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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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$3.5 Billion Invested in Food Delivery Startups This Year

Investors have a big appetite for food delivery companies this year. The Wall Street Journal reports on Pitchbook data revealing that $3.5 billion has been invested in food and grocery delivery startups so far in 2018.

If you follow The Spoon, then this news shouldn’t come as any real shock. We’ve been covering big money deals in this sector all year long. Here’s just a sampling:

And those are just pure play delivery services. We aren’t sure exactly how Pitchbook is defining a food delivery company, but there’s also been plenty of investment in services that boost delivery:

  • Ordermark, which provides software and hardware to streamline delivery orders to restaurants raised $3.1 million in March, followed by another $9.5 million in September.
  • Starship and Marble, two companies building delivery robots, raised $25 million and $10 million, respectively.
  • Though never confirmed, it was rumored that Softbank was looking to invest $750 million in data-driven pizza delivery startup Zume back in August.

These types of venture investments also don’t take into consideration the money existing delivery and grocery players are spending to bulk up. Uber Eats will cover 70 percent of the U.S. population by year’s end. Grubhub just bought Tapingo to capture the college food delivery market. Walmart is building out its own delivery service, Amazon has its in-home and in-trunk delivery service, and Kroger is experimenting with self-driving cars for delivery.

And all of the delivery-related investments and moves in this story are just for North America. That doesn’t even take into consideration Europe, where nearly half of the €6.5 billion (~$7.5 billion) invested in food tech since 2013 has gone to food delivery startups.

The WSJ article raises the issue of whether this frothy investment puts delivery in overhyped bubble territory. The paper likens all the excitement to that of the meal kit investment craze a few years back. Meal kits are still around, but they are moving into retail, and it’s probably best if you don’t look at Blue Apron’s stock price.

To be sure, valuations are sky-high for these companies: Uber Eats is valued at $20 billion, Instacart $7.6 billion, DoorDash $4 billion and Postmates at $1.2 billion. That’s a lotta billions.

But the counter-argument to the bubble talk is that there are a lot of hungry people in this country. Even more to the point, there are a lot of hungry busy/lazy people in this country who would love to have their lunch or dinner magically appear, ready-to-eat, multiple nights a week. As the CEO of Ordermark told me, “Convenience is not a trend.”

In other words, investors’ eyes may not be bigger than their stomachs in this case.

Uber Should Focus on Robots, not Drones

Uber is reportedly working to fast track food delivery by drone. Think: Burritos, burgers or boxes of baked beans zipping about overhead. Free of the congested city streets and sidewalks, these drones could get us our food in as quickly as five minutes, according to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

That sounds great!

Or does it?

Upon reading the news about Uber’s amped up drone ambitions yesterday, my first thought was — why? Other than speed, drones seem to be a bad way to shrink the last mile. Even if Uber could clear all the regulatory hurdles (which haven’t even been created yet) drone delivery just seems… dangerous. Drones could fall or drop their packages on on people or property below. They can’t work that well in inclement weather. They are loud (but getting quieter). They need places to land. They could get attacked by owls (don’t laugh, it happened to mine!).

But Khosrowshahi isn’t dumb. Certainly these thoughts have occurred to him and his team. Uber could be pumping up the idea of drone delivery for a number of reasons:

  1. The company is looking to IPO next year, so having a shiny new drone program could help sweeten the story around its public offering.
  2. Amazon and Alphabet are working on their own drone package delivery programs, and it’s better to compete than concede for a company that is all about last mile logistics.
  3. The company really believes that drones are where the puck will be, to borrow a phrase, and legitimately wants to push the technology forward.

It’s probably a mix of all three and ultimately, drones will undoubtedly become part of the mix for any delivery company.

But while it’s looking so far into a yet-to-be-regulated, murky future, I kinda wish Uber would focus more on the near future for delivery — robots. I’m not talking about self-driving cars, research into which the company suspended after a deadly accident. I’m referring to the squat, autonomous vehicles like those from Marble, Starship and Kiwi that are rolling out on sidewalks in various urban and campus locations across the country.

Uber has undoubtedly looked at delivery robots, but it doesn’t appear to have launched any partnerships or initiatives around the technology. Which is kind of curious.

Unlike drones, if robots malfunction mid-trip, they won’t fall from the sky. There’s a chance they could bump into people or things, but they won’t be traveling as fast. Robots can also easily approach existing doors of any house or apartment building and can deliver more and heavier items.

