• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

coffee

March 20, 2019

These 10 Food Tech Startups from Y Combinator’s Latest Cohort are Ones to Watch

If you want a hint about what cool new startups and innovations are coming around the corner, look to Y Combinator. Twice a year, the accelerator, which has helped launch tech giants like AirBnB and DropBox, invests money and time to mentor a cohort of young startups.

With over 200 companies, the Y Combinator’s recently-announced Winter 2019 class is its largest yet. And we’re pleased to note that the group contains quite a few food tech startups. We’ve sifted through the list to highlight the top 10 companies we think are ones to watch.

Shef

A few months ago California passed AB-626, opening up a new market for the sale of home-cooked food. Dishdivvy was the first to jump on this opportunity, connecting Southern California home cooks with hungry diners, but clearly it’s not the only startup realizing the opportunity here. Shef is a new service that lets Bay Area-ites order refrigerated meals made by nearby home cooks, which are delivered to their door. Hungry folks can order four, eight, or twelve meals per week, which cost between $6.50 and $7.50 a meal.

Habitat Logistics

Habitat Logistics is a delivery-only service that helps restaurants get online orders to their customers. The company promises to take a lower commission than other aggregation/delivery services, like GrubHub or Postmates, while also dealing with staffing issues and responding to customer complaints.

Photo: Taali Foods.

Taali Foods

Taali foods is a new natural snacking company. The company’s first product, Water Lily Pops, is a popcorn-like snack made of popped water lily seeds. The snacks come in flavors like Tangy Turmeric and Sriracha Spice, and have significantly less fat and calories than regular popcorn. I sampled some Water Lily pops while at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco this winter, and I have to say, they were pretty tasty.

Shiok Meats

Shiok Meats, the Sinapore-based startup that is making cell-based shrimp and other crustaceans, is the first cultured meat company to participate in Y Combinator. Co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram told The Spoon that they’re planning to roll out their products in Southeast Asia, and expect to have their first cell-based product to market in three to five years.

Maitian AI

Based in Sinapore, Maitian AI makes high-tech vending machines that it calls “autonomous stores.” Hungry people download Maitian’s app and scan a QR code on their phone to unlock the store’s doors. They can pick up and examine the selection of fresh products (yogurt, salads, etc.) before choosing what they want, after which they shut the door and are charged for their selections. The company doesn’t disclose which technology they use to track customer selections, but the whole operation sounds a heck of a lot like Byte Foods. Maitian AI currently has two stores operating in a WeWork in Singapore.

Bensen

Restaurants can license Bensen technology to let customers place their orders via voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant. Restaurant partners upload their menu to Bensen, which builds out a voice ordering interface. The voice technology can be used in drive-thrus (like Valyant AI and Clinc are already doing), or even on restaurants’ apps or website.

Eclipse Foods

Eclipse Foods makes plant-based dairy products that it claims are indistinguishable from their animal dairy counterparts. With co-founders Thomas Bowman from JUST (who spoke at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit) and Aylon Steinhart of the Good Food Institute, Eclipse Foods has quite the plant-based pedigree. Details are scant on what exactly Eclipse’s first product will be, but the team told Techcrunch that it would debut in pilots with SF-based Wise Sons deli and Humphrey Slocombe ice cream.

Video Player
https://www.taobotics.com/vid/supermarket.mp4

Media error: Format(s) not supported or source(s) not found

Download File: https://www.taobotics.com/vid/supermarket.mp4?_=1
00:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

Taobotics

Startup Taobotics makes a self-driving robot that roves around supermarkets to help retail brands promote their products by putting them on their circular, tiered shelves. To me this sounds kind of annoying, but there’s no denying that shoppers are more prone to buy something when it’s right in front of them (damn you, Twix bars at checkout). Taobotics is currently operating in Chinese grocery stores and, according to Techcrunch, recently closed a Letter of Intent for 1,000 retail robots.

Releaf

Releaf is developing machines to help affordably scale the processing of raw food materials in Africa. In their website, the company claims that food factories are operating under-capacity because they can’t secure enough consistent, high-quality raw food ingredients. The company didn’t give specifics on how they will scale to supply better raw materials, but the website stated that they’ll start by tackling the Nigerian crude vegetable oil industry.

Bottomless

There’s no worse feeling than getting ready to brew a pot of morning coffee and realizing you’re out of beans. Startup Bottomless makes a connected scale which, when placed under a bag of coffee beans/grounds, tracks users’ coffee supply and re-orders when they’re about to run out of joe. Bottomless users get an alert 12-24 hours before the system reorders, and can opt to get the same bag every time or switch it up. In addition to the bag of coffee, users also pay a shipping fee and a membership fee.

March 8, 2019

ArticulATE Q&A: Briggo’s Coffee Haus has Served 470,000 Cups of Robot-Made Drinks

Look in any coffee shop in any city in America (or perhaps even the world) in the morning and chances are you’ll see people lined up to get their first cup of joe. Pretty soon, however, those people could be lined up in front of a robot that automatically and tirelessly slings custom-made lattes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Austin-based Briggo is one such company making always-open robo-baristas a reality. The company’s Coffee Haus is an automated high-tech vending machine designed to serve up morning (and afternoon, and evening, and middle of the night) fixes in high-volume areas like corporate campuses and airports.

