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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

drones

Amazon Patent Points to In-Flight Recharging For Delivery Drones

Ever since Jeff Bezos teased the idea of drone deliveries on 60 Minutes in 2013, the tech world has been abuzz with the idea. At the time Bezos said that the reality of drone deliveries wasn’t there yet, but he thought it just might be in 4-5 years.

Based on when Bezos made that prediction, that’s about now, and from the looks of it Amazon’s been working hard on ideas to make drone delivered milk a reality.

One of the limiting factors for drone delivery has been battery life. High-quality drones usually can stay in the air for only 30 minutes, and the longer a drone has to recharge, the less packages a fleet can deliver.

Not surprisingly, Amazon has been thinking about this and one of the ideas they’ve come up to ensure you can get your drone-delivered milk is to create flying delivery-bots that recharge…while still in the air. The concept explained in their just-issued patent is similar to that of a wind turbine, but instead of giant propellers the drones will have on-board propellers that spin to generate energy. The patent also describes how the the propellers are adjustable to maximize energy generation and that energy would be created both by windflow and kinetic (in-motion) energy.

The above graphic shows the concept of how the drone will monitors flight paths to find higher-wind flight paths to ensure maximal energy generation. The drone will both change flight path and as well as adjust the energy-generating propellers to make sure they are generating both the most wind-generated and kinetic energy as possible.

The concept of energy generating drones isn’t entirely new. Researchers have been discussing the idea of using tethered drones to produce energy through the use of small mini-wind turbines on board for a couple years, but the concept have largely centered around how drones could basically act as a windmill replacement.  What’s novel about Amazon’s idea is that the energy generation concept appears to be focused on how to recharge the on-board battery to ensure longer flight time as well as higher overall in-air utilization.

No word on when we’ll see Amazon’s energy-generating drones, but if Bezos had his way, they might just be around the corner.

Food Tech News Roundup: Google Groceries, Icelandic Drones, and More “Bleeding” Vegan Burgers

What a week! We just wrapped up our first ever Smart Kitchen Europe event in Dublin. It was a whirlwind few days jam-packed with content and networking as foodtech innovators from across the continent got together to forge the future of food tech. If you’re curious, get to know the winner of our SKS Europe startup showcase, and read up on some smart ktichen news that dropped on the show floor. And of course, if you want to connect with many of the innovators from SKS Europe as well as a whole bunch more in person, make sure you’re at our flagship event in Seattle come October.

But enough about us — here’s a list of the some of the food tech news stories that snagged our interest this week. Perfect for reading over a second cup of coffee while fighting jet lag.

Photo: Naturl’i Foods.

Sainsbury’s to add plant-based “bleeding” burger to meat section
British retail giant Sainsbury’s announced this week that it will debut a “bleeding” plant-based burger in June 27th in 400 locations. In the spirit of the Impossible Burger or Moving Mountains, the patty is meant to look, smell, cook, and taste like a beef burger in an attempt to woo flexitarians who are trying to reduce their meat consumption but don’t want to compromise on flavor. The plant-based burger, made by Danish brand Naturli’ Foods, will be sold alongside its beef counterparts in the meat section. This announcement comes not long after Tesco, another large U.K.-based grocery chain, released the news that it would carry Beyond Burgers in their shops beginning in July of this year.

 

Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg

Iceland amps up drone deliveries in Reykjavik
Aha, Iceland’s largest online marketplace, is slated to expand the number of drones it flies through Reykjavik over the next two years. That’s right, expand — this would be in addition to the limited drone trial they launched last year with Israeli company Flytrex last year.

According to the BBC, the drones could be used to speedily shuttle everything from pizzas to organs destined for transplant — as long as they’re below the maximum weight of 3kg (6lb, 9oz). Their results will no doubt be critical for companies like UberEats, who are also piloting drone delivery programs.

Photo: Clearly Kombucha.

Molson Coors acquires California-based Kombucha brand
Kombucha, a non-alcoholic fermented tea beverage with purported gut health benefits, is not for everyone. But it appears that it’s certainly for Molson Coors, who recently acquired California-based brand Clearly Kombucha. The kombucha brand was founded in 2010 and will become part of Molson Coors’ craft and specialty import division, Tenth and Blake.

