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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

equity crowdfunding

Small Robot Co. Raises Another £2M Through Equity Crowdfunding

Agtech startup Small Robot Company announced today that it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign and already hit its goal of raising £2 million (~$2.77M USD). This is the fourth time Small Robot has turned to equity crowdfunding, where it has previously raised £4.3 million. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Small Robot to £9 million.

Small Robot Company uses a combination of robots and artificial intelligence to help automate certain agricultural needs. Small Robot’s products include the Tom, Dick and Harry robots. As we’ve covered previously:

  • Tom uses cameras and computer vision to precisely map a field of its plants and weeds
  • Wilma is the AI that analyzes those images to gather per-plant intelligence and weed identification
  • Dick is an autonomous weed zapper that is armed with an electric wand and information from Wilma to precisely electrocute individual weed without the need for chemicals
  • The company will eventually add a third robot, Harry, to its lineup that will do no-till drilling.

Equity crowdfunding has been a popular choice for robotics companies looking to raise money. Fellow agtech startup Future Acres, which makes a robotic platform that will initially be used to haul crops, launched its own crowdfunding campaign earlier this year. Other non-agtech robot startups equity crowdfunding include Piestro, Kiwibot, DaVinci Kitchen, Blendid and EBar.

Some of the benefits of equity crowdfunding include being able to raise money without the scaling pressures that come with traditional VC money, as well as building a diverse, enthusiastic community that can provide real world feedback and evangelize a product and campaign. For more, check out the video from a panel we devoted to equity crowdfunding at our recent ArticulATE food robotics conference in May (Spoon Plus subscription required).

UPDATE: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated Small Robot raised this funding through a private campaign plus a match with the U.K. Government. That particular money came through earlier financing. We regret the error.

DaVinci Kitchen Equity Crowdfunds €500,000 for Robotic Pasta Kiosk

DaVinci Kitchen, a German startup making an autonomous robotic pasta kiosk, has raised more than €500,000 (~$591,000 USD) through equity crowdfunding. The company’s campaign ran from March to the end of June this year on Seedmatch, with 488 investors participating. Combined with a previous Seed round, DaVinci has raised now raised €1.35M (~$1.6M USD).

DaVinci’s pasta station is a self-contained pasta-making kiosk that’s 2.1m wide by 2.5m high and 2.4m long. Customers use an app to place orders and customize their meals, and an articulating arm swings about preparing and plating the dish. The DaVinci can make 40 meals per hour. As company Founder Vick Jorge Manuel explained to me last year, pasta is actually just the beginning for the kiosk, as different components (like a deep fryer) can be swapped into make all manner of cuisines and dishes.

DaVinci is just the latest robot startup to use equity crowdfunding to raise money. Blendid, Kiwibot, and a bunch of companies in Wavemaker Labs’ portfolio (Piestro, Bobacino, Miso Robotics) have all turned to the crowd to raise capital. Part of the allure of equity crowdfunding is that it allows a company to raise money without the pressure to scale that can come with institutional VC funding. Additionally, equity crowdfunding can act as a marketing vehicle and helps build a community around a product. For more, check out this panel from our recent ArticulATE conference all about the ins and outs of equity crowdfunding. (Spoon Plus membership required.)

Through an exchange on Linkedin over this past weekend, DaVinci told me that the company will use the new money to finish its pre-production version kiosk, with the goal of opening up its own test restaurant in Leipzig. DaVinci will also start to raise a traditional round of funding for its Series A starting in September.

Zippin Adds OurCrowd as an Investor, Launches its Own Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Cashierless checkout startup Zippin announced today that equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has invested an undisclosed sum as part of Zippin’s ongoing Series B round of funding. Zippin also announced today that it is launching its own equity crowdfunding campaign on the OurCrowd platform, with the aim of raising $8.4 million.

Zippin makes an autonomous checkout solutions that uses cameras, computer vision and shelf sensors to automatically keep track of what people take inside a store. Zippin opened up a store at the Yokohama Tech Tower in Japan earlier this year, and powered cashierless checkout sales at Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado, and Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California.