But Briggo is more than a robotics company: it’s actually a full-stack coffee company, which also sources and roasts its own beans. This farm-to-cup approach to automated coffee was just one of the reasons we wanted to invite Chas Studor, Founder and CTO of Briggo, to speak at our upcoming ArticulATE food robot conference in San Francisco on April 16th (get your tickets today!).

But before he sits down at our show, Studor sat down for an emailed Q&A to tell us a little bit more about Briggo, the whole coffee process and why flight attendants love the Coffee Haus.

THE SPOON: What makes robots a good fit for coffee?

STUDOR: Precision and consistency are essential throughout the coffee supply chain. Some of the best coffees are already processed in highly automated dry mills in origin, and we employ sophisticated automation at the roaster. So why not create automated precision at the final step when the coffee is made.

You also create your own coffee, why did you decide to take this full stack approach.

For the best results, the ingredients and process must be designed in concert. Working with our importer and roaster partner, I spent months developing the Briggo Blend simultaneously with complementary extraction parameters. I could vary the roast level and proportion of the various origins and I would modify dosing, pre-infusion levels, temperatures and several other variables to maximize the intent of each flavor component as revealed through cuppings.

I started the company with the intent of applying emerging technology in a way that could create opportunities from farm to cup. By employing a “direct sourcing” approach, we understand how each step in the supply chain adds value, and then we apply our technology to get the most out of those beans.

In the end, we use technology to reduce waste and inconsistencies in the process, which in turn supports our partners at origin and delivers an amazing customer experience.

You recently launched at the Austin Airport, what makes airports a good fit for Briggo?

There are few other locations where speed, quality, and on-demand services are at such a premium. Being a completely automated solution, we can serve customers long after other shops close and long before they open. As you can imagine, some of our greatest advocates are the TSA agents, flight crews, and road warriors who have early schedules and limited time for coffee lines. Next time you visit the Austin Airport (or SFO later this spring), try using our Briggo app to order as you pass through security, swing past the Coffee Haus to pick up your beverage, and be on your way in minutes. Just like other venues, quality and convenience is often a trade-off, not so much at Briggo!

What kind of stats can you share about your customers? What are they buying, how often, does location impact what people purchase?

  • ~90k customers & 470k drinks served to date
  • 40% of our registered customers have bought 10 or more drinks and earned their first free loyalty beverage, taking just over 3 months to get there
  • 46% of our corporate customers have tried 3 or more unique menu items
  • 5 of our most loyal customers have purchased more than 1,000 drinks all time
  • 54% of all drinks are customized with either added flavors, dairy types, shots, sweeteners, strength, or even drink temperature

What is your favorite robot from fiction?

Rosie from the Jetson’s. I always liked her sarcasm, and we often get the “Jetson’s delivered” comment.

March 1, 2019

Analyst: Starbucks Could be the First Major Chain to Launch CBD-Infused Drinks (Eventually)

Cannabidiol (CBD) — the non-hallucinogenic ingredient in cannabis meant to promote relaxation — could be headed to your neighborhood Starbucks.

Well, eventually. This week financial services company Cowen released a report predicting the CBD market could be worth $16 billion by 2025. More interestingly, it hinted that Starbuck’s could be one of the first major chains to offer cannabidiol-infused drinks.

In the report, Cowen analyst Andrew Charles noted that Starbuck’s probably wouldn’t adopt CBD in the “near term,” which makes sense since no major chain will put it on their menu until the FDA gives its stamp of approval. However, he went on to write that, should the regulation of CBD change, “we could envision Starbucks ultimately piloting the ingredient.”

That’s pretty theoretical language. Starbuck’s hasn’t made any indication that it’s actually exploring cannabis-infused beverages. In an interview with CNBC, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson stated that Starbucks was aware of the edible/drinkable cannabis trend, though it didn’t have any immediate plans to pilot any drinks with THC or CBD.

It seems like the Cowen report called out Starbuck’s less because of any concrete hint from the company and more to illustrate a future in which CBD is so mainstream, it’s available somewhere as ubiquitous as Starbuck’s.

However, it will likely be a while yet before that’s the case. Though CBD-infused beverages have been popping up at local coffee shops and bodegas for some time, the chemical hasn’t been approved as “food-safe” by the FDA (despite its becoming legal with the passage of the Farm Bill in 2018).

Up until recently most CBD edibles sellers have been operating under the radar with little to no consequences. However, last month New York City health inspectors cracked down and put a citywide embargo on selling food or drink infused with CBD. The ban was recently delayed until this summer.

The FDA likely won’t approve CBD as food-safe by then, and some see the NYC crackdown as a bellwether for more restrictions on the sale of cannabidiol-infused food and drinks. But that doesn’t negate the fact that demand for the non-hallucinogenic ingredient is on the rise, thanks in part to celebrity endorsements and the recent “wellness” movement.

We’ve written before that despite all the buzz surrounding CBD beverages, it’ll likely be a while before it’s ready for the mainstream.

February 20, 2019

Cafe X and Briggo Bringing Robot Baristas to San Francisco Airport

Cafe X posted a teaser image to Instagram today, telling the world that its robot barista will be coming to the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cafe X (@cafexapp) on Feb 20, 2019 at 10:37am PST

The news itself isn’t that surprising. Cafe X is based in the Bay Area and already has three robo-barista locations up and running in downtown San Francisco. The company has told us before that high-traffic areas like airports are high on its list of target locations.

