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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

China

Omnipork to Make Plant-based Pork Debut in Mainland China on Black Friday

Black Friday often means slogging through crowded stores and feasting on Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches.

But this Black Friday will also mark a significant move for Green Common, maker of the plant-based product Omnipork. On November 29, the company will make its mainland China debut through online retailer Tmall during the site’s Black Friday event. Green Common founder David Yeung said over the next two months more than 180 restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing will begin selling Omnipork, according to the South China Morning Post.

Omnipork is a meatless ground pork product developed specifically to appeal palates in Asia, where pork is the most consumed meat. The plant-based pork is currently available online, in Green Common stores and in multiple restaurants in Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau and Thailand. I got to taste it when I was in Hong Kong earlier this year, and while it wasn’t exactly the same as the real thing, it did a good job of mimicking pork when put in dishes like ramen or dumplings.

The timing is ripe for Omnipork to head to China. With the recent outbreak of the African Swine Flu, China’s pig population is estimated to drop by as much as 50 percent. But Chinese consumers still have an immense appetite for protein.

Green Common isn’t the only meat alternative company to set its sites on China. Just last week Impossible Foods’ CEO Pat Brown did its first product taste in the country at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. There he said that Impossible had developed a pork prototype and was working on scaling it with the intention of selling in China. Beyond Meat has also called out Asia as an area with high market potential for plant-based meat.

Earlier this year Yeung told me that once Omnipork entered China it would double its footprint from 5,000 to 10,000 outlets. It’s still too early to say if Chinese consumers will indeed flock to Omnipork to the degree which he anticipates, but with the prices of pork set to rise over the next few months, the time is certainly good for meat alternatives to enter the Chinese market. And now it looks like Omnipork has secured first-mover advantage.

Future Food: China is the Holy Grail for Meat Alternatives, Eclipse Foods Launches Ice Cream

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Impossible Foods may be gaining territory, both geographically and market-wise, here in the U.S. But when it comes to the future regions, the startup has its gaze set on Asia — specifically, China.

You can read the full explanation of why Impossible is eyeing China in our post, but it boils down to three main reasons:

  • China has the largest population in the world
  • China produces the most meat in the world
  • China consumes the most meat in the world, and its hunger for protein is growing

In short, China is the holy grail for any alternative meat company. That’s especially true with the recent African Swine Fever outbreak, which threatens to massively deplete pig populations and drive up pork prices.

Photo: Impossible Foods

Which plant-based meat company will get to world’s most populated country first? Impossible is certainly in the running, as is Beyond Meat. And Asian plant-based meat company Omnipork, which has the advantage of selling a product developed specifically for Asian palates, has said it will start selling in China by the end of this year.

Big Food could also make a move. China-based WH Group, the largest pork company in the world, owns Smithfield. In August Smithfield announced it would be launching a “plant-based protein portfolio.” If WH Group decides to sell a new alt-meat line in China, either under the Smithfield brand or another one, the company’s massive supply chain and retail partnerships could help it quickly scale up across the country.

Then again, it could be time for China to embrace a lower-tech meat alternative. With all these newfangled, bleeding, uber-realistic faux meat options out there, it’s easy to forget that China has actually been making its own meat alternatives for centuries to adhere to Buddhist diets.

Ten years from now, we’ll likely see a mixture of all of the above in China. The country’s appetite for protein is immense and it’ll take multiple plant-based meat players to feed. Let’s just hope that if and when Impossible does land in China, they’re prepared for the inevitable demand.

Eclipse Foods x Oddfellows. Photo: ©Heidi’s Bridge

Eclipse Foods is (soft) serving up plant-based ice cream

If you want to know what’s cool right now in the food world, a good place to look is ice cream. A few months ago Berkeley, CA-based Perfect Day launched their flora-based dairy with an initial line of ‘screams (which were delicious, btw). Now, Eclipse Foods, a plant-based dairy company based literally down the road from Perfect Day, is following in their footsteps.

This weekend Eclipse Foods is debuting its proprietary plant-based dairy recipe in limited-edition flavors at high-end ice cream shops on opposite coasts: Humphrey Slocombe in San Francisco and Oddfellows in New York (thanks for the tip, Grubhub).

Unlike Perfect Day, which ferments actual dairy proteins using genetically modified microbes, Eclipse’s dairy is made from a combination of everyday plant-based ingredients that the founders claim do a much better job imitating dairy than plain old oat or almond milk. Their product is also free from nuts, coconut, soy, and other allergens.

