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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Coronavirus

‘Make Technology Your Friend’ and Other Advice on Reopening a Restaurant

One of the big discussion topics this week at The Spoon has been around the reopening of restaurant dining rooms. When will it happen? How will it happen? Will anyone even want to go out to eat?

Answers will be ongoing and, like everything else in the last six weeks, will probably change regularly. And here’s one more to add to the mix: What do restaurants need to do to prepare for as smooth a reopening as they can possibly accomplish?

I’ll answer that with a line from The National Restaurant Association’s newly released “Reopening Guidance” report: “Make technology your friend.”

Fear not. This isn’t the part where I tell you to hedge all your bets on a piece of software (or hardware) and pile on a bunch of extra solutions your already trimmed-down staff will have to learn. Instead, consider which tools will help your business communicate as directly and efficiently as possible with guests about what to expect at a reopening.

As The Association says:

“Contactless payment systems, automated ordering systems, mobile ordering apps, website updates and simple texts can help you to communicate and conduct business with reduced need for close contact. As you begin to reopen, keep communicating with customers (your hours, menu items, reservations, etc.), and help promote your social distancing and safety efforts.”

Some of these will be easier to implement than others. I was just talking to a family member of mine who is as we speak trying to set up contactless payments for her hospitality company, and she is definitely losing sleep over it. In a separate conversation, someone on the task force in charge of Georgia’s restaurant reopenings admitted that contactless payments will be one of the more difficult things to put in place for restaurants. 

But this task force person also said restaurants should be “embracing technology wherever [they] can.” Looking again at The Association’s guidelines, there are simpler tech tools restaurants can use to communicate reopen dates and any accompanying changes. Consider email updates or social media posts to tell folks about adjusted hours, new policies (e.g., “make a reservation”), and safety protocols. Use the humble text message to notify guests when their table is ready. And talk to your existing restaurant tech providers, like your POS vendor, to see if they can help you set up some of the more complicated tools like contactless payments and mobile ordering.

At the end of the day, tech should be the means to the end, not the end itself. Bear that in mind as you explore ways to integrate it into your reopen strategy, whenever that happens to be.

Maybe We Should All Look to Fat Brands to Figure Out a Ghost Kitchen Strategy

Ghost kitchens are not top of the priority list for restaurants right now, but as demand for off-premises orders goes up, they will be. As we’ve discussed before, restaurants need a certain (and rather high) level of demand to justify using a full-on ghost kitchen facility. Otherwise the economics don’t make sense.

That said, a good ghost kitchen strategy can actually start right in your own kitchen before growing into the kind that needs a dedicated facility to function.

Look at Fat Brands. This week, the company, which owns Fatburger, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Elevation Burger, and other chains, announced its first-ever ghost kitchen facility in Chicago. The location, done in partnership with Epic Kitchens, will be for delivery-only orders, and will house a number of virtual restaurants.

Fat Brands was doing ghost kitchens before they inked a deal with Epic, though. Last year, the company started using Fat Burger locations to double as mini-ghost kitchens for the company’s sister brands. Customers on one side of the country could suddenly order from the menu of Fat Brand restaurants historically only available on the other side. Doing so let the company test the waters, so to speak, with virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens before signing a more official deal with a dedicated space.

Starting small and in the confines of your own restaurants’ kitchens is definitely a lower-risk way of trying out a ghost kitchen. Restaurants can test and learn about some of the operational differences between off-premises and in-dining-room models, and they’re not locked into a long-term contract if the plan proves unfruitful. Speaking of which, in-house ghost kitchens are also a way to gauge just how much off-premises demand you really have from your customers and project whether that will grow enough to warrant a bigger operation, as Fat Brands has done.

The pandemic’s effect on the restaurant industry will almost certainly ensure demand for off-premises orders keeps rising, even after dining rooms reopen. Even as you’re trying to keep the lights on, consider whether you’re on the path towards using a ghost kitchen, and if taking the first small steps in your own kitchen makes sense as a starting point.

More Notable Restaurant News

Low-tech drive-thru innovation: Today, Taco Bell’s Southern California HQ is doubling as a giant drive-thru for large trucks carrying essential items across the supply chain. The chain is giving away free meals to truckers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and others driving vehicles that wouldn’t fit through a normal drive-thru lane.

QSR, meet the sewing machine: Employees of quick-service chain Raising Cane are now sewing masks to donate to hospitals while dining rooms remain closed. While the chain’s drive-thrus remain open, at sit-down locations, it is paying its staff to learn how to sew these masks instead of just furloughing people. Raising Cane donated 600 masks after the first week of production and said it expects to crank out even more “as Crewmembers get more proficient.”  

