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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Covid-19

Can’t Find Yeast? This Geneticist Says There’s a Solution Hiding in Your Cupboard

Obviously, Americans are baking a lot of bread right now. Don’t believe me? Just look at the aisles of your local grocery store — nary a packet of yeast to be seen.

According to NPR, sales of baking yeast were up 647 percent during the week ending in March 21, and 456 percent the week following. But if you can’t find those elusive packets to make your loaves/waffles/focaccia rise, don’t despair! One geneticist has a solution.

Sudeep Agarwala, a geneticist specializing in yeast for biotech company Gingko Bioworks (the parent company of alternative protein company Motif Foodworks), posted a tweet at the end of March that made a pretty bold claim:

If you’re an adamant baker, you likely know where Agarwala, is going. In the tweet thread he goes on to describe how to make your own sourdough starter using dried fruit (which is covered in natural yeast!), water, and flour. If you follow the instructions correctly you should be able to have your own burbling sourdough starter in two days.

For those of us who have been on Instagram lately, the fact that you can make sourdough starters at home is not exactly ground-breaking news. You likely know someone right now who is giving you updates on their starter’s progress — maybe you’ve even got one going yourself! Agarwala’s tweet also gives tips on how to experiment by adding wine or beer to tweak your starter’s flavor profile, or incorporating breadcrumbs to keep the starter fed when you can’t find flour.

What was more surprising from Agarwala’s tweet — and our subsequent phone conversation — was his broader take on bread’s role in the current pandemic.

“Yeast is technology, flour is culture,” Agarwala told me, as things turned anthropological on our call. “I can tell you the technology, but the actual cultural reasons being all of this… that’s a much bigger question.” His take? We’re baking so much bread because it’s familiar and comforting; “bread returns us to our childhood.”

Well, at least some of us. Agarwala did note that the fact that everyone in the U.S. seems to be using their fermentation skills to create bread right now is, well, a little basic. “There are plenty of other things that can be fermented — lentils, oats, rice,” he said.

Maybe as the rising mania around homemade bread starts to overproof and fall, we’ll see consumers begin to experiment making fermented comfort foods from different regions around the world. The next hot “it” food flooding your Instagram could be Indian dosas, thin pancakes made of fermented lentils and rice, or injera, the spongy Ethiopian flatbread made from teff flour. “Now is the time for all the multiculturalism we’ve been harvesting to take precedence,” Agarwala told me. “It’s exciting.”

Bonus? These dishes don’t require flour — another sought-after ingredient that’s nearly impossible to track down at your local grocery store.

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.

Will Fear of Grocery Contamination Boost Sales of CSAs and Specialized E-Grocers?

I knew it was going to be a great day when I opened up my Twitter feed morning and immediately saw a CNN story about a woman who was arrested for licking $1,800 worth of merchandise at a Safeway store in California. She was purportedly licking jewelry, not food, but there have been multiple other instances of people coughing on and contaminating aisles of food in grocery stores around the country. These stories are heightening our already heightened fears around grocery shopping — and the risk it poses during the coronavirus pandemic.

Those are just stories of people who are contaminating food on purpose. Goods in supermarkets are handled not just by employees but also by perhaps dozens of other shoppers before they make it to your grocery cart. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing a spike in online grocery delivery sales as well as curbside pickup — contactless delivery programs cut down on the literal touchpoints before food even reaches your home, hopefully lessening the risk of contamination.

All this contamination-mania makes me think that COVID-19 will not only transform how we shop for groceries, but also where we shop for them.

One avenue that could see growth as people take steps to avoid contamination is smaller, more specialized online grocers. These operations, which focus on a more selective array of products, are already seeing a spike in demand. Services like bean marketplace Rancho Gordo and online flour purveyor Maine Grains are selling out or having to delay shipments due to sudden increases in shoppers. Localized grocery delivery services, like Farmstead and SPUD.ca, are also extending delivery hours, waitlisting customers and hiring new staff to try and keep up with the new demand.

Peter van Stolk, CEO of SPUD.ca, told me that one reason these smaller operations are seeing such an increase in demand is that they can “feel safer” than the big box stores.

The key word is “feel.” He noted that, regardless, “the supply chain is the supply chain” — if you buy a box of Annie’s Mac & Cheese from Amazon Fresh or a local e-commerce site, both had to go through the same number of steps (warehouse, distribution center, etc.) to get to the retailer.

