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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Barilla

Barilla’s Venture Arm Is Launching the Fourth Cohort of Its Good Food Makers Accelerator. Applications Are Open

Pasta-maker Barilla’s Venture Group, BLU1877, announced this week that applications are open for the next cohort of its Good Food Makers accelerator. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the forthcoming program will be BLU1877’s fourth since starting the accelerator in 2018 with San Francisco, California-based incubator Kitchen Town.

Past participants to the eight-week Good Food Makers program include Plant Jammer, Renewal Mill, and Regrained, among others. Typically, each startup chosen to participate in a cohort receives $10,000 to use for business growth during the program as well as mentorship opportunities and the possibility of further collaboration with Barilla. Those chosen for cohort four can expect the same set of benefits.

For this latest cohort, Good Food Makers is looking for companies developing solutions for the following:

  • Circular Economy: Companies developing circular-economy solutions for upcycling pasta regrind, wheat brand, and bread crust
  • Better Food Delivery: Solutions that improve the preparation, logistics, automation, packaging, and recipe development of food delivery
  • Digital Nutrition Guides: Digital platforms that address the nutrition and sustainability of food items
  • Easy Meal Routines: Healthy meal kits and services

Good Food Makers has always run small in terms of the number of companies it selects for each cohort. This time around, the program will pick one startup for each of the above topic areas. In addition to specializing in one of the topic areas, applicants should also have, according to the announcement, “proven business results” and the “ability to demonstrate transformative ideas and approaches to supporting a better food system.” As with past cohorts, Kitchen Town will help with the selection process.

The program will kick off in September. For now, all programming is virtual, though BLU1877 notes that there is a possibility of in-person collaboration depending on the location of the chosen teams and current COVID-19 regulations.

Applications are open through August.

Barilla Acquires Pasta Evangelists, a UK-Based Fresh Pasta Delivery Startup

The world’s largest pasta maker is getting into home delivery via acquisition.

According to a report in Reuters, Barilla has acquired Pasta Evangelists, a London based startup that delivers fresh pasta meal kits to homes around the UK. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Reuters writes that two sources close to Barilla put the deal value at around 40 million pounds (~$54 million).

Here’s how Pasta Evangelists works. The company, which was founded in 2016, ships fresh pasta, sauces and aromatics in pre-portioned meal sizes to homes with next-day delivery. Users can choose from a selection of 10 different pasta menus per week, each serving typically priced around £7.00. Users can order individual meals or subscribe and save 15%.

Pasta Evangelists delivered over 1 million pasta dishes in 2020. The company’s already strong growth accelerated over the last year as more consumers stayed home during the pandemic and looked for ways to add quality meals to the meal plan. Barilla, which acquired the company through its venture arm Blu1877, said it plans to create a digital hub in London and work to integrate with Barilla headquarters.

Could this deal be a sign Barilla might expand into fresh pasta delivery beyond the UK? Maybe, but such a move would require significant investment in the form of regional fresh pasta production facilities and distribution capabilities.

No matter what, it will be interesting to watch what Barilla does next in a consumer market drastically reshaped by the pandemic.

Barilla’s Venture Arm Opens Up Applications for its Fall 2020 Accelerator

BLU1877, the venture firm of Barilla, announced a call for food and agtech startups to participate in its Fall 2020 accelerator program. Dubbed Good Food Makers, the program is a collaboration between BLUE1877 and startup incubator, KitchenTown.

Good Food Makers will be a primarily-remote 8-week program for startups to work directly with Barilla. In a forthcoming press release, BLU1877 said this iteration of the Good Food Makers program will focus on kids’ snacking, alternative channels, traceability systems and regenerative agriculture. Participants should already have a product or solution in the market.

This is the second cohort for the Good Food Makers program, which announced its first batch of participants earlier this year. As we wrote when the program launched:

While there’s no financial investment for startups participating in Good Food Makers, chosen companies get mentorship and collaboration opportunities with Barilla, as well as access to a wider industry network.

Though like so many other accelerators and incubators in this space, the global pandemic has pushed Good Food Makers to go mostly virtual, which, as my colleague Jenn Marston has reported, isn’t all bad. Except, in this case, participants miss out on the chance to visit Parma, Italy.

For those interested in applying for Good Food Makers, applications are open now and will close on August 8, 2020.  To apply and for more information go to goodfoodmakers.net.

We aim to cover food tech accelerators extensively here at The Spoon. So be sure to check back often to learn about new opportunities (and deadlines) for startups.

SKS 2019: Disrupting Large Food Corporations from the Outside In

When you envision a company that’s “disruptive,” you probably picture young startups tinkering away in a garage. But major food corporations also want to earn that title and keep a pulse on the newest consumer trends.

