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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

artificial intelligence

Six Trends We Might See In Food Tech In 2018

News publications making predictions for the coming year is as much a holiday tradition as eggnog, mistletoe and avoiding awkward political fights at the dinner table. As we put 2017 to bed, let’s take a look at trends that we might see in food tech in 2018. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is filled with topics we returned to time and time again throughout the year.

1. Alterna-Products Will Get More Mainstream. With growing concerns over how meat and dairy impact our planet, there are a ton of alternative products coming to mass market:pea-based burger patties that “bleed,” plant-based shrimp, and coconut milk ice cream, to name just a few. And with investment from accelerators, the whole alterna-space is just going to get better and cheaper.

2. Virtual Restaurants Will Pop Up Everywhere (and Nowhere). Data driven food delivery services such as UberEATS have convinced some real world restaurants to open up virtual ones. These delivery only offshoots can experiment with new cuisines and menu items without the cost of adding additional square footage.

3. Meal Kit Shakeup. The prepared meal kit delivery market is going through an evolution as one of its pioneers, Blue Apron, had a rough year, and more focused services are blossoming around specific markets such as kids, or just sending proteins. Then there are hardware players like Nomiku and Tovala looking to bring their full stack food solutions that can be paired with sous vide machines or smart ovens into more houses. Oh, and then there is Amazon, which may make same day customizable meal kits a thing this year.

4. The Further Instagrammification of Food. The meals you eat can no longer just be tasty, they also have to pop off the plate to impress all your Instagram followers. As Restaurant Business points out, look for “rainbow colors, vertical deserts, smoking cocktails” to be on the menu next year.

5. Artificial Intelligence and Robots Rise Up for Real. Robots are already flipping burgers and now even your face can help you order (both at CaliBurger in Pasadena, FWIW). But robots and artificial intelligence will become more mainstream throughout the food stack next year. From agriculture to reducing food waste, and from food aisles to food delivery, the immediate future is about to get way more high-tech.

6. Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. No company had a bigger impact on the food space this year than Amazon. It bought Whole Foods, giving the e-commerce giant an instant, nationwide, physical presence to better facilitate grocery delivery. It partnered with AllRecipes for shoppable grocery lists and launched an in-home delivery service. And, oh by the way, it just sold tens of millions of Alexa devices this past holiday to make ordering that much easier. But the interesting thing won’t be what existing markets Jeff Bezos and company will exert its influence over, but entirely new categories Amazon will create (visual recognition in your garden!).

What do you think will be the big stories in 2018? Leave us a comment and share your thoughts below.

Will Artificial Intelligence Brew a Better Beer?

Global beer maker Carlsberg is using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the business of making its product.

The “Beer Fingerprinting Project” is a new initiative the Copenhagen-based brewery launched with Aarhus University’s Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Microsoft, and the Technical University of Denmark.

Using a taste-sensor platform, the team can analyze different yeasts and identify subtle nuances in them, making it possible to quickly distinguish between the different flavors developed each day in the Carlsberg Laboratory. That’s a process that’s long been done by humans, with little to no tech involved. Having sensors identify the flavors means getting products to market much faster than ever before. Using AI will also help the company ensure higher-quality products that meet all food-safety regulations.

Carlsberg is not the first to try this. IntelligentX Brewing Co. has launched a beer brewed entirely by machine learning and algorithms. Drinkers taste the beer and report feedback to the company’s AI. That data is used to make changes and improvements as it brews the next batch of beer.

But wait. Isn’t beer-making supposed to be a kind of art form? Wouldn’t replacing human taste buds with sensors diminish that artistic side and stifle creativity in the process?

To some degree, yes. The flavor of a beer depends on how brewers choose to combine the drink’s four ingredients—water, yeast, barley, and hops. As anyone who’s ever been to a craft beer bar knows, those combinations often turn out pretty wacky results, depending on the group doing the brewing. Doughnut-bacon-maple beer, anyone?

Of course, like any other major brand, Carlsberg’s main business is to move product. But that doesn’t mean the company can’t experiment. And while we probably won’t see beer made from Hawaiian pizza anytime soon, Carlsberg has said it wants to develop “novel flavors” across all its lines, from its mainstream products to specialty and non-alcoholic beers.

Likewise, the IntelligentX founders told The Financial Times that AI is “an enabler but not a replacement for humans” when it comes to making brews. Technology, in this case, is just a means of enhancing what’s already there.

