2022 looks to be a big year for a number of innovating food tech approaches, including molecular farming. The practice, which involves genetically editing a crop so that its cells produce a protein, sidesteps some of the costly and tricky problems of growing proteins in traditional bioreactors since plants have built-in immune systems. As startups such as Moolec Science and Tiamat Sciences bring their products to market, many are eyeing molecular farming as a potentially exciting new approach to produce proteins at scale.
You can read about whether 2022 will be the year of molecular farming as well as the other top stories of the week in this week’s Spoon newsletter. If you haven’t already subscribed to The Spoon to get this and other stories in your inbox, what are you waiting for?
We Read the Public Comments on Cell-Cultured Meat Labeling So You Don’t Have To
After receiving about 1,700 comments, including many from private individuals, the USDA has closed its window for public comments on labeling standards for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.
Some of the most comprehensive responses to the USDA’s list of questions came from the Good Food Institute and New Harvest, nonprofit groups that share a mission of advancing the alternative protein industry. Environmental groups, agricultural associations, and cell-cultured meat startups also entered the fray. Here are some of The Spoon’s takeaways on the debate.
Brave new labeling requirements
The Good Food Institute and New Harvest presented different opinions on a key issue: whether or not the USDA should create unique labeling requirements for cell-cultured meat and poultry products.
Pointing to precedent created by regulatory agencies’ responses to other non-traditional production techniques, the Good Food Institute argued against the need for a new set of labeling requirements. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service “has generally promulgated new labeling requirements only when a new process or method materially alters the finished product or where it raises different or increased food safety risks,” the Institute said in its letter. Even the practice of harvesting meat from cloned animals, the Institute pointed out, has not warranted new requirements.
While the Institute argued for maximum flexibility, New Harvest seemed focused on guiding the creation of a framework that would be easy to navigate and empirically informed. The group advocated for a required qualifier term, disclaimer, or visual icon on cell-cultured meat labels, but suggested that the USDA wait to decide on a specific qualifier until we have a better understanding of how consumers will react to different options.
To read the full post dissecting comments about how we should label cell-cultured meat, head over to The Spoon.
A Cookie Robot is Pumping Out That New Cookie Smell in Huntsville, Alabama
If there’s one of our five senses that’s continuously underutilized when getting people to open their wallets, it’s the sense of smell. Anyone who’s been lured into a Subway sandwich shop by that bread(ish) odor wafting in the air knows what I’m talking about.
So naturally, when the company behind a new Smart Cookie cookie-making robot reached out to tell me about their new machine and its deployment at Dipwich sandwich shop in Huntsville, Alabama, my first thought was how great it must smell.
The cookie scent wafting machine robot itself is pretty simple. First, a robotic arm puts paper-plated par-baked cookie into an oven. Once the cookie gets rethermalized to 350 degrees – which takes about two minutes – the robot will put toppings on top of the cookie and then place it in a small cubby for the customer to retrieve it. The robot has two ovens within the kiosk, and working at full-speed can pump out about 60 cookies per hour.
You can about the Smart Cookie robot and see a video of it in action here.
Restaurant Tech
Jet.com’s Founder Launches Wonder, a Logistics-Driven Bet on The Future of Restaurants
Last week, Marc Lore, the ex-CEO of Walmart.com and founder of Jet.com, formally announced the launch of Wonder, a ghost kitchen-driven delivery brand powered by high-profile chef recipes and cook-en-route delivery vans. The company currently is delivering food to four cities in Union County in northern New Jersey and has plans to expand to New York and beyond in 2022.
Wonder has reportedly raised an eye-popping amount of money for a company that only formally announced itself today. According to reports, the company has already raised over $500 million in capital, which likely means a valuation in the multi-billion dollar range. The impressive raise is due to Lore’s track record of building highly successful and disruptive e-commerce businesses. Lore’s Jet.com effectively became the core engine of Walmart’s e-commerce efforts once the retail giant bought the company for $3.3 billion in 2016.
The company has partnered with several high-profile chefs to develop recipes and lend their names to virtual restaurants that Wonder will turnkey. Seventeen restaurants and chefs have partnered with Wonder, including Bobby Flay, Nancy Silverton, Daisuke Nakazawa, and Marcus Samuelsson.
The company was founded in 2018 by Lore and was initially run by his brother Chad. However, in 2019, former Diapers.com exec Scott Hilton took over in 2019, and now, Lore – who had mainly been acting in an advisory capacity – is stepping as the company’s CEO.