True, robots will take up sidewalk space, and as more of them go into service, they will force us to re-think our relationship to our walkways. And that re-thinking is going to be guided by local governments, who are still figuring out the rules of the road. But the rules of the road will be much easier for cities to legislate than the rules of the sky because cities already have experience with pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

Rather than devoting too much time to drones, I’d love to see Uber do something like acquire a smaller robotics company like Kiwi. Kiwi actually has a few things going for it. First, it’s already got working robot delivery vehicles already scurrying around Berkeley, CA. It hasn’t raised that much money (just $2M according to Crunchbase), so it wouldn’t be that expensive. And if we stretch this thought experiment to its logical (logistical?) limits, there is some synergies between Uber and Kiwi as Kiwi uses bikes (well, trikes) to shuttle robots around and Uber owns Jump bicycles.

Delivery robots would give the company an autonomous fleet of vehicles that could make deliveries around the clock (eventually), and could even open the door for delivery of groceries and other types of packages beyond food.

One way or another, Uber is bringing you that burrito, whether it’s by land, by sea or by air.

Sam’s Club and Instacart Expand Same-Day Delivery Nationally

Warehouse chain Sam’s Club announced today that it is expanding its partnership with Instacart to bring same day delivery to more than half of all Sam’s Clubs across the country by the end of this month.

According to the press announcement, Sam’s Club grocery delivery via Instacart will be available from roughly 350 stores by the end of October, up from the current 238. The two companies launched their partnership in February of this year with 61 clubs.

In addition to groceries, customers can also get gifts and small appliances delivered through Instacart in as fast as an hour.

A lot has changed since the start of the year for both Sam’s Club and Instacart. In January, Sam’s Club abruptly shut down 63 of its stores. But while Sam’s Club shrank, Instacart has grown, raising nearly a billion dollars in new funding ($600 million of which was just this week!).

Today’s announcement also comes around the same time the TABS Analytics 6th Annual Food and Beverage Consumables Study revealed that just 17 percent of respondents regularly shop for groceries online (six or more purchases per year). That figure is a 4 percent bump over last year’s survey, however.

And it’s that growth that retailers are preparing for, as online grocery shopping is projected to hit $100 billion by 2022. Instacart, Postmates and DoorDash have all raised hundreds of millions of dollars to facilitate last mile delivery logistics. At the same time, retailers are getting into the delivery game themselves. In addition to expanding its own relationship with Instacart, Kroger is testing out self-driving delivery vehicles while Walmart has launched its own delivery service.

Retailers are focusing on fast, convenient grocery delivery now to grab early market share. Once they’ve got a customer hooked, as the entire space grows, so too will the revenues.

Wool, Cool! This Company Makes Food Insulation Out of Sheep’s Clothing

No matter how sustainable your produce delivery or meal kit may be, it still carries one whopping environmental cost: packaging. One company is trying to solve that using a very old material — one that you might know from your sweaters.

The Wool Packaging Company came about when CEO Angela Morris was developing a way for British cattle farmers to keep meat cool during shipment without using polystyrene (also known as the much-maligned styrofoam). She had heard that wool was a natural insulator for buildings, and decided to try it out as an insulator for food. To her surprise, during test trials the wool kept the meat cool for 48 hours — outperforming even the styrofoam.

Established in 2009, the company’s brand, Woolcool, consists of liners and padded envelopes made of wool and covered in recyclable, food-grade polyethylene. The wool interior is biodegradable and will compost in one year; the outside lining is reusable and recyclable.

Anyone who’s ever splurged on a 100 percent wool sweater will tell you that material costs a pretty penny. But Woolcool uses so-called “waste” wool — that is, wool from the belly of the sheep that’s too short to weave into textiles and is often discarded by farmers, making it cheaper to buy.

According to Josie Morris, Managing Director of WoolCool (and daughter of CEO Angela), last year alone the company sold roughly 5 million of their liners. That’s the equivalent of over 2 million sheep. In addition to the liners — two will fully line the insides of most boxes — Woolcool also makes padded envelopes and pouches that can keep food, even the frozen stuff like ice cream, chilled below 5° C (41° F) for over 24 hours.

There are other perks to using wool as insulator. It’s more breathable than polystyrene, so it can absorb condensation from the air to keep food cooler for a longer period of time. (However, it’s sealed in plastic so the wool doesn’t come in direct contact with the food). It can also be flat-packed, which means less shipping cost than premade rectangular styrofoam boxes.

