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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

crowdfunding

GoSun Crowdfunds Reusable Cutlery Set The Size of a Credit Card

For those who give a fork about single-use plastic waste, there’s a new crowdfunding project with your name on it.

GoSun, maker of the eco-friendly battery-powered fridge and solar oven, just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its GoSun Flatware, a patent-pending set of reusable cutlery that’s so small it fits in your wallet. The stainless steel fork and spoon come in two pieces in a thin metal case roughly the size of a credit card. The pieces are dishwasher-safe and can be snapped together to make small (but functional) cutlery. The theory is you can keep the case in your wallet, so that whenever you go out to eat or pick up to-go food you can use it then and there and don’t need to take the single-use plastic utensils restaurants offer.

With the popularity of food delivery and our collective obsession with convenience, single-use cutlery has become a massive problem. According to National Geographic, more than 100 million plastic utensils are used every day in the U.S. alone. Since single-use cutlery varies in shape and material, they’re super difficult to recycle — which means that the vast majority of spoons, forks, and the like wind up clogging landfills or killing ocean turtles.

While there are plenty of other reusable cutlery options out there, GoSun’s convenience sets it apart. If you keep the set in your wallet, you can’t forget it when you go pick up your Chipotle burrito bowl. It’s self-contained, which means you don’t have to worry about cleaning your cutlery after use, lest you walk around with a dirty fork in your pocket until you find a sink

Clearly I’m not the only one intrigued by this credit card-sized solution to cutlery waste. The GoSun Flatware Kickstarter campaign has raised over $179,000, way more than its $2,500 initial goal, with nine days left in the campaign. Early backers can snag their own set for $20 before the price doubles as it heads to retail on the GoSun website.

The GoSun Flatware is set to deliver in February of 2020. As always, it’s good to be healthily skeptical towards crowdfunded hardware projects. However, this is GoSun’s seventh crowdfunded project, and several of its products are already shipping, so it seems like a relatively safe bet that backers will actually get the goods.

GoSun isn’t the only one thinking outside of plastic when it comes to single-use cutlery waste. Another notable company is Planeteer, which nabbed first prize at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition. The startup makes edible single-use spoons, so instead of ending up in the trash or recycling bins they truly leave no trace.

Single-use cutlery waste is an immense problem, so it’s refreshing to see companies developing creative solutions. I actually ended up backing GoSun Flatware myself, so hopefully that means at least a few plastic forks in the ocean.

HomeBiogas’ Backyard System Turns Home Food Waste into Green Cooking Fuel

I started composting when I moved to Seattle last year. I felt very virtuous depositing my banana peels and coffee grounds into a special organic waste bin at the back of my house, but I didn’t get to reap any benefits. Besides, you know, helping the planet.

Those who want to get more bang for their food scraps could consider investing in a HomeBiogas (Ed note: Roommates, I promise I’ll ask you before I buy one.) HomeBiogas LTD just launched a new version of its eponymous closed-loop system which turns kitchen leftovers into cooking fuel and fertilizer. The company started a Kickstarter yesterday, which reached its $50,000 goal in less than two hours. At the time of this writing, the project has raised roughly $170,000.

The HomeBiogas is about the size of a large doghouse and resembles a black bouncy castle. Only instead of letting kids crawl in to play, you fill up the system’s chute with waste materials like food scraps, animal manure, and even, um, human waste, if you’re feeling especially hardcore. Bacteria digest the organic matter to create biogas, which can be used to cook on the countertop biogas stove which comes with each purchase. Two kilograms (or 1.5 gallons) of food waste makes enough fuel for two hours of cooking, with the added byproduct of liquid fertilizer.

According to the Kickstarter page, the new HomeBiogas is easier to put together, fully recyclable, and 30 percent taller than the previous version.

Interested backers can nab a HomeBiogas for the Super Early Bird price of $399. Normally with crowdfunded physical products, we have to issue a warning that hardware is hard, and not all projects make it through the manufacturing process in the estimated time, or at all. However, since HomeBiogas has already shipped over 5,000 of its last-gen systems, it seems pretty safe to assume they’ll be able to deliver on this upgrade.