SPUD.ca goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of their warehouses — locked doors, gloves and masks, etc. — but Amazon has the same safety measures in place. So if you’re buying foods from established brands, they’ll likely have gone through quite a few (hopefully gloved) hands to reach you, regardless of which store you purchase from.

One thing you can control is whether you purchase from e-commerce services that ship directly from warehouses or from grocery stores. Instacart, for example, uses Shoppers to pick up your groceries from a physical store, meaning all the goods they’re getting are open to contamination from regular old shoppers. Walmart operates in a similar manner, for both delivery and curbside pickup. Services like Amazon Fresh (and Whole Foods), Farmstead, or SPUD.ca, however, fulfill your online orders directly from their warehouses, where all the handlers have to adhere to safety protocol.

Fear over grocery contamination could be one reason that we’re seeing an increase in sales is Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Food purchased through CSAs often go through significantly fewer hands than food purchase from large grocery chains, which typically travel through warehouses, distribution trucks and more before ending up on your doorstep. The number of touchpoints varies farmer to farmer, but Simon Huntley, CEO of online farm share platform Harvie, told me over the phone that “people have this perception that if they buy from a local farm or retailer there are less hands on their food.”

There are other benefits to buying food sourced nearby, specifically when it comes to produce. Executive Director of ReFed Dana Gunders also noted via email that “another upside to buying local or from a CSA is that the product is typically fresher, so can last longer (thus accommodates less frequent shopping).”

Obviously, even smaller, more localized e-commerce stores are not guaranteed to be COVID-free. As Huntley admitted: “I don’t know if we can prove that it is safe to buy from a local retailer.” They’re also often more expensive, so they won’t be a feasible retail channel for all budgets. And since many of the stores are more specialized or feature a smaller range of products, you’ll still have to turn to your local grocery store (or e-commerce store, or bodega) to get some essentials, like trash bags and hand soap.

But in a time when we’re trying to be as cautious as possible and also support local businesses, trust is more important than ever. With that in mind, COVID-19 could set up smaller, specialized grocery delivery services for a boom — one that could linger even after the pandemic passes.

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

Popapp Data Gives Snapshot of COVID-19’s Impact on Latin American Restaurants

Because we are based in the US, we have plenty of data about how the COVID-19 outbreak is decimating the restaurant business here. And while we have a general sense about how restaurants are faring in other parts of the world (bad), we haven’t seen a lot of numbers.

But thanks to Jorge Corona Gutierrez, we have a small glimpse into the impact of the global pandemic across Latin America countries like Argentina, Chile, Perú and Mexico.

Gutierrez is the Founder and CEO of Popapp, a restaurant software startup that helps manage delivery for small to medium-sized restaurants. He pulled together data from Popapp’s 300 customers to provide a snapshot of how COVID-19 has impacted the restaurant business across Latin America. From that report, Gutierrez says:

  • As of March 1 of this year, Popapp had 336 active point of sale (POS) per day. By April 6, that number had dropped to 59 active POS per day, representing an 82 percent churn.
  • During the first week of March, the average cumulative sales per day of Popapp’s customers was roughly $117,000 (USD) per day. During the first week of April, that number dropped to $25,000, an 84 percent loss in revenue.

Obviously this is a small snapshot of the overall state of the restaurant industry in Latin America, but it does give us some numbers to get a sense of the problems there.

Even amidst this gloom, however, Gutierrez points out some optimism. That 59 active POS number above is actually an improvement over the nadir for the company over the past month, when there were just 43 active POS systems per day. And Gutierrez says that his company has been steadily adding more customers suggesting that more restaurants are pivoting to delivery.

The data from Gutierrez’s report does illustrate that this is a truly global pandemic that is hitting the restaurant industry particularly hard around the world.

Done Rising? Some Signs Indicate Quarantine-Induced Bread Baking May Have Already Peaked

For most of March, bread baking was having its moment.

Quarantined would-be bakers flooded Instagram and Facebook with photos of freshly baked loaves. Google searches jumped for break-making how-to’s. Flour and yeast disappeared from store shelves.

But now, it seems the bread may be done rising.

According to data from shoppable recipe platform Chicory, searches for the recipe for basic home made bread reached a peak the week of March 22nd at 896 thousand total views. A week later, views dropped by 26% to 661 thousand.

