• 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

Coronavirus

March 11, 2020

Milan Based Seeds&Chips Postponed as Italy Puts Country on Lockdown to Stop COVID19

The coronavirus postponements and cancellations continue.

Today the organizer of Seeds & Chips, a large European event focused on food and agricultural innovation, announced it has been postponed.

The event, which takes place in Milan, had its hand forced in large part due a country-wide lockdown imposed by the Italian government. This week the Italian government imposed a ban on all non-essential travel to and around Italy as well as a temporary banning of public events through April 3rd in an effort to contain the coronavirus.

From the release:

“This is an announcement that we would never have wished to write but, sadly, as a consequence of the ongoing public health risks caused by COVID19 and according to what is laid down in decree of The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, on March 9th, 2020 – imposing restrictions on people’s movements and banning all public events and initiatives to prevent the outbreak of the COVID19 – we have decided to postpone our Summit” said Marco Gualtieri, Founder of Seeds&Chips.

While the travel restrictions are currently through April 3rd, that didn’t give S&C much time. There was also no guarantee the restrictions wouldn’t be extended even closer or through to the event’s dates (May 18th-20th).

As someone who puts on events, I understand how disappointing this must be for Gualtiieri and the Seeds&Chips team. The event, which I attended last year, is one of Europe’s biggest food and ag innovation events and usually has hundreds of speakers and thousands of attendees.

The group is currently considering alternatives around rescheduling a new event in Milan in September. S&C also puts on events in Australia and has one planned for Rwanda later this year and, as of now, those are still on as planned.

March 10, 2020

Startups Share Their Stories About the Coronavirus’ Impact

We’ve written about the coronavirus in broad terms, mostly as it relates to bigger trends. How will it impact food delivery, or grocery shopping or the business of food tech conferences?

But we wanted to learn more about how this outbreak is being felt on a more micro level. How is it impacting individual startups? We’ve been collecting stories from different companies to share with you here. And we want to hear from you. How is coronavirus changing your business? Drop us a line and let us know.

BEERMKR
(Ed. Note: Kickstarter projects like BEERMKR’s were among the first to get hit by the virus as manufacturing in China slowed down. This is taken from an update the company posted to its Kickstarter campaign page on Feb. 25th.)
Per the last update, we’ll be sending out weekly updates until this whole coronavirus situation resolves itself. Last week we saw our contract manufacturer come back online but in a very limited way. They still have a lot of people who haven’t been able to make it back to work, and those who did make it back to the region are now in mandatory quarantines for 2 weeks before being allowed to return to the office or factory. They expect this slow trickle to continue for the next few weeks.

The shop that handles our seals is coming back online this week. We’re optimistic that they can get going on the changes we need done, but they have not yet shared estimated production schedules with us. We should know more at some point this week.

Figo
We wanted to give on the spoon further insight on how the coronavirus is effecting our startup, Figo. Recently we have found sourcing internal electronic components a lot more difficult, along with longer lead times. Communications are event disrupted as some people are working and some are still in a state of quarantine. Delays with imported parts are major issues of most hardware manufacture businesses; however, other pieces of the company are being affected as well. More specifically Research and design, as injection molding and 3D printer part manufacturers are backed up for weeks. This is not only is the virus causing longer lead times, but companies are also responding with higher prices for their services. (One of the reasons we bought a 3D printer from the US this week and it got here in 3 days, so now we can rapid prototype internally.

Grounded
I’m the founder of Grounded (Ed. note: Grounded makes plant-based cheese). Coming from Australia, we’d already witnessed a major surge in demand—all well as investment—in plant based proteins from the Asia market. Which I believe is less a consumer driven trend and more about future food security.

When coronavirus hit, however, I imagine dairy supply came under more threat than ever (especially coupled with supply shortages arising from Australia’s post-bushfire economy). I think that’s why Grounded suddenly had such a spike in interest. There’s a lot of focus around our products providing a more resilient alternative to dairy, and one that’s not so reliant on international trade forces.

Spinn
(Ed. note: The makers of the eponymous connected coffee maker posted this update on its production in February)
Most of you are aware of the outbreak in China of the respiratory disease caused by the 2019 novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). The Chinese government has advised placing measures of isolation into practice in an effort to contain the propagation of the virus. In addition, shops and offices have been closed, working from home is encouraged, public events have been canceled and wearing masks in public is mandatory.

