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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Aramark

Campus Foodservice Giant Chartwells Brings Ghost Kitchens to Colleges and Universities

Chartwells Higher Education, a foodservice management company, announced today it has launched its ghost kitchen program for college and university campuses. Chartwells has already piloted the program at a handful of schools, including Seattle University, SUNY Buffalo State College, the University of Utah, the University of Texas at Dallas, and San Jose State University.

Working with these schools, Chartwells developed several new meal concepts appropriate for delivery. For example, the company worked with Seattle University to open a ghost kitchen that tested 12 rotating entrees and desserts, which students could order via the existing Chartwells mobile app. Since most of Seattle University’s physical campus was closed during Fall semester 2020, the ghost kitchen pilot also served as a test for how colleges and universities can provide students with food even when dining halls are shuttered. Meals were available for both delivery and contactless pickup.

Chartwells said more than 24,000 orders were placed via its mobile app within the first month of the Seattle University test. Terry Conaty, Resident District Manager at Seattle University, said in a press release that the partnership was a “win-win” because it provided students with “lots of new menu options without having to add additional personnel resources or compromise our social distancing guidelines.”

Chartwells serves more than 300 campuses. The company says this ghost kitchen program will add to rather than replace existing dining options. The idea is to take advantage of any underutilized kitchen space on campuses that can be turned into ghost kitchens.

Historically, few would have called college and university campuses hotbeds for food tech innovation. That has slowly started to change over the last few years with the rise of apps like MealMe and Good Uncle (the latter of which was acquired by foodservice giant Aramark), the presence of delivery bots on campus, and Gen Z’s inherent familiarity with a more tech-driven eating experience. 

Nor is Chartwells the only company bringing ghost kitchens to campus. Last month, hospitality platform C3 joined forces with Graduate Hotels to put more ghost kitchens in college towns. 

The ghost kitchen format is an obvious fit for the college and university market. Students eat meals at all hours of the day and night, a schedule the traditional dining room’s hours don’t typically accommodate. And on the note of dining rooms, there’s no telling whether the traditional cafeteria-style setup will exist once classes shift back to the physical campus. Social distancing will have to be considered when it comes to those spaces, and some students may not feel safe eating in a dining room. Colleges and universities will have to provide alternative options, including pickup and delivery.

Schools, too, are brimming with underutilized kitchen space. For smaller campuses, a few would suffice when it comes to serving the entire student body. For larger schools, one can imagine a network of ghost kitchens placed strategically around the campus, each serving different sets of dormitories and apartment blocks. Meals ordered from campus ghost kitchens could even count as part of a student’s meal plan, which would be considerably cheaper than someone having to order from DoorDash every night.

When schools go back in session very much depends on each individual institution. Many are doing hybrid online-offline sessions right now. The many new food options for students seem geared towards both accommodating these fluctuating schedules and a bid by schools to keep pace with the changing times for foodservice. 

7-Eleven Continues Off-Premises Push With Pickup Feature, Expanded Delivery

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven today announced updates to its off-premises business that include expanded delivery and an order/pay ahead feature for pickup orders placed through its 7NOW app.

The new pickup feature works much like pickup at a restaurant or grocery store would. Customers log into the app and select “pickup” instead of delivery, then place items in their cart and pay for them. The app notifies the user of the order’s progress and sends a four-digit code to show the clerk once the order is ready to be picked up. 

The ability to order and pay for snacks, household supplies, and drinks ahead of time is becoming an increasingly mandatory feature in these pandemic-stricken days. Historically, convenience stores have catered more to spur-of-the-moment purchases, so it remains to be seen if the concept of ordering ahead will translate to this setting. 

One thing the new feature does underscore is technology’s continued advancement on the convenience store format. Earlier this month, Aramark opened a convenience store in an apartment complex that features cashierless checkout tech from AWM Smart Shelf. DoorDash, meanwhile, has been delivering items from Circle K and Wawa as well as 7-Eleven, since the early(ish) days of the pandemic. The common denominator for all these developments is the emphasis on contactless transactions and minimizing human-to-human contact. Given the state of the world, the push to further integrate those things into every corner of daily life will continue for some time to come. 

In the same announcement, 7-Eleven said it has doubled its delivery reach to 2,000 stores across 1,300 cities. At the moment, delivery is available through DoorDash, Postmates, Favor Delivery in Texas, and through the 7NOW app itself.

Aramark Uses AWM Tech for Automated Convenience Store in CA Apartment Community

In addition to a fitness center, a dog park, and a rooftop pool (complete with a 16-foot LED screen), the Nineteen01 apartment complex in Santa Ana, CA now has its own automated convenience store.