I had the chance to try soft serve made with Eclipse Foods’ dairy during the Good Food Conference this year and thought it was overall quite good. While the flavor was almost there — it was a bit too salty and lacked the pure neutral fattiness of dairy — the texture was spot on. The soft serve was smooth and super creamy, without the iciness that often comes with plant-based ice cream.

The flavor issue might be irrelevant for now, since I’m not sure exactly how much people will actually taste Eclipse’s dairy base underneath the bold flavors of Oddfellow’s Miso Cherry and Humphrey Slocombe’s Mexican Hot Chocolate.

Given this initial partnership, Eclipse seems to be following the Impossible sales model, starting out with high-end B2B partnerships. Impossible debuted at David Chang’s lauded Momofuku restaurant, which instantly rocketed the product to fame. Eclipse is launching with two similarly trendy brands, ones known to attract droves of Instagram-ing hipsters who can start some buzz around the new brand.

This launch will be a test to see if Eclipse can follow Impossible in other ways. Can it reinvent the plant-based dairy space like Impossible reinvented plant-based meat? Or will it just be the flavor of the month?

Photo: Nestlé

Protein ’round the web

  • Nestlé is partnering with food and biochemical company Corbion to develop microalgae ingredients for use in plant-based foods.
  • Starting this week, Chicago-based Giordano’s is offering plant-based sausage from Impossible Foods as an add-on topping fo all of its orders nationwide.
  • Speaking of Impossible, taqueria chain Dos Toros is offering Impossible beef in all 21 of its NYC and Chicago locations.
  • Mooala, maker of dairy-free milks and creamers, announced it has closed a $8.3 million Series A funding round.

That’s it from me this week.

Eat well,
Catherine

What’s Next for Impossible Foods? Maybe Pork, Definitely China

Impossible Foods is gearing up to enter China, and it looks like they might launch in that country not with their signature “bleeding” beef but instead with a plant-based pork product.

In a Bloomberg TV interview at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai today, Impossible CEO Pat Brown told cameras that the company has “a very good prototype” of plant-based pork. “It’s really just a matter of commercializing and scaling that,” he added.

We already knew that Impossible was developing alternatives to pork and fish. At CES last year (we’re returning for FoodTech Live, join us!) Pat Brown told me that they were also tackling whole cuts of meat, like steak.

Brown also told Bloomberg that Impossible was eyeing an expansion into China, which he said has “always been the most important country for our mission.” It’s easy to see why. China accounts for over one fourth of the world’s meat consumption and is also the largest producer of pork globally.

Nonetheless, the most populated country in the world is primed to embrace plant-based meat. The Chinese government is aiming to reduce its meat consumption by 50 percent by 2030, and Allied Market Research reports that the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest-growing market for meat alternatives. There’s also added motivation thanks to the recent outbreak of the African Swine Flu, which could cut the country’s pig population in half by the end of this year.

Brown told Bloomberg that Impossible is way too small to fill the supply-demand gap created by the African Swine Flu. However, he noted that outbreaks like these illustrate the problems with food security associated with meat, and could help turn people towards more sustainable plant-based alternatives.

Indeed, once Impossible does enter the Chinese market, it would make sense they do so with a pork alternative, since pork is far and away the most consumed meat in China. But Impossible wouldn’t be the only one bringing plant-based pork to Asian audiences. Omnipork, made by Hong Kong-based Right Treat, makes a ground pork alternative developed specifically to appeal to Asian palates. Omnipork isn’t yet available in China but when I spoke to CEO David Yeung earlier this year he said they were aiming to launch in that country later this year.

Of course, with China’s massive hunger for pork there’s plenty of room for more than one player in the market. Especially if future food-safety scares nudge more Chinese consumers to look to plant-based alternatives to feed their hunger for pork.

The bigger point is that once it gets to China, Impossible Foods will have access to a brand new massive market. One that’s primed and ready to hop on the plant-based meat train. If Impossible can hook Chinese consumers — and with the popularity of the Impossible Whopper, the startup has shown that it knows how to stir up consumer demand — it could have a significant ripple effect on the global industrialized meat industry.

Want to keep tabs on the white-hot alternative protein space? Make sure to subscribe to our weekly Future Food newsletter!

AI-Powered Robots Taste Testing Chinese Food for Authenticity

If there was one job you’d think would be safe from automation, it would be taste-testing. And yet, a report out today from The Star online says that in China, a government program has been using AI-powered robots to look at, smell and taste food to ensure its quality and authenticity.