Big chains aren’t necessarily reopening. States like Georgia and South Carolina are set to reopen their economies next week, but not everyone is on board. Among restaurant brands, TGI Fridays and Starbucks are not necessarily ready to fling back their doors immediately. Instead, their reopening plans will factor in not just state/local laws but also infection rates and their own market analysis. So while all this talk of reopening is exciting, it realistically will be a long while yet before many food businesses turn the lights back on in the dining room. 

A Peek Into the Tech That Could Power Next Week’s Restaurant Re-openings

As you’ve already heard by now, some U.S. states — notably Georgia and South Carolina — are set to relax their quarantine rules and allow certain non-essential businesses to reopen next week. That includes restaurant dining rooms. We’ve already made some predictions about what those dining rooms will look like, and this week, I got some more intel from tech entrepreneur Bo Peabody, who is on the task force that helped create the reopening guidelines for Georgia restaurants. 

Peabody is also the co-founder and chairman of Seated as well as a board member of Boqueria Restaurants and a longtime industry vet. Over the phone this week, he talked through many of the guidelines created by the Georgia task force, which also had involvement from The National Restaurant Association. (You can read The Association’s full guidelines here.)

While many of those guidelines are around implementing social distancing and stricter health practices, Peabody suggested technology also plays a key role. That includes everything from using a text to let people know when their table is ready to implementing digital menus and contactless payment systems. 

“We suggest embracing technology wherever you can,” says Peabody, though he admits tech is “a tough one” in terms of a task for restaurants. In particular, contactless payments will prove challenging for many operators. “We suggested contactless payments if you have that in your restaurant. But most restaurants don’t have that technology,” he said.

Contactless payments take many forms. They can happen through an order-ahead system, at a tabletop kiosk, or with a handheld device a la Starbucks. The common denominator in all these technologies is that they eliminate the need for a customer to hand a credit card to a server and vice versa.

‘We’ve been behind in this country at pay at the table,” said Peabody. And to implement any new technology, restaurants need time and money, two things in short supply these days. While restaurant tech companies have been waiving and reducing some costs, restaurants large and small are just busy trying to keep the lights on right now.

One solution could be QR codes. Peabody describes this as every POS company adding the ability for restaurants to include a QR code on the check. When the server brings the bill, the customer can simply scan the QR code with their own phone to pay for their meal. Ideally, the server would be able to split a check multiple ways, just as they can with credit card payments. 

He says that Toast is currently rolling out such a system, and that others may do the same soon. In fact, he goes as far as to suggest that by the end of next year, “putting your credit card down will be a thing of the past.”

And while contactless payments will be a challenge until that day, mobile ordering might be even trickier for many restaurants to implement. While we’re quick to praise the efficiency of mobile order systems offered by massive chains like Chipotle and Starbucks, the reality is that those apps cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop.

Peabody recommends solving the contactless payments issue before trying to tackle mobile ordering.

Even for those that do look to mobile ordering, developing an expensive in-house solution won’t make sense for most restaurants. A more likely scenario, he says, is that customers will start using apps provided by POS vendors, reservations companies, or even credit card companies to pay for meals. 

Before any of that happens, though, we have to actually reopen restaurants. Georgia’s plan for next week will give us some clues. For example, the success or failure of the reopening may give intel into whether we’re putting enough emphasis on basic safety precautions.

It’s also important to note that not every restaurant in Georgia is going to open next week. “For the most part the bigger operators in Atlanta are not going to open on Monday,” says Peabody. “Outside of Atlanta I think you’re going to see a lot more opening. The pressure to open will mount on everybody in Georgia as the days go on.”

Even so, Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A has already said it will “take additional time” before reopening. Nationwide, Starbucks said its re-openings will be “gradual” and that some stores may just continue as off-premises-focused locations. TGI Fridays has also said it will sit out on this initial reopening phase. 

Finally, let’s not forget that experts have warned it is too soon to relax shelter-in-place measures, so it’s entirely possible restaurants that choose to open will face some massive health risks for their workers. If that’s the case, tech may need to take a seat even further in the back.

Peabody believes that long term, more good than not will come in terms of the new developments restaurants have been forced to adopt during this time, technology and otherwise. In the meantime, as Peabody says, “What’s going to happen in Georgia is a dress rehearsal for the country.”

The Food Tech Show: The People Are Growing Yeast and Plants at Home Episode

It’s a very specific cultural moment when a Twitter thread about deriving yeast at home from the skin of fruits goes viral, but here we are.

The Spoon editorial team got together this week to discuss said Twitter thread from a Ginkgo yeast geneticist Sudeep Agarwala. We also chatted about a few other stories, including:

As always, you can find the Food Tech Show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also download this episode to your device or just click play below.

If you’d like to join the Spoon editorial team next week when they record the podcast, our next live podcast recording on Crowdcast is next Tuesday at 10 AM PST. You can sign up here.

Waste Free! Loop Expands Reusable Packaging Program Throughout the U.S.

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing me to order more things than ever online — from groceries to toiletries to fancy dried beans — I’m accruing quite a lot of single-use packaging at my house. And I feel bad about it.

