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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News Roundup: Baby Blockchain, Kombucha, and No More Eat24

Grab yourself another cup of nitro cold brew — it’s time for this week’s food tech news roundup! You know, that time when we assemble all the stories from around the web that we didn’t have time to write about, but are still worth a read. That time!

This week we have news about Nestlé’s foray into blockchain, food delivery closures, and some kombucha innovation. Yes, kombucha innovation. Enjoy!

 

Grubhub announces it’s shuttering Eat24
Bye bye, Eat24. This week news surfaced that Grubbub would be closing down the food delivery company, which it acquired in late 2017, by the end of 2018. This announcement came just a few days after food delivery giant Grubhub acquired online order management company LevelUp. According to Skift Table, Eat24 got the axe because, in a crowded food delivery market, not enough diners were loyal to its brand. Interestingly, Grubhub did not do the same to New York-based Seamless, another food delivery company under its umbrella.

 

Humm Kombucha develops patent-pending kombucha brewing process
Great news, kombucha lovers! This week brand Humm Kombucha announced that they had developed a fermentation process which results in the “first ever verified non-alcoholic raw kombucha” (patent pending). Kombucha, like other fermented beverages, can have small amounts of alcohol — which can be a problem for obvious reasons. Apparently, Humm figured out a way to brew a raw, live (that is, unpasteurized) kombucha that’s below the government standard of 0.5% ABV — and stays that way even when left unopened at room temperature.

 

Photo: Shutterstock

Nestlé dips toe into blockchain with baby food
Corporate food giant Nestlé is applying blockchain technology to its Gerber baby food products. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nestlé hopes that blockchain will let them track the fruits and vegetables that go into Gerber goods, and facilitate product recalls in case of contamination. Nestlé is also working with frenemies Unilever, Driscoll’s, and others on the Food Trust, an IBM-supported network working to increase transparency and traceability in the food system.

Did we miss any juicy food tech stories? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

FoodLogiQ Announces First Partners for Food Transparency Blockchain Pilot

Earlier today food traceability startup FoodLogiQ revealed the first partners for their upcoming blockchain pilot. According to a press release, they’ll partner with AgBiome Innovations, Subway/Independent Purchasing Cooperative, Testo, and Tyson Foods (the last two of which are also investors in FoodLogiQ) to test the use of blockchain to increase transparency within their supply chains. The pilot is set to kick off later this year.

The company launched FoodLogiQ Labs, an R&D hub for new technologies and products in food safety, earlier last month. Chief Marketing Officer Katy Jones told the Spoon that their first project would be focused on blockchain. This pilot program came a few months after the company raised $19.5 million to intensify and expand their food traceability efforts.

Jones told me that FoodLogiQ’s top priority for the program would be ensuring that their data was standardized and high-quality. “If you don’t have those elements, no amount of transparency will help you,” said Jones. That’s because blockchain is only as strong as its weakest link: if one set of data from the food supply chain is inaccurate — say, the temperature is incorrectly registered for a shipment of chicken — the integrity of the whole thing is compromised. 

She also told me that FoodLogiQ didn’t want to hop on the blockchain bandwagon simply to take advantage of the hype. They’re hoping to use the labs to put together pilots and proof of concepts for blockchain within the food supply chain. But Jones still has some healthy skepticism about this much-heralded technology: “It’s still a relative unknown, especially with regards to food” she said. “And at the end of the day, it may not work for us — that’s the point of doing this R&D work.”

In the same press release, FoodLogiQ CEO Dan said that the company would be “taking the lead on blockchain exploration within the food space.” That may be true — but they’re not the only ones. Other food traceability companies, like Ripe.io and Intelex, are also working to create a blockchain for the food system, as is the Walmart-led Food Trust (which also includes Tyson Foods). The results from FoodLogiQ’s pilot program could indicate whether or not blockchain really has the potential to be a magic bullet for food traceability. 

Delicia Wants to Fight Food Waste with Blockchain-based Marketplace

Delicia is an Estonian-based startup positioning itself at the nexus of two very big trends: blockchain and combating food waste, and the company is hosting an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) next month to raise funds to aid in the fight.

