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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food sensors

Byte’s Smart Fridge Is Upstaging the Vending Machine. That’s Great News for Offices

It’s hard to get amped about the food options inside an office building. Unless you work for a Google-like company and get subsidized or free meals, you’re probably stuck with vending machines. And we all know Fig Newtons do not a healthy lunch make.

Byte Foods, founded in 2015 by husband-wife team Lee and Megan Mokri, is trying to introduce a new option to the office food mix. Their company supplies offices with smart fridges full of fresh, healthy food options from local producers, like coffee from Blue Bottle and falafel snack packs from Sinbad Specialty Foods.

To use the fridges, employees simply swipe a credit card and pick what they want. A receipt for each purchase is sent to their email address. Each food item has a disposable RFID tag on the bottom, which Byte supplies to their producers. Before and after the fridge door opens, Byte scans the tag to determine what the employee took, then charges them accordingly. Each fridge also features a screen with nutrition and dietary information as well as prices. “It’s basically a really high quality food court in the office,” Lee Mokri told me over the phone. A food court that knows exactly what kind of kombucha you like.

Byte’s model is full service: they provide the fridge, stock it every day, and take any unsold food away at the end of the day to donate to various shelters. All their corporate clients have to do is pay a monthly service fee. This makes things super convenient for employers who want to provide fresh, healthy food options for their workers, but puts a lot of pressure on the Byte team—if no one wants a ham sandwich, Byte ends up paying for all the leftover ones at the end of the day.

Byte fridges have a screen displaying nutrition facts and prices.

For this reason, Byte relies heavily on data to optimize what they put on offer. “We have pretty robust demand-planning algorithms deciding exactly what we want to put in the fridge every day,” said Mokri. “That’s something that sets us apart from a catering company.” This custom curation smacks of a few other stories we’ve covered on The Spoon, such as Amazon‘s predictive meal ordering and dishq’s AI-powered food recommendations.

Much like Uber, Byte uses dynamic pricing to help push food off the shelves. For example, if a batch of Blue Bottle coffees is about to expire they can discount it to encourage sales. Byte can also hand this power off to their corporate clients, giving them the power to subsidize their employees meals. For example, Tesla, a client, discounts all food in their Byte fridges by 30 percent after 6 p.m., to support their teams burning the midnight oil. Dynamic pricing is currently managed by human employees, but Mokri says they “have a very clear path” for how to automate it.

Byte has also begun licensing their fridges and technology to companies across the country. These partners have access to the Byte dashboard, but can brand the fridges however they like and even fill them with their own food products. Mokri says this is an ideal model for place like hospitals and universities, who have a lot of people to feed but already do their own food production. Basically, their clients are paying for a simplified interface as well as a tool to help track customer food preferences.

The San Rafael-based company isn’t the only one working on improving grab-and-go food options. Chicago’s Farmer’s Fridge and French Foodles are also offering turnkey fridges stocked with freshly prepared meals, and electronics giant Panasonic is even getting in on the action with an IoT-enabled food ordering ecosystem Bento @ Your Office.

This rush to shake up the office dining routine makes sense: the vending market closed 2016 with a seven-year high of $21.6 billion. That means a big opportunity for those players looking to usurp the vending machine. At the same time, there’s a growing consumer demand for healthier food options.

Byte has branched into 500 locations in the San Francisco area and has raised a total of $10 million, according to Mokri. He said that they’re adding about 50 new clients per month. So next time you go to punch in C5 and get a “healthy” snack of Sunchips, you might be able to get something that’s actually healthy, instead.

Nima Unveils Portable Peanut Sensor to Make Meals Safer

The startup behind the world’s first portable gluten sensing device is launching a peanut sensing version at CES this week. The new Nima Peanut Sensor is a handheld device designed to detect peanut particles in food by testing small samples in an insertable cartridge.

According to the Food Allergy Research & Education organization, around 15 million Americans suffer from food allergies and around 1/5 of those have some type of peanut allergy, ranging from mild to severe. The Nima Peanut Sensor aims to give people with peanut sensitivities or parents of children with peanut allergies a portable tool to test liquid or solid foods before they take a bite.

The sensor shares the same form factor as the gluten version – a compact black triangular device with room for a testing cartridge and a readable diagnostic screen. But, instead of coming with capsules that create a reaction when interacting with gluten particles, the peanut sensor ships with cartridges designed to detect 20 parts per million (ppm) of peanut protein or more in foods or drinks. Users take a portion of the item they want to test and insert a small sample into the cartridge and place both inside the sensor. After three minutes, the test gives a simple reading; if the peanut sensor detects peanut protein, the portable device will display a peanut icon. If no protein is found, a smiley face pops up letting the user know the food is safe to eat.

When Nima first launched its gluten sensor, the real excitement around the company’s innovation was around the technology – and science – inside each cartridge. What Nima’s founders have done is essentially developed a mini-laboratory in every device and a capsule with the right test materials to detect the unique proteins found in gluten. But as many pointed out, the setup Nima created could be used to detect other allergens and even beyond.

“There’s no reason it can’t be used for dairy or peanuts and there’s nothing stopping them from going to pathogens either,” food tech VC Brian Frank told the Spoon at the 2016 Smart Kitchen Summit.

While the gluten sensor goes after a growing segment of awareness of gluten intolerance in the U.S., the peanut sensor hits an even bigger market and one that’s close to the heart of many parents. Peanut allergies tend to appear in childhood and can produce a life-threatening reaction. Parents and caregivers will be able to use the Nima Peanut Sensor to test foods on the go, at birthday parties and restaurants to avoid a reaction.

Just like the gluten sensor, the peanut sensing device will connect to the Nima mobile app to share test results and build a user database of peanut-free friendly restaurants and packaged foods.

Nima’s peanut sensor is only available for pre-order right now in the U.S. and Canada through March 8 and starter kits are $229 during this promotional period. A starter kit will come with the sensor, a twelve pack of test capsules along with the charger and a carrying case. The sensor will ship at retail later in 2018 and regular price for the peanut sensor starter kit is $289 and additional cartridges will be $6 each and sold in twelve packs. Nima also offers an auto-delivery or membership option which lowers the price of capsules to just under $5 a piece (sold in packs of twelve.)

Interestingly, Nima also has waitlist signs up available for soy, tree nuts, dairy, shellfish and eggs. The company clearly has plans to be the go-to for the millions who suffer from all kinds of food allergies in the future.