The question is whether or not you’d actually want to have a sizeable inflatable bacteria factory in your backyard. Admittedly, the HomeBiogas is a pretty extreme solution for the average environmentally-conscious Joe. It’s big, expensive and requires you to be willing to adapt our cooking to a small countertop stove. If you’re looking for a way to turn your food scraps into compost, there are a number of easier, cheaper options out there. HomeBiogas is pretty self-aware, however; its promo video notes that it’s suitable homesteaders and off-the-gridders.

Nonetheless, the HomeBiogas is an inventive way to upcycle home food waste into something of added value. Plenty of companies are upcycling discarded food ingredients into new products, edible or otherwise, but very few are targeting the home. Though it might not be for everybody, especially space-strapped urban consumers, HomeBiogas shows that when it comes from cutting down on food waste, sometimes it pays to think outside the (compost) box.

GOffee Equity Crowdfunds $1.07M Dollars for Office Coffee Delivery (With Reusable Cup!)

GOffee, a NYC-based B2B coffee delivery company, announced today via press release that it has raised $1.07 million dollars in equity crowdfunding via its StartEngine campaign. This brings GOffee’s total amount of funding raised to $1.17 million.

GOffee works with corporate customers to provide a coffee or tea drink delivery service directly to workers’ desks. An employee places their order (GOffee features 24 different brands of coffee) via web or mobile app. GOffee’s baristas make the drink (flat white, Americano, cappuccino, etc.) and it’s poured into a reusable travel mug (no paper cups). The next day GOffee picks up the mugs for cleaning and re-use.

The company says this beats existing coffee delivery in a few ways. First, unlike getting Starbucks via Uber Eats, GOffee is running the whole stack: Taking the order, making the drink and doing the delivery. So there isn’t a lot of “down” time where the coffee sits waiting for a pickup. Second, because it is packaged in a travel mug, the drink is much easier to transport (no wrapping in plastic wrap). And because the mugs are reusable, there’s much less waste.

The question for GOffee is whether companies will pony to help their employees get their morning fix. GOffee offers plans ranging from $499 – $2,000 a month for drink delivery, depending on the number of employees. In its press release, GOffee says that a company with 30 employees would pay $799 a month, which covers the cost of the drinks and delivery.

It might actually be worth it to save on minutes lost when people leave the building for (or are late to work getting) a morning brew. GOffee listed 11 corporate customers in its press release, all of which are in the company’s delivery zone of the Garment District/Times Square in New York City. With the new funds, the company plans to expand delivery across Manhattan in 2020.

GOffee is actually the second startup we’ve written about in as many weeks that has turned to StartEngine to equity crowdfund. Last week GoSun (noticing a GO trend here), which makes solar ovens, launched its own crowdfunding campaign.

There are other reusable coffee cup programs out there from startups like CupClub and Vessel Works, but GOffee appears to be the first to target companies and offer delivery and to incorporate reusable mugs into people’s everyday routine. Perhaps this crowdfunding will give GOffee enough of a cash jolt to attract larger, more institutional funding.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post said that GOffee’s monthly fee only covered delivery. It actually includes the price of the drinks as well.

GoSun Goes to Crowdfunding to Kickstart its Series A

GoSun, the company behind the eponymous solar-powered ovens, announced today that it was cowdfunding its Series A round of financing. Technically, the company is looking to, pardon the pun, kickstart its Series A by raising just $500,000 on the StartEngine equity crowdfunding platform. If it reaches that goal, it will then go to private investors to try and raise an additional $1.5 million.

GoSun makes a variety of outdoor products including its titular ovens, which use a combination of parabolic reflectors and insulated chambers to cook food using only direct sunlight. The company expanded this year with a hybrid solar + electric outdoor cooker, a solar-powered portable fridge and a DIY version of its solar oven.

This is actually the second time GoSun has crowdfunded its financing. In 2017, the company raised $500,000 in seed funding, which then allowed it to get lines of credit with the bank to pay for its growth. “We’re a crowdfunded company,” Patrick Sherwin, CEO of GoSun told me by phone today. “Every new product is launched on the crowd. We just go to the crowd first.”

