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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Robot Learns to Cook Omelets to Your Liking

Whether it’s burgers, tater tots or fried octopus balls, there are plenty of things robots can cook, and plenty of robots out there trying. But those robots are pretty rigid, following a specific set of criteria. The whole point is that they take over the repetitive task of cooking the same thing over and over and prepare it consistently.

But researchers at the University of Cambridge released a paper this week showing how they are teaching a robot to not just make an egg omelet for you, but also learn from how you like your eggs and adjust the cooking accordingly.

Improving robotic cooking using Batch Bayesian Optimization

IEE Spectrum has the full story (and an interview with the paper’s authors), and explains how the robot is able to do this customized cooking:

The researchers employed a solution to this problem called batch Bayesian optimization. The more traditional sequential Bayesian optimization would take a human’s score of each omelet and use it to modify the cooking process for the next omelet, but this approach doesn’t work well because the human feedback is, as the researchers tell us, “often ambiguous and relative.” By running the optimization process only after all scores have been collected, the robot is able to explore many more combinations of variables, yielding a substantially better end result. Instead of the omelets gradually getting better as you go, you’ll instead be tasting them randomly, but you’ll end up with a much tastier omelet.

In this case, the robot is able to adjust a number of different variables such as the amount of salt/pepper, whisking time and cook time.

Adding this type of customization to a robot’s repertoire and being able to apply it to more kinds of food could help automated cooking move from the more mass, industrial-sized food prep of fast food and more into personal cooking. Having your own robo-chef that can cook eggs just as you like them while you get ready in the morning (or have dinner waiting for you when you get home), is an idea that would be welcome in a lot of homes.

Is Grocery Shopping’s Future Bringing Your Own Containers? Pete and Gerry’s Is Finding Out.

A trip to the grocery store creates a trail of packaging, much of which is plastic, that is mostly destined for a dump, sometimes a recycling center, and sadly, too often, the ocean.

Some supermarket chains are trying to do their part to reduce waste, with the latest being Giant Eagle, which has pledged to phase out single-use plastics by 2025. However, moves like these, while noble, don’t account for the waste produced by the packaged products on store shelves, from cans of beans, pints of ice cream or cartons of eggs. That latter one is getting some attention now from Pete and Gerry’s, the organic egg company.

The company announced in a press release yesterday that it has been trialing a reusable egg carton at co-op food stores in New Hampshire and Vermont. The cartons are made of recycled, durable, BPA-free plastic that can be washed at home and reused repeatedly, according to the release. Once a consumer buys the carton for $2.99, they can fill it up from the Pete and Gerry’s display of loose eggs, which are discounted from a standard dozen. More than 500 of the cartons have been sold, Fast Company reports.

Pete and Gerry’s said that an average American who eats 279 eggs per year would save more than 1,800 cartons from entering the recycling and waste stream by using the reusable carton. On a larger scale, if every one of the 327 million American did so, more than 594 billion cartons would be out of circulation. Pete and Gerry’s said that it’s looking to bring the program to more stores.

One aspect of a reusable anything is that customers must bring it with them whenever they go shopping. At their core, these items inconvenience the customer. And introducing them requires companies to be brave enough to add some friction between them and a transaction. 

One company doing so is Blue Bottle Coffee, which announced last week that “by the end of 2020, all of our US cafes will be zero waste.” The company means it: it asks customers to bring their own reusable cups, or will charge them a deposit to use one of the cafe’s, and will sell whole bean coffee in bulk to customers with their own containers rather single-use bags.

Eventually, our standard should require the use of reusable containers. The tactic taken by many food companies is to switch to materials that are more easily recycled. Clearly, this won’t be good enough. Recycling has proven to be ineffective while the world continues to drown in plastic.

The future of food shopping should be a little more difficult for everyone, especially for those who can afford it, for the sake of the planet. “Zero-waste stores” are already attempting this, demanding that their customers bring their own containers. Larger grocery chains and consumer packaged goods companies need to step up and expand efforts such as the delivery service Loop, which utilizes reusable containers.

The planet has suffered because of our thirst for convenience. It’s time for more companies to step up and demand customers give up some of that convenience.

I Tried the JUST Egg Frittata at Le Pain Quotidien. It’s Another Win for Plant-Based Foods.

Quick service and fast food restaurants, from Burger King to Dunkin’, are clamoring to add plant-based options to their menus. You can now count Le Pain Quotidien among them, which teamed up with JUST for a chicken egg-free frittata that is now available at U.S. locations as of Wednesday.

The “Plant-Based ‘Egg’ Frittata” is made of the mung-bean derived egg substitute, roasted butternut squash, broccoli, caramelized onions and almond milk. Le Pain Quotidien feels so strongly about the plant-based version that it will replace its previous frittata.

I had the chance to try the JUST Egg frittata a week before it launched, and it’s clear why Le Pain put it on the menu: it’s delicious, and if I wasn’t told it was egg free, I wouldn’t have known. The way my fork slid into it felt natural, and nothing about the look and texture of the frittata would tell you that it was made with an egg substitute. It’s amazing how mundane, and I mean that in a good way, plant-based foods have become.

Many of other people who got a preview, which included nutritionists and influencers, came away with the same impression.

JUST says in a press release that the liquid version of its egg “has nearly as much protein as conventional chicken eggs, is free of cholesterol, saturated fat and artificial flavoring and its ingredients require considerably less water and emit fewer carbon emissions than chicken eggs.”