In a corporate blog post, Zippin Co-Founder and CEO, Krishna Motukuri wrote:

COVID-19 has also caused many people to re-evaluate their everyday shopping habits and start to demand a more frictionless and convenient experience. This makes Zippin the kind of company that a lot of individual people might want to invest in; investing in Zippin is a way of helping to bring about a brighter, customer-friendly future for retail. 

For all of these reasons, I am personally passionate about giving individual investors the chance to be part of the future of checkout-free retail. Ever since the launch of the first Zippin-powered store in San Francisco three years ago, we’ve heard from many people that they love what we are doing and want to support our mission of accelerating the adoption of checkout-free technology.

Equity crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular investment method for a number of food tech startups. BEERMKR, Future Acres, Piestro, Blendid, Kiwibot, Renewal Mill and Miso Robotics have all turned to the crowd to fundraise over the past year. One advantage to equity crowdfunding, as Motukuri pointed out, is opening up investment opportunities to everyday folks. But equity crowdfunding can also alleviate some of the scaling pressure that comes from traditional VC funding, and can also become a marketing an community vehicle for the company running the campaign.

The entire cashierless checkout category has been on fire this year with a number of new partnerships and solutions launching. Now we’ll see if that excitement within the industry translates into cash from the general public.

BEERMKR Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign, Will Appear on “Shark Tank” Tonight

If I wasn’t such a professional, impartial journalist, I might shed a small tear of joy for BEERMKR. I’ve been writing about the company since 2018 when it launched on Kickstarter, and continued to follow them through trade shows, COVID-related production delays, and finally with a full product review last fall. And now the company has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, but will also be pitching to the investors on Shark Tank tonight. Li’l BEERMKR is all grown up.

Unlike traditional home brewing, BEERMKR doesn’t require the mess and complications of buckets and bottles and hoses. Instead, it’s a connected, all-in-one countertop beer fermenting, brewing and dispensing system. The accompanying mobile app tells you when to add your ingredients, and the BEERMKR controls all the agitation, temperature control and resting. I had never brewed beer before in my life and was able to make a delicious stout on my very first try, which prompted me to add BEERMKR to our Spoon Holiday Gift Guide.

We obviously don’t know yet if the Sharks will bite upon hearing BEERMKR’s pitch, but the company is hoping everyday investors will. BEERMKR is looking to raise roughly $1 million through equity crowdfunding on the StartEngine platform, and as of this writing has already raised more than $122,000 in its first day. BEERMKR has a good track record when it comes to crowdfunding, having raised nearly $400,000 on Kickstarter to put the BEERMKR into production. (And unlike other beer-related crowdfunded hardware, it actually made it to market.)

Equity crowdfunding is becoming quite a trend in the food tech world. Companies like Piestro, Future Acres, Blendid and GoSun have all conducted equity crowdfunding campaigns. Raising capital from traditional VCs comes with the pressure to scale and deliver a return on the VC’s investment in a relatively timely manner. Startups that choose that equity crowdfunding route mitigate that scaling and time pressure. However, using equity crowdfunding also means companies don’t necessarily get access to the institutional knowledge and connections that could help them run their businesses more efficiently.

I reached out to BEERMKR CEO Aaron Walls this morning to ask him why they opted for equity crowdfunding, and this is what he emailed back:

We’ve done traditional financings and we’ve done kickstarters, but this is our first equity crowdfund. As we began investigating, it became evident that our company was uniquely positioned to execute an equity crowdfunding campaign. First, we have a large install base of happy customers, many of whom have reached out prior to this campaign and asked if they could invest in our company. Second, with as many kickstarters as we’ve done, we have the internal processes in place to work through the crowdfunding dynamics. Lastly, our category of alcoholic beverages does very well with crowdfunding. It’s a category that you don’t need an advanced degree to fully understand the full potential. From our standpoint we felt it was worth the effort to see how well it performs. The worst case scenario? We can always go back to raising capital the old fashioned way, but given the first day success, it looks like we won’t have to!