Following the two-week break for Chinese New Year, and as a consequence of the current climate, our factory in Shenzhen has not been operating as usual.

Our production facility reopened its doors on February 10th. However, not all workers are able to commute due to government restrictions imposed in certain areas. As a result, most factories, including ours, are not reaching their full capacity.

We are doing what we can to continue our line of production and helping our colleagues wherever necessary. It is important to note that our Shenzhen factory is part of a larger supply chain of motors, sensors, and numerous other parts that have all been put on hold. The impact of COVID-19 in the coming weeks is still unclear. As soon as we have more information from our local channels, we will share it with you.

This post will be updated as we hear from more companies.

March 9, 2020

Uber, DoorDash and Others ‘In Talks’ to Compensate Drivers Affected By Coronavirus

Under pressure to offer more protection to workers, major gig economy companies are considering setting up a fund to compensate drivers affected by the coronavirus, according to The Wall Street Journal. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, and Postmates are “in talks” to see how they can come together to set up a fund to pay workers infected by or quarantined with the virus.

Food delivery drivers are in high demand right now as more Americans are working from home or simply staying away from restaurants in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Postmates and Instacart have responded by implementing contactless delivery options where drivers simply leave food on the doorstep instead of handing it off directly to the customer.  

Those measures mitigate some risk. However, they don’t account for the fact that gig economy workers are classified as contractors in most states, which means they don’t get paid for time off, including sick leave. In some cases, taking time off for illness could drastically affect workers’ livelihoods. One worker told the WSJ that “staying home won’t pay the bills.”

That puts delivery drivers in a tough position: stay home and miss earning essential income, or work even when you’re feeling sick and potentially risk further spreading coronavirus. While this conundrum is true of many, many types of workers right now, gig workers are in especially high demand as more people order food in, rather than go out to restaurants. 

The aforementioned companies are expected to make a decision about this potential fund in a few days.  Uber has already said it will compensate up to 14 days for both rideshare drivers and delivery drivers diagnosed or quarantined with coronavirus.

Compensating affected drivers is just one of many issues around worker treatment for which delivery companies have come under fire recently. Uber, Lyft, and Postmates are on the list of gig economy companies currently fighting California’s Assembly Bill 5 — also known as the “gig worker bill” — which reclassifies those workers as employees and entitles them to certain benefits — including paid sick leave. DoorDash and Instacart famously made a lot of enemies in 2019 over their worker tipping policies. Meanwhile, advocacy groups like Gig Workers Rising and Gig Workers Collective are putting pressure on tech companies to enact better labor policies.

One possible result of the current outbreak is that it could prioritize the issue of gig workers’ rights and spur both regulators and tech companies into action faster. Coronavirus isn’t the last public health crisis we’ll see in our lifetimes. As gig economy jobs become the norm for a growing number of the population, ensuring better protection for workers’ health needs to be built right into the job description. 

March 9, 2020

How Is Coronavirus Impacting Your Business? Let Us Know

It’s been clear for the last month that coronavirus COVID-19 would spare pretty much no industry, and the food tech spaces we follow are no exception.

From trade show cancellations to the use of food delivery and robotics as a way to avoid infection, we’ve already seen a cascading set of changes that will have an impact across the food tech world for 2020 and possibly beyond.

As we continue to cover this story, we want to hear from you. If you work for, run or are affiliated with any initiative or company in the world food tech and are seeing your business impacted, we’re interested. If you have a story that you think it interesting but don’t want your name or company name revealed, just let us know and we can anonymize your identity or your company’s identity in the story.

We’re interested in hearing any story about how coronavirus has impacted food and kitchen tech related businesses, but we’re especially interested in hearing those stories about how the virus is potentially accelerating the adoption of new and innovative technologies that could have a long-term impact on business as usual.

So if you’ve been impacted or know of a way in which coronavirus is changing food in ways big or small, just drop us a line at tips@thespoon.tech and tell us more. Let us know if you are ok with us possibly writing a story and if you are ok with attribution or wish to remain anonymous.

March 6, 2020

Postmates, Instacart Join No Human Contact Delivery Efforts in the U.S.

Food delivery service Postmates today announced what it’s calling Dropoff Options, a function that lets customers choose how they want to receive their deliveries. According to a company blog post, users can “choose to meet their Postmate at the door, as they have before, meet curbside, or go non-contact and have deliveries left at the door.” 