But it seems like there may be a robot barista battle, err, brewing at SFO. According to The Houston Chronicle, Austin, TX-based Briggo will be setting up its robotic Coffee Haus at SFO as well. The San Francisco Business Journal reported back in November that the SFO Airport Commission was on a fast track to approve a test run with Briggo when Cafe X raised its hand during a Nov. 6, 2018 planning meeting. The Business Journal writes:

“We are striving to be a very, very responsible employer in San Francisco bringing trade jobs back to the city,” Cynthia Yeung, COO of Cafe X, told the SFO commissioners at the Nov. 6 meeting. “And I want to understand why, with so little transparency, this trial program was awarded to a Texas based company?”

Evidently, this was enough to sway the commission, and Cafe X is cleared to land at SFO.

Places like airports are perfect for robot baristas, which can run all day, slinging up lattes when other locations are closed (and the robots won’t misspell your name). Briggo‘s coffee robot is already installed at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, and it’s not hard to see why Cafe X wanted to protect its home turf.

According to The Chronicle, SFO cafes and coffee houses do $50 million a year in sales. Both robo-baristas will be installed after security in the airport in Terminal 3. Briggo will open around Memorial Day and Cafe X will launch over Labor Day.

We’ve reached out to both companies.

While both Briggo and Cafe X make robots, each is taking a very different approach. Briggo’s is more of a high-end vending machine with all the automation enclosed, and the company also roasts its own coffee. Cafe X, other other hand, puts its articulating front and center to add some theatricality to its coffee making, and curates coffee from outside roasters.

Lucky for us, we have Cynthia Yeung, COO of Cafe X and Chas Studor, Founder and CTO of Briggo speaking at our ArticulATE food robot conference happening in San Francisco on April 16 (tickets are limited, get yours now!). It’s just too bad I won’t be able to grab a robo-latte when I arrive.

February 18, 2019

Ethiopian Coffee Company Uses Blockchain to Keep More Profits with Farmers

Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee, which, legend has it, was discovered in the eighth century by a shepherd who noticed his goats were bleating and jumping after eating coffee berries. More recently, the home of coffee has started experimenting with a new technology: blockchain.

Last June, Ethiopian-Dutch company Moyee Coffee partnered with its sister company FairChain Foundation and tech company Bext360 to create Token, a new brand of coffee entirely powered by blockchain. As the name suggests, each bag of coffee contains a namesake token worth €0.50, ($0.56 USD), which consumers can give directly to the farmers or the FairChain Foundation, or put towards a discount on their next bag of coffee. Then, using blockchain, they can trace the impact of their donation.

Obviously fifty cents is just a drop in the bucket in terms of farmers getting a larger piece of the profit. Moyee also hasn’t released any data about how many of these tokens were used or how much they increased the income of growers. But even fifty cents can seem like a good bit of money when coffee farmers only net an average of $1.30 for each pound of Fair Trade beans they sell — beans which will go on to retail for roughly $15.

In addition to being a smart marketing play, Moyee’s initiative also serves to get both consumers and farmers more comfortable with the often-intimidating technology that is blockchain.

Now, according to the Thomas Reuters Foundation, Moyee is increasing its investment in blockchain with new capabilities. The company will use blockchain to enable traceability on the buyer’s side, so that roasters and consumers can see exactly where and when their coffee was sourced. They can also access the profiles of Moyee’s 350 grower partners to see how much they’re paid for each pound of coffee. With this new technology, farmers can also deal directly with buyers, cutting out the middleman (exporters, importers, etc.) and, at least theoretically, giving them a larger piece of the profit.

Buyers can also use a mobile app to tip individual farmers and fund projects like planting programs which will help make coffee farms more resistant to climate change.

Moyee isn’t the only one working to make the (often lengthy) coffee supply chain more transparent. Last March Starbucks launched a traceability program which outlined coffee’s journey from “bean to cup.” This seemed to be marketing play more than anything, since the company didn’t call out any specifics on how it would use the data to help farmers or ensure more sustainable supply chains.

Nonetheless, the growing number of coffee transparency programs highlights a consumer desire for traceability beyond just the world of food safety (cough, romaine, cough). People want to know more about where their food and drink comes from, and are also seeking out sustainable, ethical products. In response, companies are turning to blockchain to do everything from improving accurate seafood labeling to fighting wine fraud.

But that doesn’t mean blockchain is a magic bullet to fix the entire food system. As traceability startup FoodLogiQ’s Chief Marketing Officer Katy Jones pointed out when we spoke last year, blockchain is only as strong as its weakest link. If the data that goes into tracking, say, a bag of coffee beans isn’t 100 percent accurate at each step of the way, then the integrity of the entire chain is shot.

And giving farmers a slightly better percentage of coffee profit or a few €0.50 tokens will not solve the issues of drought, fluctuating prices, or credit access that plague many coffee growers. But it’s a step in the right direction putting more power in the hands of the growers themselves. As climate change makes coffee more difficult to cultivate, farmers will need a lot more resources and support — unless we end up just making our coffee without the beans in the future.

home coffee roaster

February 13, 2019

Home Coffee Roasting Gear Is Booming, But Will It Last?

