you do, the flavours are intact and every grain of rice would taste different compared to any other form of cooking. We have built a time and weight based process using technology and have de-skilled the entire cooking process to scale rapidly. so scaling / growing is not an issue at all. 

How often would a typical person order a biryani? I’m just wondering about clay pots stacking up around the home.
There are markets where people order every single day but most will order at 3-4 times a month. People are very familiar with the dish and hence when they are not sure of something, the first thing which comes on their mind is biryani. Its the No. 1 online ordered dish in India today on any online food aggregator platforms. 

When did you launch, and are there any numbers you can share, such as order growth?
We launched our operation in Aug 2017 in Bangalore, the silicon valley of India. We operate under cloud / dark kitchen model and have 15 kitchens in the city as of now. We have just launched the product in Hyderabad (south of India) which is the mecca for Biryanis in India and our vision is to build world’s largest biryani company and put this dish on global platform. 

Can you expand this model to other foods?
Yes you can. But we would like to stay focused on biryanis for now. 

Anything else you think I should know?
While we make authentic biryanis through this process, it’s also important to see how we are doing this business. It’s about sustainability. We don’t use plastics. It’s about responsibility. The claypots are made in hand by artisans and hence as we grow it supports the livelihood of these people. We also send seeds with every biryani and encourage the consumers to reuse the pots and grow vegetables at home or even paint it and use it to decorate your home and garden. In addition, the food cooked in earthen pot is much more healthier than any other form of cooking because of the heat exchange. 

Full Harvest Partners With Danone to Launch Yogurt Made From ‘Rescued’ Produce

Full Harvest, a B2B service that rescues imperfect produce, announced this week it has teamed up with Danone to launch a yogurt made from food that would otherwise end up in the landfill. Called Two Good ‘Good Save,’ the yogurt will be part of Danone’s Two Good line. Full Harvest said in a press release sent to The Spoon that this is the first dairy product to use 100 percent rescued produce.

Full Harvest is best known for its online marketplace that sells imperfect and surplus produce rescued from farms. The company works directly with farmers to identify the fruits and vegetables that will go to waste, then connects those farmers with food producers via its marketplace. Food producers creating products from Full Harvest-rescued goods come with a seal of verification. As yet, the marketplace is a business-to-business operation.

The initial product from the Full Harvest-Danone partnership will use California-grown Meyer lemons that would have otherwise gone to waste due to cosmetic imperfections, overproduction, or a lack of secondary markets for the farmer.

The sources of food waste and loss varies by region. While the bulk of waste in the U.S. happens at consumer-facing levels, the Full Harvest-Danone partnership nonetheless shows that there is also work to be done in curbing waste long before food reaches stores, restaurants, and homes. 

Full Harvest, meanwhile, is one of a growing number of companies rescuing so-called imperfect foods from going to the landfill. Incorporating those items into food production is one tactic. Other food-rescue companies, like Imperfect Foods and Too Good to Go, work further down the supply chain, collecting surplus food from grocery stores and restaurants and selling it at discounted prices to consumers. Imperfect went as far as to release a holiday snack box this year featuring treats that taste great but just happen to look a little less than conventionally perfect.

Danone’s Two Good ‘Good Save’ lemon product is available now. Additional flavors are slated for 2021. 

Apeel’s James Rogers on Fixing Our Perishability Problem to Fight Food Waste

“Perishability is so fundamental to the food system it’s almost unchallenged,” James Rogers, founder and CEO of Apeel, said to me this week during a virtual event for The Spoon.

Specifically, he meant that perishability is built into the global food system, whether that means accepting it as a cost of doing business or making sacrifices around quality and nutrition in order to avoid it. Either way, perishability is linked closely to the world’s $2.6 trillion food waste problem, which happens in many different forms up and down the food supply chain.

To get a deeper understanding of both the perishability issue and its relationship to food waste, Rogers and I took some time at this week’s event to walk through the different steps of the food system

As Rogers sees it, there are four main categories of the food system to examine: grower, suppler, retailer, and consumer.

The grower stage involves the actual cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and other perishable items. It’s a point in the supply chain where those involved have to make sacrifices in order to avoid excessive food waste. By way of an example, Rogers described how tomatoes are normally picked when they are still hard and green. The decision about when to harvest the food is based not on when it’s in peak eating condition but on making it last longer as it travels to suppliers and eventually to the grocery store. That works — for the grower. But by disconnecting the fruit from the plant early on, we’re sacrificing flavor and nutritional content, and it means that a consumer could very well buy a tomato from the grocery store and wind up chucking it because of its mediocre taste.