Maybe I’ll soon be able to assuage some of that guilt when Loop, the reusable packaging service, expands nationwide over the next few months (tip via Fast Company). Loop, an initiative from recycling company Terracycle, sells name-brand CPG products directly to consumers that are packaged in reusable containers made from metal and glass. After the consumers use them up, they put the empty containers back in the tote they came in and Loop picks them up to be sterilized and refilled.

Loop launched in the U.S. last May with a pilot program in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. According to an Instagram post from the company, Loop will roll out its reusable-container service across the contiguous U.S. sometime this summer. Globally, Loop is available in Paris and has plans to head to Canada, Germany, Japan, and the U.K. this year.

At launch Loop already had a roster of big-name partners like Kroger, Pepsi, Nestlé, and Walgreens. The platform has expanded to include roughly 200 products, including plant-based burgers and ice cream from Häagen-Dazs (my personal favorite).

I know what you’re thinking — during a pandemic when we’re all anxious about contamination, are we really going to be okay with receiving groceries packed in containers that someone else has already used? Especially since bring-your-own mugs and reusable totes in retailers are becoming a thing of the past?

Loop’s CEO certainly thinks so. He told Fast Company that Loop has seen evidence that “consumers are comfortable with reuse during COVID.” Since Loop has a reuse protocol in place — with stringent cleaning measures and pre-established health and safety checklists — he’s confident that they’ll be able to continue their closed-loop packaging practice without putting users at risk.

If users are comfortable with this, Loop’s extended platform could be a real help to cut down on our persistent packaging problem. Even if your delivery boxes are technically recyclable, COVID-19 is causing challenges for the waste management industry as a whole. Many packaging elements — like styrofoam and ice packs — aren’t recyclable anyway. Considering that the EPA reported that over 32 million tons of packaging and containers went into landfills in 2017 — almost a quarter of the total waste from the entire year — this is an issue we need to take seriously.

Today is Earth Day, so there’s no better time to take a moment and consider how we can help preserve our planet. Come this summer I know one small step that I’ll be taking cut down on the amount of packaging I’m tossing out. Bonus: I still get to enjoy my chocolate-fudge ice cream.

Toronto, Canada Considering a Cap on Third-Party Delivery Fees

Toronto, Ontario mayor John Tory is considering imposing a cap on the commission fees third-party delivery services like DoorDash charge restaurants. He has said he will impose an emergency, temporary cap on those fees “if his emergency powers allow him,” according to an interview with Canada-based publication The Star.

Tory’s words come shortly after San Francisco, CA imposed its own emergency order last week, mandating that delivery services must cap restaurant commission fees at 15 percent if they want to continue doing business in that city. (Delivery services typically charge around 30 percent per transaction.) For now, that’s a temporary order, meant to assist restaurants struggling with dining room closures as residents shelter in place.

Unfortunately for Tory and Toronto restaurants, imposing a similar measure might be more of an uphill battle. Speaking to The Star, the mayor said that’s at least what “preliminary feedback from city legal suggests.”

So in the meantime, Tory is trying other tactics — including reaching out to the delivery services themselves. At the end of last week, he also left the following tweet, directed at those services:

Not surprisingly, delivery companies are defending their stance on commission fees, according to The Star. How long they can keep that up is another matter, because Toronto isn’t the only city considering potential commission fee caps. Last week, Eater pointed out that elected officials in NYC are asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to issue an emergency order similar to the one in San Francisco. Others are urging the same, including council member Mark Gjonaj, who previously introduced legislation around commission fee caps.

There’s no guarantee a measure will pass in Toronto, NYC, or any other place at this point. Even if they do, emergency caps are a surface-level fix to a much deeper problem around the amount of power food delivery services have over the livelihoods of restaurants. For many (most) businesses, offering delivery via DoorDash et al is still cheaper than trying to manage the logistics and driver fleet oneself.

That doesn’t negate the fact that charging a restaurant 30 percent of each transaction practically annihilates already-thin restaurant profit margins. Third-party services were also the subject of (yet another) controversy recently when a new lawsuit emerged, alleging Grubhub, DoorDash, and others are using their market power to push menu prices higher during the pandemic.

Finally, there is growing evidence that a delivery strategy in the midst of a pandemic won’t be enough to save restaurants.

Temporary caps in the wake of this unprecedented restaurant industry fallout are fine for now. But until we start addressing some of the fundamental flaws with the inherently greedy — not to mention unprofitable — third-party delivery model, the problems will proliferate, pandemic or no. Restaurants and their hourly workers will shoulder the bulk of those burdens.

Should All Grocery Stores Shift to Delivery and Pickup Only?

It’s been nice to see public sentiment towards grocery workers catch up to the reality of their situation. Grocery workers are on the frontlines of this pandemic, putting themselves at risk to stock shelves, work cash registers and bag groceries to keep stores open and people fed.

