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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food waste

Food Tech News: Online Food Bank, Upcycled Cacao Fruit Bites, and $10M for Gluten-Free Snack Brand

If you feel like you’ve fallen behind in the fast-paced world of food tech, you’ve come to the right place. In this week’s Food Tech News roundup, we have stories on Feeding America’s new online platform, Costco’s partnership with Uber, a snack brand’s $10 million funding round, and one of the first companies to receive the Upcycled Food Certification.

Food bank launches online grocery ordering for those facing food insecurity

Feeding America is one of the largest food banks in the country, and this week the non-profit began offering online ordering. Called Order Ahead, food is ordered through a Feeding America network food bank or partner food on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. The order can then be picked up at schools, libraries, or a drive-thru distribution center. Certain markets will also be offering home delivery. Those requiring food assistance unfortunately might feel embarrassed or stigmatized, so offering an online platform allows for the option of being more discreet.

CaPao is one of the first companies to receive the Upcycled Food Certification

CaPao has created a snack product that is made from upcycled cacao fruit. The brand was developed in Mondelēz International’s SnackFuture innovation and venture hub, and this week announced that it is one of the first companies to receive the recently launch Upcycled Food Certification. After cacao beans have been extracted from the cacao pod, there is about 70 percent of the pod remaining goes to waste, and this remaining fruit is used in the snack product. CaPao sources this potential food waste from Cabosse Naturals, a food and beverage company that uses cacao pods to make various ingredients. Using the upcycled cacao fruit, CaPao produces three flavors of snack bites: mango cashew coconut, golden berry apricot chia, and cherry almond cocoa. The products are available for purchase on the company’s website and retailers in Southern California.

Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash

Costco partners with Uber to trial same-day delivery

Costco is currently trialing same-day grocery delivery with Uber at 25 Texas locations in Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Uber has announced that its drivers will be able to deliver groceries in minutes to a few hours. To use the service trial in Texas, customers must order at least $35 worth of Costco groceries and products. Costo currently also works with Instacart to offer same-day delivery.

Gluten-free snack maker raises $10 million

Quinn produces various gluten-free snacks, and this week the company secured $10 million in its Series B funding round. NewRoad Capital Partners led the round, and Echo Capital, Boulder Food Group, and Sunil Thakor also participated. The capital will be used for product innovation, company growth, and be put towards Quinn’s mission of supporting regenerative agriculture. Quinn uses gluten-free ingredients like sorghum, cassava, and corn for its pretzels sticks and chips, stuffed pretzels, and flavored popcorn. The company provides a map of where its ingredients are sourced and a list of farmers (who are taking steps to reduce their environmental impact) it buys from to provide transparency to consumers. Quinn’s products are available for purchase in approximately 10,000 retailers nationwide.

Flashfood Partners With Giant to Bring Its Food Waste App to More Grocery Stores

Up to now, Flashfood’s surplus grocery/food waste-fighting service has enjoyed a noteworthy but fairly small presence among American consumers. New developments are set to change that. The Canada-based company recently announced an expansion with The Giant Company that will make the Flashfood app and service available in many more grocery stores across the U.S.

Carlisle, Pennsylvania-based Giant (part of Ahold Delhaize USA), operates grocery stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. The company trialed Flashfood’s service at four stores beginning in 2020. Flashfood CEO Josh Domingues said that after some initial hesitation (Giant originally said no to the partnership), the store saw a measurable reduction in food waste, net new customers at the store, and customers spending more money while in the store. Domingues did not provide exact numbers for that deal, but said that overall his company’s service has diverted 25 million pounds of food from the landfill and saved shoppers over $70 million.

The Giant partnership will eventually reach all Giant stores as well as Giant subsidiary Martin’s stores. For now, the Flashfood service is available in more than 30 stores, with a plan to be in 170 stores by fall 2021. 