Postmates customers order their meals as usual then select their delivery method during the checkout process (see image above).

The post itself doesn’t mention coronavirus, but it doesn’t have to. Around the world, delivery services now offer various forms of this contactless delivery, where couriers and customers have no physical contact and in some cases don’t even see one another face to face. 

The bulk of the efforts so far have been in China, where the outbreak originated. Restaurant chains and delivery services — Ele.me, Meituan, McDonald’s, and KFC, to name just a few — are working together to limit the amount of human contact that happens during food delivery dropoffs. Drivers and couriers must wear masks, have their temperature taken, and disinfect their hands and delivery bags before and after each run.

South Korea’s top two delivery services, Baedal Minjok and Yogiyo, have also seen an uptick in food delivery orders and requests for couriers to leave packages on the doorstep.

Stateside, Postmates isn’t alone in its efforts to introduce more contactless delivery. As Business Insider noted, Instacart has also implemented contactless delivery with a service called “Leave at My Door Delivery.” The grocery delivery company told BI that it has actually been testing this service for several months and decided to make it available to all customers after seeing a “surge” in demand for it.

With “Leave at My Door Delivery,” Instacart customers can opt to have their grocery orders left at their doorstep during the designated timeframe for their order. 

Other food delivery companies, including Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats, have not yet implemented any kind of contactless delivery for their operations.

These new services from Postmates and Instacart so far only address the issue of one human getting close to another. They do not yet address steps like disinfecting the insulated delivery bags couriers use or taking workers’ temperatures — actions that are as much about the safety of drivers and couriers as they are about customers. One Instacart worker told the Financial Times that the company still wasn’t providing items like hand sanitizer or disinfectants. While Instacart’s new contactless delivery is “a step in the right direction,” it doesn’t “reduce our overall risks of exposure because most of our risks we actually encounter while shopping,” the worker said. 

Instacart workers in particular are exposed to more germs because part of their job involves moving around a grocery store, touching a shopping cart, and picking up items from shelves. But all gig economy companies should be factoring in the safety of their workers as they implement contactless delivery services.

Which is where the robots may come in. My colleague Chris Albrect has written more than once, we live in a time when delivery robots and driverless vehicles are actually available. Undelv has already said it would make its driverless delivery vans available to deliver food, medicine, and other supplies to quarantined areas. And as Chris pointed out, rover bots like those from Starship or Kiwi “could be an easy humanless way to deliver meals and medicines around the clock in densely populated areas.” I would add drone technology to that list of possible solutions.

Granted, outsourcing delivery jobs to drones would eat into gig workers’ pay. As well, a number of regulatory issues around autonomous delivery vehicles have yet to be addressed, which limits how widely these technologies can even be used. But whether by robot, masked workers, or some other solution that’s yet to be thought of, the contactless delivery method will get way more popular in the next few months — and probably alter the food delivery landscape for good in the process.

March 3, 2020

Online Grocery Shopping Surges Amidst Coronavirus (So Tip Your Delivery Drivers!)

The Spoon is headquartered just outside of Seattle, and with a rise in coronavirus cases here over the weekend, things are understandably a little… tense. This tension was on full display at my local Safeway last night, where the cleaning supply and dry goods sections of the store were picked over and barren.

The rapidly spreading virus has sparked a rash of panic buying here and across the U.S. as concerned citizens stock up in the event of a societal collapse. The Washington Post writes:

Shelf-stable and frozen foods were in high demand. At a Trader Joe’s market in Mountain View, Calif., the freezer section was cleared out of pizza and most ready-made meals by Sunday evening. There was no pasta or rice left. One woman’s cart was piled to the brim with frozen mushroom ravioli. Another cart was filled with six gallons of milk.

Facing empty real world stores and an increasing fear of being in public places, there’s a surge in online shopping. According to MarketWatch:

In the past 30 days, 21% of U.S. consumers ordered perishable, edible groceries online, [NPD Groupd analyst David] Portalatin said. That’s up from 18% at the same point last year.

All this online shopping has taxed even the biggest of delivery players. Bloomberg reports that Amazon’s Fresh and Prime Now delivery services have been overwhelmed, and yesterday Amazon said delivery from both of those services would be impacted as it strains to meet up with demand.

As people find comfort in shopping from home, however, it’s important to remember that human beings are still making those deliveries. The Seattle Times notes that the boon in shopping means drivers can make more money, but they are definitely putting themselves at risk:

Some drivers have begun using hand sanitizer before and after ID checks, while some customers are applying disinfectant to grocery bags, said the gig-economy driver, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from the companies.

