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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food NFT + Metaverse (in a) Minute: NFTs for Purpose Driven Restaurants, Cereal DAO

It’s still early days at the intersection of food and Web3 and that means there’s almost always something new happening and more to learn. Stay up to date with our coverage and these 3 things in this week’s Food Metaverse Minute:

NFTs for Purpose-Driven Restaurant

Chefs using NFTs to fund their next restaurant is becoming a regular thing — but even more inspiring is chefs using NFTs to give back to the workers who are the backbone of the restaurant industry. That’s what St. Paul-based chef Brian Ingram and his group Purpose Restaurants are doing with their next project.

Partnering with Chicago artist Joey Africa, the NFT collection will feature 71 original digital and physical pieces, each token serving as a membership to Ingram’s newest restaurant. The Apostle Supper Club, opening this summer across from the Xcel Energy Center, will hold VIP events like private chef dinners and menu tastings. Ten percent of the NFT raise will go back into the community; Ingram’s restaurant group regularly contributes to Give Hope, his charity created to give funds directly to people in their community, particularly restaurant workers dealing with housing insecurity or addiction.

We’ll be keeping an eye on hose this project performs. The NFTs went on sale last week on Opeaseas but so far there’s been little activity. While there’s been lots of inspiration from the success of the membership of Flyfish Club, no one – not surprisingly – has been able to replicate the success of the Gary Vee-affiliated group.

The DAO-Driven Cereal Company

NFT-branded cereal makes a debut from the “first decentralized CPG company” last week at Bitcoin Miami. The new CPG DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) — named gmgn supply co — launched with its first product, gm cereal and introduced its governance structure. The goal of DAOs is to spread collective decision-making rights along with ownership benefits to all of the involved members.

To drive hype for their launch, gmgn used Web3 marketing with BoredBecky, a curated personality with famous NFT social influencer group Bored Ape Club. The new group hopes to “revolutionize the CPG industry and drive the next generation of beloved brands,” and will be the first consumer packaged goods company to embrace NFTs as a way to fund and the DAO structure to run and grow the organization.

“If you look at the current CPG landscape, the majority of brands we eat every day are owned by 11 giant CPG conglomerates. gmgn supply co is changing this and our members will have a say in what they eat, what products are going to be made and help lead the CPG industry in a new direction that’s been elevated by Web3. We are excited to be leading this change and kicking it off with the launch of our first brand, gm Cereal, slated to drop in the Fall of this year,” said Phillipe LeBlanc, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Funday.” Funday is one of the founding companies that started gmgn.

SimulATE is Back

SimulATE is coming back! We’re bringing back the first virtual event dedicated to the emerging food, NFT, metaverse + crypto space and we’re going to be announcing our speaker lineup and agenda soon. Preview some of that here and if you use THIS LINK, you’ll get 50% off ticket prices through the end of this week (FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11:59 pm PST).

Hungry Raises $1.5M for its Chef-Centric Corporate Catering

There are a lot of things going against corporate catering startup Hungry. It’s based in Virginia, not Silicon Valley or New York or some other major tech hub. It only services select parts of D.C., Maryland and Virginia. And though the company just raised a $1.5 million seed round, that amount is tiny compared with competitor ezCater, which this week raised a whopping $100 million.

But one thing Hungry does have going for it is their approach to providing meals for office workers. Whereas most business catering services act as brokers between companies and restaurants, Hungry connects companies with independent chefs. And these aren’t just ordinary chefs; they’re former White House chefs, Iron Chef and Chopped champions, and James Beard Award winners.

Clients can visit the Hungry website and peruse the chefs in its network, along with the menus they serve. They can then select a chef/food combo and order up to 24 hours in advance. Chefs give Hungry their max capacity of meals per day and if that number is hit, they’re temporarily hidden from the site until they can catch up. Hungry then sends its “captains” out to pick up the food from the chefs’ kitchens, then deliver and set it up at the client’s office.

Hungry Founder and COO Eman Pahlevani explained to me why he thinks his company’s chef-centric approach is a better one for corporate catering:

Hungry’s network of 50 chefs all work out of commercial kitchens, so they don’t incur the hefty costs associated with a full restaurant. Hungry only offers breakfast and lunch, so chefs have better hours and are done at noon. Hungry takes care of new customer acquisition and delivery, so chefs can focus on food. The service also cuts down on food waste because chefs know how many orders they need to prepare in advance and stock up accordingly.

For clients, Pahlevani said that because they chefs have less overhead, they can charge less, which means that clients pay less for lunches. Plus each delivery captain works with the same clients each time, so they know where to unload and set up, minimizing hassle for the office manager.

Hungry currently has 300 clients including Amazon and Microsoft. They have 50 chefs in its network, who, according to Pahlevani, average about $10,000 to $12,000 a month in revenue. Hungry makes its money by marking up the wholesale menu prices set by the chef.

Yesterday’s $1.5 million brings the total amount raised by Hungry to $4.5 million. The company plans to use the money to expand into a new market — most likely Philadelphia — by the end of this year.

As we’ve noted, the corporate catering market is both frothy and in flux at the moment. In addition to the aforementioned ezCater raise, both ZeroCater and Platterz have raised double-digit million rounds this year. But at the same time, you see some retrenchment as Square acquired Zesty, EAT Club acquired Farm Hill and Peach laid off 33 percent of its staff.

Hungry may not have the war chests of its rivals, but it’s at least got an interesting approach. Now we’ll see if people in other parts of the country are hungry for it.