We’ve seen espresso machines sized down to fit home kitchens. We’ve seen pour over cones transition from a snooty barista tool to home coffee bar essential. And now, it seems, coffee roasting is undergoing a similar adaptation.

Home coffee roasters have existed for years, with Behmor, Hottop, and Gene Cafe leading the space (behind Grandma’s repurposed popcorn popper, of course), but a new wave of home roasting gear is making waves—and raising lots of money.

Back in 2013, over 2,000 backers raised $600,000 to bring the Bonaverde Berlin—an $800 home roaster and coffee maker combo device—to life (you can read our review here).In 2015, London-based Ikawa raised just over $200,000 to bring its app-controlled roaster to prosumer homes. The device pre-sold for $650, was released in 2017, and now sells for just over $1,000 at retail.

And more recently in 2018, IA Collaborative Ventures’ Kelvin raised $400,000 to make coffee roasting even simpler and more affordable for casual coffee lovers, with devices pre-sold for just $250. A few weeks later, the Singaporean Power Roaster raised another $50,000 with roasters for $280 a pop.

For those of us in the coffee industry, this home roasting gear boom is a bit surprising. Roasting coffee is far more complex than most consumers imagine. Getting hold of high-quality unroasted beans can be a challenge. After roasting the beans, you have to wait days for the beans to release carbon dioxide before they even taste good. And when you finally get a great flavor profile you’re proud of, it’s hard to produce a second time.

Can home roasters engage casual coffee lovers enough to make the growth we’re seeing sustainable, or is this another fad that consumers will grow tired of once they’re confronted with the hidden complexities of coffee roasting?

I interviewed Alex Georgiou, Ikawa’s Head of Marketing, to discuss how he sees this niche market evolving over the next few years.

“The global home roasting audience is all in different places,” he pointed out. Taiwan has a well-developed tradition of home roasting with low-tech tools. Europe’s traditional cafes still maintain the monopoly on coffee beans. And America has “really deep pockets of home roasting enthusiasts.”

ikawa coffee roaster

But even in parts of the world where exploring new kinds of coffee experiences is commonplace, Alex admits that home roasters are still a very niche audience, largely because the equipment isn’t very intuitive. “For a lot of people it’s a little bit like wrestling with a vacuum cleaner in your garage. It’s hard to do well and it’s not really an enjoyable process.”

To combat this challenge, Ikawa ships six bags of green coffee beans with every Ikawa At Home roaster. When users open the app and pick a bean to start roasting, they then can choose from six roast profile options—each highlighting different flavors and aromas. “Even if you’ve never roasted coffee before, you’ll be able to get great results, and then you can explore that going forward.”

This eliminates the friction of sourcing green coffee and figuring out how to roast for the first time, but is it enough to get casual coffee lovers on board? At just over $1,000 for the Ikawa At Home, many in the industry have voiced concern that it’s priced too high to open the home roasting floodgates.

I also reached out to Dan Kraemer, Founder and Chief Design Officer at IA Collaborative and creator of the Kelvin roaster, to get a different perspective. Like Alex, Dan sees accessibility as the key to enabling demand for home roasting gear to grow.

“Consumers just need to know it’s an option,” Dan said when I asked what it’s going to take for roasting to go mainstream. “The complete roaster and green bean delivery solution we offer through Kelvin will make home coffee roasting super easy and accessible.”

The Kelvin is priced at just $249 for pre-orders and will be around $330 after devices ship this Spring—a significantly more affordable option for aspiring home roasters. Rather than allowing consumers to control every aspect of their roast profile via an app like the Ikawa At Home, Kelvin users simply turn a single dial on the device to set their roast time.

“You can create myriad combinations of flavors and profiles just by varying the amount of time that you roast the coffee,” Dan said. “It’s a very simple entry-point for people who’ve never roasted before.”

The standard Kelvin Starter Pack will ship with a single pound of green coffee, but most pre-order customers actually opted to order three to six pounds of coffee. Dan is confident that most Kelvin users will continue to use the Kelvin app to source coffees that are tailored to their taste and brewing preferences once they’ve gone through their initial bags.

kelvin coffee roaster

Ikawa and Kelvin tackle the issue of home roasting differently, but there’s one belief they both share: fanatics are always finding new ways to explore the world of coffee, and roasting at home is the natural next step for millions of people around the world—they just need the right accessible equipment to start this next segment of their coffee journey.

We’re still in the early days of home roasting, and at this point, it’s hard to tell whether it’ll remain an activity for super-enthusiasts or if consumer-centric devices like the Ikawa At Home and Kelvin will be able to capture the attention of more casual coffee lovers.

February 10, 2019

Rite’s Wrongs, Crowdfunded No-Mess French Press Is a No Show For Many Backers

Looks like you can add the Rite No-Mess French Press to the long list of crowdfunded hardware projects that have a hard time making it to market. Upset backers that haven’t received their product almost a year after the promised delivery date, have been venting their frustrations here at The Spoon and on Kickstarter:

Backers have been sharing information and screengrabs with us from Rite’s backer-only updates posted to Kickstarter, and here’s what’s happening:

What happened to the money?
Backers got riled up in earnest last week, when on February 4, of this year when Rite’s CEO, Sargam Patel, posted a video on Kickstarter saying that there have been manufacturing challenges (a factory quitting, filter issues) and they need more money (we watched a screencapture of the video). Patel says he sank most of his life savings ($280,000) into the project and has not paid himself. He then goes on to ask backers for $30 a pop to pay the factory as well as the shipping and duties.