So how do large organizations that have been around for decades and span continents stay fresh and new? That’s exactly the question that Larry Portaro, Director of GE’s FirstBuild and Victoria Spadaro Grant, CTO of Barilla and President of Blu1877 tackled during a recent panel at SKS 2019. 

If you’re part of a large company trying to emulate the agility and creativity of a startup, you should watch the whole panel video below. Here are a few insights into how large corporations successfully disrupt from within:

Independence is key
Firstbuild is a rapid-production hardware company that also happens to be a subsidiary of GE. While they may be part of a giant appliance company, Portaro emphasized on the SKS that having some level separation — their offices are actually 8 miles away from GE’s HQ in Louisville, KY — is key to building an innovative culture within their company. By establishing themselves as a separate entity, Firstbuild can have the freedom to experiment and really “mix up the DNA” of their parent company, as Portaro put it onstage.

Leverage resources for good
Just because these innovation arms operate independently from their parent companies doesn’t mean they can’t take advantage of their parent company’s resources. Blu1877, the venture arm of Barilla which fosters and invests in early-stage sustainable startups, was founded to “reach out for innovation that would not be in the mainstream,” according to Spadaro-Grant. While it’s a separate entity from Barilla, she made it clear that that doesn’t mean that one can’t help the other. In fact, Blu1877 depends on the “bigger machinery” of its parent company to help grow smaller startups within their incubator.

Add value to the parent company — and challenge them
“Our purpose is to… do the things that are a little crazy,” Portaro said at SKS. That’s how Firstbuild adds value to GE; by thinking outside the box, developing products outside GE’s typical scope and keeping the large company tapped into new hardware trends.

Sparado-Grant went one step further. She noted that innovation arms like Blu1877 don’t only exist to add value to their parent companies, but also to “challenge” them to reexamine their values and paradigms. That means not only sourcing new ideas from within, but also using their resources to foster young startup talent and help grow a new generation of sustainable food companies.

Disrupting a Large Food Company From Within

Next-Gen Blender, Edible Silverware and Produce-Saving Stickers Win SKS 2019 Startup Competitions

Every year at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS}, one of the most exciting parts of the whole event is the Startup Showcase. The competition gives young companies on the cutting-edge of food tech a chance to pitch to our audience and show off why their product/app/CPG product will change the way we eat.

The competition is so popular that this year we decided to grow it into two separate entities. The Startup Showcase focused on food technologies in kitchens, restaurants, and grocery, while the Future Food competition highlighted edible CPG products.

We whittled down the applicants to a few top-notch finalists and this week they pitched onstage before our panel of judges. And the winners are… (drumroll please)….

Startup Showcase Winner: StixFresh (pictured above)
Judges: Menachem Katz (WeWork Food Labs), Lisa McManus (America’s Test Kitchen), Joe Ray (Wired), Nicole Papantoniou (Good Housekeeping)

Roughly half of all food waste happens in the home. (That’s the reason we’re starting our new joint initiative with the Future Food Institute, The Wise Kitchen, which we announced at SKS 2019!) StixFresh makes a small food-safe sticker that, when put on produce, can extend its shelf life by a whopping two weeks. That’s the difference between throwing away a bunch of rotten fruit and eating it.

Our judges were so impressed by StixFresh’s potential to cut down on fruit and vegetable waste that it was named winner of the Startup Showcase. We can’t wait to see where this company goes next! Keep your eyes peeled for their stickers coming to a grocery store near you…

Photo: Scott Payton

Future Food Winner: Planeteer, LLC
Judges: Victoria Sparado-Grant and Michela Petronio (Barilla), Nina Meijers (Foodbytes!), Peter Bodenheimer (Food-X), Cheryl Durkee (Mealthy), Natalie Shmulik (The Hatchery)

As the popularity of food delivery grows, one of the unintended consequences is the uptick in single-use plastic cutlery. Startup Planeteer wants to replace plastic spoons (and eventually knives and forks) with tastier options. Yep, they make edible spoons, both sweet and savory, meant to cut down on the number of plastic cutlery that ends up in landfills. In addition to a sweet trophy, Planeteer’s team will be taking a trip to Italy to visit Blu1877, Barilla’s innovation arm.

The WeWork Food Labs and Millo teams. Photo: Scott Payton

Innovation Award: Millo
Judges: WeWork Food Labs team

The blender is one kitchen appliance that hasn’t seen a ton of innovation. Millo decided to change that by developing a smart, silent, cordless blender that looks cool enough to hang out all day on your countertop. Clearly the WeWork Food Labs team thought that the world was ready for a next-gen blender, since they awarded the Millo team with their WeWork Innovation Award. Along with the award, Millo will also get a desk in WeWork’s Food Labs.