But despite new measures like social distancing, limiting the number of customers in-store, and plexiglass shields at checkout, at least 30 grocery store workers have died from COVID-19, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). Another 3,000 have called in sick with coronavirus-like symptoms. As the virus continues to wreak havoc in the U.S., both Grocery Dive and more recently CNN have written pieces asking whether it’s time to close grocery stores to the public and shift them all to delivery and pickup only.

Some stores are already doing this. Whole Foods is converting some of its locations to e-commerce fulfillment only. Amazon was supposed to debut its first full-on grocery store in Woodland Hills, CA last month, but has instead opened it only for online grocery and fulfillment. Kroger has done the same with at least one of its locations in Cincinnati.

Closing grocery stores would definitely help protect grocery workers by limiting their interaction with the public. And as we’ve written about before, warehouse type stores can also benefit shoppers because only grocery store workers, not other people, would interact with the food items.

But closing grocery stores to in-store shoppers on a massive scale just isn’t realistic right now. Grocery retailers are having a hard enough time dealing with the sudden rush in e-commerce, struggling to keep up with demand for delivery and curbside pickup. My local grocery chain doesn’t even have e-commerce, and has been working furiously to build that offering. Even the biggest retailers like Amazon are waitlisting new grocery shoppers, while ShopRite creates virtual waiting rooms before people can actually buy items.

Then there is also the question of who has access to online shopping. Just like the debate around cashierless checkout, the idea of moving everyone over to e-commerce seems to gloss over the large populations of people who are underbanked or don’t have consistently reliable online access. How would they shop?

We are living in complicated and scary times and there are no easy answers, especially as it relates to getting our food. We should be doing all we can to protect grocery store workers, and converting stores to online only would certainly help do that. But from a technological or even logistical standpoint, that just doesn’t seem possible right now.

Curbside Bots and Contactless Everything: What the Post-Pandemic Restaurant Will Look Like

Even an introverted work-from-home veteran like me is starting to get kind of daffy during this here quarantine. But I will say that being stuck at home has given me a lot of time to think (and write) about the state of the restaurant industry, and I catch myself imagining what eating out will be like once we’re past this pandemic. So when Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson posted a letter this week to employees about the chain’s future, it caught my attention.

In his letter, Johnson more or less said the chain is planning to reopen some of its locations and outlined a plan for doing so. To be clear: Johnson uses the words “open” and “reopen” several times in the text, but at no point promised that your local Starbucks will reopen overnight with the usual setup and operations that existed before the pandemic. 

Which is why I’m singling out Starbucks in the first place. As an international chain that has already dealt with this recovery process overseas, and as a leader in digital business and operations, Starbucks’ plans for reopening stores give us a good hint of what we can expect restaurants to look like once the process of opening the economy begins.

Pulling from Johnson’s letter as well as numerous statements and activities from other restaurants, tech companies, and governments, we put together some predictions for what the post-pandemic restaurant experience might entail.

Note that most of these predictions are around operations and the customer experience. There are a host of other issues, from labor to food waste, I’ll be unpacking those over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

More space, fewer tables. This is less prediction and more fact, with public figures like California Governor Gavin Newsom saying restaurants will have more space between tables and fewer seats, to ensure social distancing when eating out. Separately, the WSJ noted that restaurant chains may operate at half capacity going forward, and include things like plexiglass shields between booths. That could also spell the end of buffet-style dining and family-style seating. Golden Corral, that bastion of all buffet restaurants, has closed all units for the time being. Even before state-mandated shutdowns, other businesses were nixing community seating. And grocery stores are closing down hot bars.

Lots more mobile payments. Some restaurants are already pushing customers to use their mobile apps to order and pay for food, eliminating the need to touch a kiosk or swipe a credit card. Granted, you have to have a well-designed, easy-to-use app in order to do this, which means we’ll see a surge in smaller restaurant chains developing and/or improving their own mobile experiences for customers, whether in-house or through a third-party service. I expect we’ll also see an uptick in mobile-only locations (though it’ll vary based on state laws around cashless businesses).

Curbside delivery for all. Curbside pickup was once the territory of Sonic and the odd McDonald’s location. With dining rooms shuttered these last few weeks, restaurants have had to find other ways of bringing food out. And since not all of them have been equipped with drive-thru, curbside pickup has become the default option for many. This is one of the methods Starbucks has put into practice over the last few weeks, in some cases even taking it a step further to offer “entryway pickup” for locations without parking lots.

Contactless everything. “Contactless delivery” barely existed as a phrase before China implemented it during the peak of its fight against the novel coronavirus. Now, everyone from Instacart to Pizza Hut offers it, and I doubt we’ll revert back to the old way of handing goods off between courier and customer. For contactless to live up to its name, though, brands need to think about the technical logistics behind the operation. Restaurants’ online order systems need to have the option built right into the checkout process. They should consider providing additional features, such as push notifications to alert customers when and where their order is ready. Contactless will stick around permanently for delivery and curbside orders and, when companies figure out how, probably for in-store purchases, too.