Given the success GoSun has had–the company says it has sold 35,000 products across 60 countries and earned $1.6 million in revenue in 2018 — I asked Sherwin why his company wasn’t going with more traditional routes of funding like venture capital.

“Traditional VC will breathe down your neck,” Sherwin said, “And drive everything towards more profit. This gives us more flexibility and keeps us in charge.”

As with any crowdfunding venture, and especially equity investing, there is no guarantee of a financial return for investors. Indeed, given the slower, deliberate pace at which GoSun wants to move, and without pressure from VCs, who knows when an investor would see any potential return. Caveat emptor.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post mentioned GoSun valuation and minimum investments. We were asked to remove this public information by GoSun in reference to SEC rules. We are honoring that request while we work to understand the particular issues around it further.

ARK Reusables Launches Kickstarter to Replace All The Food Takeout Containers in Your Life

I’m a cheapskate and hate food waste, so whenever I can’t finish my food at a restaurant — no matter how little is left — I ask to get it boxed up to take home. The next day I usually end up eating the rest of it for lunch and throwing away the container it came in.

I’m not the only one. Forty percent of trashed plastic is single-use packaging like baggies, straws, and, of course, takeaway food boxes. The vast majority of it ends up in landfills or clogging up the oceans.

ARK Reusables’ founding team saw our rampant use of single-use takeout and delivery containers and decided to try and make a better alternative. The startup, which is part of Dutch company Ozarka but operates out of Seattle, makes reusable silicone containers in a variety of sizes designed specifically to be used by consumers to hold their restaurant takeaway meals. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign yesterday with a $40,000 goal.

ARK has a few value adds that distinguish it from regular tupperware: the containers squish to pack flat, so they can easily fit in consumers’ bags, and also have spill-proof lids. Unlike more flimsy containers, they can go in the microwave, dishwasher, and even the oven. The company is working to develop a way to fully recycle the silicone containers.

The company plans to initially sell directly to consumers, who can use their ARK containers to take away food from salad bars, fast-casual restaurants and more. Down the road, ARK wants to branch into the B2B realm and sell directly to restaurants, replacing their current to-go containers.

For now, Early Bird Kickstarter prices begin at $22 for a single 750-ml reusable container with an option to add on a container carrying case and set of stainless steel cutlery for an additional fee. That’s not cheap, especially if you’re prone to losing your reusable containers (guilty). Which means that, at least initially, ARK will have to rely on more eco-conscious consumers willing pay more for the environmentally friendly option.

ARK Reusable containers also have a few touches that make them specifically geared towards takeaway restaurant food. Their sizes match the standard serving sizes at most restaurants, and they even come marked with fill volumes so servers at places like Chipotle or Sweetgreen can know exactly how much food they’re dishing out when consumers bring in their ARK container.

ARK isn’t the only one trying to cut down on our rampant use of single-use plastic food containers. Zume Inc. recently acquired an eco-friendly packaging system that will be used by Zume Pizza and other restaurants the company works with. Other retailers and food companies are also targeting the consumer, exploring reusable aluminum and glass containers to hold their food products. However, ARK’s products are more versatile, designed to be used for on-the-go meals at salad bars and fancy restaurants alike.

ARK’S containers are set to ship in May of 2020. As with any Kickstarter venture, it’s good to approach it with a healthy amount of skepticism about whether you’ll see the product in the time promised — if at all. However, ARK Reusables’ parent company, Ozarka, already successfully manufactures food-safe reusable containers, so it seems likely ARK will follow through on its production plans.

A bigger issue could be getting restaurants to accept the containers themselves. California recently passed legislation that lets restaurants more easily accept consumers’ reusable containers. However, the law hasn’t spread to other states yet, so ARK’s customers could potentially run into issues if restaurants refuse to accept the silicone containers for health code reasons, or just because they’re not sure how to use them.

If the California law spreads, however, or if people just get more accustomed to the idea of diners bringing in their own containers to take home food, ARK Reusables could be a slam-drunk way to keep more plastic out of the oceans. And more food in your belly.