SKS 2019 Q&A: Barilla’s CTO on Balancing Tradition and Tech

Founded in 1877, Barilla, the world’s largest pasta maker, has a lot of history behind it. But the Parma, Italy-based company is also looking towards the future with its Blu1877, an innovation hub exploring new, sustainable products and incubating forward-facing startups.

So how does a giant, 150-year-old pasta company leverage technology to constantly innovate? That’s what we’ll be asking Victoria Spadaro-Grant, CTO of Barilla, at the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} this October. As a little amuse bouche before she takes the SKS stage, we asked Spadaro-Grant a few questions about what role Barilla can play in the future of food.

Check out the Q&A below. We’ll go far more in-depth at SKS, so don’t miss out. Get your tickets now and join us in Seattle!

As the CTO of Barilla, what sort of technologies are you exploring?
There is a lot happening in the world of food. From robotization of restaurants and cooking “smartization” to natural-digital design of food, to digitization of industrial food processes to create completely new and unexplored consumer experiences.

Indeed, we are living in an unprecedented time where the confine between the worlds of food and digital are blurring, and so is our research and development to create new tasty and delicious products.

One thing remains constant: the human touch and discerning ability required to design foods that people love.

How do you balance trying to foster new innovation with the legacy and history that comes with such a historic company?
Great question! Please think of “tradition” as the innovation that was once super successful and has resisted the acid test of time… remaining in people’s lives forever.

Our job is to continue creating and driving innovation that will become tradition, i.e. Uber, successful products that consumers adopt and carry across all stages of their lives.

Tell us more about Blu1877. Why did you decide to create an innovation lab within Barilla?
At Blu1877, we look to gain exposure to new, exciting products and services, and to new categories that could represent light towers for our future.

Along the way, we also want to help disruptive start-ups that could have the ability to re-shape the way consumers see and experience food.

In sum, the job of Blu1877 is to drive innovation that would be otherwise difficult to carry at Barilla because of the smaller scale or level of category maturity/proximity.

At Blu1877, we seek to tap into evolving trends and learn about how to innovate and do business in a manner — and with an approach — that is different from the established wow we have at Barilla.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for large CPG companies in the future of food?
The ability to generate and invent new “traditions”!

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

Upcycled Flour Co. Planetarians Closes $750K Seed Round, Partners with Barilla’s BLU1877

This week Planetarians, the San Mateo-based upcycled ingredient startup, announced that it had closed a $750,000 seed round with participation from Barilla’s venture/innovation arm BLU1877, Techstars, The Yield Lab, SOSV, and a group of angel investors.

Planetarians takes defatted sunflower seeds — the hulls and fiber left behind after the seeds have been pressed for oil — and upcycles them into high-protein, high-fiber flour.

In a phone interview, Planetarians CEO and co-founder Aleh Manchuliantsau told me that for the past few months they’ve been doing tests in the Barilla facility, using their upcycled flour to make crackers, breads, biscuits, tortillas, and, of course, pasta.

The various products Planetarians has developed with Blu1877.

“With Barilla, we completed scalability tests in an industrial setting,” Manchuliantsau told me. “Next, we expect to do commercial manufacturing.” The company also just won the Most Innovative Startup Pre-Series A award at the Agfunder Agrifood Tech Innovation Awards, which it announced yesterday.

Planetarians will use its new funding to continue developing and trialing new products. They still have their upcycled chip snacks, which they developed with Techstars last year, and have been working with Italian meat-focused company Amadori to develop flexitarian meatballs cut with their defatted sunflower flour.

Upcycling —that is, turning food byproducts into new edible goods — is becoming quite the CPG food trend as of late. Regrained repurposes spent beer grain as energy bars, Renewal Mill (who just raised $2.5 million) turns leftover soy from tofu into baking flour. Even big players like Tyson Foods have gotten into the food waste game with their Yappah! crisps made of chicken breast trimmings. Clearly by investing in Planetarians, Barilla hopes to get their own piece of the upcycled pie.

Last year Manchuliantsau told me that it can be difficult to get consumers comfortable with eating upcycled food waste products, especially ones typically designated for livestock feed. But having a powerful food corporation like Barilla behind them will help Planetarians push their food to the masses  — especially if it’s in the form of pasta.

Barilla-Backed BluRhapsody To Launch 3D Pasta Printing E-Commerce Service in 2019

Have you ever wanted to create your own customized pasta inspired by a favorite work of art, company logo or the likeness of a standup comedian?