According to Grand View Research, the global kombucha market is expected to reach $4.46 billion by 2024. Lately, Molson Coors has been investing in non-alcoholic beverages; last year they purchased a minority stake in Bhakti, a Colorado-based chai tea company.

Photo: MiAlgae

Scottish agtech company raises £500k
MiAlgae, a Scottish company that turns algae into nutrient-dense animal and fish feed, raised £500k ($665k) from backers including Equity Gap, SIB and Edinburgh University’s Old College, reported the U.K. Business Angels Association. The algae is grown using co-products from the Scottish whiskey distillation process (yum), and is high in omega-3 and other nutrients. As it’s made from a byproduct, the feed also has a low environmental footprint, which is critical as our global demand for, and production of, meat and fish continues to grow.

 

Photo: ndb_photo via Flickr.

Google to sell groceries through Home and Assistant platforms in France
Earlier this week Google announced a joint venture with French grocery chain Carrefour. According to Bloomberg, the retailer said that this partnership marks the first time in France that fresh food will be marketed through Google’s platforms. French shoppers will be able to buy grocery products through Google Home and Google Assistant by 2019. This comes a little more than a month after Google unveiled Duplex, which allows Google Assistant to have surprisingly realistic phone conversations to do things like make restaurant reservations. We’ll see if this move can make Google Home/Assistant a competitor with Amazon’s Alexa, who already partnered with U.K. retailers for voice-controlled grocery shopping.

Food Tech News: Celebrity Meal Kits, Beer Delivery, and UberEats Drones

This was a pretty thrilling week for food-related innovation in big data and AI. We wrote about a patent that lets Facebook see inside your fridge and recommend personalized recipes. Google debuted its Duplex technology, which allows it to hold freakishly realistic-sounding phone conversations (listen to it make a restaurant reservation, it’s insane). Perhaps most importantly of all, we wrote about a man who cracked the code for perfect chocolate chip cookies.

And now it’s time for our weekly food tech news roundup. We’ve got stories featuring clean meat labeling, drones, beer delivery, and Chrissy Teigen — let’s dive in:

Photo: Wikipedia.

Uber tests food delivery drone
UberEats has launched a trial program in San Diego testing food delivery via drone, reported Bloomberg. The world’s largest food delivery program could now theoretically drop off your pad thai in as little as five minutes, according to UberEats CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Of course that’s presuming that the food you’re ordering is already made, but still — that’s quite a bit speedier than even the fastest average food delivery wait time (from, you guessed it, UberEats).

 

Photo: Blue Apron.

Blue Apron teams up with Chrissy Teigen
Just a week after meal kit service Blue Apron announced they were putting their wares on Costco shelves, they revealed more news: they’re collaborating with model/cookbook author/Instagram celebrity Chrissy Teigen on a six-week lineup of recipes and ingredient boxes. The series will start on June 4th and, despite their launch into retail, will only be available via online delivery.

 

Photo: Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut expands beer delivery
Pizza Hut launched a test program in Phoenix in December to deliver beer and wine alongside their cheesy crust-stuffed pies. Now they’re rolling out that test program in over 100 locations in Arizona and California, with plans to continue expansion later this month. It’s also adding beer partners; the original test was with Anheuser-Busch, but the pizza chain has reportedly added MillerCoors as a partner in brews.

 


Congress might approve lab-grown meat regulation
Quartz reported that a proposed spending bill approved by a congressional subcommittee includes a provision that would give the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) the power to regulate how lab-grown meat is labeled and inspected. It’ll go next to the full, 46-member House Agriculture Committee, and, if passed, would have huge implications for a hotly-contested issue: the labeling of cultured meat.

Did we miss any interesting, thought-provoking food tech stories from the week? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @TheSpoonTech.

DoorDash Hiring for new “Moonshot Initiatives” Like Drones and Robots

When DoorDash closed its $535 million Series D round in March, we wondered if that meant more robot delivery vehicles were on the way. Based on a job listing by the company, it looks like we will, and possibly some drones and self-driving cars too boot.

The job listing is for a Software Engineer, Special Projects. And according to the posting they are “forming a new team at DoorDash dedicated to tackling big bets and moonshot initiatives. Think self driving cars, robotics, drones, chatbots, etc.”