In the video, Patel also says that the company raised over $1 million in pledges, which is technically true if you look at the Kickstarter page, where it says “21,771 backers pledged $1,086,974 to help bring this project to life.” But sifting through the multiple Indiegogo campaigns the company ran, it looks like Rite pulled in $220,400. Plus it won $25,000 in “flash funding” from Ingram Micro, bringing the total to $1,332,374. It’s not a huge gulf between what he says they crowdfunded versus the apparent reality, but it’s good to get the full picture.

In the video, Patel says he’s spent the money “responsibly,” and blames pricing the product too low ($25 – $50 depending on the model and when you pledged) and offering free shipping in the U.S. for the company’s woes.

Additionally, the company experienced manufacturing issues, which is pretty common for crowdfunded hardware projects.

In an update on February 7, Patel shared the financials in a backer-only update via Kickstarter, which were sent to The Spoon:


What’s missing from these numbers is the $220,000 raised on Indiegogo. Granted the number Rite would actually have collected was less as Indiegogo charges 5 percent commission, and Stripe charges 3 percent + .30 per transaction, but money earned should be included. Patel may not have included it as this was a message to Kickstarter backers, but the omission is relevant when you’re going back and asking people for more money.

Patel said that 7,000 people have received their presses so far. That means at least 14,771 backers still don’t have theirs (and that number doesn’t include any Indiegogo backers).

One other point, in the video Patel says that asking for the $30 from existing backers was a “non-starter” for the Kickstarter legal team so he is going out directly via email. Kickstarter confirmed via email to The Spoon that it determined asking backers for more money “was not an appropriate use of our platform.”

Why did Rite only allow for two months for delivering its product?
The Rite Kickstarter campaign happened in January 2018, and featured a number of variations on the product: a half-liter version, full liter, different colors, etc.. The estimated delivery date for most of these was March 2018. That’s just two months after the campaign reached it’s initial goal.

The Kickstarter campaign, which launched in January 2018, says that the first off tool samples of the french press happened in September 2017, and in November 2017, product testing had occurred. If this happened as listed, then perhaps the company felt that in all honesty, they could flip the switch, have the products produced, shipped and delivered in that short window.

But that obviously didn’t work out. In his February 7 update, Patel explains what happened:

The first factory built tools in 2017 for both the 1 liter and ½ liter. The factor started production on the ½ liter because they felt it was easier to produce than the 1 liter. The parts they were making had repeated problems that should have been an easy solve. At the same time the factory was not chasing 1 liter production schedule effectively. I feel the factory felt producing products to our quality standard was not going to be profitable for them so they told us they would not be producing product going forward. At this point we asked for our money back for the material deposits and tooling. They responded by saying they had already spent over hundred thousand dollars on development would not return the tools or deposits back. We spoke with an attorney in South China about this. His feedback was that we would spend far more than the cost of the tools and deposits in legal fees and it could take years to find a resolution. In my years of working with China, I have never had a factory do this.

Regardless, Rite obviously did not build in enough of a buffer in the schedule to accommodate unforeseen hiccups. Aside from poor planning, however, this created a certain expectation with the backers, and not only were those expectations dashed, the short window made it that much easier for a year to pass and raise the ire of backers.

What is happening with direct sales?
While Rite fields comments from angry backers on crowdfunding platforms for failing to deliver, the company is taking pre-orders on its website for the product. The site says pre-orders are shipping in Summer of 2019. How can they take money to fulfill that promise when they can’t even fulfill their all of their initial commitments?

In the Feb. 7 update, Patel says:

We will continue to ship Rite Presses to Kickstarter backers as funds become available. Right now our best source of funding toward this effort is the sale of products on our website and Amazon. The stronger the sales are in these channels, the faster we will be able to get all backers’ units. I understand this is not an ideal situation, but it is a path forward. THIS DOES MEAN THAT WE WILL START SELLING RITE PRESS ON OUR SITE IN A FEW MONTHS AT FULL RETAIL, and will use a portion of these sales to help ship backers units.

Rite also made 5,500 of its Essential+, a plastic version of its french press. It sells on on Amazon (but not directly on its site) for $50.

In his Feb. 7 update, Patel explains how the plastic version came to be when the metal versions are MIA:

3) Did you use backers funds to develop the plastic Essential+?

No. I see this question a lot in the comments section. When we decided to partner with Amazon for the plastic press, the first thing I did was raise separate funds for development and inventory of Essential + from outside investors. We used these outside funds to develop, tool and build it. The Essential + however is a backers biggest help. The funds that we can generate from sales of it on Amazon will help us ship backer rewards faster. We will deploy part of the profits from Essential + to ship Kickstarter backer funds.

So, was it naivete or hubris that bogged down Rite? Making crowdfunded hardware is, well, hard. That’s why Kickstarter launched its own hardware studio to help the platform, and backers, make sure product campaigns reach the market.

We reached out to Patel, as well as other people listed on Rite’s team page for clarification via email and Linkedin.

Like the Spinn, the Cinder and the iGulu, the Rite french press is another cautionary tale for would-be backers of crowdfunded hardware projects. Buyer beware, and be prepared for delays.

