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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food NFT

Food NFT + Metaverse (in a) Minute: NFTs for Purpose Driven Restaurants, Cereal DAO

It’s still early days at the intersection of food and Web3 and that means there’s almost always something new happening and more to learn. Stay up to date with our coverage and these 3 things in this week’s Food Metaverse Minute:

NFTs for Purpose-Driven Restaurant

Chefs using NFTs to fund their next restaurant is becoming a regular thing — but even more inspiring is chefs using NFTs to give back to the workers who are the backbone of the restaurant industry. That’s what St. Paul-based chef Brian Ingram and his group Purpose Restaurants are doing with their next project.

Partnering with Chicago artist Joey Africa, the NFT collection will feature 71 original digital and physical pieces, each token serving as a membership to Ingram’s newest restaurant. The Apostle Supper Club, opening this summer across from the Xcel Energy Center, will hold VIP events like private chef dinners and menu tastings. Ten percent of the NFT raise will go back into the community; Ingram’s restaurant group regularly contributes to Give Hope, his charity created to give funds directly to people in their community, particularly restaurant workers dealing with housing insecurity or addiction.

We’ll be keeping an eye on hose this project performs. The NFTs went on sale last week on Opeaseas but so far there’s been little activity. While there’s been lots of inspiration from the success of the membership of Flyfish Club, no one – not surprisingly – has been able to replicate the success of the Gary Vee-affiliated group.

The DAO-Driven Cereal Company

NFT-branded cereal makes a debut from the “first decentralized CPG company” last week at Bitcoin Miami. The new CPG DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) — named gmgn supply co — launched with its first product, gm cereal and introduced its governance structure. The goal of DAOs is to spread collective decision-making rights along with ownership benefits to all of the involved members.

To drive hype for their launch, gmgn used Web3 marketing with BoredBecky, a curated personality with famous NFT social influencer group Bored Ape Club. The new group hopes to “revolutionize the CPG industry and drive the next generation of beloved brands,” and will be the first consumer packaged goods company to embrace NFTs as a way to fund and the DAO structure to run and grow the organization.

“If you look at the current CPG landscape, the majority of brands we eat every day are owned by 11 giant CPG conglomerates. gmgn supply co is changing this and our members will have a say in what they eat, what products are going to be made and help lead the CPG industry in a new direction that’s been elevated by Web3. We are excited to be leading this change and kicking it off with the launch of our first brand, gm Cereal, slated to drop in the Fall of this year,” said Phillipe LeBlanc, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Funday.” Funday is one of the founding companies that started gmgn.

SimulATE is Back

SimulATE is coming back! We’re bringing back the first virtual event dedicated to the emerging food, NFT, metaverse + crypto space and we’re going to be announcing our speaker lineup and agenda soon. Preview some of that here and if you use THIS LINK, you’ll get 50% off ticket prices through the end of this week (FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11:59 pm PST).

Slim Jim is creating a “Meata-verse” and a marketplace for virtual food

Last year, the meme-based cryptocurrency dogecoin got its first public earnings callout from the company that owns meat stick brand Slim Jim. Conagra Brands CEO Sean Connolly pointed to the social engagement from active dogecoin and Shiba Inu meme coin communities as big factors in Slim Jim’s win in the Adweek March Madness-style brand competition.

And now, it seems the company’s interest in Web3 technology goes beyond the gimmicky marketing campaign. Coindesk reported yesterday that Slim Jim had recently filed for trademarks under “Slim Jim,” “Meataverse,” and “Long Boi Gang” that announce plans for a virtual marketplace comprised of NFTs, virtual food products and virtual goods.

The filings also discuss “providing a metaverse for people to browse, accumulate, buy and sell virtual food products” and seem to indicate that the meat snack food brand will try and take a leading role in leveraging virtual environments to extend its reach and engage the next generation of consumers in immersive experiences.

Slim Jim joins other food brands like Nestle and McDonalds with forays into combining food and Web3 technology as consumer interest in crypto and NFTs continues to rise.