Walls also said that BEERMKR is only raising $1 million because that is a limit set by the SEC based on the makeup of the company.

I didn’t ask him whether Mark Cuban is now an investor, but I’ll be watching Shark Tank tonight and maybe there there will be one little happy tear for Walls and his team.

Miso Robotics Equity Crowdfunds $17M, Extends Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy the cooking robot, announced today that it raised $17 million during its equity crowdfunding campaign from April through November of last year.

In its press announcement, Miso said that its campaign was the highest-grossing technology deal ever on the SeedInvest equity crowdfunding platform. The $17 million was only a little more than half of the $30 million the company had intended to raise, but Miso will be extending this equity crowdfunded Series C round into this year to try and hit that $30 million milestone. Miso has previously raised $15 million in financing and $3.3 million in venture debt.

Miso’s crowdfunding came during a tumultuous time for the restaurant industry, and running an equity campaign during a global pandemic was both bad and fortuitous for the food robotics company. On the one hand, COVID-19 decimated the restaurant industry, shuttering thousands of restaurants and limiting Miso’s potential customer base. Stadiums, where Flippy was already making in-roads as an automated fry cook, were also shut down.

But this crisis also meant opportunity for Miso. While many restaurants were closed, deep pocketed QSRs were able to weather the tumult and were in more of a position to afford Flippy. In a high-profile example, after an initial pilot in July of last year, White Castle quickly expanded its use of Flippy to 11 of its locations.

Buck Jordan, Co-Founder, President & Chairman of Miso Robotics, told me by phone this week that the pandemic caused a “massive” increase of QSRs interest in Miso’s technology. According to Jordan, that interest is being driven by QSR staffing issues, the ability to create social distancing in the kitchen and the ability to transition workers into roles that more involve cleaning and fulfilling delivery and takeout orders.

With restaurants emphasizing delivery and takeout options, there will most likely be sustained interest in technology that can keep workers engaged with off-premises order fulfillment and customer service.

In addition to the funding news, Miso also announced the appointment of Mike Bell as CEO and Jake Brewer as Chief Strategy Officer. Bell was previously COO at Ordermark and President and COO at Bridg. Brewer was formerly VP of Restaurant Excellence at CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

My 2020 Prediction Scorecard: Equity Crowdfunding (✅) and Pop-Up Retail (❌)

Before unceremoniously kicking 2020 to the curb, as an industry watcher, I have to make the yearly mental trek backwards to revisit the predictions I made for this year.

This, wretched, wretched year.

Going into 2020, my big two bets were on equity crowdfunding and semi-permanent pop-up retail experiences. Seeing how it all panned out, I’d say I batted .500 this year. Equity crowdfunding caught on (especially with food robots), but those pop-ups? Not so much-ups.

Equity crowdfunding, or eschewing institutional venture capital money in favor of opening investment up to just about anyone, did seem to catch on this year. Small Robot Company, Winc, Miso Robotics, Mellow, Piestro, Kiwibot, Renewal Mill, Bobacino and Blendid all launched or announced equity crowdfunding campaigns this year.

Why did these companies turn to the crowd? Part of the reason is that skipping VC money means there’s less pressure to scale your business so dramatically. But there are other reasons as well as some Founders told us.

Sam Watson Jones, Co-founder, Small Robot Company told me earlier this year that “VCs are a bit different in the UK. There are very few early stage VCs to fund stuff that requires more development. We knew we had a load of farmers who were excited about what we could develop.” Crowdfunding, Watson said “allowed us to get angels and people who would put ten quid in. It’s been a good forum for us to capitalize on the branding and PR.”

Then just this month, Blendid Founder and CEO, Vipin Jain explained to us why his company decided to equity crowdfund, saying, “Since Blendid has recently expanded into retail establishments with national partners – giving us a much broader audience – it made sense to do crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding not only allows you to raise money, but also drives consumer brand awareness and advocacy, by enabling fans of Blendid to individually invest as well as enjoy our delicious blends.”