Roughly 75 percent of Woolcool’s clients are in the food industry: in addition to local butchers, cheesemongers, and farmers, the company also works with some pretty major customers such as juice and smoothie company innocent, Unilever, and meal kit company gousto. They also make insulated sheets and pouches for pharmaceutical shipments. Morris didn’t disclose exact pricing details, but said they were very competitive in the insulation market.

As of now the majority of Woolcool’s customers are in the U.K. and Europe. However, Morris said that they were looking to gain traction in the U.S., though they’re conscious of the increased carbon footprint of shipping their products so far.

Their emphasis on the environment also means that Woolcool has to work harder to prove themselves. “There’s an automatic assumption that if you’re going to use something eco-friendly you’ve got to sacrifice something too: either cost or performance,” said Morris. “Actually, that’s not true.”

Woolcool has had to fight to become known as not just a sustainable insulator, but also an effective one. “In fact, sometimes you have to prove yourselves even more because you’re a natural material,” said Morris.

As a growing contingent of people order food and groceries via delivery, more companies are working on ways to reduce the shocking amount of packaging required to ship said food around the world. Also based in the U.K., Aeropowder makes insulation sheets out of surplus feathers from the poultry industry. In the U.S., NaturalBlue transforms recycled denim into insulation. Ecovative Design uses mycelium — a.k.a. mushroom roots — to created insulated packaging.

But the eco-friendly insulation space is definitely not a zero-sum game. The global sustainable packaging market is projected to reach roughly $440 billion by 2025. With food delivery and grocery e-commerce also on the rise, Woolcool and its contemporaries have the potential to seriously shear (sorry) high environmental price of food packaging.

Black Bear Diner and DoorDash Team Up, Offer Free Delivery

Family-style dining chain Black Bear Diner just jumped into the delivery race, partnering with DoorDash in 66 of its 118 locations (via Food Newsfeed).

It was only a matter of time before the chain started offering delivery, a move most people in the restaurant industry now feel is necessary and not a trend. But the DoorDash partnership is only one piece of the chain’s overall expansion, which includes new locations further east (Oklahoma City and Houston), and a goal to have 126 units total by the end of 2018. It was also named one of 2018’s fastest-growing chains by Nation’s Restaurant News.

Black Bear Diner is also known for its absolutely enormous menu, all of which looks to be available through DoorDash.

For DoorDash, the partnership is one more small step in a race whose outcome, at this point, is really uncertain. As one panelist noted at The Spoon’s recent Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS), delivery may be changing the restaurant industry, but right now everything is up for grabs and no one knows who will ultimately win. Black Bear Diner hasn’t signed an exclusive partnership with DoorDash, so we’ll likely see the chain’s famous burgers available via Grubhub and Uber Eats, too.

DoorDash, meanwhile, continues to make moves. The company almost tripled its valuation when it raised $250 million in August. And just yesterday, it announced a partnership with Bringg, whose delivery logistics platform is already used not just in the restaurant space but across grocery stores, healthcare services, and retail. The integration with DoorDash will make it easier for restaurants to process, manage, and track delivery orders.

That latter point may be the key to success among all these delivery developments. At SKS, I heard numerous times from people about the frustrations of accommodating delivery orders in a restaurant. Either there’s not enough space for all those extra tablets or not enough manpower to get delivery tickets into the kitchen fast enough (among other issues). So far, no one technology or company has cracked the code yet on how to fix all this, though we’re seeing more partnerships between delivery providers and platforms like Bringg and orderTalk (who was acquired by Uber Eats this year). There are also companies like Ordermark, who unifies all a restaurant’s online orders. My guess is that whichever delivery service figures out how to unify all these different approaches will ultimately be the winner.

In the meantime, if you happen to be in the Black Bear Diner-DoorDash delivery radius, you can get free food now through October 14 by ordering via the chain’s app or website.

SoftBank and Toyota Team up for Autonomous Meal Delivery Vehicles

SoftBank and Toyota today announced that they will be forming a joint venture to create autonomous vehicles that can provide a variety of smart mobility services, including self-driving vehicles which deliver robot-made meals.

The new venture will be called MONET (a portmanteau of the words “mobility network”) and will combine Toyota’s infrastructure for connected vehicles with data collected from SoftBank’s Internet of Things platform.

