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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Farmer's Fridge

Farmer’s Fridge Expands Outside the Vending Machine and Into Jewel-Osco

Farmer’s Fridge announced this week that its jars of salad are now on sale at Jewel-Osco stores in the Chicago, Illinois area. The news caught my eye because Farmer’s Fridge has up to know been most known for selling those fresh jars of salad through vending machines throughout the Midwest.

But the pandemic hit Farmer’s Fridge hard last year since its machines were set up in high-traffic areas. With fewer people going into offices or traveling, Farmer’s Fridge vending machines sat idle, and in March of last year, the company’s revenue dropped 85 percent. A Farmer’s Fridge company rep told me that as of now, the company has 160 machines active out of the 355 that are installed.

Farmer’s Fridge initially responded to the pandemic by quickly pivoting to home delivery in March of 2020. The company took out PPP loans, raised an additional $40 million in funding (bringing the total amount raised to $75 million) and now ships food nationwide. But since the start of the year, Farmer’s Fridge has been expanding its sales into retail outlets. In January, it started selling salads through Dunkin’ (who knew a trip to Dunkin’ could be healthy?). Then in March, Farmer’s Fridge started selling at 23 Target locations in the Chicago area. And now this week, Farmer’s Fridge salads are available at 18 Jewel-Osco supermarkets in the Chicago area.

The pandemic forced many grocers across the country to shut down salad bars and look for alternatives that didn’t involve trays of food sitting out all day and communal utensils. Some adopted Chowbotics’s Sally robot, which makes customized salads on-demand. But its easy to see how the jars of fresh salad from Farmer’s Fridge could also be used to make up for lost salad bar revenue.

Interest in vending machines has accelerated over the past year, driven in part by the pandemic. Vending machines offer contactless food delivery, don’t require much space and can operate 24 hours a day. But with the success of its home delivery and now growing retail presence, we reached out to Farmer’s Fridge to find out what role vending machines would continue to play for the company. A company rep emailed us the following statement:

Fridges will continue to be a core part of our business, as they currently generate 40 to 50 percent of our revenue. We are experiencing strong growth in retail and delivery, and these additional channels played a critical role in helping us exceed pre-pandemic revenue numbers.

It’s not hard to imagine Farmer’s Fridge vending machines making an even bigger comeback post-pandemic. Airports, offices and colleges will all be looking for ways to create food experiences that don’t involve as much human-to-human interaction. Farmer’s Fridge fits that bill, and now thanks to delivery and retail, has more options than ever should another downturn occur.

Farmer’s Fridge Adds Contactless Ordering and Payment

Farmer’s Fridge vending machines have always had a lot of things people were looking for: 24 hour access, a creative menu, and fresh salads served in cute jars. But the one thing Farmer’s Fridge didn’t offer was contactless ordering and payment, features made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers still needed to touch the machine to place there order and make a payment.

Until recently, that is. I spoke with Farmer’s Fridge CTO, Candice Savino, this week, who told me that the company rolled out contactless reserve and pay functionality to its machines at the end of August.

Like so many other players in the vending machine space, the addition of contactless ordering was on Farmer’s Fridge’s roadmap but was bumped to the head of the feature queue when the pandemic hit. Savino’s team worked quickly, creating an early prototype in May and rolling out the finished product in August to 160 of its 200 machines that are still active (prior to the pandemic, Farmer’s Fridge had 700 machines active in places like office buildings and convention centers).

Farmer’s Fridge contactless ordering works through the company’s mobile app. In the app, the user selects the machine it wants to order from, places the order and pays. That machine then holds the food until the person arrives and punches in a special code generated by the Farmer’s Fridge app.

Savino said the solution allows the company to actually have more accurate inventory management across its entire fleet of machines because it moves stocking data from the edge to a centralized location in the cloud. There are also safeguards in place to prevent remote dispensing, say if you accidentally went to one machine but had ordered from a different machine across town. (If that is the case, the user cancels and re-orders.)

Savino said that adoption of the new ordering system has been good, with 20 percent of Farmer’s Fridge orders going through the mobile app and growing week over week.

With the pandemic still raging, it’s a safe bet that all vending services will adopt contactless ordering and payment going forward. Chowbotics, which makes Sally the robot salad maker, added contactless ordering at the end of last month, and Blendid, which makes a robot smoothie kiosk, has always featured contactless ordering and payment.

Farmer’s Fridge is definitely in touch with the times, especially when it comes to removing touch from its retail experience.