Not everyone is so excited, though. The same FT article quoted Yeastie Boys founder Stu McKinley as saying he would expect beers made with AI “to be pretty middle of the road.” And my former colleague Derrick Harris recently noted that, “For some reason, adding AI into the mix cheapens the process to me,” adding that, “this isn’t pharmaceutical research, where the right or wrong chemistry has life-or-death consequences. It’s just beer.”

Harris has a perfectly valid point, and sure, there is always a possibility that machine-made beer will turn out middle of the road. That said, a larger beer-maker experimenting with AI will give the market more insight into what you can do with technology-based food and beverage in general, and on a global scale. Whether that’s middle-of-the-road or pizza-flavored remains to be seen.

Chefling Is The Smart Kitchen Personal Assistant You Never Knew You Needed

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS.

Created in 2016 by a group of Northwestern University grads, the Chefling app was designed to be the ultimate smart kitchen assistant. The app, available on both Android and iPhone aims to resemble life spent in the kitchen of an average family and comes with three main features: a home inventory management system that syncs across devices, a colorful shopping list and a smart cookbook that suggests recipes based on available ingredients.

The home inventory management system monitors what a user buys and then keeps an eye on freshness levels, based on purchases. It also syncs across every family member’s device so any quick trips to the grocery store are simplified. The shopping list feature allows users to organize and create a list that is not only easy to browse, but easy to share. The cookbook feature browses a user’s inventory using an algorithm that calculates recipe matches based on what is in the pantry.

Chefling also has Amazon Echo and Google Home skills so users can operate the app hands-free through voice control.

Chefling’s long-term goal is to bring the platform outside of the phone and into smart fridges, as well as incorporating advanced A.I. elements and image recognition technology to create an assistant that is truly integrated with the home kitchen.

Learn more about Chefling at http://www.chefling.net/.

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Conversational Cooking: Exploring Chatbots As a Cooking Interface (Podcast)

When I tell people I cook with Facebook, they give me a strange look.

But using Facebook’s chatbot as a cooking interface is surprisingly natural. The first cooking company to create a Facebook Messenger chatbot interface is ChefSteps, who launched their Joule-Messenger integration earlier this year.

The chatbot is part of the company’s larger vision around the idea of ‘conversational cooking’, which I discuss with the ChefSteps CTO Michael Natkin.

You can download this episode here. Make sure to subscribe to the Smart Kitchen Show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Alcohol Brands Turning to Chatbots for Creative Marketing

It seems chatbots are popping up everywhere in the food and beverage industry, and now they’re finding their way to the liquor cabinet.

Chatbots are applications that combine Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to simulate human conversation.  They are an innovative way for marketers to reach out to target audiences and to support purchases.

As Allen wrote recently, chatbots are gaining increasing popularity as a way for grocery stores and restaurants to interact with target audiences.  Like food retailers, beverage brands, in particular alcohol brands, are quickly implementing chatbots as part of their marketing strategy.

Here is a look at what some top alcohol brands are doing with chatbots:

United Spirits Limited (USL), a Diageo Group Company, introduced Simi-Your Personal Bartender, a Facebook Messenger chatbot that provides bartending solutions.  Simi has a cocktail recipe catalogue of over 2000 recipes that feature Diageo’s brands, like Johnnie Walker Whisky, Smirnoff Vodka, Tanqueray Gin, and Captain Morgan.  With use, the chatbot will gain intelligence and offer cocktail recipes based on alcohol and ingredient preference.

According to B. Sridhar, VP Digital at USL-Diageo “There is a shift in the way consumers are interacting with brands today and through this conversational interface we wanted to build a first of its kind bar-tending solution that is not just cutting edge, but can also help us offer our consumers personalization at scale.”  The chatbot will be integrated across all Diageo brand pages on Facebook and the company’s lifestyle website, liveinstyle.com.

Johnnie Walker, one of the Diageo brands, is also rolling out, in addition to Simi, a digital education program that leverages Amazon Alexa skill, a messenger bot, and a Facebook Messenger chatbot.  The chatbot piece of their tripartite digital campaign is a guided whiskey tasting experience, aimed at giving whisky enthusiasts more knowledge. Johnnie Walker’s chatbot also offers cocktail recipes and enables users to execute on the recommendations provided, ordering alcohol and mixer supplies through Drizly or Cocktail Courier.

Free drink?