According to the Delicia website, the company uses the blockchain to create a global, decentralized platform for retailers like grocery and convenience stores to sell food that is nearing expiration to local buyers like restaurants or consumers.

The benefits of this, Delicia says, is that retailers can put food to use before it goes to waste. Additionally, the company says it will use artificial intelligence to analyze historical buying and selling patterns to create a more efficient supply chain — routing food where it should go and minimize surpluses that go to waste.

The idea of using blockchain for food is certainly not a new one. Lots of players like Ripe.io, Foodlogiq, and even Walmart are using the public ledger software to bring transparency and efficiency to the food supply chain.

But Delicia appears to be more focused on creating a marketplace for food buyers and sellers, similar to Karma and other apps already available, just built on blockchain.

Delicia’s roadmap says it will release a beta version in North America and Europe this December, with a production release in both those areas in December of 2019. Delicia joins other food-based ICOs including FeedChain and FoodCoin.

ICOs have come under more scrutiny lately, as the SEC flexes its regulatory muscles and tries to warn people of ICO scams.

Delicia may be completely legitimate, but there are couple red flags on its site. One of the top “News & Blog” posts explains your chance to become a “Delicia millionaire” by participating in a viral campaign. Additionally, the company lists Buzzfeed under “Partners and Media,” but the link goes to a community post on Buzzfeed, where anyone can create a post.

Hopefully Delicia is legitimate as food waste is a huge problem. We have reached out to the company and will update as we hear more (See UPDATE below). If you’re in Seattle and interested in learning more about what’s being done to prevent food waste, come to our Food Waste Solutions meetup this month!

UPDATE:

Delicia sent us the following email:

We have address[ed] most of the questions in the podcast released yesterday at:
Regarding the red flags on the delicia.io site:
  1. The millionaire contest is to offer the delicia tokens as part of the social media competition to increase awareness about food waste and the solution we are offering. For more details please visit the link of the contest which points to the medium blog: https://medium.com/delicia-global-food-network/delicias-millionaire-giveaway-contest-3a471f89e897
  2. Buzzfeed link: We had this link from the early days of the launch when we were still working on getting some media traction. This section now has been revamped to point links to CCN, Reuters, etc.

ThinFilm’s Tags Could (Potentially) Put Detailed Food Information at Your Fingertips

Lately, people want to know more about their food than ever before. Was this meat grass-fed or corn-fed? Was this apple grown locally? Did this chicken have many friends?

Oslo-based ThinFilm uses Near-Field Communications (NFC) to allow smartphones to read information like this with a tap of their phones. Brand partners stick ThinFilm’s SpeedTap tags on their products, and when a consumer scans the tag with their phone they’re lead to a database with detailed product information and marketing deals. While they have chiefly worked with costmetic, pharmaceutical, and fashion companies, they’re hoping to apply this tech to food safety and traceability the next few years.

Recently, they took steps towards this goal by launching CNECT Blockchain Services; a tool which could integrate blockchain into product information to promote food transparency for both the consumer and the supplier.

“With blockchain, provenance is a big deal,” ThinFilm’s Chief Commercial Officer Christian Delay told me over the phone. “The challenge that a lot of people have is if there’s food safety issues or recall issues it’s hard to determine if you have a contaminated package or not.” Retailers or food safety inspectors can use ThinFilm’s tech to scan the tag on a specific food product and get information about it, including where it was made, how it was transported, and even how it can be recycled. 

They’re not the only one using blockchain (or, at least, talking about using blockchain) to trace the food supply chain. FoodLogiQ just launched an innovation hub to pilot projects applying blockchain to increase food safety, and Ripe.io is working to build “a Blockchain for Food.”

But according to Delay, ThinFilm’s tech could have grand applications beyond food safety. “It could even give customers a recipe or preparation tips for the food they scan,” said Delay. “It’s a way to enable brands and manufacturers to forge a direct connection with people buying their products.” So if you scanned the tag on a flank steak, you would not only know where the cow was raised and whether it was corn- or grass-fed, but also get a recipe and tips on how to best slice the cut of meat. 