Are consumers over breadmaking?

I doubt it. My guess is that more consumers than ever before are baking bread.

So why the drop? One reason may be consumers realized there’s plenty of bread to be found on store shelves after an initial wave of panic buying and are mixing store purchases with home baking. Another may be that after the initial wave of searches for that first bread recipe crested, many have moved on to making more loaves with the same recipe or using one road-tested by a friend.

And then, some, like our own Catherine Lamb, may have just realized bread baking takes a lot of time. I knew she had recently taken up baking bread, so I asked her how it’s been going.

“I still do bake it, but less frequently” she responded. “It just takes a lot of time (basically 24 full hours) with intermittent maintenance, so it’s not a spur of the moment thing.

“Plus,” she said, “I had SO MUCH bread.”

I figured if Catherine, The Spoon’s most prolific home cook and a person who’s Twitter profile pic has her holding an artisanal loaf, has lost patience with act of bread baking, I can only imagine how many “one and done” bakers are out there.

Finally, it’s possible the downward trend may only be temporary. After a slight dip in early April, Google Trends showed Google searches for the term bake bread rebounded this week.

I also have to wonder if many of the first time home bread bakers are moving onto new projects (including new types of bread). While basic bread and tortillas dipped this past week, views of “how to make banana bread” and “how to make your own sourdough starter” have continued to grow every week for the last month.

One thing that is clear is consumer behavior has changed radically over the past month. Certainly, many more people are baking bread now than at the beginning of the year, even if some of those may have already decided to go back to buying loaves at the store.

The real question I have is how permanent many of the behavior shifts will be after a couple months of quarantine. My guess is it will probably take at least a year or two to find out.

The Food Tech Show: Going Off-Premise During a Pandemic

With dine-in still shut down in most places around the US (and the world), restaurants are trying to survive by going off-premise through a combination of delivery and takeout. The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht caught up with Chowly‘s Sterling Douglass to talk about the rapidly changing restaurant landscape and to discuss strategies for going off-premise.

This conversation took place as part of The Spoon’s COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit. If you missed the summit and would like to see some of what you missed, all the sessions are now available to watch.

You can get this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download direct to your device or just click play below.

With Consumers in Quarantine, Connected Cooking Companies Spring Into Action With Tailored Content

With a good chunk of the world’s population currently in quarantine, most of us are cooking at home a lot more nowadays.

Along with all this home cooking has come a massive spike in demand for information for culinary how-to, ranging from recipe suggestions to tutorials on how to do everything from making rice to baking bread. While many are simply searching Google for recipes, others are settling in to learn cooking skills to help them learn to get food on the table.

This sudden hunger for cooking-related guidance has led some tech-forward cooking startups to ramp up the content as they look to both satiate newfound interest in cooking skills while also giving quarantine bound consumers something to do with their time.

Here are a few ways in which kitchen tech startups have ramped up their efforts to serve homebound consumers:

Hestan Cue

While the Hestan Cue already walks users through recipes with step by step instructions, the guided cooking startup has launched Hestan Cue Cooking School, a series of virtual classes to help users of the connected cooking platform build up on their cooking skills during quarantine.

Built with the virtual class platform Teachable, the initial classes cover techniques for cooking beef, eggs and vegetables. The cool thing is that while the classes suggest you use your Cue for certain steps, you can use the classes even if you don’t have the Hestan device.

According to Hestan Smart Cooking managing director John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen, about one third of the Hestan Cue users have signed up for courses.

Anova

Sous vide specialist Anova has always been active in creating cooking content for their user community, and over the past month they’ve gone quarantine cooking focused by creating content to help consumers with everything from making pantry staples to batch cooking. And for the parents with bored kids, Anova suggests enlisting them to help with the brisket.

Thermomix

Thermomix is known for its in-person sales model for the high-end multicooker, but in the age of COVID-19 they’ve gone virtual with a “quarantine kitchen” series of cooking demos and are also allowing potential customers to book online cooking demos with the TM6 sales team.

You can see one of their latest episodes of their quarantine kitchen series below:

SideChef

SideChef is also ramping up its quarantine specific content. In early March they created a quarantine cooking recipe collection. A month later, and with virtual happy hours firmly planted in the stay-at-home zeitgeist, they’ve created a guide for virtual dinner parties.

