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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

covid

Yelp Now Lets Restaurants List Vaccine Requirements (and Ward Off Backlash)

There is probably nothing more 2021 than Yelp announcing today a new feature that allows businesses to list their vaccine status and requirements. It is also very 2021 that in the same announcement, Yelp felt the need to reaffirm internal processes to help mitigate any online backlash listing these requirements might incur.

In a corporate blog post, Yelp wrote:

To help consumers understand how a business is currently operating as pandemic guidelines continue to evolve, today, Yelp is announcing two new, free attributes – “Proof of vaccination required” and “All staff fully vaccinated.” Users will be able to filter by these attributes when searching for local businesses on Yelp and will easily see “Proof of vaccination required” indicated on restaurant, food and nightlife businesses in search results.

These vaccine attributes adds to Yelp’s existing COVID-related labels allowing businesses to list their mask requirements.

While the vaccine rollout this past spring helped people in the U.S. regain some sense of normalcy, the Delta variant surge has rekindled health and safety concerns and resurfaced questions around the safety of eating inside at restaurants. As such, allowing businesses to detail their vaccine requirements on Yelp seems like a really helpful idea because it sets expectations and eliminates any confusion when selecting a restaurant.

However, in these times, detailing information about vaccine protocols is not an anodyne statement. As such, in that same corporate blog post, Yelp reaffirmed the measures it is taking to minimize online backlash against a restaurant as it relates to promoting their COVID protocols, writing:

For businesses that activate “Proof of vaccination required” and “All staff fully vaccinated” on their Yelp page, we are putting protective measures in place to proactively safeguard them from reviews that primarily criticize the COVID health and safety measures they enforce.

Yelp implemented similar content monitoring features when it launched business attributes highlighting Black, Latinx, Asian and LGBTQ-owned businesses.

Yelp said that since January of this year, it has removed nearly 4,500 reviews for violating content policies as it relates to businesses’ COVID precautions.

Johnny Grey on the Post-COVID Kitchen: No Cabinets, Bigger Pantries, More Pleasure

With COVID keeping many of us at home, kitchens are taking on a bigger role than ever before. They’re not just the place we cook meals; they’re also our offices, a place to teach kids homework, the background of our Zoom video calls as we cook along with family.

Considering we’ve long considered the kitchen the heart of the home, it’s no surprise that they’re shifting as we spend more and more time homebound. But how will the kitchen transform to better suit our new needs during quarantine?

To answer that question we turned to Johnny Grey, a British design leader specializing in — you guessed it — kitchens. Today Grey (and a few surprise guests) joined us for our latest Spoon Virtual Event, titled The Future of Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID19 World. He talked about some of the constants of kitchen design, how to embrace the DIY, and how the kitchen is a sort of “3D timepiece.” Here are a few of the highlights:

Fewer cabinets, more pantries
If there’s one part of conventional kitchen design that Grey absolutely hates, it’s cabinets. He thinks they take up too much space in the core of the kitchen itself, which should be a more social space.

In fact, Grey’s overarching goal with kitchen design seems to be to make it a more pleasant space for gathering. To that end, he’s a big fan of kitchen islands (or peninsulas), ideally ones with adjustable heights that can go from a bar space to a dining table.

When asked what he thought we could learn from the past, Grey answered in one word: pantries. He likes a walk-in pantry because you can see things in front of you — like all those bulk bags of dry goods you bought — and you don’t have to rely on dreaded cabinets to store everything.

Where does smart tech fit in?
For Grey, smart tech does have a role to play in kitchens of the future. Specifically when it comes to two things: precision and safety. Grey also emphasized that kitchen technology can help generations age in place. If individuals can cook for themselves, he theorizes that they won’t have to move to assisted living facilities as quickly — thus keeping them home for longer.

Photo: Innit and Sharp

The kitchen as a timepiece
During the virtual event Grey unveiled a new concept he’s been working on. Called the Evening Kitchen, he explained that the kitchen has multiple different lives during each 24-hour cycle. During the day it may be an area for quick meal prep, but in the evening it morphs into a bistro, a nightclub, or even a quiet living room, depending on the circumstances. Grey calls the kitchen a sort of “3D timepiece.”

