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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Web3

The Spoon Breaks Ground on New HQ in the Metaverse in Partnership With OneRare

Here at The Spoon, we are excited to announce we are breaking ground on a new company headquarters.

In the metaverse, that is.

That’s right, we’re building a new (virtual) HQ in partnership with OneRare. OneRare, an India-based startup building a food-centric metaverse, is busy laying pixels and helping us create a our new outpost in Web3, a multi-use gathering spot for all things Spoon. The Spoon HQ will include a virtual event space, a watering hole, and a desk or two where we can tap on our virtual typewriters to document the stories of innovators building new things in the world of food tech.

The idea for the new Spoon HQ first surfaced after talking with OneRare cofounder Supreet Raju in preparation for SimulATE, the Spoon’s Web3xfood summit. Supreet suggested that OneRare could help The Spoon build a virtual space in the metaverse and, not being one to pass up becoming a virtual land/media mogul, I decided to take her up on it. I mean, who doesn’t dream of having their own HQ in a virtual world?

We started the process by looking for specific building designs in the real world that could approximate what our new HQ in the metaverse could look like. Being partial to mid-century American architecture – and with a fondness for Seattle landmarks – I figured what better inspiration to model The Spoon HQ than the old Seattle Post-Intelligencer building?

Above: The Seattle P-I Building on July 14, 1956.

The Seattle P-I was one of Seattle’s two major print newspapers for over a century. The paper got its start in 1863 as the Seattle Gazette (it was renamed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1867), and though it ceased its print edition in 2009 (the P-I is still available online), the classic P-I is still a fondly-remembered and storied part of Seattle’s media history.

As for the P-I’s famed circling globe, it’s still there, only a few blocks closer to the Seattle waterfront. The paper relocated to a new location in 1986 and moved the globe along with it, where it remains one of Seattle’s most recognizable landmarks, second only to perhaps the Space Needle.

And now, The Spoon will have its own globe-topped HQ in the metaverse. The building, which you can see at the top of the page in an early rendering, will also have two bar areas (we figured one isn’t enough for thirsty Spoon event attendees), the event space, and a TV where we can stream Spoon videos and content.

We’re excited. We’ve become pretty good here at The Spoon at hosting virtual events, trade shows, and meetups, and we look forward to throwing the doors open at our new HQ to welcome our community to connect in new and exciting ways. Once the art team has finished with the design renderings, the OneRare coding team will get to work, and we are hoping to have the space ready to visit in October.

We’ll keep you updated and hope to welcome you soon to The Spoon HQ in the metaverse!

Come With Me as I Walk Around a CPG Farmers Market in the Metaverse

Last night I walked around a farmers market. I spent about an hour walking from stand to stand, having conversations, and learning about new CPG products. Someone even offered me free candy. It was a blast!

And all of it happened in the metaverse. I attended a virtual pop-up farmers market put on by an organization called The Metamarket. The event featured over a dozen different CPG brands, each of which had a virtual exhibit stand in a virtual 2D Sims-like world that allowed me to interact with both the products and the people.

The platform The Metamarket used for the event is Gather, a virtual world/metaverse startup that started during the pandemic and has since raised $76 million in funding. Gather has some interesting features, including one called ‘proximity chatting’ in which a video pop window emerges for chats with people in the space (see below), making it a nice mashup of video game meets professional networking tool.

Each booth had someone from the company hanging around and chatting with anyone who stopped by. Most of the booths had lots of activity, whether it was company representatives describing the product or people checking out the interactive objects embedded in each booth. To interact with the objects and maneuver around the space, I used the same keyboard controls you’d use in any 2D open-world video game. The elements often included a unique discount code for a product, a link to a website, or a sign-up sheet for a newsletter. Commerce was made possible by links at the various booths to a special shopify website that allowed me to purchase products.

Below is a short video clip of me walking around the market and interacting with different elements.

A Walk Around a Farmer's Market in the Metaverse

Each company representative I chatted with told me that this was the first time they’d tried out a metaverse farmer’s market activation.

“This is this is the first one,” said Gina Shi, founder of mushroom-based jerky company Munchrooms. “I kind of like came in without really any expectations and kind of just like see what’s possible.”

Kasey Stewart, the CEO and cofounder of candy company Suckerz, said he’d been interested in web3 and has invested in NFTs, but this was the first time his company had participated in a virtual farmers market.