Building more time into the supply chain is a point Rogers has emphasized again and again during our conversations. He is, of course, invested in this idea through his company Apeel, which makes an edible coating for fruits and vegetables that extends their shelf life, in some cases by weeks. His goal, and the goal of others in the food industry, is to build more time into our supply chain so that crops can be picked when nature dictates and not before.

Suppliers feel the time crunch perhaps most acutely of anyone on the food supply chain. These are the people that receive produce from the grower, sort it, box it, and ship it to grocery stores and other buyers. 

“Suppliers have a clock that’s ticking,” Rogers explained. Using another example, he referenced a small farm growing caviar limes, which only last for a couple days. Fruit had to be sorted, packed, and shipped on the same day to avoid spoilage, an issue that was solved once the farm started using Apeel’s coating on the limes.

But while growers and suppliers race to avoid perishability, retailers and other buyers, such as foodservice operations, have it built right into their business model. The typical grocery store builds large fruit and vegetable displays so they can sell more and sell it faster. However, Rogers said the rate at which food ages speeds up by a factor of four once it leaves the walk-in cooler and goes on display.  

“If you want to maximize your sales, you will always want to have a full shelf which leads to waste,” he said, adding that grocers without a waste problem have missed sales opportunities, since demand has outpaced supply.

Apeel is one such solution helping retailers combat the problem of perishability. Others, including Hazel Technologies and StixFresh are also bringing their technologies to retailers with the goal of extending the life of produce.

The last stop on the food supply chain also happens to be the one where the majority of food, at least in the U.S. and Europe, gets wasted. Rogers was quick to point out that “no one wants to waste food.” However, despite the growing number of potential solutions available to consumers to curb food waste, expecting massive shifts in behavior is next to impossible. “Just telling them they shouldn’t waste food doesn’t get to the crux of the issue,” Rogers said during the event. Rather, the strategy should be about helping people create an abundance of food in their homes. Once again, building more time into the life of produce and therefore into the supply chain is what would enable consumers to keep more fresh food at home without the fear of it going to waste.

At the end of the day, he said, “we have to make the most environmentally beneficially solution the cheapest, easiest solution.”

Plan, Store, Redistribute: Tech Tools to Keep Your Thanksgiving Leftovers Out of the Landfill

Roughly 200 million pounds of turkey in the U.S. gets tossed out annually after Thanksgiving. And though dinners might be smaller this year, since massive family gatherings are a no-no, it’s inevitable that a lot of food is going to get wasted. That’s a tough fact to digest, given the long lines at food banks this year because of the economic consequences of the pandemic, to say nothing of food waste’s impact on the environment.

Much of food waste happens because it’s built into our food system, and fighting the problem at scale will require a massive effort from governments, businesses, and consumers alike. But you can still play your part during the 2020 holidays by taking steps to address your food waste or, better yet, prevent it from happening in the first place. Here are some useful tech tools that may come in handy.

Plan It. 

Thorough meal planning that actually reduces food waste goes beyond deciding which side dishes to serve with the bird. The first step is to “think beyond the recipe,” as NRDC puts it. If you’re buying onions to add to a stuffing dish, research recipes that also call for onions you could make in the days following the holiday. Ditto for something like parsley, which few folks tend to eat in bulk. Also scan the pantry before you ever set foot in a grocery store (or open a grocery app) to see what you already have, so you don’t buy repeats of, say, baking soda.

Fortunately, there are a lot of apps and online tools out there nowadays that can help consumers with this planning. While we at The Spoon have mixed feelings about these apps (most still require quite a bit of manual inventory entry), they can at the very least make the food planning and buying process more organized. 

For example, Meal Prep Mate, made by the Save the Food Campaign, has a bunch of planning features, including a calculator that estimates how much food you need based on your guest list, a tool to help you create your shopping list, and a recipe guide. Similarly, the Meal Hero app, from the Kraft-Heinz Evolv group, includes an interactive shopping list feature the app generates based on the recipes you give it and can even arrange to get your groceries delivered via AmazonFresh and Instacart. No Waste’s app, which also helps users create meal plans and shopping lists comes with a built-in food waste tracker and can be shared across multiple users — a bonus if there are multiple cooks in the kitchen.

