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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

cannabis

Cannabis Edibles Market Is Riding High — For Now

If you have ever had a pot brownie (and we’re not saying you have), more likely than not you don’t remember it as an especially pleasant ingestion experience. The brownie probably tasted bad, was from dubious sources, and might have even been given to you by an unwashed person at a house/frat party.

But today the edibles game has completely changed. Thanks to legalization and technological advances, edibles now come in a huge variety; users can choose not only how they want to ingest their weed, but also its strain and strength. And their popularity is exploding.

According to Arcview Market Research via Forbes, consumers in California purchased $180 million worth of cannabis-infused food and drinks last year, which amounted to 10% of the state’s total marijuana sales. Per BDS Analytics and Green Market report, that percentage rose to 18% in February 2018. And there doesn’t seem to be any sign of slowing.

Edibles are becoming commonplace and democratized. They are no longer a means to an end; consumers want to enjoy the consumption experience itself, not just the resulting high. They also have a wider appeal than smoking marijuana, since they’re less conspicuous to consume and don’t have the same harmful effects on your lungs.

Advances in technology enable edible makers to tweak things like the concentration of THC (the psychoactive element in cannabis) and CBD (the relaxing element) in their goods to produce the desired effect. Cannapreneurs (trademark The Spoon) can now also infuse a really wide variety of goods with marijuana, from gourmet sweets like gummy bears and truffles to stouts and IPAs. There are even marijuana-infused sodas and lattes with cannabis (think of the latte art possibilities!).

Source: Wikimedia

Edibles’ growing appeal is, obviously, a direct result of marijuana’s march towards legalization. So far, nine states plus Washington D.C. have legalized recreational weed for those 21+. This means more open access to cannabis, so producers can not only openly source marijuana, but also select the exact strain they want. As marijuana’s legalization spreads, the stigma that surrounds it is starting to decrease. It’s no longer a drug of hippies or high school dropouts; in fact, millennials increasingly view marijuana as a safer form of relaxation than alcohol.

Of course, there are still some very real obstacles standing in the way of the marijuana industry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has openly said that he wants to exert federal law that criminalizes marijuana, superseding individual state laws which have legalized the drug. If he goes forward with this, it would have a huge impact on the marijuana — and, hence, the edibles — market. There are different opinions on whether or not this news has affected investments in cannabis/cannabinoids: some sources say investors aren’t spooked, others disagree. We’ll have to wait and see if lawmakers will go the way of former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, whose thinking on marijuana has “evolved.”

While these challenges might make things difficult or unsteady for the marijuana industry going forward, within the industry the edibles market is still booming. The Specialty Food Association named cannabis edibles as one of the top 10 food trends of 2018. In Colorado, BDS Analytics reported that edible sales jumped 67% between February 2016 and February 2017.

Venture Capitalists and Big Food are noticing the growth in this sector and starting to invest in cannabis tech and edibles. Just last week Palo Alto-based marijuana edibles company Plus Products closed a roughly $6 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Serruya Private Equity and Navy Capital, only the latter of which identifies itself as a specific cannabis investment fund.

The edibles market may be in a precarious situation until marijuana is legalized on a federal level, but for now its popularity is riding high.

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.

 

How Cannabis Farmers Helped Create the Indoor Farming Industry

By Gabe Blanchet, Co-Founder, CEO of Grove

By now, most of us have heard about how pornography helped shape the development of the Internet. While the exact percentage of how much of the web’s early traffic was made up of porn is still debated to this day, what isn’t up for debate is the outsized influence the industry had on bolstering streaming and other underlying technologies for the Internet in the 90s and 2000s.

Indoor and vertical farming had a similar driving force in its early days, only instead of pornography helping to drive the technology development and innovation of this budding industry, much of the early technology developed for today’s modern indoor farming industry owes a debt of gratitude to the world’s indoor cannabis farmers.

But it wasn’t just pot. Another important driver of innovation in indoor farming was the focus from NASA and the promise/necessity of plant cultivation both in space and on other planets. This spurred a lot of the focus on aeroponic and water-efficient technologies (due to their low weight — optimal for transport). Although astronauts could likely benefit from a bit of recreational cannabis, most of the focus was on growing nutritious, edible and oxygen-producing crops with limited resources.

And although it often gets less coverage, another key element has always been the global greenhouse growing industry. Innovations from R&D in greenhouses of all different levels of sophistication have helped pave the way for indoor commercial farming in its current incarnations.

In short: cannabis, plants in space, and greenhouses → modern indoor farming.

Innovation Drivers

While today’s indoor farming owes a whole lot to the cannabis, NASA and greenhouse research, my focus in this piece is on the formative impact pot growers had on this industry.