The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report

Thanks to advances in hardware, the internet of things, and food preparation, vending machines today are basically restaurants in a box. They offer high-end cuisine in minutes, require minimal setup time, and have the on-board computing smarts to manage inventory and communicate any issues that arise.

With these capabilities, it’s no wonder the vending machine category was valued at more than $30 billion in 2018, according to Grandview Research, and was anticipated to have a CAGR of 9.4 percent from 2019 through 2025.

Had this report been written even just a few months ago, the main takeaway would have been that vending machines are perfect for high-traffic areas that operate around the clock: airports, corporate offices, college dorms, and hospitals.

But we’re living in a world continuously being shaped and reshaped by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Right now, some form of shelter-in-place orders blanket most of the U.S. Global air travel volume has plummeted, so airports are not busy. Non-essential businesses are closed and people are working from home, not office buildings. And colleges may not hold in-person classes until 2021.

While on the surface, those factors suggest vending machine companies will be yet-another sector wiped out by coronavirus, there has actually never been a better time for the automated vending machine industry. The small footprint and high-end food these devices offer are perhaps more important than ever at a time when minimizing human-to-human contact in foodservice is paramount to doing business. That makes the vending machine market uniquely positioned to capitalize on a post-pandemic world.

This report will define what the automated vending machine space is, list the major players, and present the challenges and opportunities for the market going forward.

Companies profiled in this report include Alberts, API Tech/Smart Pizza, Basil Street, Blendid, Briggo, Byte Technology, Cafe X, Chowbotics, Crown Coffee, Farmer’s Fridge, Fresh Bowl, Le Bread Xpress, Macco Robotics, TrueBird, and Yo-Kai Express.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

NÜTY Rolls Out Smart Chillers That Let Customers Buy Food With WhatsApp and WeChat

Ray Nathan had a problem.

The longtime technology entrepreneur and investor had spent years and a significant amount of his own capital to create a line of fresh, direct-to-consumer Indian food under the brand NÜTY, only to find traditional Indian retailers were not well equipped for the type of cold-chain continuity required for such a premium product.

One solution would be to use a fresh-food vending machine like Farmer’s Fridge or Bite Kiosk but, as it turns out, these automated cashierless food retail machines had yet to make their way to India. So Nathan did what any self-respecting food company founder who had also built his own tech company in a previous life would do: He built his own solution.

Conceived as a sister company to NÜTY Foods, Nathan decided to start NÜTY Technology to make IoT powered smart chillers which would keep his food at the right temperature until purchased by the consumer.

The chillers, which Nathan and his company had on display this month at the IoT Fair in India, give customers the ability to buy in person using NFC or through social apps. In India, that means Whatsapp, which allow consumers to buy food through the chat function.

To buy food from a NÜTY chiller with WhatsApp, the user simply opens the app and starts a conversation with NÜTY, finds a chiller near them and orders by texting the word pay. From there the chatbot sends a pay link. Once they pay, the consumer is free to pick up their food at the designated chiller.

The company is also testing their food chillers in China with WeChat as the conversational commerce platform. WeChat has become an entire commerce ecosystem in and of itself over the past few years with its mini-program platform, which NÜTY’s ordering and payment app is built upon.

The food inventory is tracked using RFID. Each chiller is outfitted with an “RFID set top” and has internal RFID sensors can track up to 30 or 40 products at a time.

Today Nathan’s chillers are in 80 locations, including across office parks, coworking spaces, cafeterias and shared living spaces, and he has plans to roll them out across India and in certain cities in China and, eventually, into the US market.

While mobile payments are taking off in every region, countries that embraced superapps like WeChat and WhatsApp for payment have moved faster than other regions. China in particular has pulled ahead of pretty much everyone else, where some estimates have mobile payments adoption above 80% of transactions.

As we’ve written here for some time on The Spoon, interest in next-generation vending machines and kiosks has been growing in recent years, with self-service fresh food kiosks being as one of the more interesting categories. In the US, players like Byte and Farmer’s Fridge have emerged as an alternative to cafeterias, local deli or the fresh food aisle at your grocery store, but in markets like India options like the NÜTY chiller could help to actually serve as a critical platform to enable the availability of high quality packaged fresh food.

Will New Regulations Rain on the Rise of Vending Machines?

From the hot ramen dispensing Yo-Kai Express to fresh salads whipped up by Chowbotics’ Sally, we are entering a golden age of vending machines. Tucked into just about any corner of a busy building and operating autonomously 24 hours a day, vending machines are poised to disrupt what and how we eat. That is, unless regulators disrupt the rise of vending machines first.