Flashfood’s service lets consumers buy meat, dairy, produce, and other items that are nearing their sell-by dates at 50 percent of the retail cost. Historically, grocery retailers have thrown out food that’s about to expire, and most still do. However, efforts to reduce food waste at the retail level have increased over the last decade. From that change has come a pack of companies that will “rescue” surplus, ugly, or expiring food and sell it directly to consumers. Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market both started out rescuing produce. Both companies are now full-blown e-commerce grocery stores. Another notable company is Too Good to Go, which resells surplus food from restaurants, is expanding across the U.S.  

Flashfood sticks mainly to the grocery store at this point. Users download the Flashfood app and can browse available food at participating grocery stores in their area. The most commonly sold items, says Domingues, are dairy and produce. Meat is another good seller, and “mystery boxes” — shoebox-sized packages of mixed items — are also hugely popular. 

Once the customer has placed an order, a store shopper gathers the items, scans them, and places them in the “Flashfood zone” which is just a temperature-controlled case for food that’s usually located at the front of the store. Customers pick their items up the same day they place the order.

Outside of the Flashfood app itself, the operation is intentionally simple. There are no QR codes or smartphones needed to automatically unlock the fridge door, nor is there automated self-service check-in of any kind. Once a user arrives at the store, they simply head to customer service, where a human being helps them retrieve their order.

“It’s very difficult to be simple with technology,” Domingues says, suggesting that the complexity and “potential frustration” more tech could mean for the store employees is not worth it at the moment. “The mission is to reduce food waste and to feed families more affordable. The vessel that we’re doing that through is with an app and a partnership with our grocery stores.”

Instead, for now, Flashfood will continue its focus on grocery stores. The Giant rollout follows an expanded deal with Meijer Flashfood struck earlier this year. Flashfood is also in Hy-Vee stores in Wisconsin, and is, of course, available across Canada. The company plans to make its service available at more U.S. stores in the near future. 

Kern Tec Upcycles Stone Fruit Pits Into Oils and Alternative Dairy Products

One of the best parts about summer (in my opinion) is that it is stone fruit season, and I always look forward to consuming an abundance of nectarines, apricots, cherries, plums, and peaches. After the vibrant, juicy fruit flesh is devoured, the rock-hard pit is leftover. Pits are not obviously edible and seem like something you would just toss in the garbage or compost. However, a start-up called Kern Tec, based in Austria, is developing methods to transform the discarded pits from fruit to create a variety of consumer packaged good products.

This week I spoke on the phone with Sebastion Jeschko, one of the co-founders of Kern Tec, who said that the inspiration to start the company came when he and his co-founders spoke with local farmers about what part of the stone fruit industry most often went to waste. After processing fruit, there was no obvious use for the pits, which molded quickly and were considered waste. The challenging part of using pits is extracting the seed from the hard outer hull. While the company can’t yet disclose many details on the process, Kern Tec has figured out how to separate these seeds from the outer hull. Once extracted, they can be used as regular nuts, as stone fruit seeds contain a high amount of protein, healthy unsaturated fats, and vitamin E.

At the moment, the company has two products available on the market in Europe. One is a chocolate nougat spread made from a base of upcycled apricot seeds. The other is various oils made from the seeds of plum, apricot, and cherries, which according to Jeschko, has a sweet, fruity taste. Kern Tec is currently in the process of developing non-dairy milk and yogurt alternatives from pits, and will also eventually create a protein powder.

With more and more mouths to feed on a daily basis, it doesn’t make sense to toss things like agricultural side streams that have the potential to be transformed into food. To that end, plenty of other companies are now developing uses for these side streams. The Supplant Company upcycles post-harvest byproducts from wheat, rice, and corn crops to create a new type of sugar. Coffee cherries, the vibrant red fruit that surrounds a coffee bean, is normally tossed, but The Coffee Cherry Co. upcycles this product to create a powder for baked goods and teas. In addition to upcycling agricultural side streams, there are a plethora of companies using food that would otherwise go to waste to create new products.

Kern Tec is currently in the three-month-long incubator through ProVeg International, and which is set to finish in the next few weeks. The startup is currently talking with investors, and after the program, will be closing its first funding round.