The result, according to the press release, will be:

“By the second half of the 2020s, MONET plans to roll out Autono-MaaS (autonomous mobility as a service) businesses using e-Palette, Toyota’s dedicated battery electric vehicle for mobility services that can be used for various purposes, including mobility, logistics, and sales. Possibilities include demand-focused just-in-time mobility services, such as meal deliveries vehicle where food is prepared while on the move, hospital shuttles where onboard medical examinations can be performed, mobile offices, and many more. MONET also intends to roll out these businesses in Japan with an eye to future expansion on the global market.”

Toyota announced its e-Palette autonomous vehicle platform at CES earlier this year. The idea behind e-Palette is to create a customizeable, self-driving vehicle that can be anything from a mobile pizza oven to shoe store on-the-go.

As The Wall Street Journal writes, MONET could provide mobile meals and medical services to Japan’s aging population, though it would by no means be limited to strictly that. In fact, SoftBank may already have the building blocks in place for much of what MONET wants to do.

This past summer, SoftBank was rumored to be investing $750 million in Zume, the Bay Area company that uses massive amounts of data to accurately predict pizza deliveries. Zume also happens to have a fleet of oven-equipped vans which ensure piping hot pizza on delivery. (Something that could come in handy for e-Palettes as well.)

SoftBank also led the $535 million Series D funding round in DoorDash, which uses a combination of humans and robots for food delivery (and has plans for last mile delivery of, well, anything).

Amazon Boosts Minimum Wage to $15, Will it Have a Halo Effect on its Grocery Business?

Amazon announced today that it is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all of its full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal employees, including workers at Whole Foods. In all, Amazon’s pay raise impacts 250,000 full-time and 100,000 seasonal employees. The pay increase takes effect on November 1.

The move comes at a time when Amazon is facing increased pressure over pay disparity at the company. Senator Bernie Sanders even introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (or “Stop B.E.Z.O.S.” bill), that would have added a tax on large companies equal to the value of the public benefits their employees receive.

Amazon is also facing mounting pressure internally from Whole Foods employees who are not happy with the changes its new owner brought to the grocery chain. Workers there are trying to unionize amid complaints of reduced headcount and increased work with inadequate pay.

In addition to being a good thing for a company that has been valued at $1 trillion dollars to do, and a way to potentially get the government off its back, Amazon’s move — and all the subsequent news coverage — could also provide a nice halo effect when it comes to the company’s public perception.

Amazon is locked in a multi-front battle to be your grocer of choice against the likes of Target and Walmart. As CNBC notes, Target has announced plans to raise its employees’ wages to $15 an hour by 2020, and Walmart only plans to raise its minimum wage to $11 per hour.

Immediately leapfrogging the competition gives it a hiring advantage (the company plans to open up 3,000 Go stores across the country by 2021), but it could also ease any guilty consciences people might have with buying groceries at Amazon, whether from Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh. If people know the company is paying a higher wage, it untangles, at least a little bit, some of the ethical quandaries shoppers might have.

Postmates Raises $300M, More Than $1.2B Poured into Food Delivery Startups This Year

Delivery startup Postmates has raised $300 million in new venture funding led by Tiger Capital, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $578 million. Postmates is now a unicorn with a $1.2 billion valuation.

Fortune broke the funding story this morning, reporting that Postmates wasn’t looking for new money at the time, and that Tiger Capital approached them. The new funding will go towards accelerating the company’s growth in the U.S., and it will need it.

The cash infusion comes at a good time for Postmates, which now finds itself among a herd of unicorns in the delivery space. With today’s news, at least $1.2 billion in new funding has been poured to food delivery startups in 2018 alone: In March, DoorDash raised $535 million, only to raise another $250 million in August, valuing that company at $4 billion. Not to be left out, Instacart raised $150 million in April, valuing that delivery service at $4.35 billion.

This new funding is also a validation for Postmates, which earlier this year was rumored to be in merger talks with DoorDash to better take on giants such as Amazon, GrubHub and Uber Eats.

For those who have lived through previous startup bubbles and bursts, it’s easy to see the delivery space swelling to a dangerous size. But as we’ve seen, grocery and restaurant delivery have plenty of headroom to grow, and as the CEO of Ordermark (another delivery-driven company that recently raised new funding) recently told me “Convenience is not a trend.”