To understand what the food metaverse might look like and why food brands across industries including restaurant, grocery, and CPG are planting their flags in Web3, join The Spoon community on May 4 for Simulate Spring Summit: Food Metaverse + Web3 virtual event. Early bird tickets start at $75 – register here.

GourmetNFT Want to Help Culinary Creators Monetize Recipes & Food Experiences Using NFTs

The tried-and-true cookbook is dead. Long live the fractional cookbook.

The movement toward secure, one-of-a-kind recipes and food experiences are fueled by advances and acceptance of the technology surrounding Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). It could be a way to move beyond one-dimensional food presentations and feed the growing number of foodies who want more bells and whistles in their gourmet interactions. And then, there are chefs, who, faced with shrinking margins and the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses, are always on the hunt for new revenue streams.

“It has always baffled me as to why chefs and culinary creators, who are essentially IP creators and artists don’t get royalties unless they get into the whole hassle of writing and publish a cookbook,” Ruth McCartney, part of the team behind GourmetNFT, said in an interview with The Spoon. “When NFTs came along, my mind went to individual recipes and for foodies to be able to curate and compile all of their favorite recipes and cook from their iPads.”

McCartney believes those in the food industry—from three-star Michelin chefs to up-and-comers making indigenous pasta in Brazil—need to be rewarded for their skills. Like her brother—Sir Paul McCartney of that minor band from Liverpool.

“I think it’s a good way not only for chefs to be treated like rock stars,” she said. “It’s an iTunes for chefs.”

Liquid Avatar, a Canadian firm that focuses on the verification, management, and monetization of personal identity, and its subsidiary Oasis Studios, a multimedia NFT content-creation company, provide the technology and artistry that powers Gourmet NFT. David Lucatch, Liquid Avatar’s co-founder and president, believes GourmetNFT can take advantage of his company’s technology to securely and quickly allow consumers to purchase a range of recipes and culinary adventures.

One such adventure is a multisensory weekend at David Skinner’s Houston restaurant, eculent. Skinner’s reputation in the food world could have a Pied Piper effect inspiring other noted chefs.

“The road to publishing a cookbook is paved with good intentions however schedules get in the way,” said Skinner. “But with Gourmet NFT, Chefs can upload one recipe, one image, one video at a time as they are already creating a short form variant of the content for social media. Over time, they will have amassed what amounts to a digital cookbook.”

But, as the people behind GourmetNFT and others who follow the space know, using NFTs to share recipes alone will not cut it. For a recipe to be considered “copyrightable”—not to mention entertaining— “bonus material” such as inside tips or custom videos must be part of the deliverable. Beyond such individual digital assets as instructions on making George Harrison’s favorite custard, McCartney explained that goods and services could be delivered using the secure platform.

“Chefs can also make money by putting put a QR code on their dedicated Gourmet NFT website as well as put (the code) on their menus, to-go boxes, and build their own fan clubs and traffic to their fractional cookbook page,” McCartney said. She pointed out the example of Brazilian Chef David Rivillo, a man noted for his inventive pasta creations. Rivillo is signed to an exclusive deal with GourmetNFT and will sell singular pasta with his digital presence.

All of which begs the question: Will NFTs spell the end of printed cookbooks and the vast expanse of subpar YouTube cooking videos?

Ruth McCartney said she has spoken to leading publishers about the opportunity; the response, she says, is, “We don’t do NFTs—That’s art.”

BurgerDAO Wants to Create a Decentralized Web3-Powered Burger Chain

Web3 has reached the burger joint.

A new community called BurgerDAO wants to create a decentralized burger franchise. According to the announcement, the group is looking to create a ghost kitchen burger chain with funding derived from the sale of tokens for the organization via Juicebox.

Owners of BurgerDAO tokens would have a say in the operational structure as well in things such as menu creation. The group also plans to use funding from token sales to eventually hire an operational staff (and likely pay service fees to a ghost kitchen company). According to the group, the operation’s profits would go back into the treasury, which would result in appreciation in the value of the tokens.

