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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cargill

Cargill (Yes, That Cargill) Shows Off Smart Food Locker System at CES 2023

Most people know Cargill as a massive food conglomerate with a huge share of the total food commodity market. But considerably fewer people know the same company responsible for about 25% of total US grain exports has a digital business unit that incubates technology products more akin to something you might see from a Silicon Vally startup.

One of those products on display at CES 2023 was Chekt, a smart food locker system for restaurants, stadiums, and other food service-centric businesses. The Chekt system, which you can see demoed in the video below, automates the handoff of prepared food to customers or delivery drivers. The lockers can be configured to be hot and cold in the same unit, allowing a restaurant or other food service business to hand off a warm meal and cold drink to consumers from the same locker.

A Look at the Chekt storage locker system from Cargill at CES 2023

The way the lockers work is customers can order on their phone from their table or seat, and they receive a text when the food is ready. The customer then heads to the locker, responds to the text to notify Chekt they are ready for pick up, and the locker unlocks.

According to Cargill digital business lead Eric Parkin, the Chekt system is deployed at the Pittsburgh Penguins stadium and at restaurants on the US west coast. Parkin says that restaurants like Buckhorn BBQ are seeing as many as 70 orders a day going through the locker system for customer pick-up or delivery drivers.

Cargill’s Chekt system is just one of many smart locker systems for food pickup that have appeared over the last couple of years. As the pandemic accelerated the transition towards delivery and contactless pickup, companies like Cargill, GRUBBR, Minnow, and others have stepped in to fill a need for restaurants and others to automate the final handoff of food to their customers.

My guess is that over time we’ll see nearly every stadium in the US deploy similar solutions, where lines can get long, and people are in a hurry to get back to their seats. Larger restaurant chains that depend heavily on pickup orders and delivery will also likely make these a fixture, and there’s a good chance they’ll become commonplace in universities and large multifamily residences.

Food Tech Show: Coronavirus Hits Housewares Show, Cargill Launches Plant-Based Burger

It’s another episode of the Food Tech Show!

This week I got together with the Spoon’s Chris Albrecht and Catherine Lamb to talk about some of food tech’s most interesting stories of late, including:

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on Apple podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you get podcasts. You can also download direct to your device or just click play below.

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Cargill Challenges Beyond Meat with New Meatless Burgers to Debut in April

There will soon be a new entrant in the plant-based meat shelf, and it’s a big one. Today Cargill, the global food and agriculture giant, announced that it would release its own meatless patties and ground products in early April. The new offerings will be sold both through retailers and restaurants.

According to Reuters, Cargill’s new faux meat will be made of both pea and soy protein. Beyond Meat is made of pea and Impossible of soy, so it’s intriguing that Cargill has chosen to combine the two to try and differentiate itself and nail the flavor of meat.

Flavor aside, Cargill has one advantage over newer upstarts like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods: its massive supply chain. The corporation has been operating for 155 years and is one of the world’s largest privately held companies. With its size and scope, Cargill can scale quickly and likely won’t face any supply hiccups, which have plagued both Beyond and Impossible in the past.

These are the first plant-based meat products from Cargill, but the company has been bulking up its alternative protein involvement over the past few years, including investments in pea protein producer Puris (which supplies Beyond Meat) totaling $100 million.

That is just a drop in a bucket compared to the $7 billion Cargill has invested in animal protein in the last five years. Despite dipping its toe into the alt-protein space, the company is still known globally for its involvement in animal agriculture, including the trade of beef’s two main feed sources: corn and soy.

Cargill is far from the only Big Meat company diversifying into alternative protein. Tyson and Perdue have both rolled out blended meat products; that is, offerings that are a mixture of meat and plants. Last year pork producer Smithfield debuted a line of plant-based ground meat and patties. Others, like Nestlé and Unilever, have taken the acquisition route and bought Sweet Earth Foods and the Vegetarian Butcher, respectively.

Like this growing list players, Cargill claims it’s not moving away from meat, but rather diversifying its offerings to meet the growing demand for protein of all stripes. Brian Sikes, leader of Cargill’s global protein and salt business, summed it up in the release: “Whether you are eating alternative or animal protein, Cargill will be at the center of the plate.” Come April, we’ll see if the global company’s new products have the taste to make that statement true.

Aleph Farms Raises $12M for its Slaughter-Free Steak

Though plant-based meat has grabbed most of the headlines in alternative protein this year, thanks to Beyond Meat going public and Impossible Foods scaling up, lab-grown or cultured meat is having a banner year of its own. Case in point: Aleph Farms announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A round of funding led by VisVires New Protein, with Cargill Protein and M-Industry participating as well.