Vodka maker Absolut has launched its own chatbot, with the incentive of giving users a free drink.  Rather than providing DIY mixology advice, the Absolut chatbot leads users to the professionals—to bars where they can purchase an Absolut beverage, and redeem a special code for their free drink.  The responsible bot also gives drinkers the chance to get a ride home from Lyft.

As an official sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, Heineken is using chatbots as a way to get football (soccer) fans to watch the games by offering rewards like transportation and food delivery to viewers.  The Heineken Facebook Messenger chatbot will be launched in April.

So, why chatbots?

For one, alcohol brands find using chatbots are a good way engage consumers with recipe tools, bar finders, and interactive games. They’re also a good way to connect with younger consumers. Chatbots are particularly popular among Millennials, with research showing 60% of those aged 18 to 34 having used a chatbot at some point, according to Retale.

So next time you hit the bottle, remember you don’t have to drink alone. You can find company in one of the many chatbots finding their way to the local liquor cabinet.

Wine and AI: A Perfect Pairing of Technology and Tradition

If you have trouble figuring out what is the best wine to pair with tonight’s dinner, we have some good news: artificial intelligence may soon be able to help you with that age old question, ‘Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc?’ That’s because a new wave of AI-powered virtual sommeliers are now available to help make those decisions.

Old Problem, New Solution

For decades the wine industry has struggled to overcome the anxiety associated with selecting a wine. Now thanks to technology you no longer have to have an awkward conversation with the clerk at the wine store, but can turn to a virtual sommelier to pick the perfect bottle.

There have been many virtual wine selectors available for some time.  However, we are now seeing increasing intelligence integrated into these solutions, making them both more powerful and more personal.

Wine Ring, headquartered in Syracuse, New York and founded in 2010, offers one of the most personal wine selection experiences available.  Unlike other apps that offer wine suggestions based on pairing suggestions or expert ratings, Wine Ring bases suggestions on your individual preferences.  This app uses advanced algorithms to develop a personal profile based on your rating of wines and then recommends bottles based on your taste profile. The more wine you drink and rate, the better the AI and the better the wine recommendations.

Google is also serving up wine suggestions.  Google’s new “My Wine Guide” is a conversation action added to Google Assistant for wine pairing suggestions.  While My Wine Guide is currently limited in its depth of AI and personalization of wine suggestions, what makes Google’s virtual sommelier most promising is how it integrates easy conversation format with computer based wine queries. Looking forward, “My Wine Guide” could become even more useful is to take the food pairing suggestion and then offer a variety of wines matching that paring at different price points which the user could verbally order and have delivered via a service like Drizzly, all from conversation based commands.

Once you get your recommendation from Wine Ring or “My Wine Guide” you can take it to Wine Searcher, a tool for locating and pricing wine (and beer and spirits) across all online stores.  Wine Searcher uses artificial intelligence to classify wines, linking the hundreds of thousands of products and tens of thousands of retailers to produce wine suggestions and pricing based on inputted search terms.

Wine Searcher is also integrating label recognition technology and developing a chatbot to improve user interaction with the site.

Vivino is already using label recognition technology to help guide wine purchases.  With Vivino the user simply takes a photo of the wine label they are considering and is instantly provided the wine’s rating, average price and review from the community of 22 million users.  The app then tracks which wines you scan and rate, but does not at this point offer suggestions based on your profile.

All of these tools aim to take the age-old mystery out of picking wine by applying artificial intelligence. While the wine industry is steeped in tradition and ancient ways, it could be the very modern application of artificial intelligence that makes wine and wine selection relevant to today’s consumers.

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Image credit: Flickr user a.has

I Made Steak With Facebook Messenger. Here’s How It Went

We know that over half of Echos end up in the kitchen, making Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa a good option for those looking for a new-fangled way to help make food.

But what about Facebook Messenger? While we don’t have exact numbers on how many use Facebook’s communication app while in the kitchen, with over a billion downloads of the app in Google Play Store alone, my guess would be a lot.

Still, that doesn’t mean we think of Messenger as an interface to, well, our steak, but that’s exactly what ChefSteps thought when they announced they’d created a Facebook Messenger bot for the Joule.

I’d used Alexa in the past to cook with my Joule, and it worked well for things like starting a cook and checking water temperature, but I wanted to see how cooking with Facebook would go and to see if a bot of the non-voice variety was useful when preparing the nightly meal.

Here’s how it went.