More drive-thru lanes. Austin, TX-based chain Torchy’s Tacos explained to me recently that once the chain was forced to shut down dining rooms, it quickly opened drive-thru windows in locations that had always had the feature but had never utilized it. Many restaurants set up shop in locations that were once a Wendy’s or other fast-food chain. If they haven’t already, they could utilize that space to start offering drive-thru on the regular to customers.   

Gloves and face masks for workers. Restaurants I’ve spoken with over the last couple weeks are quick to emphasize the steps they are taking to protect both customers and workers when it comes to health. Gloves and face masks nearly always come up in that conversation. They’re also part of Gov. Newsom’s plan for restaurants, and will definitely make their way into other states’ frameworks for reopening business.

Robot staff.  Having said that, though, some might just opt for robots when it comes to who’s going to handle your food. My colleague Chris Albrecht recently pointed out that dining customers might prefer “the cold sterility of a robot” to a server wearing a face mask and gloves. Robots, of course, bring up the whole loss of human jobs angle. However, as Chris notes, with fears around the virus and human-to-human contact unlikely to subside for some time, for those restaurants that can afford it, robots might be an appetizing option, at least where city laws permit. Somehow I think they would come in especially handy for running curbside orders to cars.

Okay, wait a minute. Does all this mean my future restaurant experience will involve ordering food ahead of time via an app, then waiting at a plexiglass-encased table for a wheeled bot to roll up with my burger? That sounds lonelier than a month in quarantine.

I doubt it comes to that scenario, though. The COVID-19 situation changes daily, which mean so do expectations about what restaurants will look like when the economy reopens. Maybe all of these predictions will come true. Possibly none of them will. The most likely scenario is that a few of them, like curbside pickup and mobile payments, will become industry standards, and restaurants will use a mixture of the others based on time, money, and customer volume. As states begin discussions around reopening the economy and more chains like Starbucks start outlining their plans, we’ll get a clearer picture of what to expect in the the post-pandemic restaurant experience.

Thanks to Tech, Restaurant Employees Are Accessing Earnings Faster

One area that’s part of any good discussion about the future of the restaurant concerns employees — that is, the servers, baristas, drivers, managers, and others who make up the backbone of the industry.

How they get paid is something that’s fast changing as the industry grapples with dining room closures, mass layoffs, furloughs, and general economic tension. This week, we wrote about Domino’s teaming up with challenger bank Branch to offer employees instant access to their earnings via the Branch app.

Branch is one of a few apps out there that lets hourly workers — who often live paycheck to paycheck — get faster access to much-needed cashflow. DailyPay, which we’ve written about before, is another popular one.

I see an uptick in restaurants making it possible for employees to use these types of apps in future. As everything in the previous section of this newsletter suggests, the restaurant model is rapidly changing, and it’s hard to guess now which formats are most likely to be around next week, next month, or even next year. That means it’s also hard to predict how many people a restaurant will need on staff, and how many hours those individuals can work.

With so many questions up in the air, the least restaurants can do is integrate with one of these apps to get their employees paid faster.

As Coronavirus Fuels Interest in Food Sovereignty, Will Smart Gardens Finally Have Their Moment?

As someone interested in consumer behavior, I have to admit a pandemic makes for a compelling case study in how people will react when our normally stable food system gets a shock.

The panic buying. The embrace of processed food. The baking of bread. It’s all fascinating and provides a small glimpse into how consumers could behave when they believe, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that the relative ease with which they’ve had access to food is threatened.

All of which brings to the forefront a larger conversation about food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is something governments and interest groups debate all the time, such as when island countries like Japan worry (rightly) about over-reliance on imports or a lack of native agricultural production.

Consumers, however, usually don’t speak in the language of food sovereignty. That might soon change.

As the coronavirus has forced all of us to think more about our food supply, some consumers have gone beyond just buying a little extra food to store away. Now they are thinking about how we could ensure access to food independent of breakdowns in the system.

While that doesn’t mean we’re all going to buy lots of land and start a farm, it does mean more people than ever are looking into how to grow their own food at home.

That could mean something like raising chickens. According to Google Trends, interest in the topic has shot to an all time high.

More likely though, the notion of food independence for most consumers will mean starting a garden. Interest in starting home gardens has, like raising chickens, jumped to unprecedented levels. Seed sellers across the country are telling new customers they can’t take new orders. Meanwhile, gardening classes are on the rise. One virtual Master Gardener series from Oregon Stage saw registrations jump 12,000 percent over the previous spring.

So while a Victory Garden-esque resurgence in home gardens may be sprouting across the country, unlike those World War II-era home gardeners, we have access to technology can help us grow food nowadays.

The question is will consumers choose to use it?