Delay even pointed out that their tech could be used to reduce the price of an item that was about to go bad. Once you bring food home, the expiration date would link up to the server and alert you with a timer when your food is ready to go bad. Sort of like what Ovie tags do, but virtual — though, at this stage, this is all theoretical.

Brands can either pay per unit for use of the ThinFilm tags, which includes access to their information-sharing database, or they can pay a flat subscription fee to license both. So far their scanning tech works automatically with Android phones, but iPhone users will have to download an app. 

As of now their CNECT Blockchain Services are on the market with companies in three trial verticals: wine, spirits, and meat (specifically, Australian beef). All are in stealth mode, though Delay promised that they would reveal the identity of the wine company shortly. If the pilots are successful and they continue to expand their markets, we might soon be able to see if the chicken on our plate was, indeed, well-liked by his chicken friends. 

Food Tech News Roundup: DIY Food Printers, Salad Analytics, Ramen Robots

It’s time for your weekly dose of food tech news! This is when we take a look at some of the stories from the week which intrigued us and put them all in one convenient place.

This week we’ve got stories about lab-grown meat, DIY 3D bioprinter building, and sushi-serving robots. Get yourself a big mug of coffee and settle in for a read.

Lab-grown meat company Wild Type gets a funding boost

Cultured meat company Wild Type raised $3.5 million this week in a seed round led by firm Spark Capital with participation by Root Ventures, Mission Bay Capital, and other investors.

Wild Type is yet another player in the growing field of clean meat, along with startups like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meats, and Supermeat. Startup Finless Foods is also using cellular agriculture to culture fish in a lab, though they’re focused on bluefin tuna while Wild Type is working on salmon.

Wild Type hopes to use its new capital to speed up the development of its cultured salmon, increasing manufacturing capabilities while lowering costs. Their first product will be minced salmon meat intended for use in sushi, but they hope to eventually develop an animal-free lox and salmon filets.

 

 

Image: Adam Feinberg, HardwareX

Carnegie Mellon bioprinter could democratize 3D printing

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently developed a low-cost 3D bioprinter and are publishing the designs as open source so that anyone can build their own.

The researchers were able to cut costs by applying a syringe-based large volume extruder onto a standard desktop 3D printer (you have one at home, right?), essentially DIY-ing a 3D bioprinter. Bioprinters typically start at $10K to $20K and can cost up to $200K, but this MacGuyvered one can be built for under $500. It’s also easier to modify than a traditional 3D bioprinter.

Though the CMU team’s original research centers around organ tissue printing for transplants, their instructional abstract notes that these homemade bioprinters can perform “a wide range of 3D printing applications, including bioprinting, embedded printing, and food printing.” As we’ve covered on The Spoon before, 3D food printing is a massively underexplored area of food tech. Maybe these (relatively) affordable bioprinters will change that and make 3D food printing more accessible.

 

Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP via Mashable

Ramen-serving robots invade Seattle

Plenty USA will launch the new version of their AI-powered, Japan-made robot, dubbed ‘SOTA,’ in Seattle next month. The robot will premiere at JUNKICHI, a robota izakaya restaurant scheduled to open on April 15th in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

SOTA sits atop restaurant tables and uses AI to recognize diners’ faces. It is meant to facilitate communication between customers and servers, though it seems like having a table-bound robot as the middleman would make communication more confusing, if anything. Users can also use the SOTA app to make the robot speak, having guided conversations while they snack on hot pots and grilled meats.

This will be the North American launch for SOTA, but the robot is already a regular fixture at an izakaya restaurant in Japan. (They’e begun their integration into restaurants in America, as well.) According to Market Insider, the restaurant reported a 10% jump in sales since it started using SOTA, and the robot is a popular attraction for dinners. We’ll have to wait and see if it has the same success in an American market.

