Another fast-grocery startup bites the dust.
JOKR, the speedy grocery delivery company that was part of a larger wave of startups that entered the US last year, is shutting down its US operations, according to an email sent to customers today. The company said the last day of delivery in New York City and Boston will be June 19th.
From the email:
While we were able to build an amazing customer base (thank you!!) and lay the groundwork for a sustainable business in the US, the company has made the tough decision to exit the market during this period of global economic uncertainty.
To read the full story, click here.
Who Are The Leaders of the Food Tech Revolution?
We may be a little biased here at The Spoon, but we think food tech is the most exciting industry going.
Think about it: Food is what many of us – heck, most of us – spend a huge chunk of our day thinking about, craving, searching for, and consuming. Food is something everyone is passionate about.
It’s also an industry where some of the biggest advances in AI, biology, agriculture, design, chemistry, and many more fields are now manifesting themselves to create some of the most interesting and exciting changes we’ve ever seen in what, where, how, and why we feed ourselves.
And perhaps most importantly, food systems and their future will undeniably play an outsized role in determining what life on earth looks like here in 10, 20, or 100 years.
All of which is why we love covering this industry, and the biggest joy in all of it is talking to the people leading the food tech revolution. The innovation, the collective progress we make, the futuristic advances we see nearly every week, all of it is a direct result of the many inspiring voices pioneering in this space and trying to create a better world.
To read the full post, head to The Spoon.
Molecular Farming Pioneer Moolec is Going Public Via SPAC
Moolec Science, a company that develops animal-identical proteins utilizing a technique called molecular farming, announced today it is going public via a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). The company is doing so via a business combination agreement with LightJump Acquisition Corp, a company formed in 2020 as a SPAC vehicle. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022.
Moolec, a spinout of Bioceres Crop Solutions, is one of the first companies to utilize molecular farming to create alternative proteins. The attraction of molecular farming is that it uses crops as a protein factory, compared to traditional microbial fermentation techniques that utilize more capital-intensive fermentation infrastructure.
With molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company has launched two products so far, including a plant-based dairy ingredient called chymosin and nutritional oil GLA, both of which use safflower as a carrier crop. According to Moolec, both products have been cleared by regulatory authorities and the company is currently ramping up seed inventories.
You can read the full post at The Spoon.
Kitchen Tech
Fellow, Maker of Specialty Coffee Gear, Raises $30 Million Series B
Fellow, a maker of specialty coffee gear, announced this week they had raised $30 million via a Series B funding round led by Nextworld Evergreen.
The San Francisco-based company, which has made a name for itself with its somewhat pricey design-forward coffee-making gear, was started by founder and CEO Jake Miller in his dorm room at Stanford where he began work on a coffee steeper that raised close to $200 thousand on Kickstarter.
Since those early days, Miller and his team have launched a family of coffee and tea gear, ranging from French presses to kettles to insulated coffee mugs. The company, which has gained a following among baristas and celebrities for its sleekly designed Stagg EKG kettles (and also influenced a dozen or more knockoffs), also sells coffee beans via its website and has opened a flagship retail store in San Francisco.
You can read the full interview with Jake Miller of Fellow at The Spoon.
The Shrooly Lets Aspiring Mushroom Farmers Grow Fungi On Their Kitchen Countertop
While I’m not a mushroom eater – they’re slimy and weird-looking pieces of mold – I’m all for growing them at home because, well, mushrooms are slimy weird-looking pieces of mold.
And, from the looks of it, I (and the mycophiles among us) may soon have another option to become a small-scale mushroom farmer with a home mushroom fruiting chamber called the Shrooly. The new gadget is currently being offered up through a new Indiegogo campaign and is scheduled to start shipping to backers in December of this year.
The appliance, which is available starting at $299 on Indiegogo, is a countertop home growing chamber with light and humidity control. The appliance has on-device control knob and a small display screen that gives updates on the mushroom’s growth, temperature data, and how long until the mushroom is ready for harvest. The Shrooly will also have an app that allows the user to control humidity and monitor the growth of the mushroom.