“I see this as the future of where people will shop,” Stewart told me. (Stewart offered to send me free candy as one of the first ten people in this booth. I happily accepted his offer).

The Metamarket organization is a collaboration between CPGD, a CPG curation and community platform, and Parade, a CPG commerce software startup. Last night’s event, which was the second farmer’s market put on by Metamarket, included 16 CPG brands, the bulk of which were food and beverage startups.

While it’s too soon to say if this is the future of CPG commerce or farmers markets, I was pleasantly surprised by how fun and easy it was to navigate around, find out about new products, and talk to the people behind those products. Sure, the Sims-style virtual world of Gather isn’t exactly the type of 3D virtual world you often hear about when folks like Zuck talk about the metaverse, but I found the simplicity of the experience to be much more approachable and less effort than what I imagine it would be like navigating a VR-centric shopping experience.

If you want to attend the next Metamarket, you can sign up here. I’ll probably see you there.

Food Tech News Pod: The Wendyverse, 15-Minute Grocery Struggles & Roku’s Big Food Play

It’s another weekly food tech new wrap-up.

The stories we discuss this week include:

As always, you can find more episodes of The Spoon Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also just click play below to listen to today’s show.

From the Paneraverse to the Wendyverse, the Food Web3 Trademark Gold Rush is On

While it’s uncertain at this point just how profitable the food industry’s efforts to build out a presence in the metaverse will be, what we do know is those sure to make out in the near term around all these food web3 initiatives are trademark attorneys.

All anyone has to do is make a casual search of the USPTO’s trademark database or check out trademark Twitter (there’s a Twitter for everything) to see that there’s been a rush by food brands to file web3-related trademarks to ensure they have their place reserved in the metaverse for whenever they’re ready to make a trip.

Coverage of these filings in the crypto-press is often templatized, usually featuring tweets from one of a couple of trademark attorneys making a name for themselves on crypto twitter by talking about different trademark filings. Whether it’s Snickers or Chuck E. Cheese or Panda Express or you name it, the stories generally tell us these brands are set to enter or headed to or already have entered the metaverse.

And the reality is that many – if not most – of the food brands aren’t heading anywhere right away but are more than likely hedging their bets by filing trademarks to make sure they stake a claim for their brand in the metaverse and have some form of trademark protection for whatever their eventual plans are.

And these hedges often take the form of an exhaustive list of different ways the company may use an NFT. Take, for example, Panera’s filing, which not only hints at Panera’s virtual world called the Paneraverse or presence in a third-party virtual world with the same name, but goes into extensive detail about every which way a restaurant could connect with their consumers via an NFT: virtual goods, tokens for real-world food, NFTs as a foundation for loyalty and incentive programs for discounts on Panera’s food, virtual food, virtual beverages, etc., etc. It’s like Panera’s legal team took a web3 word list, put it in a blender with food terms, and listed the first 200 word combinations on their trademark filing.

But not all brands are just filing long trademark applications. Some, like Wendy’s, are already building out their presence in the metaverse. On April 2nd, they opened their virtual restaurant in Horizon Worlds, a virtual destination called Wendysverse that features a restaurant, town square, and more. Last week, they announced Sunrise City, which is, believe it or not, a breakfast-oriented expansion of the Wendysverse that features gameplay complete with bacon bridges and flying biscuits. Those that enter Sunrise City can get a complimentary breakfast sandwich with purchase.

No matter what stage the effort, food-related brands of all types seem to be reserving their spot in the metaverse for whenever they decide what they want to do, including big beer companies like Miller and Budweiser, CPG brands like Mars and Kraft, and even home appliance companies like Instant Brands.

Just how seriously many of these are remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: the filings – and the buzz around them – will continue for some time.

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!

Food NFT + Metaverse (in a) Minute: NFTs for Purpose Driven Restaurants, Cereal DAO

It’s still early days at the intersection of food and Web3 and that means there’s almost always something new happening and more to learn. Stay up to date with our coverage and these 3 things in this week’s Food Metaverse Minute:

NFTs for Purpose-Driven Restaurant

Chefs using NFTs to fund their next restaurant is becoming a regular thing — but even more inspiring is chefs using NFTs to give back to the workers who are the backbone of the restaurant industry. That’s what St. Paul-based chef Brian Ingram and his group Purpose Restaurants are doing with their next project.