Trendwatch: Flat is the New Black for Bottles

One of IKEA’s more genius moves was to break down their products so they could fit into flat boxes. These flat boxes made stacking, shipping and delivering odd-shaped Malm-style dressers and such easier and cost-effective. In much the same way, we are starting to see the containers for your favorite liquids get flattened to facilitate easier shipping and delivery.

Case (pardon the pun) in point: Food and Wine reports Garçon Wines’ Flat Wine Bottle, which was just listed as a Diamond Finalist in 2018 30th Awards for Packaging Innovation put on by Dow Chemical Company. (You know, like the Oscars, but without all the glitz.)

The Garçon flat wine bottle is pretty much what it’s name suggests: a squished wine bottle made from recycled plastic that is narrow enough to fit through the standard U.K. (where the company is located) mail slot. The company says it is made from 100 percent recycled, food-safe PET plastic. The plastic also makes the bottle lighter to ship and helps it withstand tumbles in transit as well as the drop from the mail slot to the floor.

Garçon is actually a B2B company, and has protected the intellectual property behind its bottle design. According to its website, Garçon is actively seeking out relationships with various wineries and “with those working at every stage of the drinks supply chain,” according to its website.

Garçon seems to be hitting the market at just the right time. Beverage Daily writes that by one estimate, 34 percent of beer drinkers in the U.K. buy booze online. Here in the U.S., DRINKS said that it shipped 10 million bottles of wine in the U.S. in 2017, and has 500,000 active households as customers.

Garçon is thinking bigger and partnering up with bottling facilities to expand beyond wine. Other companies are taking this flat approach as well. As we wrote about last month, Olivery’s smart olive oil bottle/system uses flat, plastic pouches that can fit through a mail slot to get you your olive oil refills.

Better packaging for shelf-stable beverage and liquid delivery will beget more types of bottled products that can be ordered online, which will beget even more types of packaging modified for easier/cheaper transport. And unlike IKEA, when the flat bottle of wine arrives, you don’t have to assemble it.

Ordermark Raises $9.5 Million for its Online Order Management Tools

Ordermark, a startup that helps restaurants unify and organize online orders, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million Series A led by Nosara Capital. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $12.6 million.

The boom in restaurant delivery has spawned a boom in companies who will deliver that food. Managing orders from the likes of GrubHub, UberEats, and DoorDash can cause chaos for restaurant staff because none of those systems talk to each other, and each require separate installations. Ordermark works to help streamline and simplify that process. As we wrote about the company back in March:

Ordermark works with restaurants to identify delivery services available in their geographic area. The company then onboards these platforms and integrates them into an Ordermark dashboard, which standardizes all incoming orders and funnels them through a single printer.

Since we last checked in with the company, Ordermark has grown quite a bit and now integrates with fifteen online ordering services. The company also has more than 500 restaurant brands including TGI Friday’s, Qdoba, Johnny Rockets and Sonic.

As Ordermark Founder and CEO, Alex Canter, told me earlier this year “Convenience isn’t going away, and it’s not a trend either.”

Ordermark’s business is akin to the old saw about the people who really made money off the gold rush were the ones who sold pick axes. The more delivery grows, the more restaurants will need consolidation tools like Ordermark’s.

With its new money, Canter said that Ordermark will be expanding its product offering into reporting tools, accounting and more.

Restaurants, especially ones that deliver, are data-generating machines. Everyone eats, and developing a deeper understanding of what people order, when they order it, where they live, etc. is a gold mine for restaurants who can then market to precise neighborhoods and demographics. Startups like Ordermark and Ingest.ai aren’t just streamlining order processes, they are helping restaurants create a deeper understanding of their business.

The Weekly Spoon: Where’s My SodaStream Fridge?

This is the post version of our weekly (twice-weekly, actually) newsletter. If you’d like to get the weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

Every now and then a big company makes an acquisition that makes you wonder about the possibilities.

Pepsi scooping up SodaStream is one such deal.

The $3.2 billion purchase clocks in at 33 times forward earnings. The rich valuation is justified in part by SodaStream’s strong growth in the sparkling water market, but also because it puts Pepsi into a new category: home beverage creation.