Faced with an amorphous, invisible threat that does not discriminate, could literally be anywhere, and will only get worse, our current delivery and logistical systems are going to be pushed to their limits. But as we’ve noted before, this outbreak could also help push forward technological solutions that require less human-to-human contact.

Robots like those from Starship could be an easy humanless way to deliver meals and medicines around the clock in densely populated areas (they’d still need to be sterilized). And self-driving delivery vans like those from Udelv could bring people bulkier items like groceries.

That’s still a ways off, especially since we haven’t had to lockdown any U.S. metropolitan areas (thankfully) yet, and the safety tradeoffs of autonomous vehicles must still be considered. So for now we’re still reliant on humans to make our deliveries. Those delivery drivers aren’t just bringing packages, they are serving as a lifeline to the food we need to eat. If you need to panic grocery shop to feel better, we can’t stop you. Just be sure you tip your delivery driver generously.

March 3, 2020

Expo West Postponed a Day Before Expected Start Due to Coronavirus

After days of bad news about exhibitors pulling out of one of the biggest natural and organic food product shows in the world, New Hope Network announced last night that it would postpone the Natural Products Expo West due to coronavirus just a day before the expected start of the show.

Yesterday I wrote that it was a pretty extraordinary move for the Inspired Home Show, another large trade show, to cancel less than two weeks before it was expected to begin. But two weeks was at least enough advance notice to allow exhibitors and attendees time to change plans. By postponing just a day before its expected start, Expo West gave attendees and exhibitors still planning to attend no time to alter plans, and many were already en route to Los Angeles to attend the event.

The show’s abrupt cancellation left many attendees and exhibitors scrambling to cancel hotels or flights and to figure out what to do with products and trade show equipment already shipped to Los Angeles. Rabobank’s FoodBytes, one of many organizations that had planned to have its own gathering in LA around Expo West, announced via email they would cancel a mixer planned for Wednesday, March 4. On Facebook, a representative from another organization offered to buy inventory from exhibitors that had already shipped product to help some of these small companies mitigate losses.

While the postponement was last minute, the fast-moving nature of the Coronavirus epidemic left the trade show’s organizers in a very tough place. In the announcement, New Hope Network talked about the back and forth discussion it had been having over the past week with its exhibitor community and how they ultimately decided to postpone the event.

From the announcement:

“Over the last 48 hours, we have worked with the Community to try and serve those who want the show by delivering a great experience, and support those who want it, but not now, by working on credits and alternatives.

It is now clear, despite continued advice from local government and health authorities that the City of Anaheim remains open, that the majority of our Community want the show, but they do not want it now.”

New Hope Network wrote that they plan to announce a new date and location for a rescheduled Expo West by mid-April.

As with the cancellation of the Inspired Home Show, Expo West’s delay shows how the virus is having a significant disruptive impact on nearly ever aspect of the broader global economy and industry. We’ll continue to cover the impact of the virus on the food and food tech industry in coming weeks.

March 2, 2020

Inspired Home Show Canceled Due to Coronavirus

Another trade show has gone down due to the coronavirus.

Last month we learned the Inspired Home Show (previously known as the Housewares Show) had cancelled the portion of its annual trade show that featured OEM parts from manufacturers in China. Today we learned they’ve called the whole thing off.

From the announcement issued today by the International Housewares Association:

“After careful consideration regarding the ongoing spread of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) overseas and recent cases in the United States, the International Housewares Association’s Board of Directors has decided not to hold The Inspired Home Show 2020, scheduled to take place March 14-17, 2020 at McCormick Place in Chicago.”

It’s an extraordinary move to cancel a trade show less than two weeks before it opens, but it’s an illustration of how fluid and fast-moving the situation is around the coronavirus.

Just a few weeks ago we learned that Mobile World Congress was cancelled in its entirety, and while another big show, the Natural Products Expo West in Los Angeles, is expected to open this week, there’s been a huge number of exhibitor cancellations in recent weeks and some forecast the show’s attendance could be down by as much as 60%.

If it wasn’t already obvious that COVID-19 was drastically changing the 2020 outlook for nearly every industry (including housewares and kitchen appliances), the cancellation of the North America’s biggest small home electronics trade show should drive the point home.