So did the campaigns work? That’s kind of hard tell without speaking directly with each company, but here’s what we know:

  • Small Robot Company raised £2,003,880 ($2,596,000 USD), surpassing its goal of £700,000 target
  • Winc raised $5.3 million
  • Miso Robotics raised $16.7 million, or a little more than half of the $30 million it sought
  • Mellow‘s equity crowdfunding was a bust and the company failed to reach its funding goal
  • Piestro‘s first go-round with equity crowdfunding went so well it launched a second campaign
  • Kiwibot has raised $576,034 of the $1 million it wanted
  • Renewal Mill raised $116,777 of its $1 million goal

Bobacino’s campaign won’t launch until next year, and it’s still early in Blendid’s campaign, so we’ll have to check back in on both of those.

I’m curious to see if the food robot world continues to go the equity crowdfunding route in 2021. While it does allow startups to skip the VC death march, so far, it doesn’t seem like a way to raise the large amounts of money a robot company needs to scale. But equity crowdfunding is still a pretty nascent concept. Like so manythings, if someone makes money on it, potential investors will flock to it.

What people weren’t being driven to in 2020 was semi-permanent retail environments. At the start of the year, I thought brands would take to the mini cashierless retail environments created by AiFi with its NanoStore and Zippin with its pre-fab Cubes.

These small, plug-and-play retail environments are easy to set up inside office buildings (or just about anywhere, really). They could, for instance, allow a grocer like Safeway to build a small, unattended Safeway-branded store in a lobby, or a hospital or train station. This is a lot cheaper than building out or retrofitting an existing space. And since there’s no cashier, they can be more economical to run.

But the pandemic forced people to avoid offices and other high-traffic areas, and subsequently pushed them into record amounts of online grocery shopping from home. As such, retailers needed to focus less on creating new retail spaces and more on their own logistics and fulfillment to accommodate all those new e-commerce orders.

I still think cashierless checkout technology will pave the way for a boom in pop-up stores over the next couple of years (AiFi aims to build 330 such stores by the end of 2021). Retailers will want to create more contactless ways of shopping that are fast and get people in and out of stores quickly, and setting up a small, cashierless stores is one way to do that.

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll put pop-ups on my prediction list for 2021….

Robot Smoothie Company Blendid Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Blendid, a company that produces standalone robotic smoothie-making kiosks, is running an equity crowdfunding campaign through MicroVentures with the goal of raising up to $5 million.

Blendid sent word of its crowdfunding efforts via a marketing email today, though it appears that the campaign itself has been live for roughly a month already. As of this writing, Blendid has already raised more than $240,000 in its crowdfunding campaign.

Equity crowdfunding is becoming quite the popular way to raise money for food-related robot companies. In 2020 alone, Miso Robotics, Kiwibot, Piestro, Bobacino and Small Robot Company all launched or announced equity crowdfunding campaigns.

There are pluses and minuses to going the crowdfunding route. By eschewing traditional VC capital, startups lose out on some of the knowledge and connections that come with institutional investors. But at the same time, crowdfunding helps these companies sidestep some of the scaling pressures that comes with VC money.

Previously, Blendid (formerly 6D Bytes) raised $13.5 million from Benhamou Global Ventures, Plug & Play, Hone Capital and Partech Ventures. We sent a note to Blendid to find out more about its decision to go the crowdfunding route and will update when we hear back. UPDATE: Blendid Founder and CEO, Vipin Jain emailed us the following statement:

“Since Blendid has recently expanded into retail establishments with national partners – giving us a much broader audience – it made sense to do crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding not only allows you to raise money, but also drives consumer brand awareness and advocacy, by enabling fans of Blendid to individually invest as well as enjoy our delicious blends.”