P.S. Keep an eye out for The Spoon team to make a field trip and interact with these robots ourselves! And eat some sushi, of course.

 

Beer gets high

For those who hate to choose between their vices, there’s a new product for you. Keith Villa, the inventor of Blue Moon beer has partnered with Ebbu, a company that works with marijuana compounds, to launch a THC-infused, non-alcoholic beer in Colorado this fall. The brew is designed to have the marijuana hit the drinker at the same rate as if they were consuming a beer.

The team plans to develop a wheat beer, a light beer, and a stout. The product will launch in Colorado, but producers want to eventually sell it in all states where marijuana is legal.

Other brewers, such as Lagunitas, have infused beer with CBD, a cannabanoid which does not produce any hallucinatory effects. However, this Colorado-based brew will be the first to incorporate THC, which is what gives marijuana users the trademark “high.” Its success (or lack thereof) will speak to how flexible Americans are willing to get with their cannabis consumption.

 

SweetGreen harnesses analytics to inform its new menu

Earlier this week, fast-casual salad chain SweetGreen made a major menu chance. At first glance, it seemed that all they had done was tweak their offerings — but it’s the why, not the what, that’s so interesting.

SweetGreen’s menu changes were apparently a direct result of tech-driven insights. The company recently told Bloomberg that they now use blockchain to track their produce, and also to inform their app (which they launched in 2013). Through the app they collect customer analytics to determine which salads to keep, which to introduce, and which to take off their menu, all of which led to their new menu — the first major menu change in 10 years.

This change is an indicator of how fast casual joints, like Eatsa, are integrating tech into their service models to distinguish themselves from the competition. They’re also harnessing platforms like Toast and Ingest.ai to help run restaurant operations for efficiently and increase revenue. Which all goes to say that this restaurant market is one that will likely see a lot of growth and change — in salad toppings and beyond.

 

FoodLogiQ Raises $19.5M to Promote “Traceability” in the Food Industry

FoodLogiQ, the Durham-based platform that helps food industry professionals trace their supply chains, just raised $19.5 million in their most recent funding round. This comes a few months after they snagged $4.25 million in Series B funding in September 2017, a round that was led by Renewal Funds, a mission-based venture capital firm based in Vancouver, B.C.

In this latest round, Renewal Funds was joined by Testo, Tyson Ventures, Pontifax AgTech, Nicola Wealth Management and Greenhouse Capital. This marks yet another investment in food tech startups by Tyson Ventures, who has recently contributed funds to smart oven and meal company Tovala and lab-grown meat startup Memphis Meats. It also comes roughly one month after FoodLogiQ announced their partnership with Testo, which, among other things, added temperature monitoring capabilities to their platform.

In a press release, FoodLogiQ said they would use the funding to grow customer support, increase R&D, and accelerate product enhancements.

The FoodLogiQ Connect platform at work.

Founded in 2006, FoodLogiQ is a cloud-based supplier transparency solution which aims for “farm to fork traceability” in the food supply chain. It does this by offering three products within its SaaS platform (called FoodLogiQ Connect): one which verifies suppliers’ information, one which traces food on its journey throughout the supply chain, and one (still in Beta) which is meant to simplify food recalls.

Here’s an example of how the overall platform it might work: Say a shipment of chicken destined for a restaurant is discovered by the supplier to contain traces of salmonella. If the restaurant has connected their supply chain with FoodLogiQ, owners can trace exactly which shipment of chicken was contaminated and act quickly to take it that particular lot—no more, no less—out of their restaurant circulation. With their recent Testo integration, suppliers could also prevent these sort of situations; if the temperature of a shipment of chicken ever goes above the maximum “safe” temperature en route, they can opt not to serve it.

The platform also works from the top-down: If several cafés report poor quality lettuce, or have incidents of a food-borne illness, FoodLogiQ can identify which supplier those restaurants have in common and trace the issue to its source. Thanks to their intensive focus on traceability, FoodLogiQ’s tracking software promises to cut the cost of food recalls in half.