There were a couple specific drivers that helped cannabis have an outsized influence on small-scale indoor/vertical farming:

Driver #1: Demand
Combine the illegality of growing cannabis and specifically the 1980’s Regan-era ‘war on drugs’ which drove cannabis growth indoors and out of the limelight (and sunlight, with that) with the MASSIVE, ~$54B annual US consumer demand for cannabis (medicinal and recreational), and you can understand why cannabis farmers felt forced indoors and off the radar. Outside of the driving force of secrecy, the other large benefit to indoor cultivation of cannabis remains consistency, quality and a year-round growing season.

Driver #2: Margin
Cannabis is by a long shot among THE most profitable crops to grow. Although it’s not a perfect comparison (due to cannabis-based on cultivated flower whereas harvested collard greens entail the whole vegetative plant), cannabis represents a price to consumers (avg. legally and illegally) of ~$100-250/ounce, compared to <$.50-1/ounce of collard greens. That’s anywhere from 100-500x more revenue per ounce sold.

Combine massive demand with the huge premium, and it’s no surprise the underground cannabis industry was a major economic driver for the young controlled environment agriculture industry.

Innovating In Secret

Many indoor growing technologies — from high pressure (HPS) sodium lighting to metal halide lighting to LED grow lighting to specially formulated nutrient blends to rootzone technologies like rockwool, hydroponics, + aeroponics, even beneficial mycorrhizal fungi inoculants — were developed, improved, and marketed for cannabis growers, driving innovation in hydroponics and aeroponics, mostly in secrecy.

When we started our company, Grove, in 2013 with a mission to empower people to grow their own fresh, delicious food in their homes, year-round, it didn’t take long for my cofounder Jamie and I to realize the how much we owed to the cannabis industry. We found we were using the awareness, technology, and techniques developed by and for large and small scale indoor cannabis growers in most of our physical and ecological prototyping. Although cannabis is just one of the plants we set out to empower people to grow successfully, we realized we were scouring blogs and forums dominated by anonymous cannabis growers. We learned a lot from them; while they often departed from any form of the rigorous scientific method, there was no doubt these cannabis-growing forum-dwellers tended to have practical and tried-and-true responses and insights.

A Process Of Optimization

This early focus on cannabis resulted in a few defining characteristics of modern indoor farming: 

Optimizing for One Crop Type: Cannabis is a flowering crop, which means it requires nutrient blends (fertilizers) formulated with higher levels of potassium and phosphorus and high-intensity warm-spectrum lighting formulated to trigger and maintain the flowering cycle.

Focus on inorganic methods: There (traditionally) has been less of a focus or keen eye on how ‘organic’ your cannabis is — or where it came from at all. I can attest to this — growing up, my friends were just thrilled to get their hands on some and didn’t ask too many questions.

That means the growing methodology and especially nutrient regimes developed have focused less on organic, sustainable inputs and instead on highest yield. Similar focus to conventional farming throughout the 20th century — yield, yield, yield.

Industry-wide association with ‘weed’: Most consumers in the US equate the term “hydroponics” and indoor growing in general with weed. This is good and bad.

The good: it gets people talking. It’s controversial. It’s interesting.

The bad (for those of us focused on cultivating fresh produce or other medicinals): the industry association with cannabis turns a lot of consumers off from seeing the benefits of the technology. This leads to a lot of quick quips instead of real consideration.

2,000+ brick and mortar indoor growing retailers: The popularization of indoor cannabis cultivation resulted in a boom in brick and mortar indoor growing/hydroponics retailers. There are estimated to be about 2,000 stores in the USA and Canada. Access to these supplies has been a big boost for the indoor growing/smart gardening industry. For example, that’s where Jamie bought his first lighting system for our MIT dorm room setup (which led to us founding Grove).

So Thank You, Cannabis Farmers

With the continued growth in commercial high-tech indoor farming and the introduction and popularization of personal indoor farming appliances (my own company, Grove, will introduce a couple next year), indoor farming will continue to touch more parts of our everyday lives. Everyone touched by indoor farming owes a lot to those maverick cannabis growers who developed the awareness, technology, and techniques that continue to drive the industry today. These developments have helped result in much more expansive opportunities for indoor, controlled environment farming such as the opportunity to reshape how fresh produce ( ~$60B annual spend just in the US) and, more generally, how food is grown on our planet.

So thank you, cannabis farmers.

Gabe is Co-Founder, CEO of Grove. Gabe believes that inspiring and educating people to have fun growing their food is a powerful way to promote healthy food choices for both individuals and the planet.