Instant Pot

The massively popular pressure cooker is famous for leaning on its Facebook community to create content for them. Still, the company seems to have recognized our new shared reality and is letting people know that Instant Pots can help you cook bread while you’re cooped up during quarantine.

Food Network Kitchen

While the Food Network Kitchen app doesn’t seem to have created any tailored content for quarantine bound consumers, they have seen a big jump in usage and consumers look for more ways to cook. Company spokesperson Irika Slavin told me via email that Foodnetwork.com has seen “double digit increases” in page views and the Food Network App, the guided cooking premium offering launched in October, has seen what Slavin describes as a “triple digit increase” in visitors.

ckbk

ckbk is a ‘Spotify for cookbooks’ app that puts pretty much any cookbook or recipe just a click away.

Since ckbk only offers access to existing cookbooks, the company isn’t creating any quarantine specific content, but they do have a good idea of what people are cooking. Company founder Matthew Cockerill told me he’s noticed most of his subscribers, and the world in general, seem to be moving in sync over the past month through what he calls the ‘seven stages of cooking grief.’

“So first of all it was about the prepping – stockpiling durable good – beans and pasta,” said Cockerill. “Then came the “staff of life” basics bread and baking. And after that, I think, there’s a need for some comfort, yes, but also some relief from the monotony. Which is where I think chocolate and dessert cravings are kicking in. It’s either that or alcohol. And in many cases both!”

“Lastly,” he continued, “we’ve also seen a trend of interest in ways to use the new found time which people see stretching out ahead of them, with longer-term projects” like baking bread.

Cockerill told me that new subscriptions are up 250% over pre-COVID times. If you want to cook your way through grief, the company is giving away 30 days free access to their app to help you cook through your pantry items.

COVID-19 Summit: Coronavirus Could Actually Help us Reduce Food Waste (in Some Areas)

Unpopped popcorn kernels from movie theaters. Pre-wrapped cheese plates for airline passengers. These are just a few of the unexpected food resources that, due to social distancing recommendations, are going to waste during the coronavirus pandemic.

True, reducing food waste might not be one of the top-of-mind priorities right now for many of us, including airlines and movie theaters. But as Dana Gunders, Executive Director of ReFed, pointed out during yesterday’s COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit, as the coronavirus shakes up the food system from top to bottom, our food waste patterns are shifting too. “There’s enormous volatility in the system right now,” she said.

As we shutter restaurants, Gunders explained that we’ve cut off the supply chain to half of the food system. With that outlet closed, farms, processors, and distributors that typically work with foodservice are eyeing the grocery market and trying to establish new sales channels. Gunders walked us through how each sector of the food ecosystem is experiencing change — and what that means for food waste.

Farms
Farms, many of which rely on restaurant partners to sell their goods, are trying to pivot to find new retail channels. “But it’s not that instant,” Gunders said. She explained that instead, millions of pounds of green beans, tomatoes, and cabbage are getting tilled under because farmers can’t find outlets for them. So until farmers are able to forge new partnerships for e-commerce and D2C delivery, farm waste will increase. 

Processors and Manufacturers
With retail shopping on the rise, Gunders said that processors and manufacturers, such as CPG brands, are seeing up to triple the typical demand. But they’re also trying to navigate social distancing regulations and employee illnesses, which negatively affects their production capacity. This is bad news for upcyclers — companies that make goods out of traditional waste products, like spent grain from breweries — who are suddenly having difficulty sourcing their raw materials. 

Photo: ReFed

Distributors
When foodservice entities are forced to shut down and cancel their orders, distributors are the ones stuck with extra product. Distributors are seeking new retail channels to find an outlet for these leftover foods — but Gunders pointed out that the food is not often packaged for retail sales (e.g. the aforementioned popcorn kernels and cheese trays). 

Grocery and Retail
If you read The Spoon on the reg, or have gone shopping for toilet paper over the last month, you know that grocery stores and retailers have been experiencing a huge boom. At the same time, grocery stores are having difficulty forecasting how much to stock, since demand is so volatile right now. And as Gunders pointed out, volatility leads to challenges in purchasing, which could actually lead to more food waste on the grocery level. 