First I went to the ChefSteps support page for using Messenger and tried to talk with my Joule, which I had inserted into the water with a nice ribeye. I was told I would first need to log into my ChefSteps account. Fair enough.

Once logged in, the ChefSteps Chatbot, which we’ll call Joule-bot for this post, reminded me of what I’d named it and gave a few clues about what it could do.

I decided to jump right and tell Joule-bot what I wanted to cook a steak. I got a pop-up message telling me a little about sous vide complete with a visual guide to doneness (a big focus for ChefSteps overall with their guided cooking approach for the Joule app).

As you can see above, the tone of the bot is casual but also informative. I like the ability to choose the length of cook with their visual doneness guide. This is an advantage over cooking with Alexa which (obviously) can’t show you how what a cook will look like as a voice bot.

Once I chose medium rare (you didn’t think I wanted a Trump Cook did you?), Joule-bot asked me a few more questions to understand how to go about cooking my ribeye.

 

Once it knew I was cooking fresh and how thick the steak was, it was able to set the temperature. As you can see, I had already started the Joule (with Alexa – meaning I technically had a battle of the bots over my evening meal), so it told me, in essence, my water was running a bit hot. The Joule, like other sous vide circulators, can adjust down as it lets the water cook and will then hold the temperature, which is what happened for my cook.

You can also see that Joule-bot told me that that it is still young and hasn’t fully matured, meaning it wouldn’t be able to send me notifications in Messenger about when things were done. This is where Joule’s native app has an advantage over the Joule-bot.

I decided I wasn’t done with Joule-bot, since I wanted to see if it could help me out with my ribeye prep and post-cook. I decided to ask it a few more questions and see how it responded.

When I asked it how to prepare steak, wondering if I could surface some of the same types of information that Joule app does with its cooking guides. While it didn’t give me the same, concise cooking guide I get within the Joule, it did give me a link which provides access to much of the same information on the ChefSteps website.

My next message confused Joule-bot a bit, mostly because I think of my language choice. I was trying to get Joule-bot to tell me something it had already done (2 hours of cook time) with a specific question about that. Instead, it guessed that I was trying to see when my Joule would ship by surfacing an FAQ question.

While the logic wasn’t perfect, I think the response was fine. Since Joule-bot lets the user give feedback, this will help refine the bot’s logic over time. It also gave me lots of options of what to do next, with links to the ChefSteps community forum, recipes and also the option to file a support ticket.

Conclusion

Overall, cooking with Facebook Messenger was an interesting – but for now limited – experience. Joule-bot allowed me to set temperature based on visual guidance, told me in a conversational voice when my meal would be done, and directed me to the information rich ChefSteps website when it didn’t have the answers.

What it didn’t do was provide notifications, a big difference which gives the Joule app an advantage for now.  Joule-bot also didn’t have the richness of information provided by the in-app cooking guides (though, as mentioned, it did send me links to the ChefSteps website).

Compared to Alexa, Joule-bot has an advantage in the type of the information it can provide, such as visual guides around doneness.  However, Alexa commands are just a little easier (what’s easier than talking?) and I could see how Alexa would be preferred over Joule-bot when I’m preparing food with my hands.

Lastly, it’s important to ask the question: is cooking with Facebook Messenger a good idea?For now, I would say the Joule app is a better experience, but over time a bot could have some advantages. Messenger’s conversation logic is very good, and those used to using chat as a way to interface with people may also find it also a good way to control their things (like the Joule). I also think as many of us tire of apps for every device, Messenger is a logical candidate to become that universal app, especially as bots become better.

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Food Retail AI Startup Shelf Engine Raises $800K

One of the biggest headaches for anyone purchasing food in bulk – whether it’s grocery stores or restaurants – is figuring out how much to buy. Perishable foods go bad quickly and if ordering is off, the food that’s thrown out has a direct impact on the bottom line. This problem is what led Stefan Kalb, a Seattle food entrepreneur and owner of a local sandwich and salad distributor, to create a software platform that could use artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to cut waste.

Shelf Engine is a Seattle startup that just announced an $800K seed round of funding to deliver a software platform to grocery stores and food distributors that would predict and in some cases automate perishable food ordering. The software works with the retailer’s existing system, pulling in historical sales data, profit margins and combines it with external factors like seasonality, volatility and gross profit by product to deliver precise food orders.