“SodaStream is highly complementary and incremental to our business, adding to our growing water portfolio, while catalyzing our ability to offer personalized in-home beverage solutions around the world,” said Ramon Laguarta, CEO-Elect and President, PepsiCo, in the company’s press release.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Big Drink – including Pepsi – has looked at the in-home beverage market. They launched their Drinkfinity line earlier this year, and competitor Dr. Pepper has most likely at least considered the possibilities of a revamped Keurig Kold post-acquisition.

But at this point, it’s safe to say none of these efforts have been a runaway hit. Will a SodaStream armed with Pepsi’s resources change that? While Chris’s take is that it’s best for Big Drink to stay away from the home beverage machine business, my take it a little more sanguine. I think in-home creation dovetails well with two consumer megatrends that will only pick up more momentum:

-The soda business is shrinking fast, and low-calorie healthy alternatives will likely continue to be the fastest growing category in beverages

-Bottled drinks are bad for the environment, so a growing contingent of consumers will continue to look for more ecofriendly alternatives (like home beverages!).

While a countertop beverage machine may not be for everyone, who’s to say SodaStream couldn’t be built into my refrigerator some day? I just bought a new fridge and, I have to say, I would much rather have a tasty drink spigot on it than a touchscreen (and I’m probably not the only one).

Bottom line, whether built into a fridge or through a small machine on the countertop, I think the stars are lining up for continued growth for the in-home beverage market.

Now if they could make a home Kombucha as easy.

(Ed note: Reader Chris pointed out to me that in 2013 Samsung partnered with SodaStream to add a dispenser to a fridge, but the models have since been discontinued. With sparking water having a moment, I have to wonder if it’s time to revive this idea?)

Speaking of Interesting Drink Trends…

Have you ever had your name printed on a beverage?

We have:

While the idea of images printed on drink foam (whether its coffee, cocktails or beer) may seem like a novelty to some, I would argue drink “printing” could become commonplace in the next few years in restaurants and bars.  My guess is that not only would consumers pay a little extra for a drink printed “selfie”, but brands would jump at the opportunity to get the word out via drink-top messaging. Imagine the value of having your new vodka brand printed on all the drinks served in a bar on a given night.

You can read about the new Ripples cocktail printer announced today (and see a video of The Spoon logo printed on a drink) over at The Spoon.

Delivery Tech Is Hot

Grocery delivery and logistics continue to be one of the hottest spaces in food tech. This week we saw a massive $110 million investment in Boxed (which brings the total invested in the grocery logistics company to $243 million) and news of a successful trial of in-trunk delivery by Delivery.com/Phrame.  As someone who’s skeptical about letting a total stranger into my home, I’m intrigued by the idea of trunk delivery. Amazon apparently feels the same.

If you haven’t caught our the latest episode of The Smart Kitchen Show, I had a great time talking with VineSleuth’s Amy Gross about how AI can help consumers find the perfect wine.  Check it out at The Spoon or subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts.

And if you like my conversation with Amy, she’s just one of many great speakers coming to the Smart Kitchen Summit in just under seven weeks. Make sure to get your tickets today with the discount code NEWSLETTER for 25% off of tickets. 

In the 08/22/2018 edition:

Grocery Logistics is Hot as Boxed Nabs $110 Million Investment from Aeon Group

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 22, 2018 09:16 am
Boxed, an e-commerce company that sells bulk grocery items, yesterday announced a $110 million investment led by Aeon Group, one of the largest retailers in Japan. This minority stake brings the total amount raised by Boxed to $243.6 million and values the company at $600 million.

Ripple PM Prints a Selfie on your Cocktails

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 22, 2018 06:00 am
We are all used to the idea of Instagramming our cocktails, but the new Ripple Maker PM, made by Ripples, lets you place your Instagram-worthy photos directly on the foam of your favorite boozy beverage. To customize a cocktail, users upload selfies, logos, or other images to the WiFi-enabled appliance using a Facebook Messenger app.

Buttermilk Co’s Microwaveable Indian Meals Merge Authenticity and Convenience

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 21, 2018 01:15 pm
Founder Mitra Raman got the idea for Buttermilk Co. because of a craving for rasan: a tomato-y South Indian stew and her favorite food. Raman’s mother gave her the ingredients in a bag — all Raman had to do was add water and boil.

Hitachi to Use AI to Analyze Hospital Food Leftovers and Improve Patient Recovery

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 21, 2018 11:14 am
We often write about artificial intelligence (AI) being used on food before it gets to you: inspecting the supply chain, making sure your burgers are cooked, etc. But a new unit of Japanese company Hitachi is applying AI to food leftover on the plate after people are done with it.