Restaurants and Foodservice
As we know, restaurants and foodservice establishments have been one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic. Forced closures over the past few weeks led to an initial spike in donations to food banks as restaurants tried to avoid throwing away food — the donations were too much for the system to handle in some cases, said Gunders. But as restaurants stay closed, these donations are now dropping off. There are also challenges around logistics; transporting food donations the last mile can be tricky when restaurants have laid off employees and volunteerism is down.

Consumer
One of Gunders’ biggest takeaways from the summit is that COVID-19 is forcing us all to be a lot more conscious about what food we’re buying and how we’re using it. When going to the grocery store means standing in line for an hour, you’re forced to be more strategic about how to use up food you already have at home — and that means less food waste. At the same time, Gunders pointed out that hoarding behavior at the grocery store can lead to more food waste when people discover they didn’t actually need that 6-pack of brie cheese wheels.

As more people cook at home, we’re also gaining kitchen skills. These could serve us going forward; consumers will learn how to freeze, preserve, and make use of their food, instead of just throwing it away. Gunders also said that people might begin to eat food that’s past its “sell by” date, which is notorious for being confusing and overly conservative. It’s also an opportunity for the adoption of smart kitchen tech which helps use up food, like IoT-connected containers or meal planning resources.

The majority of food waste right now happens within the home. If we start being more conscious about our food, and how we consume and preserve it, the COVID-19 outbreak could actually be a significant opportunity to cut food waste. But only if we all do our part.

You can watch the full session with Dana Gunders below or check it out on Crowdcast.

The Spoon COVID-19 Summit: Dana Gunders on COVID-19's Impact on Food Waste.

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

Comfort Food & Scratch Cooking: What the Data Tells Us About COVID-19’s Impact on Home Cooking Habits

While it’s hard to see the bright side of things during the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, one potential silver lining is the fact most consumers are cooking more at home. Research has shown that home cooking not only often can lead to healthier overall lifestyles, but it’s also a good life skill to teach kids.

And whether you’re taking a casual tour of social media or looking at data from any number of sources, signs today definitely point to more of us making our own food. A lot more of us.

But what specifically do the numbers say? First, that a lot of people are learning to make certain types of food for the first time.

Whether it’s something as simple as making rice…

Or something a little more complicated like making bread, interest has spiked to all time highs.

But it’s not just Google searches that are shifting, but actual purchase data of cooking equipment. According to NPD analyst Joe Derochowski, demand for gear to make food at home has jumped significantly.

According to tracking data from NPD for the week ending March 21st, purchases of bread makers were up 800% when compared to the same week a year ago. Electric rotisseries were up nearly 4 times the previous year, while pasta makers were pacing at 3 times their normal sales when compared to a year ago.

While people are learning the basics and scooping up housewares to help them prepare more food at home, they’re also looking for recipes that lets them pinch a penny or two. Chicory, a shoppable recipe app platform used by recipe publishers, has seen a spike in interest for low-cost “bowl food” like soups and stroganoff.

The table below shows a snapshot in time look at the top daily recipe views near the end of March:

What the table data tells us is that people are making comfort food that can stretch a buck, which is not all that surprising since many of us have been thrust into financial uncertainty in relatively short order.

While there are many differences between the great recession and today’s crisis, it is instructive to look at what happened then to get an idea of how behaviors changed during the downturn. Data from NPD shows those categories that saw an increase between February 2007 (pre-crisis) and February 2010 (post-crisis) were pasta dishes, bread and cereal.

In other words, not only did we look to make food that was affordable such as pasta and casseroles then, but we also consumed more carbs, which tend to be cheaper than protein-heavy foods.

And while we are once again cooking more food that will feed us more affordably, unlike the 2008 and 2009 time frame, early indicators show that recent behavior shifts might be driven in part by a desire for food self-sufficiency rather than just saving a buck. Data from Chicory shows in the chart below there’s was a massive spike in mid-March in interest in scratch cooking.

Naturally, part of the interest in making things like corn bread and cookies is due to most of us having more time on our hands, but I also have to wonder if the rapid growth in interest in things like making things like tortillas and basic bread is because some consumers worry they might have to make these staples at home for the foreseeable future.

How permanent these behavior shifts will be depend in large part on how the COVID-19 crisis resolves itself over the course of 2020-2021. My guess is the lingering effects of the Coronavirus crisis will be longer and deeper than that of the great recession and, ultimately, result in more permanent behavior changes than we saw from the last big downturn.