China’s National Light Industry Council has been running a test for the past three years with different food manufacturers to test products such as black rice vinegar, fine dried noodles and Chinese yellow wine. From The Star:

The machines, which can learn on the job, are planted at various points along production lines to monitor the state of the food from raw ingredients to end product. They are equipped with electrical and optical sensors to simulate human eyes, noses and tongues, with a “brain” running a neural network algorithm, which looks for patterns in data.

These robots gather all the sensory information about the food, inspecting it for accuracy and consistency. According to the story, programmers and food experts have gotten the AI to take in all the multisensory data to make assessments that are roughly 90 percent as good as a human.

Though the AI can achieve results that are more consistent than a bank of human testers, The Star writes that the program is not without controversy. The China Cuisine Association objects to the robots, noting that the sophistication of Chinese food requires more nuance and understanding than the AI is capable of, especially when it comes to labeling something as “authentic.”

This isn’t the only instance of the Chinese government using AI to standardize practices in the food world. In January of this year, the Shaoxing Province of China started using cameras and AI in restaurants to automatically (and continuously) monitor sanitary conditions.

Is Big Brother Coming to Restaurant Kitchens?

As if food service didn’t have enough to worry about, what with robots predicted to automate many of jobs and put employment of actual humans in jeopardy. Now, even those humans who still have kitchen jobs in the future may have to contend with Big Brother peeking over their shoulder as they work.

ECNS.com has a report up about an artificial intelligence system being installed in restaurant kitchens in the Shaoxing Province of China to monitor for unsanitary conditions. From that story:

The system will first “learn” from a large volume of videos about nonstandard work patterns such as staff not wearing a uniform and cap, dustbins without lids, and mixed use of cutting boards, Zheng Hongdi, a representative of Yuquan Technology Development Company which developed the system, told the Global Times on Monday.

Installed cameras will monitor the kitchen, and if they catch unsanitary behaviors, as analyzed by the AI, an alert is sent to the manager. The system will also be hooked into equipment like fridges to detect any anomalies that might cause problems. Though ECNS didn’t report specifics, presumably error detection would be around temperature controls, etc..

The program is starting out in 15 restaurants and catering companies that are 3,000 square meters (~3,200 sq. feet) or larger. Should all go well, that number will eventually hit 10,000 cameras in 1,000 kitchens.

It could be tempting to dismiss this news, as it is happening in China, which exerts much stricter government controls over its society.

But reading that story this morning made me immediately think of PathSpot, the wall mounted device that looks for poop on restaurant employees hands. PathSpot wants to gamify getting employees to properly wash up, which is much less intrusive than a bank of surveillance cameras watching you leave the bathroom, but you can also see it as the tip of a spear for automating even more of a restaurant’s sanitation practices here in the U.S.

It’s not hard to understand why restaurants would want to automate such a thing. As I wrote last year when covering PathSpot:

According to the Center for Disease Control, 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States. To put it in cold, monetary terms, a single foodborne illness outbreak can cost a fast casual restaurant anywhere between $6,330 to $2.1 million.

Being able to mitigate that risk — and save money — though technologies like AI or PathSpot’s fluorescent spectroscopy is an attractive proposition for restaurants. But that does mean a surveillance state for those working in the back of the house. Restaurants already have security cameras, but soon they’ll be plugged into the software that analyzes worker behavior and narcs on them when something goes wrong.

You can also see AI creep into the front of the house with technology like Presto‘s. It’s a wearable device servers don to help with customer service, but it uses AI and predictive modeling to help with inventory and labor costs. What else could it monitor?

As a consumer (and someone who worked in a restaurant and saw more than a few unsavory things), I like the idea of a cleaner kitchen and more sanitary cooking practices anywhere I eat. But for a worker, I can imagine how nerve wracking it could feel knowing that your every move is being watched and any deviation is being reported.

JD.com Investment Puts Google in the Robot Restaurant Biz

Google announced today that it is investing $550 million into Chinese e-commerce company JD.com. Many of the takes surrounding the deal have focused on the access Google will get to the Chinese market (and JD to the American market), and how the deal is an attempt by Google to claw back some product search traffic from Amazon.

Yes, yes, yes. That’s all very important, but let’s take a moment to appreciate something else this investment means: Google is getting into the robot restaurant business! Kinda.