If you’re thinking that those products sounds pretty similar to those offered by other companies, such as Ripe.io and Intelex, you’re right. Ripe.io, a startup which leverages blockchain technology within the food system in an attempt to create “the Blockchain of Food,” is a particularly interesting comparison. Both companies market their platforms to every level of the supply chain, from growers to restaurants.

Where FoodLogiQ differentiates itself, at least according to their Chief Marketing Officer Katy Jones, who spoke with The Spoon a few weeks ago, is with its full suite of offerings. Their startup is unique in its comprehensiveness, covering everything from supplier management to product traceability to recalls. They also have a centralized platform that aggregates all of these services into one module, which, at least in theory, makes tracking food shipments simpler for their customers. As of now, those customers include industry heavyweights Whole Foods Market, Chipotle, and Five Guys.

While FoodLogiQ makes it easier for grocery stores and restaurants to track down the source of any food issues, their software also puts increased pressure on the suppliers to be transparent about their products and thorough in their food safety. This, of course, is not a huge ask—but it made me wonder if farmers, co-packers, and shipping companies benefit as much from FoodLogiq’s platform as those higher up the supply chain.

According to Jones, they do. “Generally speaking, suppliers have a significant amount of required documentation as a result of the Food Safety Modernization Act,” she told The Spoon. “FoodLogiQ helps them get all of their documents onto one platform and increase efficiency.” The transparency also fosters relationships between suppliers and their customers. While this may hold true for larger suppliers who oversee many growers and want to centralize quality, protocol, and documentation, I can’t help but wonder if the farmers appreciate this level of digital accountability.

This last round of funding, as well as FoodLogiQ’s recent growth, could be an indicator of the potential in food safety tech. Consumers are becoming more and more interested in what they’re eating—and that makes things tricky for restaurants and grocery stores. Not only do eaters want to know where their food comes from (you know that the Portlandia sketch), they also want to know, in detail, how it got to their plate. Add that to a recent spate of news stories on recalls of staples like spinach and lettuce due to listeria and E. Coli, and you’ve got an increase in pressure on food industry groups to tighten up security measures against contamination.

Interestingly enough for a company aimed at promoting consumer safety, FoodLogiQ is a platform built to work exclusively within the food industry. Which leads me to believe that while their myriad of data points and ability to chronicle and trace ingredient journeys may help decrease contamination issues, the platform will go a long way in helping restaurants stay on top of food safety regulations—and cut costs associated with recalls in the process.

FoodLogiQ doesn’t currently use blockchain technology to support their platform at the moment, but they’re looking into it.  But, as we all know, a chain is only as good as its weakest link—and there are a lot of links between most restaurants, especially nationwide chains, and where their food is grown. “At the end of the day a blockchain is a decentralized database, and we’re database agnostic,” said Jones. “We’re trying to help the food supply chain get all their data standardized and in the same language.”

Blockchain has recently become quite a buzzword in the food tech community, hailed as a panacea for everything from fraud to tracing salmonella outbreaks. Jones is a little bit more skeptical, pointing out that blockchain can fall victim to data integrity issues. She stated that FoodLogiQ is going to work on educating the food tech industry on what blockchain is—and what it isn’t.

The success of FoodLogiQ’s latest round of funding indicates a real need within the industry for support navigating food safety issues. Supermarkets, restaurants and the like have to comply with ever-shifting FSMA and FDA regulations and rising consumer expectations for ingredient transparency, and FoodLogiQ wants to help.

“The restaurant industry is changing—get ahead of it with FoodLogiQ,” proclaims their website. We’ll have to wait and see if FoodLogiQ and its competitors, especially those powered by blockchain, are, indeed, the secret weapon of food safety innovation.

 

Food Tech News Roundup: Tooth Calorie Counters, Snoop Dogg, and Amazon’s Next Move

The time has come for our weekly roundup of food tech news stories; ones that caught our eye, but weren’t quite big enough to justify a whole post. This week’s news update focused on some of our favorite foods (and drinks): pizza, beer, and coffee. Also, did we mention that Snoop Dogg is involved? Or at least his voice is. There’s also a tiny tooth sensor that can track everything you eat and — surprise, surprise — more news on Amazon’s journey to rule the ecommerce world. Let’s get started, shall we?