Decafino Promises to Decaffeinate Any Cup of Coffee in 3 Minutes

Decaffeinated coffee gets a bad rap, since coffee snobs often think it’s a poor substitute for the real thing, with less flavor and nuance.

Decafino is a startup out of Seattle that’s trying to reinvent people’s attitudes towards decaf. The company has developed a small biodegradable pouch — about the size of a tea bag — which, when inserted into coffee, will decaffeinate it in three to four minutes. “We’re the first company in the world to decaffeinate coffee after brewing,” Decafino founder Andy Liu told me over the phone yesterday.

Liu, who has a background in engineering, was inspired to start Decafino because he loved the taste of coffee but not the jitteriness of caffeine. He found decaf bean selections limiting and often less flavorful. So instead of settling for pre-decaffeinated coffee, he decided to make a product that would allow him to turn any coffee into decaf. In 2016 he founded Decafino, which currently has a team of four.

Today the company launched a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign. Decafino is currently self-funded and Liu said they would use the crowdfunding to initialize production.

Decaf coffee is actually primed for some disruption. For consumers, buying decaf beans severely limits your selection. And since there’s less demand for decaf than regular coffee, roasteries often only make one or two decaf roasts at a time. Those who want to try a particular Ethiopian single origin but don’t respond well to caffeine might never get to taste it unless the company decides to make a decaf roast. Pop in a Decafino bag, however, and you can turn any coffee (or tea, or even soda) into a decaf, which widens your selection.

There’s also the fact that the process to decaffeinate green coffee beans often relies on chemical solvents that, Liu says, can remove some of the beans’ flavor. Decafino, on the other hand, relies on a physical process called “adsorption” that doesn’t involve any chemicals. Mineral beads in the porous tea bag attract caffeine molecules from the liquid and trap them, sucking in up to 200 mg of caffeine per bag (an average cup of coffee has around 180g).

Liu said that each bag can decaffeinate 16 ounces of coffee. The decaffeination process takes three to four minutes, but if you want to ensure every last caffeine molecule is gone you can let it soak even longer. For those who are concerned about losing heat by letting their coffee sit out for four minutes, you can also put the bag directly into your preferred coffee brewer and let it suck up the caffeine as you brew (or just use an Ember mug to keep your coffee hot!).

Decafino is aiming for a commercial release in Q2 2020. They’ve already developed partnerships with several local Seattle coffee shops, which will sell their bags and also use them behind the bar to make decaffeinated drinks. The bags will also be available via Decafino’s website.

Liu plans to price the decaffeinating bags at $1.50 to $2.00 each. Added onto your regular coffee drink, that can make a modest coffee purchase into a pretty pricey one — especially if you’re going for multiple cups per day. But considering that decaf coffee beans are already generally priced higher, and many stores add on an extra $1 charge for decaf espresso, it’s not out of line. Plus I’m guessing many consumers will be willing to shell out for the novelty effect, especially if they’re only having one cup of coffee as a decaf.

The real advantage in my mind, though, is on the side of the café staff. I worked as a barista for years and it was always such a hassle when someone ordered decaf. We never made a full pot of it since there wasn’t much demand, so making decaf coffee entailed hunting down the decaf beans, then specially grinding and brewing them. With something like Decafino I could just make a regular coffee drink, pop in the bag, then in three minutes voila! You’ve got decaf.

Seattle has become a bit of a hub for cutting-edge coffee tech (oh how far we’ve come from Starbucks). It’s also home to Atomo Coffee, a startup which makes molecular coffee without the beans. Pop in a Decafino and, come 2020, you could have a bean-free, caffeine-free cup of joe. What a world.

ChopBox’s Cutting Board + Timer + Sanitizer + Scale + Knife Sharpener Obliterates KickStarter Goal in One Day

Writing about the ChopBox instantly makes me feel like I’m writing one of those old TV informercials, so bear with me. Launched on KickStarter yesterday, the ChopBox is cutting board that also is a scale, a kitchen timer, a knife sharpener, a sanitizer, and oh-by-the-way, it’s also waterproof and made from organic bamboo.