For that reason, the evening kitchen must look different than the kitchen of daytime. Grey talks about the power of lighting, which gives intimacy, as well as smell and music to transform the space. If you’re curious you can watch his video explaining the concept here.

Especially now, embrace joy
Especially now, kitchens should be a place of joy. “It should be a pleasure to use your kitchen,” Grey said. To make it pleasurable, designers should think about touch, ease of movement, and even color. They could set up places to set a chair in the sun. Consumers themselves can do a lot to improve their kitchen. “Embrace the DIY,” Grey told the audience.

Grey also urged listeners not to put too much pressure on themselves to de-clutter, especially now that the kitchen table is also a coworking space and/or classroom. “It’s not really how people can live,” he said.

Overall, it was a fascinating conversation and — bonus — you get to enjoy Grey’s soothing British accent. You can watch the full video below.

Kitchen Design in a Post-COVID World: A Conversation with Kitchen Designer Johnny Grey

Finally, don’t forget to mark your calendar for our next event on May 21st 10am PT, when Gingko Bioworks program director Sudeep Agarwala will talk about fermentation as a food tech platform.

Will Bellwether Coffee’s Plug-and-Play Roasters Help Cafés Survive COVID-19?

Every Tuesday, before I make my weekly outing to grocery shop, I stop by my favorite coffee shop and get a black coffee and a donut. The shop used to be a hubbub of activity — freelancers hanging out on their laptops, friends catching up, kids running around — but now it’s quiet, with a masked barista serving up to-go coffees to patrons who line up outside to be served.

Like most other foodservice establishments, coffee shops are feeling the pain of COVID-19. To compensate some are cutting hours, reducing staff, or trying to incorporate new revenue streams, like selling local products, flowers, and emphasizing bagged coffee.

Bellwether Coffee, a company that makes electric, ventless zero-emissions connected commercial coffee roasters that can go into cafés, is trying to help coffee shops supplement their income by roasting their own beans. To try and get more partners during the pandemic, they’re offering to waive the first two months of roaster fees — provided the shop installs it between May and July. The roasters can be delivered in as little as a week.

On the one hand, coffee shops who are struggling to stay afloat probably aren’t able to commit to purchasing a pricey coffee roaster (the machines cost $75,000 to buy or can be rented for a monthly fee), even with the deal. On the other, Bellwether roasters could offer these shops a new revenue stream as they sell bagged beans roasted in-house. The coffee shops could also use their house-roasted beans in their drinks, so they don’t have to purchase coffee from other roasters.

The only reason this is actually feasible is because Bellwether’s roasters don’t require any special setup or expertise. The device, which is about the size of a standard fridge, is automated, so baristas or café managers don’t have to have any roasting experience to figure out how to use it. It runs on electricity and is ventless, so coffee shops don’t have to build out expensive ventilation systems to start roasting — something which would be especially tricky given the limitations around the pandemic.

The software that controls Bellwether’s roasters also features a marketplace where users can browse and purchase green coffee beans in 22-pound boxes. That way, shops don’t have to worry about setting up relationships with suppliers or buy massive amounts of beans if they’re just trying to set up a temporary roasting solution.

With all of that said, the roaster is still pricey. The Bellwether website notes that shops can lease the roaster for $1,150 a month for 60 months, but that’s still cost-prohibitive for small, local coffee shops — coronavirus or no.

Since coffee shops already have to-go infrastructure set up — takeaway cups and containers, etc. — they might actually have a better chance of surviving the pandemic than, say, full-service restaurants. They can also operate pretty easily with a bare-bones staff, since a single barista could take orders, make coffee, bag up pastries, etc.

That said, coffee shops, like all foodservice joints, still have a significant amount of overhead. Just like restaurants, we’ll continue to see cafés get creative to figure out new ways to cut costs and spark new revenue streams. Roasting their own beans could help coffee shops do both of those things. The question will then become whether or not cafés want to keep their Bellwether roasters after they’re able to reopen their doors post-pandemic.