In pre-pandemic times, the answer of whether consumers embrace tech-powered gardening is mostly a no. Wi-Fi powered home watering systems for the backyard have largely flopped, while smart in-home grow systems have been around for a while but have had mixed success.

That could change with a pandemic.

I decided to check with both AeroGrow (maker of the AeroGarden) and Click & Grow, the two leading smart garden brands, to see how business is going since COVID-19 took hold.

According to AeroGrow CEO J. Michael Wolfe, there’s has been a surge in interest since mid-March across all of their sales channels.

“Inventories are running low,” Wolfe told me via email. “We have raced to spin up the supply chain in Asia (and they were relatively fast to get back up to capacity), but we have surged so much that the supply we had on hand was not able to keep up with demand.”

Click & Grow spokesperson Martin Laidla told me that the increase in demand has been “substantial.”

“So far, we’ve seen a staggering twofold increase in demand for our products in all markets,” said Laidla.

The AeroGarden Farm (Image Credit: AeroGrow)

Smaller smart garden manufacturers are also seeing surging interest. Ava Technologies, which began with a crowdfund campaign for its Byte herb garden, has accelerated a second batch of manufacturing to take advantage of increased interest. According to Ava CEO Valerie Song, visits to the company’s preorder page is up over 1,300 percent versus just a month ago.

The strong demand makes sense. After all, smart gardens take up a small footprint and can grow greens at a pretty fast clip due to a fine-tuned grow environment of high-intensity light, automated watering and nutrients.

But these high-tech indoor grow systems have a few drawbacks, the first of which is price. While low-end AeroGardens start roughly below $50, the bigger systems that can grow a substantial amount of produce start at around $240. The AeroGarden Farm, which allows for 24 “pods” of seeds to be planted simultaneously, start at close to $600.

The second problem, which is directly related to price of the system, is yield. While lower-priced smaller systems from Click & Grow and AeroGarden look good on a kitchen counter and can pump out herbs, that’s mainly it. To actually grow veggies in enough volume to feed you let alone a family, you have to look a higher-end system like the AeroGarden Farm.

But despite the higher price tags of higher yield systems, consumers still seem interested. AeroGarden’s higher yield systems like the Bounty and the Farm are sold out on Amazon and Home Depot, and the AeroGarden has even stopped selling the Farm on their own site as they’ve run out of inventory.

“The Farm sold out in early March,” said AeroGrow’s Wolfe. “We won’t have replenishment for a few more weeks. I expect that we’ll sell out of the replenishment inventory that arrives in a matter of days — and then more will arrive in June.”

So while smart garden systems might not be for everyone, it appears that the arrival of a pandemic might actually push these systems more into the mainstream.

One thing I’m curious about is how this increased demand plays out in the longer term. I could envision a post-pandemic world where, in a more normalized economic situation, new homes come with an option for a home grow system built into the kitchen. Some master planned communities could make vertical farming a big part of the sales pitch.

At CES and KBIS, I counted four major appliance brands who had smart garden grow systems in development, and I could see those plans accelerating and even more brands jumping into the grow system fray.

As for now, if you want your own high-yield smart farm system, you’ll need to get in line. Of course, if you have a yard and you’re the adventurous type, you can always buy a robotic farm for the back yard.

ID on the Glass, Please. The New Normal of Walmart Grocery Pickup

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Though I wasn’t even going into the store during my grocery pickup from Walmart this week, I still wrapped myself in a facemask and gloves. Mainly because I was buying alcohol, and last time I did so from Walmart, I had to talk directly with a worker in a situation that was way closer than six feet, and I had to sign for the booze with my finger on a device that presumably had been touched by a ton of other people that day.

But it turns out that a lot has changed in the past few weeks and, at least at my store, Walmart was being more aggressive about safety than even I was. Gone was the tablet to sign; instead the pickup worker asked me to stay in my car, roll up my window and press my ID up against the glass.

Additionally, I saw someone, who I presume was a supervisor, shout out to a customer and worker that they were too close and needed to stay six feet apart.

I can’t speak for the working conditions inside or more broadly — Walmart doesn’t have the best reputation for the way it treats its workers — but from a grocery pickup standpoint, my Walmart is taking COVID-19 very seriously.

There were more changes that I noticed on this trip. Walmart added a bunch of new pickup spots as well. They, like every other grocer, are grappling with ways to keep up with the surge in online grocery shopping. Walmart reportedly saw a record number of downloads for its grocery app over the weekend, surpassing Amazon.

While Walmart scrambles to keep up with safety protocols and meeting demand, there are some signs it’s struggling. I had issues with the app this week, both ordering and coordinating pickup. Like, big issues that even re-installs wouldn’t save. This was confirmed on two separate calls with Walmart customer service, both of whom said there were widespread problems with the app.