This article has been updated because of a typo in the crowdfunding number. The amount raised on Indiegogo was $220,400.

February 7, 2019

Atomo Coffee has Developed Less-Bitter, Sustainable Coffee. The Secret? No Beans.

For many of us, our morning cup of coffee is the only thing that makes us functioning humans. But I’m betting that rarely (if ever) our morning fuel-up do we consider the negative impact of coffee farming on the environment.

We should. Coffee consumption is on the rise, and according to a report by Conservation International, coffee growers may have to triple their demand by 2050 to meet demand. At the same time, global warming is making it harder and harder to grow coffee beans. In January of this year, Science Advances estimated that 60 percent of wild coffee species are under threat of extinction.

Seattle-based startup Atomo claims to bring you all the goodness of a cup of coffee — without the bean. Atomo’s so-called “molecular coffee” is made by reverse engineering the flavor and aroma compounds in coffee bean to make a substance that, when brewed, tastes and caffeinates like java. It’s made with natural ingredients and can be brewed one-to-one for coffee in French presses, refillable K-cups, pour-overs, etc.

Atomo’s original product was a liquid, which the team creates in small batches in their food scientist’s garage. But today they’re launching a Kickstarter to raise $10,000 to sell a ground version of their coffee, which they’re aiming to launch in Q4 2019. During a phone interview, Atomo CEO Andy Kleitsch told me that Atomo’s coffee would cost anywhere from $0.33 to $0.55 cents per cup — at least a fourth of the price of a cup from Starbuck’s. But if you’re a latte lover, Atomo might not be for you: as of now they only make ground coffee for drip, not espresso.

It’s no secret that plenty of crowdfunding projects don’t ever make it to market. But there are two reasons I think Atomo can pull it off. First of all, Atomo’s team has a good experience set: Kelitsch is on the board of the UW entrepreneurship program, and Atomo’s chief scientist Jarret Stopforth has helped develop products at Soylent, Campbell’s, and Chobani, and more. Secondly, Atomo is partnering with food and beverage development company Mattson to help quickly develop and scale their coffee.

In addition the environmental and novelty draws, Atomo is also marketing its product as a less bitter version of coffee. During their re-engineering process, Kleitsch and his team decided not to add back in the chlorogenic acid, which gives coffee its bitter taste. For those who need to doctor their java with cream and sugar, Atomo could offer a welcome alternative. In fact, during a blind taste test on the University of Washington campus, 70 percent of students preferred Atomo’s “coffee” to Starbuck’s. Admittedly, the experiment had a sample size of just 30 students. However, it goes to show that in situations where people are just looking for a pleasant-tasting jolt of caffeine, “to bean or not to bean” might not be such a big deal after all — especially with Atomo’s attractive price point.

Learning about Atomo’s reverse engineering process made me think of Ava Winery. Instead of coffee without the bean, Ava is making wine without the grapes, yeast, or fermentation by mimicking its chemical compounds. It makes me wonder: what other popular foods and beverages will we see “hacked” in the future?

At the end of the day, Atomo might not make the cut for true coffee aficionados. But for the average Joe (ha), Atomo’s “molecular coffee” could be just fine and dancy — and taste all the sweeter knowing they’re saving the environment with every cup.

January 28, 2019

This Company Wants to Roast Coffee Beans in Space — For Real

If you think you go to great heights to find the best coffee, you’re about to be one-upped. Space Roasters founders Anders Cavallini and Hatem Alkhafaji decided that in order to achieve perfectly roasted beans, there was only one thing to do: head to outer space.

Naturally.

Here’s how it will supposedly work: According to the Guardian, the spacecraft — dubbed the Coffee Roasting Capsule — will launch from Earth filled with 300 kg green coffee beans, reaching a height of about 200km (124 mi). Upon the 20-minute trip back to Earth, the beans will roast in the heat generated by the reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Since the capsule will be zero-gravity, the beans will be free-floating, meaning that they’ll get a 360-degree even roast.

Photo: Space Roasters website.

Once the device returns to earth, Space Roasters plans to sell the first-ever space-roasted coffee in Dubai, where the company is based (though the website’s contact page lists their location as San Diego, California).

The concept may be ludicrous, but the Space Roasters founders just might have the background to make it happen. Both Cavallini and Alkhafaji have educations in Space Science, and Cavallini has worked at NASA and Orbital and has “over 5 years of experience roasting, brewing, and tasting coffee from around the world.”

But there’s at least one coffee roasting red flag. The Space Roasters team expects temperatures inside the capsule to be around 200°C (392°F) during re-entry. I won’t get too deep into coffee roasting science here, but that’s a pretty low temperature — meaning that the coffee will likely have a very, very light roast. This is just another sign that this stunt is clearly less about creating the perfect cup of joe and more about creating a public spectacle.

Forgive the skepticism. As an ex-specialty coffee barista and forever coffee snob, I’ve seen people go to great heights to achieve the perfect coffee roast. Just not heights as great as this. And honestly, coffee roasted the traditional way is pretty dang great. While theoretically roasting beans in zero gravity would give a more consistent, all-around roast, there’s no way it will taste good enough to justify what is presumably an out-of-this-world pricetag (the company has yet to disclose any pricing details).