The New York Times posted a story yesterday about how Farmers Fridge, which dispenses fresh salads in jars, sparked a change in the way New York City will regulate newer, high-tech vending machines.

The crux of the problem is that like so many things, municipal regulations lag behind technological innovations. Laws on the books around vending machines were made back when vending machines were just pre-packaged snacks and sodas. But vending machines nowadays dispense all manner of fresh food like salads and açai bowls, which are more susceptible to foodborne illnesses.

Given this new vector for potential food poisoning, New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene stepped in and actually forced all Farmers Fridges in NYC to temporarily shut down while the city figured it out, which the two parties eventually did. From the NYT article:

In negotiations over the last month, the department and the company have agreed that each Farmer’s Fridge machine will be treated, for the most part, as a restaurant — or “food service establishment,” per the health code. Every machine will require a permit, inspections and the same kind of letter grade posted everywhere from McDonald’s to Le Bernardin.

Food vending machines already jump through a lot of regulatory hoops just to be able to serve food in the first place. There are plenty of rules about the construction of these machines that include using food safe materials and not having angled corners (so bacteria doesn’t build up). And as Yo-Kai and Briggo have learned, there is also another layer of compliance for things like access for the visually impaired that must be met when installing machines at airports.

But NYC taking note of these newfangled vending machines could spark a new wave of rules across different cities that startups must comply with. City governments, always on the lookout for new revenue, probably won’t pass up the chance to impose new fines on high-tech vending machines. Companies like Chowbotics and Fresh Bowl in particular, both of which dispense fresh salads, will probably face greater scrutiny, but new administrative procedures are likely to impact companies like Yo-Kai and Basil Street as well.

As long as the regulations don’t become too onerous, this new scrutiny is probably a good thing. Even Farmers Fridge expressed empathy for NYC regulators in the Times piece, saying “New York regulators genuinely seem to be acting out the desire to keep people safe and understand a new business model. You always have to manage the chaos when you’re doing something new and different.”

Move fast and break things may work for software startups, but when it comes to the food we eat, slowing down and making sure it’s safe is probably a good thing.

Weekly Spoon: Kitchen Projection Interfaces, Amazon Drone Patent & Innit Nabs Arçelik

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

If you go to lots of trade shows like me, you know it takes time for innovation to make its way from the show floor into our living rooms.

We’ve all seen this with technologies like virtual reality and 3D food printing; only after years of development and iteration cycles do we get to the point where a product is ready for prime time.

And then there are technologies like projection interfaces that – up until now at least – seem like they’re stuck in development stasis. The idea of a projectable, anywhere surface interface has been discussed for close to a decade in the research and academic community and started showing up on trade show floors about five years ago. Despite this, the concept never seemed to go beyond an occasional product demo.

So last year I started to wonder why exactly the technology hadn’t reached consumers yet. After all, with the likes of Whirlpool, IKEA, and Bosch showing off jaw-dropping demos, it only made sense this technology would find its way to market at some point.

While there’s no clear answer, I narrowed it down to a couple of factors. First, the reality is the technology still needed some refinement to make it both consumer-ready and affordable. Second, appliance vendors often wait for big-tech to take the first leap, and from what I could tell none of the big-tech 5 (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon) seemed particularly active with projection interfaces.

But now, it looks like one big company is committing to bringing a projection interface to market. BSH Appliances showed off a new product concept called PAI at IFA in Berlin this past week. PAI is a movable projector interface that is designed to go on a countertop in a kitchen.

I’m excited that BSH looks to be serious about bringing PAI to market. While some see voice as the dominant user interface of the future, abysmal usage rates of Alexa skills for commerce have shown us that voice in itself isn’t enough.  Consumers are visual, and most things we do in the kitchen are multimodal. Because of this, I believe the dynamic projection interface could a vibrant area in UI development over the next decade.

BSH Appliances wasn’t the only one to make news at IFA last week. Sharp showed up in Berlin with a fridge that featured a built-in vacuum sealer, prompting Chris Albrecht to wonder what exactly types of features he would want in his next fridge.

Smart kitchen platform startup Innit had a strong showing at IFA, popping up in a number appliance OEM booths, including that of a new partner in Arçelik.  The Turkish appliance conglomerate behind the Beko and Grundig brands showed off an Innit integration to power guided cooking as part of its HomeWhiz smart home platform.