The QuickEats Close Convenience from Aramark opened yesterday and features cashierless checkout technology from AWM Smart Shelf. The store is open to the general public and to shop. Customers just need to download the QuickEats Close Convenience mobile app, which they scan upon entry. A mix of cameras, computer vision and AI track what is taken and the shopper is charged automatically when they exit the store.

Greenwood & McKenzie, the real estate investment firm that owns Nineteen01, claims in the press announcement that this is the first such automated convenience store in Southern California. Which might technically be true in that QuickEats is a convenience store. However, Swiftly has powered cashierless checkout at Zion Market in Southern California since last year.

While Quick Eats may not truly be the first cashierless store in SoCal, it is the first one we’ve heard of being built as an amenity in an apartment complex. It’s basically offering a corner store that doesn’t require human staffing and is more convenient for residents (especially for residents cocooning in place during the pandemic). It’s easy to imagine other large apartment complexes implementing similar stores as a benefit to attracting and retaining residents.

It’s also worth noting that AWM is powering the automation for Quick Eats. There are a lot of cashierless checkout startups out there (Zippin, Grabango, etc.), so it’s worth watching to see if AWM carves out its own niche with this type of residential retail.

I expect we’ll see a lot more cashierless applications pop up in the coming months as the pandemic continues and people demand more contactless options.

Snackpass Raises $21M Series A Round for Its Order-Ahead Food App for Students

Order-ahead food app Snackpass has raised $21 million in Series A funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from First Round, General Catalyst, YCombinator and Inspired Capital. The round brings total funding for Snackpass to $23.7 million.

Snackpass was founded in 2017 at Yale University. Though the company has since relocated headquarters to San Francisco, its focus, for now, remains on college campuses. The app is currently available at 11 schools around the U.S., and Snackpass said in a press release it will use the new funding to expand to 100 campuses over the next two years.

With the app, Snackpass users can order and pay for food then pick it up at the restaurant. (There is no delivery functionality at present.) Where the company sets itself somewhat apart from the food app pack is with its social features and loyalty program. Users earn loyalty points that can be redeemed for free food, either for themselves or friends. The latter highlights the social aspect that’s a major centerpiece of Snackpass’s strategy. Built into the app is a Venmo-like feed where each purchase a user makes shows up and where people can communicate with one another, get restaurant recommendations, and send gifts (i.e., free food).  

This emphasis on creating a community within the app is one of the reasons Snackpass has been able to maintain something other food delivery apps struggle with: a loyal user base. Third-party delivery may be on track to have 44 million U.S. users in 2020, but most of those people hop between apps, more interested in finding the best deals on food than claiming allegiance to, say, DoorDash versus Uber Eats. 

A loyalty program, which is different from subscription models many of the big-name food delivery apps offer, is also key to keeping Snackpass users coming back. The company claims a 75 percent penetration rate among students within six months of being on a college campus. The service can also sync with students’ campus meal plans.

Right now, college campuses are fertile grounds for testing new approaches to food delivery. Though unique, Snackpass is hardly the only app out there catering to students. Earlier this year, food delivery app Good Uncle was acquired by Aramark, a longtime food services provider for colleges and universities. In 2018, Grubhub acquired Tapingo, an order-ahead app for college students that’s at 150-plus schools.

Those are only a couple names in the pack. DoorDash, Allset, and others are also making their way to schools in the U.S., and the competition for college students will intensify as we head into 2020. The new funds, as well as having a name like Andreessen Horowitz in their court, will hopefully give Snackpass enough financial and operational muscle to stay in the center of that competition.  

Future Food: Pigging Out on Omnipork in Hong Kong

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

I just got home from a stopover in Hong Kong after the whirlwind of SKS Japan, and boy it was anything but boring.

In between sampling bubble waffles and copious amounts of dim sum, I got to meet with David Yeung, founder of the Green Monday enterprise. Green Monday is an umbrella organization which includes a non-profit educating consumers on the benefits of meat alternatives, a vegan grocery and wholesale operation, a venture arm, and a branded plant-based pork product called Omnipork.

Yeah. David Yeung is busy.

During my visit I also got to put Omnipork to a taste test. I sampled it tucked in a fried gyoza, crumbled on top of a bowl of ramen, and stuffed inside sweet puff pastry dim sum.

Overall, I thought Omnipork worked pretty well as a pork substitute. It doesn’t have the same unctuous fattiness of actual pork, at least partially because it’s lower in saturated fat, but it’s still tasty and the texture hits close to the mark.