Photo: Modernist Cuisine

Modernist Cuisine’s newest book is about pizza

Modernist Cuisine may have just published their 5-volume compendium Modernist Bread a few months ago, but they’ve already announced the subject of their next literary venture: pizza. The multivolume will be written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, along with the Modernist Cuisine team, and will cover a broad array of pizza recipes, pizza history, and pizza-making techniques, both traditional and modern.

It’ll be a year before the ‘za anthology comes out, but if you want to give Nathan Myhrvold and his team some insider advice on your favorite pizzerias and pizza-makers, they’re already crowdsourcing tips: just email pizza@modernistcuisine.com. Then treat yourself to a slice of pepperoni for doing a good deed.

Photo: Diageo

Alexa and Snoop Dogg are your new mixologists

This week Amazon Alexa partnered with Diageo to launch a “Happy Hour” skill. It offers three features, including one called ‘Mix-It-Up’ which offers drink recommendations based on users’ mood and tastes. There’s also the ‘Find a Bar’ feature which has a Yelp integration to recommend bars nearby that serve Diageo cocktails (which, since Diageo is the world’s largest spirits producer, is pretty much everywhere). All recommendations are sent to the user’s Alexa app. This is another example of Amazon pushing the boundaries with voice assistants, taking a step forward so that competitors like Google and Apple will have to rush to catch up.

My favorite part of this skill is the fact that Snoop Dogg is involved. Yes, Snoop Dogg. Users can also ask Alexa for “Snoop Dogg’s drink of choice,” and he’ll give cocktail recommendations. One can only hope they’re not all iterations of gin and juice. 

Photo: Starbucks

Starbucks hops onto the blockchain train

Starbucks announced this week that it would launch a pilot program applying traceability technology to its coffee beans to monitor their journey from “bean to cup.” They’ll partner with small coffee farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia and Rwanda, logging and sharing information about the coffee supply chain. Essentially, they’ve embraced the blockchain trend — though they don’t use that term anywhere in their release.

With this program Starbucks is hoping to connect its coffee drinkers to coffee farmers, though it’s not exactly clear how. While the traceability may indeed give their farmers an “individual identity” — one that will no doubt be capitalized upon as a marketing angle — the system is only really applicable to the players downstream.

I can only see this used as a marketing scheme. With this program, Starbucks can trace beans from one particular farm through the roasting and packaging process, and can then market that product as a “single origin coffee” (not doubt for a higher price). This is something that previously only smaller coffee roasters and distributors could do. But thanks to blockchain tech, Starbucks can hop on the bandwagon. We’ll have to wait and see if they actually deliver on their promises of transparency, but suffice it to say I’m healthily skeptical.

Amazon expands Whole Foods stores to support delivery

Amazon is looking for bigger Whole Foods stores in urban centers to serve as both grocery stores and delivery jumping off points for some of their most popular items, like books and electronics. If Whole Foods serves as a city-based delivery hub, it would reduce Amazon’s need to maintain warehouses for non-grocery items. That way, they can deliver goods to urban consumers more quickly.

This move comes a little over a month after Amazon started rolling out 2-hour Whole Foods delivery. It’s another step in the ecommerce giant’s strategy to use brick-and-mortar Whole Foods locations to bolster their online sales.

Photo: Nomiku

Nomiku expands delivery to 6 more states

Nomiku, one of the first companies to launch a home sous vide circulator, just expanded  the map for their Sous Chef meals. The company started experimenting last year with food delivery and, after a year of working the kinks out within their home state of California, has started shipping their sous vide ready meals to to six additional states: Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Their meals, which offer a large range of vegetarian and meat options, are precooked meals are heated to serving temperature in 30 minutes with the Nomiku sous vide appliance. Nomiku is part of a growing number of startups such as Tovala, ChefSteps, and FirstChop that are pairing cooking appliances with subscription food services to create additional convenience for the consumer.