It wasn’t all IFA this week. This week the Spoon scooped yet another Amazon patent in which the Seattle tech giant shows an innovative new method for delivery drones to generate power while in transit by harnessing both wind and kinetic energy.
After the news of a $30 million funding round for Farmer’s Fridge, I’m looking forward to a panel at Smart Kitchen Summit on the future of lunch. We’ll be discussing how new technologies, business models and delivery formats are all colliding to change what we eat every day, including at work.  You can read Chris’s piece on Farmer’s Fridge, a startup we’ve been covering for the past year.

Speaking of Smart Kitchen Summit, we’re less than five weeks away from our flagship show exploring the future of food and cooking. We have an amazing program planned, and not only will we have executives from big appliance brands like Whirlpool, GE and more, but we’ll also have startups from the smart kitchen, food robotics, restaurant tech, retail and more to discuss and showcase how each of these industries are changing to disrupt the consumer meal journey.  Make sure to get your tickets now and use the discount code NEWSLETTER (You can also use this link which has the code already applied).

That’s it for now. Have a great rest of the week.

Mike

P.S. Make sure to tune into this weekend’s episode of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast, where I have a great conversation with the CEO of the startup behind what is arguably the most successful consumer food robot ever made. You won’t want to miss it!

In the 09/06/2018 edition:

Ordermark Raises $9.5 Million for its Online Order Management Tools

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 10:23 am
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.

Nima Peanut Sensor Now Available, Gluten Sensor Selling at Select CVS Stores

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 06, 2018 06:00 am
It’s back-to-school time, which means my son is once again eating lunches in a cafeteria. I doubt his school is unique, but it actually has separate tables for kids who bring in peanut butter sandwiches.

With its own Grocery Delivery Service, Walmart Grabs More Data

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 04:00 pm
Walmart is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to getting you your groceries. As of today, that includes testing out its own delivery service (h/t Food Dive). The retailing giant announced a pilot program for its new last-mile delivery service, dubbed Spark Delivery, which will deliver groceries directly to customers’ front door.

For Goodr’s Jasmine Crowe, Blockchain Is a Key Piece to the Food Waste Puzzle

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 05, 2018 02:00 pm
Food waste is generating quite a lot of interest as of late; but one buzzword that might give “food waste” a run for its money is blockchain.

Innit Adds Arçelik To Growing List of Appliance Partners

By Michael Wolf on Sep 05, 2018 12:00 pm
The smart kitchen was everywhere this year at IFA, Europe’s big appliance and tech expo, and one company that seemed to be on everyone’s dance card was Innit.

Farmer’s Fridge Stocks up with $30M

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 10:54 am
Farmer’s Fridge, the company which makes vending machines that dispense healthy meals such as salads and protein bowls, today announced that it has raised a new $30 million round of funding led by Innovation Endeavors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $40 million.

Seltzer? Sous Vide? Smart Apps? What Cool Things do you Want in a Fridge?

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 05, 2018 07:33 am
For those old enough to remember, there is an episode from season two of The Simpsons where Homer designs a car for the average American. The result, as you can imagine was a hodge-podge monstrosity that featured bubble domes, three horns, shag carpeting and cost $82,000.

Bear Flag Robotics Raises $3.5 Million for Autonomous Tractor Tech

By Chris Albrecht on Sep 04, 2018 10:00 am
The common refrain from robotics companies is that they help with manual, repetitive tasks. And when you run a farm, there are plenty of manual, repetitive tasks, and Bear Flag Robotics raised $3.5 million seed funding right before the holiday weekend to help agricultural workers out with them.

Amazon Patent Points to In-Flight Recharging For Delivery Drones

By Michael Wolf on Sep 04, 2018 06:54 am
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.

FoodPlus Sells Surplus Food (in Slovenia) so it Doesn’t go to Waste

By Catherine Lamb on Sep 04, 2018 06:00 am
Based in Slovenia, FoodPlus began in 2015 when co-founder Dalibor Matijevic began searching for a way to cut down on food waste by redistributing surplus food. He developed a B2B platform for companies to buy and sell extra food at a super low cost — creating a new revenue stream and keeping food out of landfills.

Farmer’s Fridge Stocks up with $30M

Farmer’s Fridge, the company which makes vending machines that dispense healthy meals such as salads and protein bowls, today announced that it has raised a new $30 million round of funding led by Innovation Endeavors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $40 million.

With 186 locations across Chicago and Milwaukee, Farmer’s Fridges are high tech machines stocked with kitchen-made meals such as Smoked Cheddar Cobb Salad, Tarragon Chicken Salad Wrap, and Almond Butter Oats Bowl. Customers can order either through a touchscreen menu on the machine or via an accompanying mobile app.