But wait! There’s more! There’s actually a second cutting board that slides out for an additional cutting surface.

The ChopBox campaign is only on its second day but has already raised nearly $300,000, blowing past (which almost feels like too tame a description here) its initial goal of $10,000.

Full disclosure: I backed it. And while yes, I’m a sucker for cool food tech equipment, this cutting board actually looks like it could be extremely useful.

In addition to the ChopBox being a shiny new cutting surface, its most handy feature to me is the built-in scale. Being able to chop and then measure out precise amounts of ingredients on the same surface is smart and a time saver. And since I’m a germaphobe and paranoid about making people sick from cooking, I’m also intrigued by the sanitizer because it uses a built-in ultra-violet light to disinfect the knife and boards. From the ChopBox campaign page:

Now you can place your knife in between the two cutting surfaces and activate the small but powerful 254nm UVC light to sanitize up to 3 knives at once AND both cutting surfaces at the same time! Just one minute of UVC light exposure is guaranteed to kill 99.99% of germs and bacteria.

I’m less enthused by the built-in timer as my house is lousy with Alexas that are far more convenient for that sort of thing. And I guess the knife sharpener might come in handy in a pinch, but I know that it’s best to get knives professionally sharpened.

The ChopBox uses USB-C to charge, which is supposed to last for thirty days.

The ChopBox is faring far better than the NutriScale, which we wrote about a couple years back. That cutting board + food scale combo never met its campaign goal. Of course, it also didn’t blast your knives with UV rays.

The ChopBox cost me $99 plus $20 for shipping, but that was the super-early-bird pricing. The “early-bird” next tier is $119 plus $20 for shipping. The campaign page says the retail price will be $199. FWIW, you can pick up a bamboo cutting board and scale on Amazon for $30. But again, no UV rays.

Even though I backed this project, I’ve written about enough crowdfunded hardware projects to know that things can easily go south for the fully funded ChopBox and that my high-tech cutting board may never actually make it to market (just ask the folks who backed Rite-Press). The ChopBox is made by the Yes Company which is “a remote team with designers, production, and engineers all over the world, including the US and Shenzhen.” Not exactly a household name, and they have a rather aggressive December 2019 ship time.

Hopefully I’ll have my ChopBox in time for the holidays, where I’ll be able to use it to slice, dice and even make julienne fries.

Shoppable Recipe and Kitchen Appliance Startup Mealthy Hits $1.07M Crowdfunding Cap

Today Austin, TX-based kitchen appliance company Mealthy raised the maximum amount allowed by the SEC for equity crowdfunding: $1.07 million. They raised the funds from 4,440 investors on crowdfunding platform Republic and reached the cap with 61 hours of the campaign remaining.

Founded in 2017, Mealthy is trying to provide a full-stack solution to making cooking simpler. It sells kitchen appliances, such as a Mealthy Multipot electric pressure cooker and Mealthy Crisplid, a standalone lid which turns a variety of pressure cookers into air fryers. The company also has an online tool, available via the Mealthy app or mealthy.com, to help users select Mealthy-created recipes, plan their meal, and shop for ingredients through InstaCart or Amazon Fresh. It also includes step-by-step videos to guide users through the cooking process.

Basically, Mealthy is a shoppable recipe platform that also sells kitchen appliances. It’s not exactly offering anything revolutionary. There are more shoppable recipe sites than you can shake a stick at: Myxx, Whisk, and Fexy Media, just to name a few.

Nonetheless, Mealthy’s fundraise was big enough to make us take note, especially considering the company started out with a crowdfunding target of $25,000.

Mealthy’s expectations-busting fundraise emphasizes that consumer desire for convenience in the kitchen isn’t going anywhere. It’s the same demand that skyrocketed the InstantPot to viral fame — and the InstantPot consumer seems to be exactly who Mealthy is targeting.

Mealthy’s flagship product, the multi-pot, is slightly more expensive than the InstantPot (Mealthy costs $99.95 for a 6-quart pot, whereas InstantPot is roughly $75). However, language on the company’s crowdfunding site indicates that Mealthy’s hook is that it’s easier to use than the InstantPot, and also offers a more robust selection of Mealthy product-compatible recipes.