We’ll have more on the implications of this cancellation in coming weeks.

March 2, 2020

Korea’s Meatbox 365 is an Automated Meat Vending Machine

As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, we are watching in real time as our food systems adapt. Everyone, after all, still has to eat amidst the outbreak, but enjoying a meal or shopping for groceries around hundreds of strangers in a crowded restaurant or supermarket carries more risk than it did just a few months ago.

We’ve seen robots delivering food to quarantined patients, a driverless vehicle company offering up its technology to assist with food delivery, and over the weekend, a reader sent us the following tip:

In Korea, non-commercial, unmanned fresh food stores are popular because of the coronavirus.

Along with that brief note came a link to a Korean blog post about the Meatbox 365, an automated meat vending machine service. It’s a small, real world location that houses three different vending machines. We couldn’t get a ton of details because we read a Google translation of the webpage, but it appears that two vending machines are serving a range of meats like beef, lamb, and pork in a variety of cuts. The third machine serves salads and sides. There also appears to be a bank of cold storage lockers where you can presumably safely store your purchases for pickup later.

24시간 운영하는 고기 자판기…무인 정육점 미트박스365를 사용해보니[현장포커스]

Meatbox 365 falls neatly into the Venn diagram of topics we’re following closely here at The Spoon. First, it’s another example of the golden age of vending machines, which we are starting to enter now. The Meatbox 365 is basically a 24-hour butcher shrunk down into a very small physical footprint. Not everyone needs a pork chop at 2 a.m., but it can provide a fresh meat alternative for busy people unable to make it to an actual grocery store.

Second, as noted earlier, we are watching to see how the coronavirus pandemic alters the meal journey. An automated butcher means less human-to-human contact as people shop for meat, and people can venture out of their homes in off-hours to buy protein to avoid crowds.

Of course, the touchscreens and dispensing cavities of the Meatbox 365 machines need to be scrubbed down and/or people need to wash their hands after using the machine to minimize the risk of spreading the virus.

Based on a video posted by TechCafe, Meatbox 365 has been in operation since at least October of last year. I’d love to see any stats around Meatbox 365 sales since then, just to get a sense of how people in Korea adopt buying meat from a machine. But it would also be interesting to see stats over the past few weeks as coronavirus cases have spiked in Korea, and whether the automated nature of the machines has spurred sales.

We actually have meat vending machines here in the U.S. as well. The Applestone Meat company has two meat vending machines that operate 24/7 in New York. Though those machines aren’t as high-tech, and lack the touchscreens of Meatbox.

If you’re in Korea and have bought meat from a Meatbox, drop us a line and let us know why you did so and how the experience was!

February 28, 2020

Udelv Offers its Driverless Delivery Vans to Assist with Coronavirus Efforts

If there is anything “lucky” about the deadly coronavirus outbreak marching its way across the world, it could be the timing. At at time when human-to-human interactions, especially in quarantined areas, need to be limited, we actually live in a world where driverless delivery vehicles and robots aren’t science fiction, but could actually be a viable means to supply delivery.

In Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus which is currently on lockdown, online grocery shopping has been a lifeline for those forced to stay home. Even here in the U.S. where no large-scale quarantines are in place, the New York-based online grocer FreshDirect has attributed a spike in sales to media coverage around COVID-19.

But in both of those scenarios, you still have human drivers bringing food to human customers. In China, they’ve implemented a contactless method for delivery wherein the delivery person and the consumer remain ten feet apart from each other, but there is still a human putting themselves at risk to feed another human.

Given that there are a host of startups working on self-driving delivery technology, we at The Spoon were wondering if and when any of them would raise their hand to help out in the efforts to combat the effects of the coronavirus.

Today, Udelv, which makes self-driving and tele-operated delivery vans, made such a move, and on Twitter announced that it was ready to pitch in.

As a preventative measure for areas hit by an outbreak of the #coronavirus or where patients are quarantined, #Udelv is offering its autonomous delivery trucks to move goods without human intervention (tele-operated). Includes China. Contact us for help. pic.twitter.com/G03qFb7uvV

— udelv (@udelv_av) February 28, 2020

At first, this may seem like some mercenary Silicon Valley grab for press attention amidst a humanitarian crisis. But two things can be true at the same time.