Farmer’s Fridge is part of a wave of startups that are transforming the notion of automated food service and bringing it into a more modern, health-conscious era. Byte Foods operates smart fridges for offices that are stocked with fresh food options. Moniker (formerly Bodega) sets up mini convenience stores inside apartment buildings. And more directly, Chowbotics has its own robotic vending machine that makes salads and soon bowls as well.

All of these companies are targeting high-traffic areas such as airports, universities, office buildings and more. So don’t be surprised if the vending machine room in your building starts to get crowded.

According to the funding announcement, Farmer’s Fridge will use the new funds to scale up its business. This will be a challenge for the company as it trades in fresh food. Stocking a machine with preservative-packed “food” like Twinkies is easy, because they will survive the apocalypse. But perishables like salads are another matter. As it looks to scale up, Farmer’s Fridge will need to live up to its promise of “transforming the supply chain through technology and creating a new paradigm for fresh food,” as the company says in its press release. Farmers Fridge will need kitchens, cooks, and delivery drivers close to wherever they open up a new machine location.

Good thing the company stocked up on cash.

Map the future of food and cooking at the leading foodtech summit in North America. Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit on Oct 8-9th in Seattle. 

Startups Aim To Bring Fresher Choices To The Office Vending Machine

Office life can often mean tight deadlines, which in turn often means making tough choices like ‘Funyuns or Fritos?’ when lunch rolls around.

But for those of us who believe that no time starved employee should have to sustain themselves on bags full of salt and high fructose corn syrup, things may be looking up: a new crop of startups are trying to revisit the office vending machine and bring fresher choices to those of us chained to our desk.

One of those startups is Byte Foods. The company operates a fleet of smart fridges installed in office break rooms and cafeterias throughout the Bay Area.  The company, started by the husband and wife team of Lee and Megan Mokri in 2015, licenses their fridges stocked with fresh food from local producers such as Blue Bottle and Mixt Greens. Companies pay a monthly service fee, and Byte manages food inventory, payments and allows the employer to check out purchasing patterns with a web based dashboard. Employees access the food by swiping their card, choose what they want, and a bill is sent to their smartphone.  Each food item has a small RFID tag on the bottom which helps the fridges determine which items the employee has chosen.

The Mokris ran food delivery startup 180 Eats before getting into fresh vending machines. The current version of Byte is a result of 2016 acquisition of Pantry, a company which made the fridge and software tech licensed by Byte when they launched in 2015. After a year of perfecting the combined offering of fresh food delivery with the product licensing model inherited from Pantry, the company is now looking to expand beyond the Bay Area with the cash from their recent $5.5 million funding round.

Another company bringing fresh food to office cafeterias as well as other locations such as O’Hare airport is Chicago based Farmer’s Fridge. The company, which operates in about 75 locations throughout the Windy City, stocks their fridges with fresh salads made in their kitchen. Customers can check their fridges for inventory with the Farmer’s Fridge app, which also helps them to find locations around town.

Like Byte, Farmer’s Fridge recently received an investment to fuel growth. The company recently received a $10 million investment led by French food giant Danone’s venture arm, Danone Ventures.  The investment team also includes former McDonalds CEO, Don Thomson, through though venture firm he founded, Cleveland Avenue.

It’s not just American startups who are rethinking the vending machine. Foodles, a French startup, is using a model similar to Byte where they will install turnkey connected vending machines stocked with food for $3,400 per month. The company, which is operating in a dozen locations throughout Paris, has raised just over $2 million in funding.

And as it turns out, big companies are also toying with the idea of fresher food from the vending machine. At SXSW this year, Panasonic showed off a smart vending machine called ‘Bento@Your Office’, which dispensed – you guessed it – bento boxes for employees.

In some ways, this new crop of startups is taking many of the ideas created by micromarket movement that’s started to gain traction over the past few years. Fresher food and better technology have started to push vending machine operators across the country evaluate new models. The vending market, which is a $20 billion plus market across food and other items, is a potentially significant opportunity for those looking to shake things up.

And that’s exactly what this new crop of startups bringing fresher food to offices looks to do. The race is on to create national footprints as these companies look beyond their home markets to find new customers for their turnkey fresh vending concepts.

And hopefully, for those of us racing to meet deadlines, we will soon have more choices than Funyuns or Fritos for lunch.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is less than three months away. Get your ticket today before early bird ticket pricing before it expires to make sure you are the the one and only event focused on the future of food, cooking and the kitchen.