Earlier this month we wrote:

“…JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce company, will open 1,000 restaurants completely staffed by robots by the year 2020. Though a location hasn’t been determined yet, the first of these robo-restaurants will open in August. It will be roughly 400 sq. meters (~4,300 sq. ft.) and will serve 40 dishes from around China, with customers ordering and paying by smartphone.”

But JD’s robot ambitions aren’t relegated to restaurants. As Axios wrote last week, JD “has built a big new Shanghai fulfillment center that can organize, pack and ship 200,000 orders a day. It employs four people — all of whom service the robots.”

That type of automation is certainly very Amazonian, and perhaps one that could be licensed here in the States much the same way Kroger bought into Ocadao’s robot warehouse technology.

The JD investment becomes even more interesting as it relates to Amazon when you consider the other relationships Google’s been forming. It partnered with Walmart last year for virtual assistant shopping. Just this month, Google partnered with European grocery giant Carrefour SA for online grocery shopping and same-day delivery in France.

Of course, back here at home, Google already has it’s own research efforts around robotics, as well as investments in food robot companies like Momentum Machines and Abundant Robotics.

Now, before you — well, I — get too excited over the idea of a JD robot restaurant host taking reservations from the human-sounding Google Duplex AI, Google’s investment in JD amounts to just 1 percent of the shopping site, and there are much bigger fish to robotically fry than a restaurant chain that hasn’t actually opened yet.

Pig, Out: Omnipork Hopes to Replace China’s Most Consumed Meat

Dumplings, char siu, lo mein, sweet and sour stir fries — a lot of China’s most-loved dishes feature one meat above all: pork. In fact, mainland China is the world’s largest consumer of pork; they’re projected to consume about 56 million tons of it this year alone.

David Yeung is trying to curb Chinese pork consumption by replacing it with a plant-based option called Omnipork. Made from soy, pea, mushroom and rice proteins, Yeung hopes it will exactly mimic the taste and texture of pork. It contains about a third of the calories and saturated fat of traditional pork, as well as more fiber, calcium, or iron. And, since it’s not made from an animal, it doesn’t have any antibiotics or hormones, and carries less of a risk of foodborne illness.

This isn’t Yeung’s first foray into meat alternatives. He is an investor in Beyond Meat and brought the meatless burgers over to Hong Kong to sell in Green Common, a vegetarian grocery store and casual dining chain that he founded. Green Common is one of the few places in the world to serve Just Scramble, a mung bean-based egg substitute.

Omnipork will launch in Hong Kong in June, at Michelin-starred restaurant Cantonese Ming Court. Yeung’s company Right Treat is working to get their product approved by Chinese regulators. If they succeed, Yeung hopes to start selling it in mainland China by the end of 2018. 

According to a taste test with CNNMoney, however, Omnipork isn’t fooling anyone yet. Part of the issue might be because there’s so little precedent; Right Treat is one of the first to focus on making a plant-based pork product. Sure Beyond Meat has a (still relatively new) Beyond Sausage and there are a few companies turning jackfruit into pseudo pulled pork. But compared to beef — especially burgers, “bleeding” and otherwise — there are very few examples of plant-based pig products. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make an all-in-one pork replacement — one that steams, fries, and patties like pork — and they’re going where no meat alternative company has gone before.

Which is also why Omnipork has such great potential. Since there are so few vegan “pork” products, if Yeung can successfully develop one that has the same taste and texture as the real thing, it could be massively successful. After all, pork is the most consumed meat in the world, according to the World Watch Institute — and much of it is consumed in China. 60% of all hogs are bred in China, 95% of which are slaughtered and eaten before they leave the country.

Yeung realized that if he was going to tempt China away from pork, his product would have to be tailored to Chinese culinary tastes. While the majority of plant-based meat alternative companies are developed for Western palates, he worked to create a specifically ‘Chinese’ plant-based pork product. (He did, however, team up with U.S. scientists to develop it.) Because if a pork alternative is going to make a serious dent in the meat industry, it has to make a serious dent in the Chinese pork market.

Yeung’s timing just might pay off. There are around 50 million vegetarians in China, and, thanks to growing concern for health, food safety scares, and millennial dining habits, the number is projected to rise. Pair this with the fact that the Chinese government announced two years ago that they’re aiming to cut national meat consumption by 50% and a growth in the Chinese vegetarian protein market seems inevitable. If demand for meat alternatives increases in China, as it did in the U.S., then Omnipork could soon be flying off the shelves — as long as the flavor gets a little closer to pork.

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.