Newsletter: How to Support Restaurants Right Now Without Endangering Everyone’s Health

To do my bit in supporting restaurants right now, I’ve been ordering from them once every few days for the last couple weeks. More times than not, it’s been a logistical circus that winds up costing a lot of money and, especially lately, unnecessarily putting workers’ health at risk.

Case in point: Tuesday night I ordered online from a local burger place. While the system gave me a “curbside pickup” option, there was no curbside at which to actually park once I arrived at the restaurant. Rather, I joined a crowd of other people clustered in front of the restaurant. A lone worker frantically ran in and out of the restaurant calling names as she tried to determine which order belonged to which customer. No one wore gloves and no one was standing six feet apart.

The inconvenience of the experience is the least problematic part of this example. Far more unsettling are the financial and health risks of running an off-premises business when you’re not an off-premises restaurant. Through no fault of its own, that burger place is not equipped to efficiently manage the volume and logistics of a curbside business. It’s never had to until now.

Restaurant owners and industry folks have long argued that the dine-in experience differs greatly from a to-go operation, and that one can’t simply flip a switch and be asked to transition from one to the next without a hitch. And yet that’s exactly what thousands of restaurants across the country are at this moment being forced to do. And what you get is a scene like the other night, where there isn’t enough staff to even pick up the phone, let alone manage the influx of orders going out and customers waiting. Staffers are interacting with way too many people than could possibly be safe, and everyone’s health is at risk. There’s also evidence that an off-premises strategy isn’t even financially fruitful for many restaurants.

Is it really worth it or is there another way to support restaurants that desperately need a lifeline as dining shutdowns and COVID-19 ravage the industry?

The answer, fortunately, is “yes.” Shortly after states began mandating dining room closures, charities and funds began popping up online. Last week I wrote about virtual tip jars for servers and bartenders out of work right now. And some of these funds go directly to restaurants themselves.

The James Beard Foundation has launched a Food and Beverage Industry Relief Fund that accepts donations from corporations, foundations, and individuals to provide micro-grants to independent food and beverage businesses.

Dining bonds and gift cards are another route. The Dining Bonds campaign was started by a group of industry professionals to get immediate relief funds to restaurants. It works like a savings bond: guests purchase a bond at today’s value rate and can redeem it for full face value at a later date. Support Local lets you purchase restaurant gift cards from independent businesses in a number of cities. They can be redeemed now or, if you’re not feeling up for off-premises, later on, when dining rooms open again.

Initiatives like these aren’t a magic bullet. But they do provide some other avenues for supporting restaurants, whether you’re trying to avoid other people or just looking for a way to give a little extra help.

Running a Restaurant? We Want to Hear From You

If you’re reading this and also happen to be a restaurant owner, operator, or worker, help The Spoon help you. We’re currently collecting stories, tips, and ideas about what it’s like to actually live and work in the restaurant biz during this strange, unsettling time.

That includes anything from new strategies to make delivery and takeout more efficient to how you’re keeping yourself and your workers safe. And, this being The Spoon, any stories of how you’re using tech to help cope with this situation are most welcome. But before the tech comes the people, which is why your voice is the most important piece of our ongoing coverage and narrative.

Drop us a line a tips@thespoon.tech or DM me via Twitter.

It’s Almost Here: The COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit

If you’re a restaurant, food business, or food tech company, join us next week for a virtual summit on how to do business in the age of coronavirus.

On Monday, April 6 The Spoon will host the COVID-19 Virtual Strategy Summit for Food and Restaurants. No travel required to get there and 100 percent socially distant, this online summit will features talks and fireside chats from leading experts including:

  • Chef Mark Brand – Founder of Save-On Meats and creator of the Token Program to feed those in food insecure situations
  • Caesare Assad – CEO of FS6
  • Sara Roversi– Founder of the Future Food Institute
  • Dana Gunders – Executive Director of ReFED
  • Phil Lempert – the SuperMarket Guru
  • Paul Freedman – Professor of History at Yale University and author of American Cuisine: And How It Got That Way
  • Ryan Palmer – Partner at Lathrop GPM and chair of firm’s Restaurant, Food, and Hospitality group

Register today.

Keep on truckin’,

Jenn