Israel-based Aleph Farms is looking to make full-on steaks, complete with the same structure and texture as traditional meat. As my colleague, Catherine Lamb wrote last year:

To do that, [Aleph’s] scientists are working on growing four types of cells: muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue. While those last two might not sound very appetizing, Toubia said that they’re critical to replicating the texture of meat. Once they cultivate the various types of cells, they place them on scaffolds which act as a framework for the cells to cling onto. That way, the four types of cells can grow together into a finished product with the shape of steak — not just blobs of separate cell types in petri dishes that have to be manually combined.

Last December, Aleph unveiled what it called the first lab-grown minute steak: a steak made from cow cells in a bioreactor. Though the steak was only a few inches long and a few centimeters thick, The Wall Street Journal tried one, noting that it “passes” for the real thing. Aleph’s new money will go towards accelerating the development of this earlier prototype into a commercial product.

It should be noted that this is the second slaughter-free meat investment for Cargill, the U.S.’ third-largest meat producer. Cargill, along with chicken giant, Tyson, has also put money into Memphis Meats. Both companies are angling to be their own disruptor, rather than leaving that to some upstart startup.

The investment comes at a time when consumers are reconsidering the ethical and environmental impact of eating traditional meat. While sales of plant-burgers are booming right now, we are still a ways away from lab-grown meat reaching our dinner plates. Memphis Meats and Mosa Meat claim they’ll have their cultured meat to market by 2021, and JUST has said it will debut its cultured meat in Asia by the end of this year.

Before slaughter-free meat does hit the market, it will have to tackle its own set of hurdles like how it will be labeled and regulated. Most of all, however, these cultured meat companies will need to scale production to hit the mass market at a price point consumers can afford. Because unlike meat, money can’t be grown in a lab.

Cainthus

Cargill Grabs a Stake in Facial Recognition Software for Cows

Facial recognition technology might seem creepy when it’s your mug in question, but move it over to the farm and its possibilities become far less dystopian.

Irish startup Cainthus is using it to increase cow productivity and lower costs on dairy farms. And with food industry heavyweight Cargill grabbing a minor steak (please kill me for that) in the company, Cainthus’ reach should expand to more markets in the coming months.

Cainthus’ software uses machine learning and digital imaging software to recognize cows’ faces and hide marks, and in doing so provide data about the animals’ temperature, appetite, water intake, and other behavioral aspects.

Regularly checking up on the herd is one of the most important aspects of dairy farming, since cows’ overall health and wellbeing has a huge impact on the quality of the milk they produce. A change in appetite or activity can signal a problem with the cow, such as illness. If, for example, water intake is low, the cows’ drinking supply may need to be refreshed. If cows’ temperature goes up, it may be too hot in the barn. In both of these cases, overall milk production is at risk.

Cainthus isn’t changing any of these issues with its technology; they’re simply making it possible for farmers to keep track of the cows without having to be physically with the herd, as has been the case historically. As cows are actually happier when people aren’t around, monitoring their activity via this software should be an added bonus for milk production.

Data-driven software could also help to ensure more precise information about cows’ health and environment. Cows are, first and foremost, an investment. The faster dairy farmers can learn about a change in environment—as well as the precise nature of the change—the sooner they can address it without milk production and overall profit being affected.

According to Cainthus’ site, the software is compatible with “all existing technology, including UAV, satellite, CCTV, and smart devices.” So far, their facial recognition technology is in use on farms in New York, California, and Canada. Cost is based largely on the size of the farm in terms of both space and number of animals. The hardware runs between $38 and $50 per animal, and data analytics for each animal are another $50 per year.

Cargill, meanwhile, has had an eye on the startups lately. In addition to their investment in Cainthus, the Minneapolis-based company recently invested an undisclosed sum into lab-grown meat alternative producer Memphis Meats. It’s also a partner in Techstars upcoming Farm to Fork startup accelerator.

Cargill’s investment in Cainthus should make the technology available in more markets, and also accelerate the Dublin-based startup’s plans to expand into areas like poultry, swine, and aquaculture. (Crop farmers can already use the software to get data on crop health, growth rate, and biomass quantification.)

So while facial recognition software will probably stay a hot-button issue where human faces are concerned, the agriculture and livestock sector seems perfectly positioned to embrace it as more and more farms go digital.