Omnipork is essentially flavorless — which is both a good and bad thing. Yeung told me this was very intentional; he wanted to make a product that was endlessly versatile so it could be incorporated into a wide variety of Asian dishes. However, it can also make for a pretty bland bite if not properly seasoned or combined with tasty sauces.

The versatility bit is key. Yeung’s overarching goal is to make a comprehensive platform to cut down on Asia’s consumption of animal products, starting with the continent’s most popular meat: pork. Yeung said that Asian consumers might have a burger every month or so, but they incorporate ground pork into multiple meals daily. He figured that if he wanted to create a plant-based protein that could have a shot at taking a bite out of growing meat consumption in Asia, he had to make a product specifically tailored for that audience.

Crazily enough, he’s the first to do so. When people think about the new wave of fake meat products, their thoughts automatically turn to Silicon Valley. While there’s certainly plenty of innovation there, Asia is actually the area that seems in most need of tasty, cheap plant-based protein: meat consumption there is projected to rise by 78 percent by 2050, and recent outbreaks have made meat prices skyrocket and also triggered consumer demand for a safer alternative.

I left Hong Kong feeling both inspired by Yeung’s progress and daunted by how far he has to go. If he wants to take a bite out of Asian pork consumption, he’ll need to get Omnipork on a lot more plates. Making it into tasty gyozas is certainly a good start.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat skips Japan

Like any alternative-protein nerd, I kept my eyes peeled during my time in Tokyo to see if I came across any plant-based meat, eggs, etc.

No dice. And now it seems that at least one major alt-protein player won’t be entering the Japanese market at all, at least for a while. Last week Reuters reported that Beyond Meat had dropped plans to start selling in Japan, instead opting to double down on the U.S. market.

This is a change in tune from Beyond CEO’s Ethan Brown statement during the company’s first earnings call a few months ago. Then, he outlined Beyond’s aggressive expansion plan, naming Asia as one of the key areas of focus.

That being said, it makes sense why Beyond has to hit the pause button on outward growth and turned their attention back stateside. The company has announced multiple fast-food partnerships over the past few weeks alone, including large rollouts with Dunkin’ and Subway. A product shortage would be very, very bad right now, as Beyond competes with Impossible Foods in a race to snag the most fast-food partners and steels itself for Impossible to enter retail later this year.

No wonder Beyond has turned its attention back to the U.S.

Photo: Aramark.

Cafeteria special: Meatless meat

As I mentioned above, alternative meat companies have been grabbing headlines lately by partnering with large fast-food chains like Burger King, Subway and Dunkin’. But recently, two new alt-meat partnerships have flown relatively under the media radar — and they shouldn’t.

Last week food service management company Sodexo announced it would launch a new product line featuring the Impossible burger at 1,500 locations in the U.S. A few days later, news broke that food and facilities management giant Aramark would begin using Beyond Meat products to build out its plant-based meat portfolio.

Partnerships like these may not get as much press as fast-food launches, but teaming up with major food and facilities management companies is an important strategic move for companies like Impossible and Beyond.

Most obviously, it’s an opportunity for plant-based meat companies to massively expand their footprint and get their products on even more plates, selling to a captive audience at sports venues, concert halls, and cafeteria. Since both providers also serve a lot of university cafeterias, also a way for them to train younger generations of consumers to expect alternative proteins wherever they dine.

Beyond and Impossible may be just starting to ramp up foodservice expansion, but they’re not the first to do so. Plant-based chicken nugget company Rebellyous has been targeting large clients like cafeterias from the start (they just got into the Microsoft canteen).

If meat alternatives want to give real meat a serious run for its money, they’ll need to capture audience not just in restaurants and grocery stores, but also during their office lunch or ball game dinner. These partnerships are a great start.

Photo: Integriculture

Protein ’round the web

  • An Australian startup is growing kangaroo meat in a lab (via the Wall Street Journal). They currently estimate it would cost about $600 Australian dollars (~$400 USD) to produce one kilogram.
  • Edible insect company Chapul is no longer making protein bars. Instead, they’ll focus on growing bugs to use as fish and poultry feed (h/t Foodnavigator).
  • At SKS Japan we spoke with Integriculture’s founder about his plan to sell cell-based foie gras in restaurants by 2021.

That’s it from me this week. I’m off to grab another coffee to keep my jet lag at bay.

Eat well,
Catherine

Newsletter: Back-to-School Delivery Apps and High-Tech Sushi Burritos

While my colleagues are across the Pacific this week at the SKS Japan show, I’ve been thinking about college. Specifically, how college and university campuses are a lucrative frontier for food delivery.