Partnering with Chicago artist Joey Africa, the NFT collection will feature 71 original digital and physical pieces, each token serving as a membership to Ingram’s newest restaurant. The Apostle Supper Club, opening this summer across from the Xcel Energy Center, will hold VIP events like private chef dinners and menu tastings. Ten percent of the NFT raise will go back into the community; Ingram’s restaurant group regularly contributes to Give Hope, his charity created to give funds directly to people in their community, particularly restaurant workers dealing with housing insecurity or addiction.

We’ll be keeping an eye on hose this project performs. The NFTs went on sale last week on Opeaseas but so far there’s been little activity. While there’s been lots of inspiration from the success of the membership of Flyfish Club, no one – not surprisingly – has been able to replicate the success of the Gary Vee-affiliated group.

The DAO-Driven Cereal Company

NFT-branded cereal makes a debut from the “first decentralized CPG company” last week at Bitcoin Miami. The new CPG DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) — named gmgn supply co — launched with its first product, gm cereal and introduced its governance structure. The goal of DAOs is to spread collective decision-making rights along with ownership benefits to all of the involved members.

To drive hype for their launch, gmgn used Web3 marketing with BoredBecky, a curated personality with famous NFT social influencer group Bored Ape Club. The new group hopes to “revolutionize the CPG industry and drive the next generation of beloved brands,” and will be the first consumer packaged goods company to embrace NFTs as a way to fund and the DAO structure to run and grow the organization.

“If you look at the current CPG landscape, the majority of brands we eat every day are owned by 11 giant CPG conglomerates. gmgn supply co is changing this and our members will have a say in what they eat, what products are going to be made and help lead the CPG industry in a new direction that’s been elevated by Web3. We are excited to be leading this change and kicking it off with the launch of our first brand, gm Cereal, slated to drop in the Fall of this year,” said Phillipe LeBlanc, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Funday.” Funday is one of the founding companies that started gmgn.

SimulATE is Back

SimulATE is coming back! We’re bringing back the first virtual event dedicated to the emerging food, NFT, metaverse + crypto space and we’re going to be announcing our speaker lineup and agenda soon. Preview some of that here and if you use THIS LINK, you’ll get 50% off ticket prices through the end of this week (FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11:59 pm PST).

Tom Collichio and Spike Mendelson’s Pizza NFT Goes Live

Chefs Tom Collichio and Spike Mendelson officially launched CHFTY Pizza NFT project this week. The official “mint” or release of its 2777 unique pizza designs began this week, with the pre-sale started yesterday Wednesday, March 23 and the public sale opening today.


Each NFT is priced at .07 Ethereum (worth $204 as of this writing) which will net CHFTY founders around $566,000. NFT holders will have access to virtual and in-person pop-up events, classes, kitchen accessories + apparel and more. CHFTY Pizza’s Discord has more details including an AMA the team did over the weekend to rally support and add people to the insider “Slicelist” for pre-sale access.

Chefs talk NFT and CHFTY at SimulATE Mini-Summit

Chefs Mendelson and Collichio joined The Spoon at our virtual February 1st SimulATE Food Metaverse + NFT Mini-Summit to discuss their upcoming NFT, its intended purpose and why it was important for the chef community to be involved in the development of Web3.

Mendelson commented, “(Post pandemic) I felt left behind in Web 2.0 and technology, as a restaurant tour and chef. And I was fighting to learn really quick on how to develop your own app, how to drive traffic from those third-party stores to your own app, but we were really way behind that point. So we want to enter NFTs right.”

When Collichio noticed artists and other creators were using NFTs as a way of keeping their own IP and driving revenue back to themselves when releasing their art, the two began a conversation on how to leverage NFTs for chefs and foodies. And out of that, the project that would become CHFTY Pizza was born.

The IP in the culinary world is difficult to protect in the age of digital food content and shareable recipes and food creation — and restaurateurs and chefs are in need of new pathways to profits in a post-pandemic world.

“What this does is that’s going to enable a restaurant term to expand way past their brick and mortar. This is where the world’s going, so we can either sit there and dig our feet and go no, we’re not going to do this or we can embrace it and get in front of it. And I think that’s what Spike and I are doing,” remarked Chef Collichio.

What’s next?

If you’re able to grab one of the 2,777 tokens during the pre or public sale, you’ll have to stay tuned and see what rewards and utilities will be added. First up, CHFTY Pizzas is hosting its first in-person event for token holders in Washington, DC, and will include meet and greets with founding Chefs Tom and Spike along with Andrew Zimmern, Maneet Chauhan and Kristen Kish.