Phrame and Delivery.com Partner for In-Trunk Delivery

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 21, 2018 08:16 am
Is your car trunk the new post office box? It could be if a new service from Phrame and Delivery.com catches on. The two companies announced today the conclusion of a successful pilot that saw deliveries made directly into car trunks in an attempt to provide a new method of convenience for grocery shoppers.

No More Lukewarm Coffee: How Heating Tech will Disrupt the Kitchen

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 20, 2018 02:27 pm
The ability to apply precision heat to food and drinks is a quick-evolving — and pretty darn exciting — area of the digital kitchen innovation. And no one is pushing more boundaries in this space than Clay Alexander. He’s the founder and CEO of Ember, a company which makes smart mugs which can exactly control and […]

Coca-Cola Should Stay Out of the Home Device Business

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 20, 2018 11:51 am
After I wrote up the news this morning about PepsiCo buying SodaStream for a bubbly $3.2 billion, a commenter got me thinking about what rival Coca-Cola’s next steps should be. Spoon reader “James” asked: So now that Pepsi has Sodastream and Dr. Pepper has Keurig, what consumer hardware company is Coke going to buy?

PepsiCo Buys SodaStream for $3.2 Billion

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 20, 2018 08:21 am
PepsiCo said today that it will buy SodaStream, makers of the countertop carbonation system, for $3.2 billion. The move not only pushes the sugary drink giant further into the healthy beverage market, but it also moves the company into more of a hardware space, which opens up new lines of recurring revenue.

Podcast: The AI Powered Sommelier With Amy Gross

By Michael Wolf on Aug 19, 2018 08:07 am
A decade ago, Amy Gross was enjoying a glass of wine with her husband when she noticed how the same wine tasted different to different people. From there she began to think about how technology could be used to make personalized wine recommendations, and it wasn’t long before IBM and others wanted to learn more […]

Food Tech News Roundup: Plant-Based Starbucks, Google’s Wearable Meal Plan, and Grocery Innovation

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 18, 2018 06:00 am
What a week for food tech fundraising! From DoorDash’s $250 million to a hefty raise for cellular aquaculture company BlueNalu to not one, not two, but three fundraising rounds for food waste startups, it’s been a doozy.

Grocery Logistics is Hot as Boxed Nabs $110 Million Investment from Aeon Group

Boxed, an e-commerce company that sells bulk grocery items, yesterday announced a $110 million investment led by Aeon Group, one of the largest retailers in Japan. This minority stake brings the total amount raised by Boxed to $243.6 million and values the company at $600 million.

The news was first reported by The New York Times as part of a larger story about Boxed‘s high-tech warehouses and the larger role fulfillment is playing for grocery retailers. Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods last year shook up the grocery business with its combination of technology-driven logistics and groceries. Now, having an optimized logistics infrastructure to handle e-commerce and delivery is an essential component for every retailer.

All the major grocery retailers are getting into the logistics game. Amazon is bringing its delivery expertise to Whole Foods, Target acquired Shipt and Grand Junction, and Walmart acquired Parcel after previously acquiring Jet.com. All of this activity means how you get your groceries is becoming as important as the quality of groceries you are getting.

Which brings us back to Boxed, which in addition to operating its own e-commerce, has a robust fulfillment offering. The Times writes that the investment deal between Aeon and Boxed is structured such that Boxed can license its technology, which includes “mobile app technology, personalization software, a packing algorithm that maximizes space in shipping boxes, software that tracks item expiration dates, order management software and warehouse robotics automation” to other retailers in the U.S.

The Boxed/Aeon deal is reminiscent of the recent Kroger/Ocado deal. Earlier this year, Kroger upped its investment in U.K.-based Ocado, which runs a number of automated smart warehouses for more efficient last-mile grocery delivery. As part of that deal, Kroger will be building out twenty similar warehouses for grocery delivery here in the U.S..

Fulfillment centers are also moving from dedicated warehouses and into the grocery stores themselves. Walmart is building out a robotic fulfillment center at one of its locations to bolster its curbside pickup service. And the startup Takeoff will unveil its first robot-driven micro-fulfillment center inside a grocery store later this fall.

The good news is that as Boxed and all these other grocers bring fulfillment into the modern era, consumers will be the beneficiary, with expanded options for faster grocery shopping.