As mentioned above, the big downside to most meal planning apps right now is that they can’t automatically scan your fridge or pantry to tell you what you already have; the user has to manually input that information. No, that’s not a real problem to have compared to everything else going on this year, but it is something to think about as you choose your food waste tools for the holidays.

Store It.

My crystal ball tells me that despite planning, a lot of us will still wind up with leftover food come Thursday night. If you plan to store it, place the food in clear containers marked with the contents inside and the date you first stored them. The USDA notes that doing this “can increase the chances that the leftovers in the fridge will be remembered and actually eaten.”

There are some options for smart food storage systems available that can simplify the process of keeping leftovers and remind you when food is about to go bad. A company called Lasting Freshness uses a vacuum-seal container system and is available in the lower 48. At the moment, though, systems from the likes of Ovie and Silo are still only available for pre-order. 

For tips on how to best store certain types of food, check Save The Food’s comprehensive guide on the topic.

Redistribute It. 

You could also donate leftover ingredients to those in need. A food-sharing app such as OLIO lets neighbors and communities share excess food. Users can list pretty much anything that is edible, such as a leftover carton of eggs or an extra loaf of bread. For restaurants and grocery stores, apps like Too Good To Go and Imperfect Foods offer a way to donate excess ingredients that are then sold to customers at a discount price. 

At the moment, those apps have no options for the average U.S. household to donate excess food. They do, however, let you order a box of “imperfect” groceries, which means you could craft a Thanksgiving meal out of rescued food items and contribute to the food redistribution concept in that way. Imperfect Foods, for example, lets you pick groceries online and get them delivered to your doorstep.

Afresh Raises Another $13M to Help Grocers Manage Produce Inventory

Afresh announced today it has raised $13 million in new funding for its grocery retail management platform. The round, which is a Series A extension, was led by Food Retail Ventures with participation from existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Maersk Growth, and BaselineVentures. This brings Afresh’s total funding to $32.8 million.

San Francisco-based Afresh’s technology uses machine learning to analyze customer buying data for fresh produce and help grocery retailers forecast demand, which is harder to predict when it comes to perishable foods like fruits, vegetables, and breads. Grocery stores must order enough to meet customer demand, but not so much they are throwing out excessive amounts of unsold items and wasting both food and money in the process. Afresh’s technology helps grocery retailers forecast more precisely and order accordingly.

Right now there is a major need for this level of precision when it comes to grocery inventory. Panic-buying sprees at the beginning of the pandemic underscored some of the supply-and-demand shortcomings with grocery inventory systems. Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz told The Spoon earlier this year that “COVID was a test case” for the company’s overall structure. “Ultimately, we’re building the system for edge cases and supply interruptions,” he said.

At the same time, the world’s 1.3-billion-ton food waste problem grows more urgent each year. In the U.S. 40 percent of that waste happens in consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants. In addition to helping grocers better manage supply and demand, Afresh’s platform can also help them cut the amount of waste they throw out (and save more money). 

The pandemic, the record levels of online grocery shopping, and the food waste problem are collectively making inventory optimization a big business for the grocery sector. Afresh’s funding comes the same week Farmstead, another AI-powered platform, raised $7.9 million. Crisp, based in NYC, offers retailers a similar platform.

Afresh’s latest funding round follows another Series A follow-on from July, that one for $12 million. The company said today it will expand its product to new markets and add new features in the coming months.   

Choco Is Challenging L.A. Chefs to Curb Food Waste With Food Creativity

As the world’s food waste problem gets literally bigger each year, so too does the amount of creative effort tech companies are putting into fighting it. The latest of these comes in the form of the Waste is Gold campaign, a pop-up event in Los Angeles in which three restaurants will serve dishes created from the food byproduct in their own kitchens. Powering the event is restaurant tech company Choco, which has big ambitions for fighting food waste both now and in the future.

The pop-up event will take place from Nov. 19–21 at Counterpart Vegan in Echo Park, Strings of Life in West Hollywood, and Beelman’s in Downtown L.A. These restaurants’ chefs will create dishes made from food byproduct (e.g., tomato soup from leftover vegetables) that will be available for takeout or outdoor dining. Customers can order online via the Waste is Gold website.