As part of its pitch to potential investors of the crowdfunding campaign, Blendid shared some of its financials. Not surprisingly, 2020 was a rough year for the company. Blendid’s first two locations were at colleges, and given the pandemic and the shift to remote learning, those machines have been inactive for most of the year. According to Blendid, the company earned just $546 in Q3 of this year and $64,119 for its 2020 fiscal year.

Having said that, the fourth quarter has been pretty busy for Blendid. The company has opened two new robots at Walmart locations in California. One of those locations is actually a co-branded robot with Jamba as the company moves away from an owner-operated model to more licensed deals. This shift towards licensing should help with consumer adoption by leveraging the brand recognition that comes with a partnership like Jamba (and others).

One other interesting tid bit from Blendid’s disclosures is that the company is already looking beyond making just smoothies. From the “Product Roadmap” portion of the campaign page:

Q3 2021 – Food format #2 leveraging the existing kiosk, which has been designed as a platform that can be modified to support a large variety of food formats.

For those interested, the minimum investment for the crowdfunding campaign is $100. This post isn’t an endorsement of Blendid and any investment carries with it a certain amount of risk.

Renewal Mill Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign to Raise $1M

Renewal Mill, a startup that makes baking products out of upcycled ingredients, launched an equity crowdfunding campaign today in an effort to raise $1 million.

Founded in 2016, Renewal Mill takes manufacturing byproducts that typically go to waste and turns them into upcycled ingredients that can be used for baking. For instance it turns the soybean pulp leftover from a company making tofu into gluten-free, high-fiber okara flour.

Renewal Mill has previously raised $1.7 million in Seed funding, and has been a participant in the Techstars Farm to Fork accelerator as well as Barilla’s Good Food Makers program and the Systems 6 accelerator. Renewal Mill products have been used by companies like Pulp Pantry, Humphry Slocombe and Tia Lupita Foods, and the company sells its own product line directly through its website and retailers like Good Eggs and Whole Foods.

Through this crowdfunding effort, Renewal Mill is looking to commercialize its second ingredient product, “oat oakara,” which is made from the oat pulp leftover when oatmilk is made. The company also wants to expand its upcycled baking mixes.

Today’s news puts Renewal Mill at the center of a couple trends happening in food tech. First, the company is one of a handful of companies upcycling everything from salmon skins to banana peels to imperfect apples and pears into new products. Not only does this upcycling result in new and unique foods, it also helps eliminate food waste.

But Renewal Mill is also joining in the trend of food tech startups turning to equity crowdfunding to raise fresh capital. Kiwibot, Piestro, and Winc have all launched equity crowdfunding campaigns this year. Equity crowdfunding is a way for startups to grow without the pressure to scale that comes with traditional VC backing. But it also comes without the valuable institutional knowledge and relationships that a traditional VC can bring.

In an email sent to The Spoon, Renewal Mill Co-Founder and COO Caroline Cotto said that the company had the option of getting additional money as part of its initial Seed round, but decided against it to retain ownership of the company. Cotto said that they went the equity crowdfunding route to diversify the cap table and use it as a marketing opportunity as they work to expand their retail presence nationally.

The Spoon does not provide any investment advice and, as with any investing, there is always risk. Those interested in investing in Renewal Mill can do so for as little as $50 at Republic.co through November 30, 2020.

Miso Robotics Expands Equity Crowdfunding Efforts to the UK

Miso Robotics, maker of Flippy the robot cook, announced yesterday that it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign in the UK on the CrowdCube platform.

Equity crowdfunding is a way of raising money from everyday investors instead of institutional investment sources. CrowdCube funders can invest as little as £10 to own a piece of Miso.

This is the second equity crowdfunding campaign for Miso, which opened one on SeedInvest here in the U.S. back in April with the goal of raising $30 million. That $30 million seems to be a global fundraising goal (yesterday’s press release states Miso is looking to raise £24 million worldwide, which is roughly $30 million USD). We’ve reached out to Miso to clarify.