To read about Marc Lore’s futuristic vision for restaurants, click here.
Ghost Kitchen Operator REEF Continues Acquisition Spree, Buying Hospitality-Focused 2ndKitchen
REEF Technology, an operator of ghost kitchens and proximity hubs, announced it has acquired 2ndKitchen, a provider of turnkey food service to hotels, offices, buildings, and other hospitality businesses. REEF and 2ndKitchen will combine their businesses under the REEF brand and will operate under REEF’s Hospitality division. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The concept behind 2ndKitchen is to provide food service to local businesses that don’t have their own kitchen facilities, such as pubs, sports venues and hotels. The company handles everything, including setup, ordering, menu development, payment, fulfillment, and customer support. The company, which has set up shop in Chicago, New York City, Miami, Denver, Dallas and New Orleans, powers food service to over 100 thousand rooms and common areas today.
For REEF, the deal instantly adds a large inventory of customers for their kitchen business. The company, which has grown its ghost kitchen network from 50 in February to 450 as of October, needs lots of new open mouths to feed as it expands it food production capacity at a rapid clip, and this deal helps deliver just that.
Click here to read the full story about REEF’s acquisition of 2ndKitchen.
Future Food
Motif Foodworks’ New HEMAMI Receives GRAS Status From FDA
Motif Foodworks is on a mission to improve the taste and texture of plant-based foods, and in June 2021, the company raised $226 million USD to do exactly that. This week, the food-tech company made its most recent product called HEMAMI commercially available for large-scale distribution to its customers.
HEMAMI appears to be the combination of the words “umami” and “heme”. This novel ingredient is a heme protein derived from yeast, created via precision fermentation. Heme is a molecule that contains iron, and it is found in high concentrations in the blood of animals and humans. According to the company, HEMAMI can be used to improve the aroma and flavor of plant-based meat analogs likes burgers, sausages, chicken, and more.
Plant-based heme (made from a base of soy) is what gives Impossible Burger the realistic meat flavor and its “bleeding” texture. A Chicago-based start-up called Back of the Yards Algae Sciences developed spirulina-derived heme that can be sprayed onto plant-based burgers and other analogs to provide a meatier flavor.
You can read the full story of Motif’s new HEMAMI platform for more realistic plant-based meat products at The Spoon
In 2022, Molecular Farming Startups Will Move Toward Commercialization of Animal-Free Proteins
Like many of the technologies that are driving innovation in the alternative protein space, plant molecular farming has traditionally been used in the pharmaceutical industry. The practice — which involves genetically editing a crop so that its cells produce a desired protein — is being discussed as a way to rapidly produce proteins for COVID-19 vaccines.
In the food industry, molecular farming is one route to producing the animal proteins that give egg, dairy, and meat products their visual, taste, and functional properties. Molecular farming allows you to use the exact same protein that would normally be produced by a chicken or cow, without the need for any actual animals.
Moolec Science, a spinoff of Argentina-based agtech company Bioceres Crop Solutions, is probably the most prominent name in molecular farming for the food industry. Moolec already sells chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme, which the company grows in safflower plants. They’ve also successfully grown meat proteins in soybean and pea plants.
To read the full piece on whether 2022 will be the year of molecular farming, head on over to The Spoon.
Food Robots
SJW Robotics Demoes RoWok, a Fully Robotic Wok Restaurant Kiosk
This week, SJW Robotics, a maker of robotic kitchen technology, publicly demoed its robotic kitchen prototype for the first time.
When we first covered SJW earlier this year, the company was still keeping the cooking robot under wraps since patents had yet to be filed. With all their patent applications in the mail, I caught up with company CEO Nipun Sharma on a zoom call to get a virtual walkthrough of the Toronto-based company’s first product, a robotic wok-centered kitchen and consumer-facing kiosk called RoWok.
Sharma started by punching in his order on a large touch screen on the front of the large kiosk. Once entered, the robot got to work by dropping pre-cut ingredients such as chicken cubes, green onions and julienne carrots from segmented storage siloes in customized proportions onto a perforated steel tray. The tray shuttled through a steam tunnel via a conveyor belt (“like a car in a carwash.”). Once warmed, the food was dropped into an oiled wok for cooking. After it was cooked, the food was put into a bowl, sauces added, and then the meal was prepped for serving. Currently the robot has a station for humans to put the bowled food on a counter, but Sharma says the plan is integrate cubbies where the prepared meals can be placed for pickup by the customer.
To read the full story about the RoWok, click here.
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