According to a press release, Mealthy will be sold in over 10 countries by the end of August including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and India. The company will use its latest cash influx to develop new products and build brand awareness.

When it comes to crowdfunded hardware startups, it’s always a bit of a toss-up whether or not the company actually ends up shipping the product on time — if at all. However, Mealthy already sells and ships its Multipot on Amazon, which means it has a better chance of following through on its projected product timelines than most. Next up, they’re planning to launch a blender, a tea kettle, an air fryer, and will also enter the cookware category with a line of frying pans.

Did You Even Back the Bolde Bottle Shaker for Your Protein Drinks, Bro?

If you go to a gym, then you’re probably familiar with what might be considered the mating call of the musclebound: the rattle of a protein drink being shaken vigorously, its metal whisk ball smashing up clumps of whey powder inside a plastic bottle. But a new Kickstarter campaign is looking to silence those shakes with a new type of design.

The Bolde Bottle passed its $30,000 goal this week, after just a couple of days on Kickstarter. Unlike most shaker bottles out there, the Bolde Bottle is made from stainless steel, not plastic. According to the campaign, a lack of plastic means that the bottle won’t trap odors (leftover protein shake after a day in a gym bag does not smell great), plus the metal body is more durable and won’t wind up as another piece of plastic waste.

But the bigger innovation for the Bolde is it flipping how the mixing happens. Rather than the rattle-y ball, the mixer is affixed to the top of the thermos, so it doesn’t move. Bits of protein powder or whatever move around and through its stationary rungs. This also eliminates that ball skittering up and down the bottle every time you take a drink.

The Bolde also has a screw off compartment on the bottom to hold said protein (or whatever), and a food-grade silicone cap to prevent leaks.

All this innovation doesn’t come cheap though, bro. One 16 oz. Bolde bottle will cost you $39 if you snatch one of the remaining pledges at that level. Afterwards, the price jumps to $44 for one bottle. Oh, and you’ll have to wait until December before they start shipping. Meanwhile, you could just pick up a plastic 28 oz. Blender Bottle for $8. At Bolde’s hefty price, hopefully the company has avoided the pitfalls that beleagured the crowdfunded Rite Press, and will actually make it to market.

Then the only sound you’ll hear at the gym is your own huffing and puffing.

uKeg Nitro Cold Brew Maker Blasts Past Kickstarter Goal

Summertime is cold brew season, and no cold brew is trendier than nitro cold brew.

Nitro cold brew is essentially cold brewed coffee infused with nitrogen gas and dispensed out of a tap. The result is smooth, lightly-carbonated beverage that drinks like Guinness, and is now so ubiquitous that you can find it at Starbuck’s nationwide.

Since it requires nitrogen gas and a tap, one place you can’t typically find nitro cold brew is in somebody’s home. But uKeg Nitro, a new device on Kickstarter from Portland, OR-based company GrowlerWerks, is aiming to change that. The device lets at-home baristas brew, store, and pour nitro cold brew coffee on their countertop.

To brew, users can either brew their own cold brew in the keg itself or just fill it with pre-made cold brew coffee. Charge the keg cap with Nitro gas, let the pressure build to desired carbonation level, shake to infuse the gas throughout, and that cold brew is ready to pour. The homemade nitro cold brew will stay fresh and carbonated for two weeks.

Suggested retail price for the uKeg Nitro is $199. Early backers can get it for $169, along with two Nitro gas chargers, four coffee filter bags, a coffee funnel and a drip mat. Considering that nitro cold brew often goes for at least $5 a pop at trendy coffee shops, the uKeg Nitro could actually pay for itself in just one summer (though you still have to buy the coffee beans themselves).

Clearly I’m not the only one intrigued by GrowlerWerks’ new product. The uKeg Kickstarter launched on June 5th and reached its $75,000 goal within 90 minutes. At the time of this writing, the uKeg has raised just over $262,000 with one month left to go.