According to the CrowdCube campaign page, it looks like Miso has already surpassed its UK-specific goal of £1,201,904 and has raised £2,544,720 (~$ 3.2 million USD) from 292 investors with 20 days still left to go. Coincidentally, $3.2 million is what Miso has raised in the U.S. via SeedInvest so far.

Miso’s UK crowdfunding campaign comes just one day after the company announced that U.S. fast food chain, White Castle, was using Flippy to operate the fry station in a pilot program at one of its Chicago locations. This was the first non-investor customer for Flippy, which has also gone to work at CaliBurger as well as the Dodger and Diamondback baseball stadiums.

Miso has raised $13.1 million in traditional funding, with its last round being a Series B back in February of 2018. There are actually a number of startups that have turned to equity crowdfunding in recent years including Small Robot Company (also on CrowdCube), as well as Winc, Mellow and GoSun. Equity crowdfunding helps alleviate some of the scaling pressures that come with institutional money, but also removes some of the institutional knowledge and connections that come with VCs.

Miso appears to be catching on so far with UK investors, now we need to see how many paying customers Flippy can rack up across the pond as well.

Mellow Turns to Equity Crowdfunding to Raise $1M in Seed Funding

The saga of Mellow, the company behind the eponymous sous vide cooking machine, continues, as it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $1.07 million dollars in seed funding.

The Mellow, for those who may not remember, was a combination cooler/sous vide cooker. The hook with the Mellow was that you could put food in a water chamber in the morning and the machine would keep it cold until it was time to cook, so you could have dinner ready for you when you got home.

The product started as a self-hosted crowdfunding project back in 2014. But a series of delays, the departure of Mellow’s original CEO, and a brutal review in WIRED that called out the machine as “too risky” because it didn’t actually keep food at a food safe cold temperature seemed to spell the end of the device and the company.

But Mellow found a new owner, kept going and successfully crowdfunded a second iteration of its device last year called the Mellow Duo. The company raised more than $200,000 on Kickstarter for the Duo, which will feature two water reservoirs so people can cook multiple items to different temperatures at the same time.

In a Kickstarter update on April 6, Mellow said that the Duo was significantly delayed because of the coronavirus, a common issue for crowdfunded projects. So perhaps Mellow is turning to equity crowdfunding to help keep the lights on until it can ship. Mellow launched the equity crowdfunding campaign on SeedInvest, looking to raise a seed round of slightly more than $1 million.

The minimum investment is $1,000 and as part of its pitch, the company released some interesting information. According to Mellow, “Over 6,400 Mellow V1 units have been activated, with the average household using it to cook 1.7+ times per week.” That’s…. not a ton of devices in use or a sizeable market to build on.

Mellow is conducting this campaign at a time when more companies are turning to equity crowdfunding. GoSun, GOffee, Winc, Small Robot Company and Miso Robotics have all shunned traditional VCs in favor of potential everyday investors over the past year. Bypassing institutional investment does mean there is less pressure on companies to scale, but they also give up the institutional knowledge and connections VCs bring.

Of course, any investment carries risk, but it seems like Mellow is trying to raise money at a time when the home consumer sous vide hardware has been largely commodotized and the market itself seems fairly limited in size. ChefSteps laid off staff and dropped product lines before being acquired by Breville. Nomiku shut down completely. And Anova is looking to expand beyond sous vide into a forthcoming smart oven.

Of course, part of the problem with home sous vide cooking was the amount of time it takes to make your meal. First you have to bring a water bath up to temperature and then once you put your food in, you have to that up to the right temperature, which can take more than an hour. Then, if you’re cooking something like steak, you have to sear it.

The Mellow promises to do most of that (sans searing) automatically for you behind the scenes, so you can set it and forget it. Assuming they fixed the cold storage issue, we wonder how big that use case is as most people don’t typically know what they want to eat for dinner until a few hours before they actually eat.

Will Mellow’s saga continue? For now, that’s up to the crowd.

Miso Robotics Officially Opens Equity Crowdfunding Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy, the burger grilling, tater tot frying robot, announced today that it is kicking off its equity crowdfunding campaign to raise a $30 million Series C round.