Walmart isn’t the only grocer struggling as it tries to meet demand. Amazon announced yesterday that new Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods customers have to wait to be invited before getting deliveries. And ShopRite is putting online customers into a virtual waiting room before they can shop.

Accelerated is almost too soft a word for what COVID-19 has done to grocery e-commerce. With 31 percent of US households using online grocery as of last month, compared with 13 percent in August, retailers experienced a year’s worth of growth in a matter of weeks. Problems in the supply chain and logistics were bound to arise.

Thankfully, the hiccups I’ve encountered have been minor and few. Since I live in a more rural area, grocery delivery is hard to come by, and Walmart pickup has been a godsend for my family. I appreciate those workers still showing up everyday and stocking my trunk. I wish there was an option to tip them, but hopefully they can see my sincere appreciation through the driver’s side window.

Can a Software Upgrade Save Food 3D Printing?

3D printing food has long held the promise of unlocking sci-fi-like benefits for society. Think of a machine teleporting sushi or creating highly customized food on the spot made just for you.

But 3D food printing has stalled in recent years, and as Spoon Founder Mike Wolf reported this week, the answer to kickstarting it might be better software, writing:

[Marine Coré] Baillais, the founder of a French 3D food printing consultancy called The Digital Patisserie (La Pâtisserie Numérique), told me that the reason general purpose 3D printing software doesn’t work well is it’s designed to print with \materials like plastic filament, not food paste. This usually leads to less than optimal results because a food paste has unique characteristics that make it much different than filament.

It’s actually a pretty cool idea and you should check out his full story for more details (plus, Notre Dame inspired food printing).

During a Pandemic, Don’t Be a Pandummy

This should go without saying, but if there was ever a time to be kind and generous with one another, it’s during a deadly pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying economies.

So we were a little disappointed when reading stories about customers tip-baiting Instacart shoppers; promising a big tip for grocery delivery only to remove it once the job is done. That is (*#$@$^ evil. Don’t do that.

Third-party delivery services, which had some sketchy business practices even during better times, got a bit of a slap on the wrist from the city of San Francisco this week. Mayor London Breed ordered a temporary cap of 15 percent on delivery fees third-party services can charge restaurants during the shelter in place. One would wish that a new rule wasn’t necessary for something like that, but… here we are.

We understand times are difficult, to say the least. Be kind where you can. It makes a difference.

This is the online version of our weekly food tech newsletter. If you would like to get The Spoon in your inbox, subscribe here.

COVID-19 Summit: The Question That Keeps Online Grocers Up at Night

It’s no secret that as the pandemic rages on, more and more consumers are ordering groceries online. But as with everything else right now, circumstances and protocols seem to change minute by minute. As Peter van Stolk, CEO of Canadian sustainable e-commerce grocery store SPUD.ca, put it during our virtual COVID-19 summit last week: “The ground is moving under our feet everyday.”

That sentiment seems to be especially true of grocery. We know that we’re relying on grocery — and grocery delivery — more than ever before to keep ourselves fed while social distancing. But how are grocery stores reinventing themselves to stay relevant, safe, and profitable?

That’s exactly what van Stolk discussed with Phil Lempert of Supermarket Guru at last week’s virtual summit. To keep up with this fresh demand and new safety protocols, grocery retailers — both online and brick & mortar — are having to institute new protocols and readapt their current business models.

One big change that SPUD.ca has been tackling is staffing. Van Stolk said that in the two-week period after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the company’s inbound employee applications skyrocketed from 200 to 10,000. Of the people they hired, SPUD.ca had to figure out best practices to keep the workers (not to mention shoppers) safe, including allowing employees to don personal protective equipment (PPE) if they so choose.

To that end, Lempert asked van Stolk about the question that’s keeping him (and presumably other grocery owners) up at night: How can grocery stores absorb additional costs from PPE for grocery workers, bonus payments, and paid sick leave, and still stay profitable?

For SPUD.ca, the answer was simple: start charging handling fees. In the interview, van Stolk said that SPUD.ca had originally stated that it would never charge delivery fees for their online orders. However, as with so many things during the pandemic, van Stolk said that has now changed. SPUD.ca will now charge customers a handling fee for grocery deliveries which is around $6. The company breaks down the fee to show where all the money will go: packaging, labor, sanitization, etc.  

SPUD.ca has had to make other compromises to keep their shoppers safe during the pandemic. Previously, one of the retailer’s main selling points was its emphasis on sustainability: it delivered food in returnable totes which it would later pick up, used reusable cups, etc. For now, the company has had to halt those initiatives to reduce the risk of contamination. “There’s a stop right now on that process,” van Stolk said. “People are focused on safety.”

SPUD.ca is a smaller retailer that only serves the Vancouver and surrounding regions of Canada, so it’s obviously not going through the exact same challenges as, say, giants like Walmart or Amazon which have to coordinate shipments around the globe. However, some problems are universal to the grocery industry right now, including safety, staffing, stocking, and the threat of impending price hikes for certain foods. I’m sure many retailers, large and small, will have sleepless nights as they try to figure out how to navigate this new normal for grocery.

