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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

B2B

Firstchop Abandons D2C Sous Vide Proteins for B2B Microwavable Meals

When Firstchop first launched towards the end of 2017, it was at the center of a couple of different trends then sweeping the food tech world. It was a direct to consumer mail order meal kit, kinda, it only provided vacuum-sealed frozen proteins (that were actually quite tasty). Those proteins were meant to be reheated at home with a sous vide machine wand, the hot kitchen device at the time, which Firstchop gave away as part of a customer’s subscription.

My oh my, how a couple of years can change an industry. Meal kits are still around but most of the growth is at retail, not mail order. And the consumer sous vide market has basically collapsed. Chef Steps laid off a bunch of staff before being acquired by Breville, Nomiku shut down, and Anova is expanding beyond sous vide wands and into a new steam oven.

Ajay Narain, Co-Founder of Firstchop told me by phone this week that he saw the the big sous vide collapse coming. “We knew by the end of 2018 that the D2C was dead and the luster of sous vide was gone,” Narain said.

“Sous vide really caught fire and then collapsed,” Narain said. “Unrealistic expecations were built around what sous vide could do. People thought it would be great for all of these different use cases, but it has a lot of limitations.”

So in January of 2019, Firstchop decided to abandon almost everything it started out doing. It was getting out of the direct to consumer business and out of the consumer sous vide game. Firstchop pivoted into refrigerated prepared meals sold through office vending machines. The company added veggies and carbs to its proteins and each meal is re-heated with a microwave.

Narain said that during an initial customer pilot of its new meals at the beginning of 2019, Firstchop sold three times as much product in the first month than it had the entire previous year of selling D2C.

Since that initial test, Firstchop has been developing its products and the company officially launched its menu of meals today, which include Chicken Tikka Masala, Korean Barbecue Beef, Grilled Chicken Breast, and Chicken Chili Verde. The company is in talks to sell its meals through different large foodservice companies that operate vending services for various companies.

Firstchop hasn’t completely abandoned its sous vide roots however. Narain said that the sous vide cooking just moved from the consumer to the back end, and that’s how all of its meals are prepared. “At a manufacturing level, sous vide cooking process on the backend is essential,” Narain said. “It delivers moistnenss and tenderness, and the microwave is like magic.”

What’s almost more impressive is that Firstchop has held on this long just by bootstrapping. While it survived the consumer sous vide implosion, we’ll have to see if this latest pivot will be Firstchop’s last.

FoodPlus Sells Surplus Food (in Slovenia) so it Doesn’t go to Waste

Based in Slovenia, FoodPlus began in 2015 when co-founder Dalibor Matijevic began searching for a way to cut down on food waste by redistributing surplus food. He developed a B2B platform for companies to buy and sell extra food at a super low cost — creating a new revenue stream and keeping food out of landfills.

When suppliers end up with surplus food products because of warehouse inefficiencies, a logo rebrand, or nearing expiry dates, they typically have to pay to have it destroyed — at least in Slovenia. With FoodPlus, however, companies can post said extra food on an online marketplace for a super low cost, usually around 70% off. FoodPlus acts as a middleman, facilitating the sale and coordinating delivery to purchasers — usually high-volume food providers like cafeterias, catering companies and hotels — through their logistics partners. “We’re making the Amazon for surplus food,” co-founder Gregor Pecnik told me over Skype.

The FoodPlus dashboard.

You might think: “Hey, I want to buy some super-cheap spaghetti, too!” If you’re in Slovenia, you can: FoodPlus operates two physical stores where they sell surplus food sourced directly to consumers. Called RobinFood, the first store opened its doors in mid-2017. Their website claims they’ve sold over 100,000 items and make about €15,000 (~$17,500) to €20,000 (~$23,300) per month in revenue. They recently opened a second location through a partner and are hoping to franchise the stores throughout Europe.

Currently FoodPlus only sells dry packaged goods, like pasta, sugar, or chocolate. “They’re much easier to transport, and have a larger window where they stay good,” Pecnik told me. Eventually they hope to expand into fresh goods, like fruits and vegetables.

Pecnik told me that they’re also hoping to expand out of Eastern Europe and into places like the U.K., which has greener pastures for startups working in the food waste arena. “In Eastern Europe we still have to do a lot of education and awareness-raising about how companies will benefit from a company like ours,” he said. While there might not be much opportunity in Slovenia, there also aren’t many competitors: once they expand — especially into the U.K., which boasts quite a few food waste startups — they’ll certainly bump into a few. Most notable is Matsmart, the Swedish e-commerce company which also sells surplus food to consumers.

The same goes for their plan to expand into fresh food. At the moment, they seem to be the only company focusing on surplus dry goods. Move into fresh food, and there’s a sea of competitors. In Europe, Karma and Too Good To Go let customers buy leftover food from restaurants, and Toast Ale turns leftover bread into beer.

FoodPlus currently sources surplus food from over 100 distributors, including Danone and Orbico (an Eastern European distribution company). They’re currently working on their next marketplace iteration. Dubbed FoodPlusX, it will use blockchain to give distributors the option to keep information on what surplus they’re selling — and at what price — private to protect brand reputation.

FoodPlus received equity investment from Enterprise Ireland (though they didn’t disclose how much). They’re currently bootstrapped and plan to start fundraising in early 2019.

In the end, I’m skeptical as to whether their global clients will actually care much about FoodPlus’ noble food waste mission. However, they will definitely care about a fatter bottom line. Whatever they choose to buy or sell on FoodPlus, the end result is the same: less food waste. And that’s always a good thing.