In the Guardian interview, the Space Roasters founders said that they were in discussions with private rocket companies like Rocket Lab and Blue Origins to find a launch partner. They’re hoping to launch the capsule as early as next year.

If you’re interested in getting in on this cosmic coffee, the Space Roaster’s website has a countdown clock for a pre-sale campaign which will open in a few weeks. Be sure to let us know if you suddenly get alien superpowers after sipping on a space latte.

January 11, 2019

Cheers to the Future: Five Cool Beverage Startups at CES’ Eureka Park

Sure, the towering installations, self-driving cars, and elaborate smart home setups at CES are fun to see. But my favorite part of the show is wandering through Eureka Park, the gigantic open room filled with over 1,200 startups all hoping to make a name for themselves. Meandering up and down the aisles of this room is one of the best ways to discover companies that are hidden gems.

Interestingly, some of this year’s coolest startups involved beverages. From coffee alarm clocks to wine sensors, here are five that caught my eye amid the chaos of Eureka Park.

IMG-0837
IMG-0838

Capsulier
Making your morning espresso with a coffee pod is super convenient, but those plastic pods are a blight on the environment (unless you mail them back to Nespresso), not to mention, expensive. Atom Xquare Limited’s Capsulier device is out to free you from the pod with their countertop machine which lets you make your own custom coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Just put a scoopful ground coffee (or loose-leaf tea) in the top of the device, pop in the reusable stainless steel pod, and pull the lever to pack your own pod. You can use it in your Nespresso machine, then wash it out and then reuse.

There are already refillable Nespresso capsules on the market, but Capsulier promises to precisely measure and pack your coffee so there’s no mess or guestimating. As of now the Capsulier only makes pods that fit into Nespresso machines, so if you use a Keurig you’re out of luck. The device retails for $99 on Atom Xquare Limited’s website, and you can purchase additional pods for $36 each.

 

TeaRado
TeaRado Tech‘s smart, self-heating tea tumbler can brew up to two cups of tea on the go. To make the tea, fill the interior basket with loose leaf tea, pour room temperature water into the tumbler, and set the brew time and water temperature on the TeaRado app. In 12 to 15 minutes, the water will heat up to 170 °F and brew the tea via an automated French Press-like movement. You can either brew by setting the tumbler on a charging pod and plugging it into the wall, or attaching it to a battery pack to brew on the go.

TeaRado’s brewer will retail for $150, and users can also purchase tea through the connected app. TeaRado will launch on Kickstarter on April 15 and is expected to ship in December of this year.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

MyOeno Scan
Unless you’re a sommelier, figuring out the composition of wines — and which types you like — can be a daunting challenge. MyOeno Scan has a small device (roughly 4 inches long) which, when inserted into a glass of wine, will display a breakdown of its levels of tannins, acidity, and strength on the MyOeno app. Afterwards, you drink and rate the wine, so the app learns what type you like. Once you’ve established your taste profile, you can search for compatible wines on the MyOeno app and see where they’re available to purchase.

The device retails for €89 ($102 USD) and is available on the MyOeno website and through Amazon. Fun fact: MyOeno can also be used in milk to detect if it contains any water or detergent, a service which the team told me is mostly used in Asia.

 

Photo: Catherine Lamb

Barisieur
Dragging yourself out of bed in the morning is way easier if coffee is near. U.K. startup Barisieur‘s coffee brewer alarm clock brings the cup of joe to you while you’re still in bed. The night before, fill the drawer on the front of the device with ground coffee (or tea), then set your alarm and indicate whether you want your coffee to start brewing before, during, or after your alarm sounds. It takes 2 to 3 minutes for the water to boil, and a few more for the coffee to brew. There’s even a small chilled compartment where you can keep a wee container of milk or half-n-half.

Barisieur retails for $445 (zoinks!), and is available online and in several large department stores in the U.K. and U.S.

 

DrinkShift
No one likes running out of beer. And while keeping track of your bottle count isn’t exactly rocket science, the new smart beer fridge from Tokyo-based DrinkShift manages your stock for you. The fridge’s server monitors your drinking pace and uses an algorithm to figure out when to re-order more brewskies so you never run out. You can customize beer packages to indicate which ones you want, and they’re delivered to your door via a third party retailer.

DrinkShift debuted their fridge this April; it was immediately bought by Panasonic. It’s not on the market yet, and also doesn’t yet have a retail price — but one of the booth workers told me it will first roll out in Japan.

Eureka Park is huge and I am but one person — did I miss any cool, under-the-radar startups? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

December 27, 2018

Video: Bellwether Cuts Out the Coffee Roasting Middleman

“A lot of people don’t realize just how big coffee is,” said Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Bellwether Coffee at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. Seriously, though: according to him, coffee is the most consumed beverage in the U.S., with people drinking more cups of joe than bottles of water, wine, and beer combined.

Not only are people drinking a lot of coffee, they’re also drinking better coffee. Consumers — especially millennials — are looking for fresher, higher-quality beans that are roasted locally. And they’re willing to pay for it.

But getting that freshly-roasted product into the hands of consumers isn’t easily done. The majority of coffee today is roasted at a highly centralized place and then shipped all over the world. This “hub and spoke roasting model,” as Gilliland calls it, is expensive and not condusive to freshness.

