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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Decafino

Newsletter: The Drive Thru Matters More Than Ever. So Do Farm Bots and Decaf Coffee

From self-service kiosks to mobile apps to dedicated pickup shelves and portals, there’s no end to new tech trying to speed up the order-pay-collect process for customers at QSRs.

But if the last week has made anything clear, it’s that while those pieces certainly play a role in the future of the restaurant, the drive thru is still the most important area of growth — at least for fast-food. Even as Minneapolis tries to ban drive thrus, companies are pumping enormous amounts of money and energy into improving this area, most notably with last week’s news that McDonald’s, king of all QSRs, had acquired voice-tech company Apprente. It’s the second acquisition Mickey D’s has made in 2019 of a technology company whose offerings can speed up lagging drive-thru lines and move more customers in less time. In March, the mega chain acquired a company called Dynamic Yield and has since installed its AI tech in thousands of McDonald’s drive thrus to make the order experience more personalized for customers.

Others aren’t sitting still. In 2019 alone, Dunkin’ has expanded its “Next Generation” store, which features dedicated drive-thru lanes for mobile orders, to other parts of the U.S.; KFC started testing a drive-thru-only concept in Australia; and a slew of new tech companies have emerged offering various digital and AI-powered tools to take orders at the drive thru.

It’s not hard to understand why. As of last check, drive thrus still make up over 50 percent (in some cases closer to two thirds) of all orders for many QSRs. At the same time, bigger menus and more disjointed pieces of tech in the restaurant space have slowed down the order process and made wait times in drive-thru lanes longer. As Apprente CEO Itamar Arel, Ph.D., said back in 2018, “Fast food is not always fast and bottlenecks at ordering stations result in lost sales.” McDonald’s and others can’t afford those lost sales, so anything — whether an extra lane or a full-on tech makeover — to move people through the line faster could give QSRs an edge in the rising competition. You can bet there will be plenty more news from the drive-thru lane as more major QSRs revamp to take a page from McDonald’s playbook and reinvent themselves with tech.

Weeding Out the Labor Shortage Problem
The drive-thru isn’t the only area the food world is looking to speed up production. This week a company called FarmWise raised $14.5 million for its self-driving robots that remove weeds from crops without the need for herbicides or pesticides. (We expect these machines will be able to do much more than pull weeds in future, too.)

For the agtech world, machines like these not only save time, they also pick up the slack left by a major labor shortage in farm production. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. say this labor shortage is the most limiting factor they face on their farms, and it’s not one that looks like it’ll be solved any time soon.

Hence, the robots. Every farm in America won’t have autonomous bots to pick weeds and harvest produce at the snap of a finger, but these machines are an increasingly appealing solution to the labor issue. Robots don’t need breaks, can work in sweltering heat and humidity, and in some cases can work faster than a human. As we look to solutions for both farm labor and wasted crops on the farm, these bots hold many possibilities.

Photo: Decafino

Disrupting Decaf
Meanwhile, someone wants to reinvent decaf coffee.

Decafino, a startup based out of Seattle, launched a Kickstarter campaign today for a tea bag-like product it claims can remove caffeine from any cup of brewed coffee. As my colleague Catherine Lamb detailed, the biodegradable pouch can be dropped in a cup of coffee (or caffeinated soda, for that matter), and within three to four minutes will remove the caffeine from the beverage.

If the product does as it claims, it could open up many more options for decaf coffee drinkers, who often face very limited selections at stores and coffee shops, and in some cases no options at all.

Personally, I’d have to be told I needed triple bypass surgery to stop drinking caffeinated coffee, and no doubt that day will come. In the meantime, there are plenty of folks out there who love the taste of coffee but for health reasons cannot drink the real thing. If Decafino is successful, these people might find a whole new world of drink choices.

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.