To listen to the entire discussion on restaurants, NFTs and CHFTY Pizza, join Spoon Plus and get access to all virtual event archives.

Food meets the metaverse

Join us for SimulATE Spring Summit virtually on May 4th

Get early bird tix for our food metaverse, NFT + Web3 summit

‘It’s Like a Driver’s License for Cows’: Why One Wyoming Company is Creating NFTs for Cattle

Back when Rob Jennings helped found the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition back in 2017, he knew he needed to find a use case that resonated with residents of the Cowboy State. It didn’t take him long before he settled on beef.

“Back then, there was a lot of conversation around about how grass-fed, grain-finished Wyoming fat cattle beef was being mixed into commodity feed yards with lesser animals, let’s say,” Jennings said on a Zoom call with The Spoon. “And so we developed this idea about how you could use blockchain to verify the animal’s provenance.”

Back then, Jennings worked with the University of Wyoming to develop the technology for his first blockchain startup called Beefchain. And while he and other early blockchain enthusiasts found the idea of putting the information about a steer on the blockchain exciting, Jennings found the response more muted when explaining the technology to ranchers, mainly because many of them still couldn’t see the immediate value of such a tech-forward solution.

That’s when Jennings started to think about ways to utilize NFTs. With the early implementations of storing cattle data on the blockchain, Jennings said they would hash an entire excel spreadsheet and put it on the bitcoin blockchain.

“Yes, you’re putting the information there, but it wasn’t functional,” said Jennings.

He knew that there were certain challenges in cattle ranching that could be met head-on with the utility provided by NFTs that would go beyond simply putting information on the blockchain. He knew that to build something cattle ranchers and others in the industry found useful, he had to create a platform for an individual digital record and add on additional functionality through the application layer brought on by an NFT. That’s when he founded CattleProof.

“It’s like a driver’s license for cows,” said Jennings. “I’ve always believed that whatever you want to do with blockchain and all of the functionality that’s promised to us down the horizon, and it starts with creating that record.”

Attributes about the cow such as age, genetics, ranch of origin, and more can be stored and easily accessed by the holder of the NFT. Additionally, certifications such as an inspection record can be appended to the NFT.

“Traditionally, inspection records are a piece of paper,” said Jennings. “Inspectors say, ‘okay, these hundred cows are good’, and then you have that one piece of paper you take along the supply chain. So what we wanted to do is create the ability for all of this metadata that’s associated with each animal to travel along the supply chain. So the next guy who buys this animal, whether it’s one or one hundred, will have access to all of this information appended to this NFT.”

Jennings also said financial functionality could be derived from a cow NFT.

“You could use an NFT record to collateralize the animals with a bank,” said Jennings. “You could use them to track movement. You can use them to do an e-brand inspection and interstate movement.”

Jennings says that transferring ownership via an NFT at cattle auctions will expedite fund transfer for the cow. Funds transfer nearly immediately, compared to the days or weeks through the traditional financial reconciliation process.

The way CattleProof’s technology works is the rancher creates an account via the company’s website, which creates a digital wallet. Next, the rancher tags the cow via a Bluetooth sensor or an EID (an embedded tag that goes into the cow’s ear), and then uses the CattleProof app to scan the EID for each animal. Next, they enter the data (photo, weight, breed, etc) and, once all the information is entered, the rancher “hits a big red button” and mints an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain.

From there, the owner of the NFT controls who can see the data and is the only one that can enter new data (past data can’t be changed). If the animal is sold, ownership of the NFT – and all control rights to the data and the animal – are passed onto the new owner.

His company has already run a successful trial of the collaboration with Wilson Ranch in December. The company helped Wilson Ranch create NFTs for 20 steers that were sold through the website of Wilson’s distribution partner, Flying Diamond Beef. The company has plans to expand trials to more ranches in the coming months.

CattleProof has filed for a provisional patent and is currently working to develop a USDA process that the agency can recognize as an approved process flow for a verified claim utilizing blockchain technology.

“It’s exciting,” said Jennings. “I grew up in Wyoming. I like the Western way of life. I want to help producers connect more directly with consumers and democratize the marketplace.”