Enter Bellwether. The company makes internet-connected coffee roasters that can be installed in cafes, grocery stores, or small local coffee shops, and also has a marketplace for green (unroasted) coffee beans. By roasting in-store, Gilliland explains that the shop can provide more sustainable, fresher coffee and save money by cutting out the roasting middleman. “It’s like a roaster meets an iPhone,” he said.

Watch the video below to get the lowdown on the future of sustainable coffee consumption — and how data and IoT can help us get there.

From Soil To Sip: Disruptions In The Coffee Value Chain

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

December 19, 2018

Alpha Dominche Shuts Down: Is Commercial Coffee Tech Dead?

There’s a lot to say about how the Spinn Coffee Maker has failed its customers with a delay of nearly two years, but there’s still a chance that story will have a happy ending (fingers crossed, Michael). Customers of Alpha Dominche, a tech hardware startup that’s made waves in the specialty coffee industry, aren’t so lucky.

On December 4th, Alpha Dominche notified its customers that the company was halting all operations immediately with no goal of launching up again.

“This past year we have explored every reasonable option to continue our business operations, but were unable to secure the resources necessary to continue. We deeply regret any hardship this causes our partners, customers, and friends within the coffee and tea industries.”

The company recently crowdfunded over $230,000 to manufacture the Flask Coffee Brewer, a relatively simple manual coffee maker, but they won’t end up shipping a single product. No refunds or late arrivals.

But it’s far worse for the company’s commercial customers. Alpha Dominche’s flagship product that launched in 2014, the Steampunk, is—or, was—an eye-catching $15,000 coffee and tea brewer designed for high-end cafes. And soon they’ll all stop working.

Thousands of cafes around the world purchased a Steampunk for its stunning cylinder design, vacuum-sealed brewing process, and tablet-driven controls. Many of these cafes transformed their bar layouts, customer flows, and menus specifically to complement the Steampunk. It was supposed to usher in the future of precision coffee and tea brewing, enabling coffee shops to brew using recipes hyper-tailored to individual coffees at the click of a button.

Flask Brewer backers are out eighty dollars, Steampunk-wielding cafes around the world are about to have a useless hunk of metal when the official servers go down, and Alpha Dominche’s brand new cafe in Brooklyn has turned the lights off. Alpha Dominche was the tech darling of the specialty coffee industry, the innovator leading the way to a high-tech future for coffee shops.

We’ve seen coffee technology projects fail in the past, but not with a company as beloved and well-funded as this. What does it mean for coffee tech? Have we discovered the boundaries of financial viability, the limit to what the industry can afford? Will cafe owners ever learn to love tech again?

Businesses fall apart frequently for reasons other than their products, but even in the beginning, many in the coffee world wondered if the Steampunk would be a sound investment.

“For me, financial viability was never even a question for an existing cafe,” Umeko Motoyoshi, Head of Coffee at Sudden Coffee, told me (Note: I have done freelance writing for Sudden previously). The device was so expensive that it would only make sense to purchase if you were to develop your entire cafe around it, from barflow, to customer interactions, and even the menu. Before Sudden, Umeko spent a few years at Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco, “there was no pain point that the Steampunk would have addressed for it to be worth it.”

Margins are notoriously low for coffee shops, but the story is different for roasters who own their own cafes. Profits tend to be significantly higher per beverage since they receive the beans at a much lower price point, and this allowed Oak Cliff Coffee in Dallas to have a more positive experience with their Steampunk. As Will Riggs, Client Experience Director, puts it: “As a roaster, there was price justification because it was used primarily for our single origin coffees, which have a higher margin.” The cafe eventually sunset their Steampunk due to repeat maintenance issues.

I’ll admit to being an early skeptic myself. As a former cafe manager, I couldn’t make sense of the numbers for our own small town shop, especially when a top-notch batch brewer would run less than 10% the cost of the Steampunk. A positive ROI simply didn’t seem realistic.

The BKON Craft Brewer is a ~$10,000 tea and coffee brewer that looks eerily similar to the Steampunk, though the underlying brewing technology is significantly different. When I spoke to BKON about Alpha Dominche’s closure, I was surprised by what I heard. Steampunk owners may be burned, but they aren’t traumatized by the recent news and trading in their cloud-connected brewers for manual pour over cones. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

“Cafe owners that were using the Steampunk aren’t looking to get out of coffee tech,” Dean Vastardis, one of BKON’s co-founders told me. “They’ve actually come to us looking for a way to fill the gap.”

But the question is still the same: can the coffee and tea industries really sustain expensive hardware like the BKON when margins are low and $1,500 batch brewers are already pretty good at making coffee?

Apparently, it can. Most of BKON’s Craft Brewers are located in smaller chains and independent coffee shops, and unlike Alpha Dominche, BKON doesn’t show any warning signs of closing down. In fact, they say they’re just getting started. Last year BKON launched the Storm brewer, a commercial-sized cold brewer utilizing the same vacuum technology and capable of producing up to 400 gallons of coffee or tea at a time.

The sudden closure of Alpha Dominche may have initially seemed like a sign of the end times for coffee innovators, but the coffee tech space doesn’t seem to be winding down. Flask backers will probably be more skeptical of future crowdfunding projects and some cafe owners may opt for less risky batch brewers, but the specialty coffee market as a whole isn’t finished with high-end coffee tech yet.

Previous
Next

Primary Sidebar

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
 

Loading Comments...