The company, which is also working on cultivated meat, has seen other restaurant partnerships hatch: restaurant chain Silver Diner and burger chain Bareburger (where you can also order an Impossible or Beyond Burger) will include JUST Egg on their menus. The company also announced that the liquid egg replacement will be available at Walmart and Kroger stores.

It’s been an impressive run for a product that only launched last year.

GFI: Investment in Plant-Based Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Hits $16 Billion, No Sign of Slowing

Today the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit promoting alternatives to conventional animal agriculture products, released a report on the state of investment in plant- and cell-based meat and dairy companies. You can download the report and read it in full, but here’s the main takeaway: the alternative protein space is on a massive upward trend, with record amounts of capital invested and high rates of new companies and acquisitions.

While it’s important to be aware of the author here — GFI has a clear agenda to promote alternative protein products — the numbers (below) are convincing. And also, not all that surprising. In fact, it’s in line with what we’ve been reporting all year.

Data from the report shows that alternative protein investment began experiencing a real boom in the past 2.5 years. Of the $16 billion invested in plant-based meat, egg, and dairy companies over the past 10 years, GFI reports that $13 billion of that occurred in 2017 and 2018 alone. We can attribute that to a corresponding increase in consumer demand for plant-based food options, specifically dairy and meat, spurred by trendy startups making tasty-in-their-own-right products like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Oatly oat milk.

There has also been an uptick in acquisitions of plant-based companies: of the 19 acquisitions in the space since 2009, 10 happened in 2017-18. That number could certainly increase as Big Food companies decide to invest more heavily in alternative protein sources (Unilever purchasing The Vegetarian Butcher; Maple Leaf Foods buying Lightlife and Field Roast). Beyond’s over-performing IPO could also entice these big corporations to spend big bucks.

However, acquisition isn’t the only way to get a bigger piece of the plant-based pie, especially going forward. For example, Tyson decided to end its investment in Beyond Meat to focus on developing its own line of plant-based products. And with its aforementioned successful IPO, Beyond has proven that acquisition isn’t the only end game for alternative protein companies.

The reports also covered investment and growth in the cell-based meat space, though products in that space have yet to come to market so there’s less going on overall. GFI notes that a whopping 11 new cultured meat companies were founded in 2018, bringing the total number of companies to 27. Of course, none of those companies have actually made a public sale. But 2019 might be the year that JUST finally makes good on its promise and brings cell-based meat to market — keep your eyes on Asia.

The plant-based/cell-based investment space isn’t about to cool anytime soon. So far in 2019 Shiok Meats, the Singaporean startup developing cultured shrimp, has raised $4.6 million, Singapore is investing over $100 million in cell-based meat (and other food innovations), and plant-based dairy company Eclipse Foods also closed a seed round. Add in Beyond Meat’s wildly successful IPO and it’s no wonder investors are scrambling to throw money at the alternative protein space. And it’s only May.

You can download the full report here.

Psst — want to stay up to date on all the investment trends in the protein alternative space? You’ve gotta subscribe to our Future Food newsletter — we cover it all. 

Food Tech News: Vegan Powdered Eggs, More Vertically-Grown Lettuce & India’s Red Hot Cloud Kitchen Market

Happy weekend from sunny Victoria, Canada! I took the ferry from Seattle for a quick weekend of high tea, touring gardens and whatever else one does in the capital of British Columbia.

But first, this week’s food tech news. We’ve got stories about blockchain, vegan eggs, and vertical farming to get your Saturday started right. Enjoy!

Gotham Greens expands to Providence, RI
Indoor agriculture company Gotham Greens announced plans to expand into Rhode Island this week. The company currently operates four farms: three in the New York City area and one in Chicago. The new 110,000 square foot greenhouse farm in Providence will open in early fall of 2019 and will operate year-round, serving local residents and foodservice establishments. Gotham Greens estimates the new facility will produce around 10 million heads of lettuce and leafy greens annually.

 

South America’s biggest egg producer creates a vegan egg
This week Grup Mantiqueira, South America’s largest producer of eggs, announced it had developed a vegan egg product in collaboration with nonprofit the Good Food Institute (h/t Livekindly). Called N.Ovo, the plant-based product is made of pea starch and comes in powdered form packaged in a traditional egg carton. (Cute, but is it practical?) N.Ovo will debut March 31st at the Rio Super Expofood event.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Ripe.io teams up with FlavorWiki
Ripe.io, the company developing a blockchain for the food industry, has partnered with digital sensory platform FlavorWiki. Basically, ripe.io will be able to access FlavorWiki’s collection of data around consumer flavor, texture, and aroma preferences, and in turn Flavorwiki will store its database on ripe.io’s blockchain-based platform.

That’s a lot of jargon. Essentially, food producers and sellers will be able to use the data from FlavorWiki and ripe.io to better understand how things like seasons and soil conditions impact customers’ taste perceptions. In theory, this improved transparency will be able to help producers make better-tasting foods.

 

Box8 raises $15 million in India’s red hot cloud kitchen market

India’s Box8 is the latest startup to benefit from the rapid growth of a food delivery market that is fueling investment in cloud kitchens across every region of the globe. The Mumbai based startup, which has 110 kitchens across five cities, just raised $15 million for its series C. It’s the second big raise for an Indian cloud kitchen startup in just one month, with Pune-based Faasos raising nearly $16 million in a series D earlier this month.

Box8, which currently serves 1 million meals a month across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Gurgaon, plans to use the new funding to expand to open 100 more kitchens over the next 12 months and expand to five more cities.

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