To find out more about Udelv’s intentions, I spoke with its CEO, Daniel Laury, by phone today. He explained that his company’s delivery trucks could be useful in quarantine situations such as the one in Wuhan because they can be tele-operated. There is still someone driving the delivery van, they are just housed in a remote location. Vans could be sent in to deliver food, medicine or other supplies without putting a human driver at risk.

Additionally, Udelv trucks are built with customizable individual cargo compartments. Each order has its own delivery cubby that is unlocked with user’s phone when it arrives. So a grocery route could have multiple stops with people only able to access their own orders.

Asked if he would charge for the use of Udelv’s services, Laury told me “This is done with the best intention. I’m not charging. I’m not going to make money on this.”

In talking with him, it seemed like Laury saw what was going on and saw that his company might be able to help. He hasn’t worked through all of the details yet; for example, rules around autonomous vehicles on public roads have only recently been enacted here in the US, though I imagine there could exceptions made for extreme quarantine situations. And Laury doesn’t have a particular sanitization workflow in mind. It’s one thing to not have a human driver, but if you have an infected person touching or coughing at the inside of a cargo hold, that cargo hold will need some kind of scrub down.

“We’re expert in autonomous trucking, not viruses,” Laury told me. He considers Udelv’s truck just another tool that could be used to help fight the outbreak. Udelv would provide vans to a government agency like the CDC, and they would institute proper sterilization procedures. His company would just make sure supplies gets from point A to B.

So far Udelv has not been contacted by any government agencies either at home or abroad. Udelv doesn’t even operate in China, but Laury said he’s happy to put some vans on a boat if they want. “I don’t know anyone at the CDC or the administration that I can contact directly,” Laury said. “It’s one of the reasons I put out this tweet. Maybe it’s picked up by someone who is in charge.”

If someone in charge is reading, perhaps you can take look at how autonomous vehicles might be able to help.

February 26, 2020

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

It’s another episode of the Food Tech Show!

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

  • The cancellation fo the foreign sourcing expo by the Housewares Show (aka Inspired Home) because of coronavirus
  • Cargill wades into the increasingly crowded plant-based burger market
  • Starbucks and McDonalds take the NextGen Cup challenge
  • Drinkmate’s effort to help us carbonate drinks on the go

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

Audio Player
http://media.adknit.com/a/1/33/smart-kitchen-show/1aa0oa.3-2.mp3
00:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

February 24, 2020

Coronavirus Causes Inspired Home Show to Cancel International Sourcing Expo

UPDATE: On March 2nd, the International Housewares Association decided to cancel the 2020 Inspired Home Show in its entirety. You can read about the cancellation here.

The Inspired Home Show, a big convention put on by the International Housewares Association next month in Chicago, is canceling the International Sourcing Expo portion of the convention due to concerns over the coronavirus epidemic.

The announcement came last Friday, with the following explanation provided on the Inspired Home Show’s FAQ:

The Inspired Home Show is made up of five Expos. The International Sourcing expo, which traditionally houses seven Chinese pavilions offering OEM products, will not open in 2020. This decision was made in collaboration with the Chinese pavilion organizers due to health concerns and challenges related to travel between China and the United States.

The rest of The Inspired Home Show including the Dine + Décor, Clean + Contain, Wired + Well, and Discover Design expos will open as planned. These expos are home to more than 1,600 exhibitors and over 5,000 brands.

Additionally, travel restrictions put into place amidst the outbreak will also impact the ability of people to attend the show. Foreign nationals that have visited China within 14 days of traveling to the U.S. are being denied entry. And US nationals who have visited China in the past 14 days are being redirected to a specified airport for health screening, and could have their movement limited for 14 days after they left China.

This isn’t the first time the coronavirus has impacted the business of conventions. Earlier this year, Mobile World Congress was canceled due to concerns over the virus.

The virus’ spread around the world sparked a downturn in global stock exchanges this morning. All three major US stock indices were dropped with the Dow Jones Industrial Average eliminating all of its gains for the year, according to Bloomberg.

As we’ve reported, the deadly epidemic has impacted food tech’s small corner of the world. Kickstarter projects manufactured in China are delayed, robots are being used to hand out food to quarantined travelers, and new contactless methods are being deployed for food delivery.

As the coronavirus spreads to more countries, we are bound to see more fallout, especially for anything related to travel and in-person business. It should be noted, however, that the Inspired Home Show isn’t completely canceled, the remaining expos will be carry on. Though I imagine hand sanitizer will be in full effect in most booths this year.

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...