The company is “looking for entrepreneurs to join the founding team,” and the role reports directly to the Co-founder (doesn’t say which one). It goes on to say that the person hired will “Build the 10x ideas from the ground up e.g. robotics, drones, next-gen dispatch, ML-chatbots, strategic partnerships, etc.”

DoorDash has already used robots from Marble for delivery in certain San Francisco neighborhoods. Moving some of that R&D in-house could mean the company is looking to build its own, customized version of one.

The listing doesn’t have a posted date, so we don’t know exactly how long they’ve been searching for such a role. We reached out to DoorDash for a comment, but didn’t hear back in time for publication. We will update this post when we hear back from the company.

A little less than a month ago, DoorDash expanded beyond restaurant delivery and into groceries with a partnership with Walmart in Atlanta. DoorDash is basically powering the logistics and delivery as more of a while label for Walmart in that instance. With 10 percent of U.S. consumers now regularly buying groceries online, getting into that category is a big opportunity. But it also brings bigger competitors, namely Amazon, which is a master of logistics and delivery. DoorDash will need to be innovative as it looks to possibly take on Bezos and company.

DoorDash COO Christopher Payne will be speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October. Hopefully he’ll bring robot or drone or a robot piloting a drone with him.

How Starship’s Hub & Spoke Robot Delivery Model Could Change Food Delivery

As semi-autonomous delivery robots wind their way through the streets of Greenwich, a borough of London, England, delivering take-out meals to local diners, we are witness to a small glimpse of how such technology will forever change the food ecosystem.

While Starship Technologies’ partnership with Just Eat, a home delivery service connecting consumers to their favorite restaurants, has received a significant amount of media attention, robotic delivery has far broader—and perhaps more socially significant—possibilities. Starship’s hub-and-spoke vision—that is a scenario where large amounts of goods—in this case, food—are taken to a central location after which an army of semi-autonomous robots take the wares the last quarter mile to individual homes.

Two obvious scenarios of this application of Starship’s innovation are home grocery delivery and bringing needed fresh food to a growing number of food deserts (areas outside the logistical reach of farms and farmers markets). For the home grocery startups such as Instacart, robots allow workers to focus more on careful curation than transporting sacks of produce, canned goods and other staples to local residents. Much the way newspapers set up substations where the daily papers are taken in bundles to individual districts where they are sorted and doled out to kids on bikes, supermarket chains or other food distribution can create a value-chain efficiency that benefits their bottom lines while providing a valuable service.

It’s clear that such a scenario is in Starship Technologies’ plans. In early September, the company announced a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to develop “robot vans” which could bring the hub-and-spoke model to life. According to its press release, Starship said it will work with the German car manufacturer to build a transportation system in which specially-designed Sprinter vans will hold up to eight delivery robots. Based on location density and consumer needs, the vans will make their rounds dropping off, and later picking up, individual robotic delivery agents. While not mentioned in the release, a backend with carefully programmed robust logistical software and a “service center” where multiple robots can be simultaneously monitored will be needed.

A few enhancements would be needed to the current robot agent to truly optimize its capabilities. According to Starship Technologies, the semi-autonomous unit can hold up to 22 pounds and uses the insulation provided by the restaurant or its delivery service. In order to deal with larger deliveries—such as supplies to prep kitchens– or perishables, greater capacity and commercial insulation will need to be added to the units.

Moving from commercial needs to the greater good, the creation of a system to cut down on the growing number of food deserts will require more hands on deck. One of those additional hands might come in the form of delivery drones from the likes of Amazon, already in the business of efficient home delivery. The Seattle-based retail giant prides itself in leaving no address “unaddressable” when it comes to getting goods and services to the far reaches of the planet.

As with previous innovations, advances in food technology—particularly in logistics—first movers don’t always have an advantage. Lurking in the background—some not so subtly—are key players such as incumbents UPS and FedEx, as well as newcomers to the asynchronous delivery transport world including Uber and Lyft. In short order, autonomous vehicles of every shape and size will be in plentiful supply; how entrepreneurs in the food industry deploy them will separate the winners from the losers.