What a week! We’re recovering from ArticulATE, our food and robotics summit that went down this past Tuesday in San Francisco. (Keep an eye out for session videos coming your way soon.)
Before we head out to snooze the weekend away, here’s your weekly food tech news roundup. This week we have stories about new high-tech snack bars, chocolate bean sensors, and shoppable recipes in Scandinavia. Enjoy!
Soylent goes solid with new mini-meal bar
Soylent, maker of the meal-replacement drink, is branching out from its liquid lineup. This week the company launched a 100-calorie bar. Called Soylent Square, it comes in three flavors: Salted Caramel, Citrus Berry, and Chocolate Brownie. The bars have 5g of protein and contain probiotics and are sold exclusively on Soylent’s website. A box of 30 Squares will set you back $30.00.
Interestingly, a press email sent to The Spoon included a quote from Soylent’s CEO Brian Crowley suggesting that customers “can enjoy 1-2 [bars] for a healthy snack or 3-4 for a complete meal.” Seems kind of inefficient to have to keep eating so many bars, but I guess it’ll give you a chance to try all the flavors.
Olam Cocoa uses SCiO sensors for on-site cocoa bean analysis
Olam International, a global food and agriculture company, will now give field and purchasing managers in its Cocoa division SCiO sensors to help with product management. Handheld SCiO sensors can sense the moisture level of a batch of cocoa beans on location in under a minute. SCiO has garnered some skeptics who think the tech is too good to be true. However, SCiO’s parent company has already forged successful partnerships with food commodity giants: in 2017 it teamed up with Cargill to analyze cattle feed.
Photo: Anamma.
Northfork partners with Orkla for more shoppable recipes
This week Northfork, a shoppable recipe platform for grocery retailers, announced it was expanding its partnership with Nordic CPG company Orkla. According to the announcement (translated with Google translate), customers on participating brands’ websites can peruse recipes and order all the associated ingredients — even those not made by the brand — for delivery or pickup. Northfork has been piloting a program with Orkla for several months through its seafood brand Abba and is now expanding to work with vegan food brand Anama.
Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech to let us know!
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