Choco is best known for its mobile platform that connects restaurant kitchens directly with suppliers to more easily order and manage their inventory. The company raised $30.2 million back in April, around the time it also launched a direct-to-consumer channel in response to the pandemic and ensuing restaurant industry meltdown. 

But speaking to me on a call this week, Chelsea van Hooven, the Global Industry Advisor at Choco, said that the company’s overarching goal was to fight food waste, and that Choco is working on a number of different projects to raise awareness about the problem, including the Waste Is Gold campaign.

She noted that the inspiration for this campaign came after working with Matt Orlando, owner and chef at Amass, a zero-waste restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. In keeping with Orlando’s idea of building creative menus from food byproduct, Choco has given chefs participating in the Waste is Gold campaign a similar challenge.

For example, Mimi Williams, the executive chef for Counterpart Vegan, has created a ratatouille with spaghetti made from various parts of squash — parts that might normally be thrown out. Using more of the entire food, whether a squash, a pumpkin, or whatever else happens to be in the fridge, is lesson more chefs could take advantage of, and one that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of tech to execute on.

Tech, however, definitely has a role to play in the fight against food waste. For her part, van Hooven said that Choco is exploring the role of data in this area and how her company can provide a layer of it that will bring awareness and understanding of food waste to more restaurants. Tracking inventory data, and therefore food waste data, needs to become a part of daily business for restaurants. “We’re analyzing data in every field of our life, we should definitely use it for the better and optimize our food system,” she said. It’s a sentiment the food industry is voicing more these days as data’s critical role in fighting waste becomes more and more apparent.

While it’s still early days for Choco’s ambitions around creating that data layer, the pop-up restaurant events will definitely be making their way to more cities in the future. 

ReFed Launches a $10M Campaign to Reduce Food Waste, Announces New Insights Engine

ReFed today made two big announcements around its continued fight against food loss and waste. The U.S.-based nonprofit has launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to support projects and initiatives that reduce waste in the supply chain. Additionally, ReFed will release an online hub for food waste data and insights next year, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The campaign is meant to support initiatives across the entire food supply chain that help to reduce food loss and waste. Crown Family Philanthropies, the Fink Family Foundation, The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation, the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, and Wiancko Charitable Foundation are already involved and have helped to raise $3 million so far. The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust has made a matching grant.

Additionally, the campaign is part of an ongoing effort to aid in the goal of the United Nations, the USDA, and the U.S. EPA to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030. As we discussed in a recent Spoon Plus report on food waste innovation, many companies and solutions exist in the space, but a great many more are needed in order to “make food waste less possible” for producers, retailers, and consumers alike.

Also supporting the 2030 goal is ReFed’s forthcoming Insights Engine, an online hub for both data and insights around the global food waste problem. Some features will include in-depth analyses on existing food waste solutions, a directory of these existing solutions and companies, a calculator that shows food waste’s impact on both the environment and food insecurity, and financial analysis that will help direct the private and philanthropic capital needed to fund new solutions.

Alongside the Insights Engine, ReFed will release its Roadmap to 2030, which the organization says will serve as its guide for the next decade around the actions it and other players in the food system take to strengthen the fight against food waste.

The U.S. 2030 Food Loss and Waste Reduction Goal was launched back in 2015 by the USDA and the EPA as a companion to the UN’s Target 12.3. Over the five years since, we have seen the number of companies working to fight food waste grow, particularly around waste at consumer-facing levels (grocery, household, etc.). Even so, 40 percent of the world’s food continues to be wasted, resulting in 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases and economic losses of about $750 billion annually.

ReFed said today the $10 million campaign will help make a significant reduction in the amount of food being wasted each year. Meanwhile, Insights Engine is expected to be released in early 2021.

Food Waste Friday: Face Shields Made From Excess Food, Cooking Tips That Reduce Waste

As we often discuss at The Spoon, food waste remains a major problem worldwide and is getting bigger each year. The upside, though, is that nowadays, chefs, non-profits, tech companies, consumers, artists, and many more are constantly on the hunt for ways to stop it.

And while much of this week’s headlines were taken up with election news and pandemic updates, there were multiple noteworthy pieces of news around food waste innovation. I’ve rounded a few of them up here to give an idea of the creative lengths people will go to in order to curb the world’s massive food waste problem.