SimulATE: All Sessions From Food Web3 & Metaverse Summit

Here’s the lineup:

  • Building a Crypto Powered Food Future – Amber Case (Unlock Protocol), Chad Horn (Devour Token), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Welcome to the Foodverse – Supreet Raju (OneRare), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry Amogha Srirangarajan (Carbon Origins), Barry Herbst (The Elliott Group)
  • Case Study: Making an NFT Restaurant with Flyfish Club – David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), Josh Capon (Flyfish Club), Conor Hanlon (Flyfish Club), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • Building Web3 Burger Joint – Al Chen (BurgerDAO), Perrin Davidson (LA Eats)
  • How Will AR Change Food & Cooking – Lauren Cason (XR Creative Technologist), Michael Wolf (The Spoon)
  • NFT Strategies for Consumer Packaged Goods – Brad Klemmer (Bored Breakfast Club), Brett Fink (Yerb), Perrin Davidson (LA Eats)
  • Chefs Spike Mendelsohn & Tom Colicchio Talk CHFTY Pizzas

 

Spoon Plus members can watch the complete sessions below.  If you would like to learn more about Spoon Plus, you can do so here. 

Your Next Job May Be in the Metaverse. Here are Four Ways Web3 Will Change The Way We Work

This week at SimulATE, the first-ever event examining the intersection between food and beverage and Web3, The Spoon hosted a panel on the future of work in the metaverse.

To look at how our jobs may change in a Web3-powered world, we welcomed Amogha Srirangarajan, the CEO of delivery robot startup called Carbon Origins, and Barry Herbst, a VP and executive recruiting firm The Elliott Group.

Below are four ways our panelists saw work changing as we enter the era of the metaverse:

The Metaverse Will Become A Way to Do All Forms of Work

Srirangarajan, whose company Carbon Origins hires virtual reality experts to operate their sidewalk robots, said in the long term, the work-from-anywhere nature of the metaverse would open doors for workers who have previously been shut out of the labor market.

“You’re going to have jobs that anybody can do in the metaverse.” said Srirangarajan. “The jobs that we’re creating are from all walks of life are moms and dads, as they’re called students, people with disabilities, people from all around the world. They can choose what time they work, how long they work with who they work, and what type of jobs that they work on.”

Web3 Jobs Will Be Community Driven

According to Herbst, jobs in Web3 will be centered around communities.

“Web2 is all about profit, while Web3 is all about that community,” said Herbst. “Brands coming into this space are going to add value to their consumers in a whole different way, connecting with their consumers, their customers, their patrons.”

Srirangarajan agreed that community is essential and sees the metaverse as a great place to find enthusiastic new talent.

“This is how we found every single one of our Skipsters,” said Srirangarajan, referring to the term the company uses for their remote VR robot operators. “The technology’s there now to support large groups of people coming into this virtual world with affordable hardware, and hanging out and building communities.”

The Metaverse as The New Job Training Ground

According to both panelists, the metaverse will be used to teach us new skills we will need for our jobs.

“Training is why we started using VR at Carbon Origins,” said Srirangarajan. “Training is going to be a big application early on. Training for all sorts of industries, starting with the service industry.”

“I foresee a lot of continued training and development not only in the real world but also with the headset, which will save companies a lot of money,” said Herbst. “Having that experience, whether it’s learning how to clean or cook, or even going on a date, having that shopping experience, eating a meal in the metaverse. Humans are social animals, and while we thrive on having that connection with people whether it’s face to face, it’s also fun having just as we’re doing now.”

Meet The Chief Virtual Officer

According to Herbst, Web3 will push brands to create a new executive job role, the Chief Virtual Officer (CVO), and one of the skills required by the CVO is that of digital real estate manager.

“The chief virtual officer will have to be very fluent first in digital land,” said Herbst. “What are the best in class metaverses to buy digital land?”

Another necessary CVO skill will be an understanding of digital security and the ability to fortify a brand’s metaverse presence.

“How do you secure those assets safely? How do you handle a hardware wallet to ensure that you’re not going to get hacked, or have your assets stolen or fished?”

And finally, the CVO will also be the chief Web3 community officer.

“Managing that community and paying it forward is going to be a really large focus for this chief virtual officer,” said Herbst. “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships and keeping that community intact.”

You can watch the video from the panel, Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry, moderated by The Spoon’s Ashley Daigneault, below.

SimulATE Summit: Jobs in a Web3-Powered Food Industry