Image: Fio Omenetto, Ph.D., Tufts University

A new tooth tracker can track everything you eat

Think of it as a calorie counter you can’t cheat, a fitbit for your eating habits. Researchers at Tuft’s University have developed a 2mm x 2mm sensor that you can stick on your tooth to monitor what you eat. It syncs up with your mobile device to wirelessly transmit data on your glucose, salt, and alcohol content. While this could be a helpful tool for some people who want to keep a super accurate account of their calorie intake, it could have some scary implications. It could exacerbate unhealthy food obsessions, or create a way for people to monitor individuals who are supposed to be limiting their sugar, salt, or alcohol intakes.

In the future, scientists want to create abilities for the sensor to track nutrients, chemicals, and psychological states. And if that brings Black Mirror to mind, I’d say you’re not too far off base.

How Could Blockchain Be Used With Food?

At this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Mike Lee of the Future Market said that personalized data profiles are a huge unmet opportunity in food.

I agree with Mike, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I see blockchain as being pretty critical to the creation of secure, decentralized data profiles. But, of course, this is only one potential use case for blockchain, which is getting a strong look as calls for greater transparency and security across the food value chain become louder.

And so when I was at the Internet of Food conference last month, I was intrigued by many of the things folks like Raja Ramachandran, the CEO of Ripe.io, had to say. Ramachandran and his company are building a blockchain for food, so I decided to ask him to come on the podcast and talk about the future of blockchain within the food ecosystem.

Enjoy the podcast and make sure to subscribe in Apple podcasts if you haven’t already.

Blockchain Beer Delivers Ingredient Transparency

Can the technology behind Bitcoin build a better beer experience? Ireland Craft Beers thinks so, and has launched Downstream, the world’s first brew placed on the blockchain platform.

As Food Ingredients First reports, Ireland Craft Beers use of blockchain technology will provide more transparency into how their beer is made, allowing consumers to see exactly what they are consuming.

For those new to blockchain, CB Insights has a nice, lengthy primer, but for our purposes, think of blockchain as a ledger. In the case of Downstream beer, users can scan a QR code on the bottle and go to an online resource that identifies every unique bottle that comes off the line, including its ingredients and brewing methods.

Ireland Craft Beers is betting that the blockchained Downstream will quench consumers’ increased thirst for knowledge about exactly what they are eating and drinking.

Whether or not a blockchain hook will be enough to move the needle on a particular beer’s sales remains to be seen. But as we’ve written before, blockchain technology is poised to disrupt the entire food scene, with giants like Walmart getting into blockchain to improve food safety.

Hopefully the price of Downstream won’t reach the highs of the blockchain-based Bitcoin, unless you like the thought of paying nearly $10,000 for bottle of meticulously tracked beer.

This Company Uses Blockchain To Fight Global Food Fraud

Sometimes bad food is caused by undercooking or leaving fresh foods out too long – but often it’s because the item was either fake or contaminated before it even reached retail or a restaurant. After suffering a terrible case of food poisoning likely due to this problem while visiting Shanghai, Mitchel Weinberg was inspired to do something about international food industry fraud.

A former trade-consultant, Weinberg founded Inscatech, a global network of investigators that down evidence of food industry fraud and malpractice. Inscatech’s agents inspect a variety of reports of counterfeit and contaminated food products before they reach retailers and food producers with most problems originating in China.

“Statistically we’re uncovering fraud about 70 percent of the time but in China, it’s very close to 100 percent,” Weinberg told Bloomberg Technology. “It’s pervasive, it’s across food groups, and it’s anything you can possibly imagine.”

Currently, Inscatech is in the process of creating molecular markers and genetic fingerprints to help more effectively identify natural products and determine what’s real and what’s not.  Other companies are taking a digital approach and developing technology to monitor where that product originated.