Reddit co-founder and Shelf Engine seed investor Alexis Ohanian commented about the startup’s potential on Product Hunt, saying:

As seed investors, we’re always excited to learn about new problems that have potentially valuable software solutions — food waste is one of them. The food industry hasn’t had the ability to solve this with software and this app helps retailers and distributors reduce their waste.

Kalb uses Molly’s, the food distributor he founded, as a case study for Shelf Engine. Molly’s distributed fresh, locally sourced sandwich, salad and deli products to local businesses and guaranteed their sales – meaning, if they didn’t sell, Molly’s refunded the retailers. And because they used such fresh ingredients, the food only had a shelf life of five days or less.

Often, Kalb found, the company was using waste data as the sole metric to predict future orders. If waste was high for one account, they’d lower the next order. If it was low, they’d increase the next order. But this method is highly problematic – according to the study, “when managers react to waste, they are reacting to a single point of data. That decision isn’t based on a cumulation of waste and deliveries.” It often led to volatile availability of their products at places like Seattle Children’s Hospital cafeteria – at times the shelves would be full, and other times they would be empty. There was little predictability for customers looking for Molly’s food at meal time.

The company then began using Shelf Engine, which generated a probability model for all ten of their accounts. Basically, the model looked at the likelihood of products selling or products being wasted at any given level of availability and would then find the maximum between the two.

After using Shelf Engine for just a few months, the company saw a 7% leap in profitability.

Kalb opened Molly’s at the age of 23, with a degree in actuarial science and economics and on a 2014 ski trip with friend and engineer Bede Jordan found themselves wondering why the processes and systems in the food industry were so outdated.

 Could we create a platform that enables retailers to buy food and eliminate significant waste?  Could we create a platform that eliminates redundant busy work between vendors and retailers?  Could we create a more perfect marketplace?

These questions led the pair to create a product that would move the food industry towards more efficient systems using technology. Jordan himself is a former engineering lead at Microsoft who worked on HoloLens, an augmented reality technology. He will now lead the development of Shelf Engine as its CTO.

To get analysis like this and to stay up to date on the future of cooking and the kitchen, subscribe to our newsletter, the Weekly Spoon. 

Podcast: Talking Artificial Intelligence With ArchiTECHt’s Derrick Harris

I caught up recently with my old friend Derrick Harris. We worked together at Gigaom, the once-great tech blog, and now, just as then, Derrick is the go-to guy to learn all the latest in the worlds of big data and cloud computing. Most recently he’s been digging deeper on artificial intelligence, so I thought we would catch up and dive deep into what’s happening in this market.

We get nerdy on this podcast, but we talk about how AI will evolve and how it will impact markets like the smart kitchen and the smart home.

You can download the episode by clicking here.

You can find Derrick’s new online home here.

Food AI Startup Gets A Boost From Bono

The celebrity turned investor trope isn’t a new story; from Leo DiCaprio to Magic Johnson, the rich and famous have often turned to the tech world either as an investor and sometimes as a founder. Recently, we’ve seen some high-profile investments in the food tech space – including actor Ashton Kutcher and his investment in Keurig-like juice startup Juicero.

The latest celebrities to jump on the food tech train are none other than U2 frontman Bono and the band’s beloved drummer The Edge. The lucky startup? Irish AI and DNA food startup Nuritas, a company working to find combinations of elements within our food and develop supplements that could act as cures to common diseases.

Nuritas joins a wave of companies launching with the plan to study and use DNA analysis to help people live healthier lives. Startups like Habit take a similar approach but use biological data to deliver customized health and dietary plans for users, tackling their nutritional needs at the molecular level.

Nuritas is currently awaiting patents for its technology which uses a combination of artificial intelligence and DNA analysis to dive deep into billions of molecules and extract components that can benefit human health. The company calls these compounds “bioactive peptides” and claims they can be used to manage a host of issues, including inflammation and potentially blood sugar levels in diabetics.

The U2 frontmen are joined by CEO and founder of Salesforce Marc Benioff along with tech entrepreneur Ali Partovi as early investors in Nuritas’ seed round of funding. Bono is no stranger to successful tech investment, having poured money into both Facebook and Dropbox in their early days.

Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest areas of tech – 2016 was a huge year for machine learning and the technology is finding its way into every vertical. The potential for AI influence on our food – from the ways we eat and cook to the types of food we consume along with the commerce, storage and healthcare implications that accompany these changes – is enormous.

Read more about Nuritas’ plan for expansion and the investment from U2.