First up: face shields made from food scraps (h/t Waste 360). It was only a matter of time before someone came up with an environmentally friendly face mask for the COVID-19 era. London biotech designer Alice Potts has created 20 bioplastic face shields from a combination of food waste and flowers collected around London. The idea was to create a biodegradable face shield made from sustainable materials, rather than single-use plastics.

Architecture and design magazine Dezeen has photos of the face shields, which use food elements for the material and are dyed with walnut husk, beetroot, purple iris, and other natural elements. The color of the shield depends on the food and flowers from which it was made.

Potts’ masks, which she has dubbed Dance Biodegradable Personal Protective Equipment (DBPPE) Post Covid Facemasks, will be on show at the NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Post-show, the face shield design and bioplastic formula will be available as an open-source design.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., four professional chefs are joining forces next week to teach consumers kitchen techniques that can help reduce food waste in the home, according to the Adirondack Almanac.

The ReCook Cafe, which previously took place in person, will be held virtually this coming Tuesday, Nov. 10. It’s a mix of live and pre-recorded programming that features four chefs sharing tips and techniques to help home cooks get more out of their food items, reduce food waste, save money, and hopefully get a tasty meal out of the deal. 

In the U.S., the bulk of food waste happens in our own homes. Our recent Spoon Plus report on food waste outlined some of the companies and tech tools currently available to help consumers fight their own food waste habits. An online workshop that could help folks do that while improving their cooking skills seems like another logical addition to the list.

Best part: it’s free. Register here.

Speaking of food waste at the consumer level: a new study suggests FOMO causes food waste among Gen Z. 

Cook Clever, an EIT Food-funded project, surveyed 18- to 25-year olds and found that peer pressure to be “adventurous” in their food choices deters them from meal planning and eating leftovers. According to the study, this generation wants “new and exciting meals and are very opposed to suggestions of being more resourceful with leftovers.”

The study goes on to say that traditional approaches to food waste (see cooking class) don’t appeal to Gen Z. Dr. Natalie Masento, a lead researcher for the project, said we need more “specialized” efforts specifically geared towards the Gen Z age group will be more effective in fighting food waste.

Food Navigator has more thoughts from Dr. Masento, which are worth reading in full.

 

Edible Garden Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Its High-Tech Greenhouses

New Jersey-based indoor farming company Edible Garden has launched a crowdfunding campaign in the hopes of raising $1 million for its controlled-environment indoor farming operations that supply leafy greens and herbs to grocery retailers across the U.S. The campaign is currently live on crowd investment platform Republic, with $5,075 raised so far and 74 days left to go.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said that funds raised via Republic will go towards further commercializing the company’s greenhouses and expanding its reach in terms of where it sells its produce. 

The company operates a controlled-environment greenhouse in Belvedere, New Jersey that utilizes tech to monitor things like temperature and humidity levels as well as help growers manage crop cycles. The software monitors these and other variables along the food supply chain for greater traceability of its products.

Edible Garden has additional farms nationwide through partnerships with growers, and its greens are already at over 5,000 stores nationwide. Meijer, Shop Rite, Target, Kroger, and Walmart, among many others, are listed as Edible Garden’s retail partners. 

Individuals can back Edible Gardens in different tiers, starting at a minimum of $100. Backers that contribute $250 or more get a Crowd SAFE agreement, which would enable them to receive a financial return “should the company ever sell or file for an IPO,” according to the press release. Other perks include sample of Edible Garden greens, including monthly and yearly supplies, depending on how much the individual invests. 

As with any campaign, backers assume a certain amount of risk investing in companies and projects via crowdfunding platforms, and there is no guarantee Edible Garden will sell or go public and therefore reward this campaign’s backers financially. In other words, caveat emptor.

That said, the last several months have seen a sizable uptick in activity and investment into the controlled-environment agriculture space. To name just a few, Revol Greens recently raised $68 million, AppHarvest nabbed $28 million, and Gotham Greens further expanded its high-tech greenhouses in the U.S. Those numbers are encouraging at a time when more consumers are expressing interest in locally grown food that is more traceable. However, controlled-environment ag as a sector has yet to economically prove its worth as a vital part of the food system, though it’s trekking in that direction.

For its part, Edible Garden will run its campaign until January 16, 2021.