The group lays out three overall milestones for their Web3 burger franchise, the first one being the launch of the first virtual BurgerDAO restaurant location. The group puts the cost of reaching this milestone at upwards of $1 million and details four specific deliverables for getting to this first milestone: finding a ghost kitchen partner, deliver-apps integration, branding, and menu creation, and the launch of an NFT for BurgerDAO contributors.

If you think a million bucks sounds like a lot to get a virtual restaurant off the ground, you’re right, but the group explains they may not need all of it:

Will it actually cost $1M? Probably not. But we know opening a restaurant is tough (see above) even with the advent of cloud kitchens. While the DAO will help us make decisions, we will be the ones working with the cloud kitchen, testing ingredients, pay for marketing tests, and other administrative expenses. Opening a basic deli or pizza joint (brick and mortar location) costs between $200-$500K depending on the location just to give you a frame of reference.

From there, the group lays out plans for further expansion of their decentralized ghost kitchen burger franchise, which includes the eventual opening of a brick and mortar location in a specific city and hiring a full-time staff.

On the one hand, the idea of a decentralized burger franchise is interesting, but I suspect it won’t be easy to pull off. In explaining the motivation for the concept, the group points to the inspiration of MrBeast Burger and companies like Virtual Dining Concepts (the virtual restaurant startup which is operationalizing MrBeast) but then asks why a MrBeast or VDC should take home all the profits? The group then explains much of their initial costs will be in finding and working with a kitchen operator (this type of work is what VDC does for the MrBeast Burger franchise and its other virtual restaurant concepts).

In other words, BurgerDAO is against the idea of centralized management and gatekeepers, but will likely need to find a group that has relationships with kitchen operators or build a relationship with and pay a for-profit ghost kitchen operator themselves.

They also haven’t answered the biggest challenge for virtual restaurants: brand building. The most successful virtual restaurants have been able to leverage an influencer’s reach, or they’ve been ones that have already tapped into the existing successful restaurant brand like Wowbao. While companies like NextBite have been able to spin up completely new virtual brands and get broad reach across several markets, they’ve had lots of venture capital to fund the brand-building for their concepts.

All that said, while the group has a big hill to climb, I’m interested to see if they can pull off their web3 burger concept. BurgerDAO is part of a broader movement in the restaurant and food space away from traditional operating models, which includes the move towards automation-powered centralized food production, the move away from physical front-of-house dine-in, and now the embrace of web3 and metaverse-powered digital concepts.

If you’d like to learn more, attend The Spoon’s Metaverse/NFT virtual mini-event on February 1st (Hurry, the first 400 tickets are free!).

Yes, Crockpot Has an NFT Too

Remember when your mom started using Facebook, TikTok or some other technology-related thing, and you thought, ‘ok, now everyone’s doing it?’ I just had that moment with NFTs. Only instead of my mom, it’s her slow cooker that’s jumping on the technology bandwagon.

That’s because Crockpot, the genericized brand of slow cooker from Newell, has released an NFT to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The NFT, which you can bid on until midnight tonight on Opensea, is basically an animated GIF that shows a bunch of different cartoon renderings of the Crockpot from its origin in 1971 up to today.

Watch for yourself:

Listen, I get it, brands that want to tap into the pop culture zeitgeist will often jump on the latest trend, and the effort by Crockpot is part of a push by the brand at what it is calling “newness.”

“We wanted to celebrate our history without getting too nostalgic,” said Christine Robins, CEO of Home Appliances at Newell Brands, via a press release. “Minting an NFT might seem like an unexpected move from the Crockpot team, but expect to see more newness from our brand as we embark on the next 50 years.” 

But unfortunately for Crockpot, NFTs are tricky. Unlike ostensibly owning something like the first tweet ever, an NFT like Crockpot’s doesn’t have a history behind it that adds to the perceived value. For most, it just appears like another animated GIF.

As I’ve written before, NFTs will find the most success in the food market if they act as a golden ticket to some unique real-world experience. So if Crockpot had created, say, a one-off unique 50th-anniversary collective Crockpot that came with the NFT, I think they may have had something.

But maybe I’m wrong, and there’s someone who wants a Crockpot’s NFT. So if that person is you, hurry up and head on over to place your bid before time expires.