You can watch the full video of the fireside chat below, and check out the other videos from the virtual conference here.

The Spoon COVID-19 Summit: How the Grocery World is Evolving During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yelp Lays Off 1,000 Staff Members, Furloughs More, and Cuts Hours

This morning, Yelp announced it is reducing the size of its workforce due to the impact of COVID-19 on the company’s business. In a letter sent to employees, co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote that the company is letting 1,000 people go and will furlough roughly 1,100 more. It will also be cutting back hours for some employees.

“The physical distancing measures and shelter-in-place orders, while critical to flatten the curve, have dealt a devastating blow to the local businesses that are core to our mission,” he wrote.

Social distancing measures have closed stores, gyms, hair salons, and, of course, restaurants. So it’s only mildly surprising that Yelp, which is best known for its user-generated restaurant reviews, is feeling the impacts of coronavirus and the nationwide dining room shutdowns. In his letter, Stoppelman called restaurants Yelp’s “most popular category” and noted that interest in them on the site has dropped 64 percent since March 10. “All told, the millions of local businesses hit hardest by the effects of COVID-19 face the prospect of closing and laying off their employees, without knowing when, or if, they’ll be able to reopen.” 

Employees that receive layoffs will get severance pay and up to three months of reimbursement for health insurance coverage. Those on furlough will get unpaid leave but receive two weeks of additional pay and also keep their benefits.

Yelp will also implement 20–30 percent pay cuts for all executives, reduced server costs, “deprioritized” projects and redo the budget based on ensuring company survival (instead of growth). Stoppelman himself will not be taking a salary. 

He ended his letter saying that coming months will require the company to “stay nimble and adapt” — an idea more and more businesses across the restaurant industry are being forced to do. That’s true not only of restaurants (both large chains and mom-and-pop businesses) but also companies that provide tech solutions to restaurants. For example, earlier this week, Toast, a company previously valued at $5 billion, announced it was cutting half its staff. 

I’d like to put a silver lining on all this, but the unfortunate truth is that layoffs, furloughs, and other drastic moves to stay nimble and adapt are on the way, and the effects of them will persist long after the pandemic is under control. 

COVID-19 Summit: For Struggling Restaurants, the Key Terms are “Shapeshift” and “Break Even”

“It’s really f***ed up right now,” That’s how Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen, summed up the current restaurant situation on our COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit. “I’m sorry dudes, but there’s no other way to put it.”

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus epidemic is wreaking havoc on the hospitality industry, decimating restaurant sales and forcing massive layoffs. So how can restaurants, bars, and catering services innovate to make it to the other side of the pandemic?

We tackled that question during today’s socially-distanced summit. In one of the first panels of the day, Mark Brand, a chef, B-corp owner, brewery manager, and professor (okay, overachiever), spoke with Egger to The Spoon’s Michael Wolf about how restaurants can innovate to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are a few takeaways for restaurants that came about from the conversation:

Prepare for an uphill battle
Surviving as a restaurant, even in better times, is damn hard. Brand said that — in the very best of times — restauranteurs are making a maximum of 15 percent revenue on each transaction. “Folks think we have more money than we do as restauranteurs,” he joked. Therefore the vast majority of foodservice organizations don’t have a lot of padding to fall back on when their main revenue source, like in-house dining, suddenly goes away.

To survive, you must adapt
One of the biggest challenges facing restaurants is that there’s no blueprint to go off of. “A lot of people are making this up as we go,” Egger told the summit audience. That said, Egger and Brand had a few tips to help foodservice businesses survive the crisis. “The words of the day are ‘shapeshift’ and ‘break even,'” Egger said.

In short: restaurant operations will have to pivot to stay afloat, perhaps branching into new sales channels. Some foodservice spots are also offering purchase incentives, like a 1-to-1 donation where for each meal you purchase, one is donated to someone in need or a healthcare worker fighting COVID-19.

But no matter how many initiatives or pivots restaurants make, all they can really hope to do, Egger says, is break even. Hopefully that will be enough to help them make it to the other side of the coronavirus pandemic.

Another thing to look out for? A smaller menu. “I think there’s a lot of money to be made in a modest menu,” he said. Not only in terms of selection, but also pricing and serving size.

An opportunity for change
The panel wasn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, both Brand and Egger agreed that this crisis could actually help us transform our relationship with food for the better. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to reevaluate the restaurant structure,” Brand said.

Egger agreed, noting that COVID-19 could catalyze us as a society to prioritize our food more highly. “We can make sure that our food is sourced locally, workers are paid, and we can put together a healthy meal,” he said. “We’ll have a great sense of respect for food again.” 

Here’s the full video below.

COVID-19 Summit From The Spoon: Mark Brand and Robert Egger