You may soon get your chance.

That’s because BluRhapsody, the pasta printing spinout of Barilla’s Blu1877 group, will launch an e-commerce platform in the coming months where anyone can order customized pasta printed by a Barilla-developed 3D pasta printer.

The new e-commerce offering is an expansion of an early limited direct-sales business in which BluRhapsody worked with a small handful of Michelin-star chefs to create customized pasta for their restaurants. With the new e-commerce offering, anyone will be able to go to BluRhapsody.com and order pre-designed custom pasta and, eventually, design their own and order it online.

According to BluRhapsody CTO Antonio Gagliardi, the company’s custom-created pasta capability will evolve through a couple phases. At first, customers will be able to go to BluRhapsody and order from a small catalogue of pre-designed pasta.  There will also be the ability for customers to start custom projects in which they work jointly with BluRhapsody to create unique pasta designs. Finally, the company plans to eventually offer a “customize-your-pasta page” where the customers use an interactive online tool to personalize the shape, ingredients, and even taste and texture of the pasta.

The transition from a one-off service that only worked directly with 5-10 chefs to one in which BluRhapsody becomes what is essentially a ‘Sculpteo for pasta’ was made possible because the company has made significant progress over the last couple years in developing their 3D pasta printing technology. According to Gagliardi, the company has moved beyond the initial prototype the company co-developed with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to one based entirely on an internally developed design. With their new patent-pending pasta printer, BluRhapsody has optimized the design to print pasta with much greater efficiency.

Looking forward, I’m excited for an era of customized printed pasta. I can see a world where not only do restaurants big and small design their own unique designs, but average folks like myself create pasta for special occasions or gifts.

And who knows, maybe if Seinfield was a modern day sitcom, Fusilli Jerry would be printed rather than hacked together in Kozmo Kramer’s apartment.

Barilla Launches Blu1877, A Food Focused Venture Fund & Innovation Hub

With forty percent market share in the Italian pasta market, you’d almost forgive Barilla if they became complacent about the future.

But the 140-year-old, family held business is doing nothing of the sort. Instead, the company is embracing that future through a new venture fund and innovation hub called Blu1877, a name which references the company’s trademark blue pasta box and the year the Parma, Italy based company got its start as a small bakery.

Like its name, Blu1877 is an interesting hybrid. The new initiative combines an investment fund with an innovation hub that gives innovators access to the company’s pilot plant where they can take new food concepts and experiment with small batch production runs, as well as to a virtual expertise network of trusted advisors and other food and technology accelerators.

The first focus of the new VC/innovation hub is to make seed investments in food entrepreneurs creating new products related to Barilla’s core business and adjacent markets in pasta and meal solutions.

One interesting related development: With the launch of Blu1877, the company has transitioned the 3D pasta printer that we’ve been tracking from Barilla proper into Blu1877 under the name BluRhapsody. According to Blu1877 CEO & President Victoria Spadaro Grant (Spadaro Grant is also CTO of Barilla), they plan to develop BluRhapsody as “a portfolio of products aimed at high-end gastronomy applications and luxury catering only.” Spadaro Grant said the first line of products would focus, naturally, on pasta.

I interviewed Spadaro Grant about the launch of Blu1877 via email, which I have included below:

What are the investment themes/companies you are focused on?

Spadaro Grant: Blu1877 does have a total undisclosed amount that we are investing in selected areas related to Barilla’s core business and its adjacencies in the bakery and meal solutions like pasta, sauces, Italian style condiments, i.e. all types of pesti.

What is the stage of companies you are looking for?

Spadaro Grant: In this first phase, we are focused on seed-level investments.

Tell us about your Pilot Plant.

Spadaro Grant: With regards to piloting, prototyping and producing, Blu1877 does invite selected startups and accelerators to come to Italy to take advantage of our +100,000 square foot state-of-the-art pilot plant facility. We also collaborate with the US and European food accelerators and incubators.

What is the Open Innovation Hub?

Spadaro Grant: The Open Innovation Hub is a virtual center that we are nurturing along with other food accelerators and incubators in the food ecosystem. We are seeking to support and propel forward the creative thinkers of tomorrow’s food ecosystems.

SKS17: Barilla Wants To Be The Expert On Food Science In The Smart Kitchen

The Smart Kitchen Summit is the first event to tackle the future of food, cooking and the kitchen with leaders across food, tech, commerce, design, delivery and appliances. This series will highlight panelists and partners for the 2017 event, being held on October 10-11 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. 

When you think about technology and innovation, the first thing that comes to mind probably has nothing to do with spaghetti. But for food makers like Barilla, thinking about the future of the food they create means thinking a lot about technology and how it will impact the design, production, cooking and consumption of their products.