Unless you’re in an urban campus like NYU, where delivery, takeout, and street food options already abound, the average college campus has everything a food-delivery service could want in terms of customers: lots of bodies packed tightly together, pulling late hours in locations where food isn’t always a given (e.g., the library).

Third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub already provide a presence on campuses, along with a much-needed alternative to soggy spaghetti and stale Cheerios. But for bigger corporations who’ve long been a part of the university foodservice world, third-party delivery is a competitive threat to their very relevance on campus.

Not surprising, then, that some of these legacy foodservice companies are starting to respond with their own contributions to delivery. This week food services provider Aramark, who works with more than 400 universities in the U.S., announced it had acquired meal delivery company Good Uncle.

Via Good Uncle’s app, students can order chef-made meals and snacks that are typically cheaper than the average restaurant and don’t have delivery fees. While Good Uncle’s reach is relatively small right now, serving just eight campuses, its business model makes a lot of sense for an older company like Aramark trying to stay relevant to students in the food delivery era.

Exactly how Aramark will leverage this new acquisition remains to be seen, but it’s a smart move to get into the delivery space now. Grubhub has already been working its way onto campuses via its 2018 acquisition of Tapingo, and a growing number of delivery bots on campus brings both new ways to do food delivery for students and more competition for existing players. That includes Aramark rival Sodexo North America, who this year partnered with Starship Robotics to unleash fleets of wheeled bots onto college campuses.

An Eatsa-style Empire in Japan

But back to Japan.

My colleague Chris Albrecht got to experience not one but two awesome food-centric things this week: sushi burritos and high-tech restaurants.

Chris headed over to Beeat Sushi Burrito, a Tokyo restaurant that serves sushiritos and is powered by an end-to-end system that automates most of the order, pay, and pickup process for customers.

As Chris noted, though, UBO, the company behind the restaurant, is more focused on tech than food:

“Instead of selling sushiritos, UBO has developed the entire system from the software platform to the cameras installed in the cubbies that read the special QR codes that identify each order. UBO wants to license its tech stack to other restaurant chains, who can then integrate the automat style of eating into their own locations.”

It’s not unlike the Brighloom (nee Eatsa) system here in the U.S., which is an end-to-end restaurant tech stack that automates much of the customer’s restaurant experience and will do so even more now that it’s licensed some of Starbucks’ technology.

So while a sushirito empire isn’t the end goal for UBO, Beeat Sushi Burrito is another example of how the restaurant experience is getting automated and suggests we’ll see many more iterations of this in future, on either side of the Pacific. And, most likely, in colleges and universities, too.

Until next time,

Jenn

Aramark Acquires Campus Food-Delivery Service Good Uncle

Just in time for school to start again, food services provider Aramark announced today it has acquired Good Uncle, an on-demand meal-delivery service that drops food to students at specific pickup points around college campuses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Good Uncle launched in 2016 and has raised a total of $2.2 million. The service, accessible via an iOS or Android app, aims to offer college and university students restaurant-quality meal options at student-friendly prices, including free delivery.

To order food, students first sign up with the Good Uncle app and choose items from a menu that rotates every couple of weeks. Certain campuses also feature 15-week membership plans that theoretically could function as an alternative, or at least a supplement, to a traditional student meal plan purchased from the university.

Good Uncle partners with local chefs to make the food and uses its own fleet of vehicles to deliver meals. All food is delivered at drop points on or around the campus. When a user purchases a meal, they choose one of these designated points, marked in the app, and are given an estimated time for how long the food will take to arrive at that point. The Good Uncle site claims an average of 26 minutes for most orders. Payment and order tracking are available through the app.

Aramark, meanwhile, is a longtime food services provider to universities and currently works with over 400 of them in the U.S., offering everything from dining hall services to convenience stores and coffee shops. But thanks to delivery, restaurant-quality food is easier and faster than ever for students to get their hands on, which means slimy spaghetti and endless bowls of cereal from the dining hall aren’t the only options anymore. For Amarak, acquiring a company like Good Uncle is a way to stay relevant as the campus culinary landscape changes.

And it’s definitely changing — specifically to meet the demands for delivery. In 2018, Grubhub acquired Tapingo, whose platform lets students order ahead at on-campus restaurants, cafes and dining halls. And universities are also a hot testing bed for delivery robots, with companies like Starship and Kiwi sending their bots to roam about the quad delivering meals and snacks to hungry students.

Right now, Good Uncle is available on eight campuses in the U.S. According to the press release, the company will operate independently of Amarak and maintain its own unique brand identity. Even so, linking up with a larger company like Aramark, which has a long history and wide reach with universities, could enable Good Uncle to expand to new campuses and compete with the plethora of delivery technologies currently headed back to school.