As cold brew rises in popularity, companies large and small are husting to provide solutions to make it at home. PicoBrew has cold brew capabilities for the Pico Z and Pico C. Cuisinart and Dash have devices that will let you make a cup of cold brew — which typically takes at least 12 hours — in just 30 minutes (with varying degrees of success).

I never quite got why people would pay for a device to make cold brew when it’s so easy to do at home: cover ground coffee with water, let sit overnight, and boom — cold brew. (Maybe that’s why the Gravity Cold Brew Coffee Maker failed to meet its Kickstarter goal.) However, the uKeg Nitro adds an extra benefit that most people couldn’t DIY: the creamy fizziness of nitro. Its booming Kickstarter shows that there’s clearly consumer demand for more accessible, affordable nitro cold coffee, especially as summer rolls in.

GrowlerWerks is aiming to ship the uKeg Nitro in early October of this year. As always with crowdfunded hardware projects, there’s a risk that the uKeg won’t meet that October ship date — or even ship at all. However, GrowlerWerks already launched their original uKeg product (for beer, not coffee) on Kickstarter in 2014, which raised over $1.5 million.

While they had a few production hiccups, hopefully GrowlerWerks can leverage the lessons they’ve learned over the past three years — as well as their existing manufacturing partners — to make sure the same problems don’t happen with the uKeg Nitro.

Crowdfunded Home Beer Maker iGulu Appears to Be a Goner

If you love beer and are contemplating backing a crowdfunded home brew machine — don’t. This free advice is brought to you by more than a year of covering Kickstarted beer campaigns, most of which have taken the public’s money, only to shut down before shipping any product.

Following in the steps of Brewbot and HOPii, it now looks like iGulu is the latest automated home brewing appliance to fold. The following update was posted to Indiegogo and Kickstarter on April 4:

Dear Backers,

We regret to announce that we have to put our project in ‘hibernation’ and pause our regular update. For the past few weeks we have experienced some of the hardest challenges for our company and the project. Our funds were exhausted and we experienced a significant team downsizing due to the financial constraints.

While I still maintain great working relationships with all of our key team members, I couldn’t keep them as employees before I secure new funds from the investor. We have been talking with several prospects since last year, but the financial markets are unfavorable to start-ups like ours recently so I haven’t had any luck yet.

I’m still trying but I cannot at present give any specific timeline for recovery of this project. I will share any further updates whenever we have tangible progress that we are able to report. I deeply apologize again. We have shipped the first machine to one Australian backer. We will continue to fix existing bugs, optimize our product, ship 2nd, 3rd and more machines. Please believe us. We won’t give up.

Regards,

iGulu Team

This development isn’t actually that surprising for anyone who backed or followed the project. iGulu met its funding goal in May of 2016, and after a litany of production and manufacturing delays, the CEO publicly apologized to backers in December of 2017 and said the company had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from three Chinese VC firms to supplement the $1.1 million it had raised via crowdfunding. At that time, the company was expecting to ship its product in July 2018.

This projected ship date obviously came and went with no (well, one?) iGulus brewing up frosty mugs of beer for the backers who ponied up at least $489 a pop to get one. And though the latest update seems to offer those who funded the project a ray of hope, history shows its unlikely that all of the 1,000+ backers will ever get their iGulus.

We’ve reached out to iGulu for comment and will update if we hear back.

At this point, we sound like a broken record, but there’s a HUGE caveat emptor when backing hardware projects from untested companies on crowdfunding platforms. Designing a one-off prototype is relatively easy. Manufacturing that same device at scale in China brings up a host of unforeseen and expensive issues (see: Rite Press, Cinder).

Some home beer brewers have come out of crowdfunding unscathed — Picobrew and BrewArt, for example. I am also optimistic about BEERMKR because that was built by an existing company that had previous experience with beer-related hardware.

It doesn’t look, however, like iGulu has got what it takes to succeed. Appliance giant LG is getting into the home brew appliance business; maybe it can do what Desora did with Cinder and buy up iGulu’s assets for cheap.

Oh, and if that lone Australian who received their device is reading, please drop us a line to let us know how it works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Feb. 7 update, Patel says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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