To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.
Here Are Four Tech-Powered Lunchboxes That Might Help You Fight Lunchflation
Everything is getting more expensive lately, and food is near the top of the list.
For those of you who work outside of the home (and don’t have free and tasty food as a work perk), you’re probably trying to figure out how to fight the suddenly very real problem of lunchflation. The easiest and most obvious way is to pack your own lunch, but often times food tossed in a brown bag or a plain old lunchbox (Evil Knievel or otherwise) doesn’t stay warm or cold enough or whatever needs to be done to optimize freshness.
Luckily for you, we live in an era of feature-packed lunchboxes. Models with everything from temperature zones to hydro flasks to stackable compartments and more give everyone from school kids to lunch-toting nine-to-fivers an abundance of options for bringing a meal along for the day.
And things are about to get even better. A new generation of tech-powered lunchboxes is on its way to help make eating homemade lunches outside the home an even better experience. In this post, I take a look at four of these new options coming to market for those looking to pack up their lunch for work or school.
To read about the four tech-powered lunchboxes, head over to The Spoon.
Future Food
SuperMeat Believes An Open Source Approach to Cultivated Meat Will Benefit All
Lab-grown or cultured meat is a sexy topic that fulfills the dream of healthy eating while saving the planet’s precious resources. Most of the headlines focus on the companies in the four corners of the world waiting for regulators to wave the checkered flag. The more interesting story—at least for those who enjoy looking under the hood—is in the processes, supply chain, and partnerships vital to this promising industry.
To understand the drill-down of what it takes to go from harvesting animal cells to creating consumer-facing products, it’s valuable to speak with visionaries such as Ido Savir, CEO of Israel’s SuperMeat. In addition to his knowledge of cultivated meat, Savir’s background in IT provides him with a panoramic view of the infrastructure needed to build a successful B2B company.
While it might not qualify as an awe-inspiring announcement, SuperMeat recently received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to establish an open-source high-throughput screening system for optimizing cultivated meat feed ingredients. As an analogy, think of it as a system that ensures cows or chickens receive only the best quality feed to produce larger quantities of high-grade meat or chicken. But there is a significant difference.
Read the full post at The Spoon.
Mars Teams Up With Perfect Day to Launch Animal-Free Chocolate Bar
Today Mars announced the launch of a new animal-free chocolate under the brand CO2COA. Developed in partnership with precision fermentation specialist Perfect Day, the chocolate is available today via the product’s new website.
While Mars already offers a range of vegan chocolate bars, this is the first bar from a major candy brand that replaces animal dairy with identical proteins produced through precision fermentation. A German startup by the name of QOA announced last year they are using precision fermentation to develop new chocolate, but their focus is on replacing cocoa rather than animal inputs. The Mars deal follows an announcement made by Perfect Day and Betterland Foods in March of an animal-free chocolate bar.
Read the story at The Spoon.
Food Robots
Picnic’s Pizza-Making Robot Heading To Five College Campuses This Fall
Seattle-based Picnic Works announced today that its Pizza Station robot will be heading to college this fall as part of an expanded pilot program with college food service company Chartwells Higher Education. The pilot will include five colleges: Texas A&M, the University of Chicago, Missouri State University, Carroll University, and Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis.
The rollout of the pizza robot follows a successful eight-week pilot of Picnic’s Pizza Station at Texas A&M. According to Picnic, during the initial pilot, the robot at Texas A&M made over 4,500 pizzas and enabled the kitchen staff to reallocate 8 hours of kitchen worker time per day to other tasks.
The origin story of Picnic’s enrollment at Texas A&M goes back to COVID when Chartwell’s district executive chef Marc Cruz couldn’t find enough workers to staff the pizza makeline and often found himself in the kitchen making pizza by himself. After someone at food service supplier Rich’s suggested that Cruz and his team check out Picnic, it wasn’t too long before the startup installed its robot in College Station, Texas.
To read the full story, click here!
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