As more Chinese food companies become part of the global supply chain, big supermarket companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, are recognizing the reputational danger of food fraud. Wal-Mart recently completed a trial using the technology, blockchain to monitor their pork supply chain in China. Blockchain, an eight-year-old technology that cryptographically records transactions, helped Wal-Mart to reduce their tracking time from 26 hours to only a few seconds.

Blockchain works as a database of records. It can potentially improve traceability by creating a chain of history that is impossible to alter without destroying the current sequence. Alibaba has also recognized the potential for blockchain within their platforms and is planning to implement a project with food suppliers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Australia Post and auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“Food fraud is a serious global issue,” said Maggie Zhou, managing director for Alibaba in Australia and New Zealand told Bloomberg Technology. “This project is the first step in creating a globally respected framework that protects the reputation of food merchants and gives consumers further confidence to purchase food online.”

However, Inscatech has its concerns about blockchain. Their agents focus on working with informants who bring attention to the exact location where the food-fraud is taking place and believe that blockchain is only as reliable as the person providing that data. As of right now, blockchain is still the best system in place against fighting food-fraud. In a global food industry that relies mostly on just paper records, blockchain will help identify those putting data into the system and if incorrect, allow them to be held responsible.

From Safety to Savings, Blockchain Technology Will Disrupt the Food Scene

Behold the blockchain. The disruptive new technology promises to make traditional paper ledger-based transactions obsolete, replaced by digital ledgers. Headlines appear every day heralding how blockchain technology will revolutionize financial services markets, which remain burdened by unwieldy paper trails and costly proprietary software applications. But blockchain technology will also have a transformative impact on the food industry and many other industries. From cost savings to removal of intermediaries to more efficient and precise tracking of contamination, the food business will derive many benefits from blockchain.

None of this is lost on titans in the food industry and technology giants are focused on blockchain, too. IBM has announced a blockchain collaboration with food giants including Walmart, Unilever and Nestle. Big Blue has announced that it will help global food businesses use its blockchain network to trace the source of contaminated food instantly.  Because blockchain uses digital means to track transactions and trace the flow of food, contamination trails can be solved by data-centric means rather than paper-based ones. Officials from Walmart have demonstrated how this kind of contamination tracking can take place in under three seconds.

According to the World Health Organization, one in ten people will fall ill every year due to contaminated food. Children under 5 years of age are at particularly high risk, with 125,000 children dying from foodborne diseases every year. Blockchain technology will have a giant impact on these problems. The full list of food companies signed on to work with IBM’s blockchain network is as follows: Dole, Driscoll’s, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Unilever and Walmart.

In this video, Walmart’s VP of Food Safety discussed the huge impact that blockchain will have:

According to Forbes: “By using blockchain, when a problem arises, the potential is to quickly identify what the source of contamination is since one can see across the whole ecosystem and where all the potential points of contamination could be using the data to pinpoint the source. As such it is ‘ideally suited’ according to IBM to address these challenges because it establishes a trusted environment for all transactions.”

IBM has already conducted several pilots focused on food safety in order to demonstrate the ways in which blockchain can benefit global food traceability.

All participants in the global food supply chain stand to benefit from blockchain technology, ranging from growers to suppliers and distributors. Beyond tracking contamination, blockchain promises to usher in much more efficient, trusted financial transactions that can remove many types of intermediaries. According to a new market intelligence report by BIS Research, titled ‘Blockchain Technology in Financial Services Market – Analysis and Forecast: 2017 to 2026′, cost savings of $30 to $40 billion per year will be achieved in trade finance.

The move to blockchain does not necessarily mean buying into expensive proprietary platforms, either. While IBM’s blockchain network resides on the IBM Cloud platform, The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project is squarely focused on keeping blockchain open source and blockchain solutions free. Many powerful companies are partners on the project, and are committed to keeping patent wars and proprietary shenanigans out of the blockchain ecosystem.

“Blockchain technology enables a new era of end-to-end transparency in the global food system – equivalent to shining a light on food ecosystem participants that will further promote responsible actions and behaviors,” notes Walmart VP Frank Yiannas. “It also allows all participants to share information rapidly and with confidence across a strong trusted network.”