They even have a Chief Technology Officer.

Behind the scenes, Barilla has – without much fanfare to date – been engineering partnerships and strategies that will allow them to take a leadership position in the food tech conversation. In the movement to create more visibility around supply chains and how food is produced, Barilla has partnered with Cisco in a “field to fork” pilot project that creates digital footprints for every food item that gets created. With complex supply chain technologies and delivery systems, it’s often hard for the end consumer to know where every element of their meal came from. Barilla aims to change that.

“Great work is going on about adapting new technologies to the foods as we know them. But what if we could imagine foods that are wholesome, natural and delicious that can work synergically with the technologies to come?” commented Victoria Spadaro Grant, Barilla’s CTO and 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit speaker.

Barilla is on the hunt for ways to use their vast technical knowledge in areas like food science, food engineering and industrial processes for foods. Last year, the company debuted a 3D printer for pasta – using the same high-quality ingredients the Italian gastronomy leader is known for – to show how technology will fundamentally shift the way food is made in the future. They also want to examine what partnerships with kitchen appliance makers might look like – and how the food they create might “talk” to the devices that are used to prepare them for consumption.

We asked Spadaro Grant why Barilla considers the smart kitchen an important space. “Barilla would like to become the Italian gastronomic “sparring partner” for appliance inventors. We are inspired by good food that is also sustainable and we want to explore ways that marrying gastronomy and technology can help drive the future of food.”

Don’t miss Victoria Spadaro Grant, CTO of Barilla Group at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit. Check out the full list of speakers and to register for the Summit, use code BARILLA to get 25% off ticket prices.

The Smart Kitchen Summit takes place thanks to our sponsors; if you’re interested in sponsorship opportunities, reach out to the SKS team to discuss options. 

Technology Innovation Adds New Dimension To Pasta Making

Alas, finally technology for those who like to play with their food.

Give its universal popularity, pasta is a natural prime target for entrepreneurs wanting to leave an imprint on the future of food. Living at the intersection of smart food techniques and future consumer trends are methods to shapeshift ordinary macaroni noodles into 3D wonders that delight the eye and tickle the palate.

Similar to those animal-shaped sponges that mysteriously grow when submerged, researchers at MIT have developed gelatin-based discs that separate and form origami-like three-dimensional shapes when dunked in hot water or broth. Not only are these creations fun to eat, their practical purpose is saving space during transport to retailers and consumers.

“We did some simple calculations, such as for macaroni pasta, and even if you pack it perfectly, you still will end up with 67 percent of the volume as air,” Wen Wang, a research scientist at MIT told the Tribune of India.

“We thought maybe in the future our shape-changing food could be packed flat and save space,” said Wang.

Shapeshifting pasta

According to MIT, researchers took their discovery to a chef at a leading Boston restaurant. The collaboration led to discs of gelatin flavored with plankton and squid ink, that quickly wrap around small beads of caviar. They also created long fettuccini-like strips, made from two gelatins that melt at different temperatures, causing the noodles to spontaneously divide when hot broth melts away certain sections.

The next step would be to see if the process will work with more traditional pasta ingredients such as eggs, flour and water.

Not to be left behind the innovation curve for indigenous food, Parma, Italy-based Barilla Group, has come up with a 3D pasta printer. In the works for more than three years, Barilla teased the market in 2014 by holding a 3D pasta printing competition. Winners made pasta in the shape of roses, Christmas trees and full moons, resulting in forms able to hold more sauce as well as dazzle the eye.

BARILLA - 3d pasta presented at Expo 2015

In 2016 at the CIBUS International Food Exhibition, Barilla showcased a working prototype of a pasta printer that is able to make four different shapes, each in under two minutes. The device, built in conjunction with Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) uses pre-made pasta cartridges loaded with Durum Wheat Semolina and water. Custom-made extruders deliver the final product.

At the 2016 event, Fabrizio Cassotta, Barilla’s Innovation Pasta, Ready Meals and Smart Food Manager, explained to 3ders.org, “All you need to do is load the dough cartridges in the machine and that’s it. It takes only a few minutes: you choose the pasta shape you want and the data is sent to the printer that materializes ready-to-cook pasta, shaped as cubes, moons, roses or many other shapes. Never seen before pasta shapes made with our favorite ingredients,” he says. Premade shapes can be selected using a tablet or smartphone.

Barilla will initially target restaurants and shops that sell fresh pasta before taking aim at the consumer market.

A second 3D pasta printing contest, sponsored by Barilla and administered by Desall.com, ended in early May with more than 1,100 entries with new designs. No winners have been announced.