Equity crowdfunding eschews traditional institutional funding such as venture capital and allows everyday people to invest directly in a company. In the case of Miso, a minimum investment of $1,493 per investor is required in order to participate. (And we should interject that any investment is a risk and this post is not an endorsement of Miso.)

Miso announced the equity crowdfunding campaign back in November, but it still required SEC approval before it could officially begin. According to the press announcement emailed to us, Miso says it has already secured $2.6 million in reservations with a pre-money valuation of $80 million.

Earlier this year, Miso introduced its newest generation of Flippy, the ROAR, which has the robot suspended on rails above a cooking space to make more room for any human co-workers.

This jump into equity crowdfunding comes at an interesting time, to say the least. The world is in the throes of a global pandemic that is costing millions of jobs, has sent the stock market reeling and is creating even new levels of uncertainty. How many everyday people impacted by COVID-19 are going to have the money to plunk down at minimum of $1,500 to own a small part of a robot company?

Not to mention the fact that a big driver of food automation in restaurants was a labor crunch. With an estimated 3 percent of US restaurants permanently closed, there will be a lot of human workers suddenly available once this pandemic passes.

On the other hand, the coronavirus outbreak and fear of human-to-human transmission of the virus is sparking all kinds of change throughout the food system. In a post-corona world, robots that prepare food could be seen as a way to make restaurants more hygienic. This, in turn, could spark a boom in food robotics.

Equity crowdfunding has become a bit of a trend in the food tech world. Other companies like Winc, Small Robot Company, GOffee and GoSun have all turned to the everyday investor for their latest rounds of funding. On one level, it provides them with the flexibility to grow as they like without added pressure from scale-seeking VCs, but it also denies companies the networks and knowledge VCs can provide.

Miso has made its choice, and now we’ll see if everyday investors flip for Flippy the robot.

Data-driven Winery Winc Raises Over $5.3M in Equity Crowdfunding

D2C winery Winc’s equity crowdfunding campaign Winc Shares is closing today. The company launched Winc Shares on the platform SeedInvest in August of 2019 to raise its Series D funding round. At the time of this writing, the campaign had seven hours left to go and had raised $5.3 million.

If you’re not familiar, Winc is a winery that develops blends based off consumer data and trends. It sells D2C through tailored wine subscriptions, and also supplies its wine to over 4,400 retail and wholesale accounts. Prior to launching the Shares program Winc had raised $41.6 million.

The minimum investment for Winc Shares is $999 per investor. Each level includes perks of Winc credits and bottles of wine. With its new crowdfunded capital, Winc will launch a new “clean wine” brand as well as a line of saké over the next year. On its site, the company also states that it will acquire its first wine company in Q2 of 2020.

Equity crowdfunding has become a bit of a trend for startup companies in the food and drink world. GoSun, Small Robot Company, Miso Robotics, Mealthy and GOffee have all launched their own crowdfunding campaigns to let regular people buy a piece of their company. Winc’s campaign is one of the bigger and more successful, second in scope only to Miso, which is hoping to raise a whopping $30 million Series C round through equity crowdfunding (its campaign is ongoing).

Equity crowdfunding appeals to startups who want greater control over their destiny. If they get all their money from individuals, they won’t be beholden to the intense pressures that can come with VCs — though that means they also don’t get the connections and advice that comes from working alongside venture firms. Considering that Winc’s whole shtick is that it makes wine geared towards the palates of everyday people, not wine critics, it makes sense that the startup would choose to go the equity crowdfunding route.

One thing to note: the recent COVID-19 outbreak is throwing a wrench into the entire food and drink ecosystem, affecting everyone from farmers to restauranteurs. It’s too soon to tell if the coronavirus will negatively affect Winc specifically. But one thing’s for sure: Winc’s campaign is ending none too soon. With so many people losing their jobs, equity crowdfunding may be one of the areas that struggles in our new COVID reality.