There’s More to Food Waste Innovation Than Tech, According to ReFED’s Dana Gunders

This being The Spoon, a lot of our discussions around food waste concern the innovative technologies that could help us eventually curb the multi-billion-dollar problem and meet national and international targets to halve food waste by 2050. But as we learned today at our Food Waste Insights and Innovation Forum, done in partnership with nonprofit ReFED, tech is only one piece of the solution. When it comes to food waste, true innovation is as much about new business models, behaviors, and ways of thinking as it is about advances in, say, machine learning or computer vision.  

Dana Gunders, the Managing Director and a founder of ReFED, kicked off the event by asking two important questions related to food waste: What is innovation, and what is the problem we’re trying to solve with it?

The second question is the easier one to answer, and Gunders called on some well-known stats as a way of explaining how “radically inefficient” our food system actually is:

  • 35 percent of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten
  • $408 billion annually is spent in the U.S. on food that is never eaten
  • More than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure

Food waste also accounts for 4 percent of U.S. GHG emissions (that’s 58 million cars worth’ of greenhouse gases), 14 percent of all freshwater use, 18 percent of all cropland use, and 24 percent of landfill inputs.

Citing data from Project Drawdown, Gunders pointed out that reducing food waste ranked first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change — ahead of plant-based diets, utility-scale solar, wind turbines, and other well-known contenders.

New innovations will help us reach those targets and cut down overall food waste, but as we learned at today’s event, “innovation” means different things to different stakeholders when it comes to food waste. “People talk about food waste as if it were one problem. It’s not,” Gunders said at the event. “This is a complex set of inefficiencies and we need a whole suite of solutions to address that.” Gunders is, of course, referring to the wide variety of ways in which food is wasted along the supply chain. Post-harvest food loss looks different from food thrown out at the grocery store. Both of those in turn look different than food that we dump down our kitchen drains. In all of these scenarios, food waste looks different, so it follows that the solutions will vary greatly based on which part of the supply chain they are aimed at.

Tech is one obvious tool when it comes to innovation, and at this point, companies are working with everything from machine learning and image recognition to hyperspectral imaging and sensors to fight food waste. These and other technologies can track waste, help retailers forecast more precisely, and even tell us which pieces of fruit will ripen soonest in any given crop. 

But, as mentioned above, technology is only one piece of innovation. Equally important are new processes and business models as well as what Gunders calls “cultural evolution.”

New business models around food waste have been emerging steadily over the last few years, many of them around grocery and/or restaurant services selling surplus food. This is a model popularized by the likes of Imperfect Foods, Too Good to Go, Flashfood, and many others. Upcycled products are another example, as is offering financial incentives to managers, as Sodexo is doing. 

Cultural evolution, meanwhile, refers to what Gunders called “innovation on a much simpler level.” It’s smaller actions that work together to make the public more aware of food waste and encourage changes in behavior. Signage in dining halls about food waste or allowing customers to taste a product before they buy it are two examples.

In the wake a of the pandemic, a new administration, and an increased sense of urgency around climate change and food equity, the culture in the U.S. right now is open to change. As Gunders pointed out, now is the time for businesses with food waste solutions to consider where they fit into these changes and how they might test their customers accordingly.

RIND Raises $6.1M for Upcycled Fruit Snacks

RIND Snacks, a startup that produces upcycled dried fruit snacks, this week announced that it has raised $6.1 million in a Series A round of funding (news from Forbes). This round was led by Valor Siren Ventures, with participation from an existing investor, Melitas Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to $8.4 million. This most recent round of funding will be used to increase production capacity and expand RIND’s team.

RIND’s chewy dried fruit snacks are made from fruit that would have otherwise be wasted and wind up in the landfill. The peels of the fruits are left on, which are also typically discarded. The company estimates that it has prevented about 120,000 pounds of edible fruit peels from being discarded in 2020. Later this year, RIND will also be launching crunchy dried fruit chips and the company has also hinted at making roasted vegetable snacks (including the peel) in the future.

Towards the end of 2020, Whole Foods made predictions for food trends of 2021, and one of the trends happened to be upcycled foods. A few other companies make use of discarded fruit to create new products, including the Ugly Company and 2050 Company. In April, the “Upcycled Certified” label was officially launched by the Upcycled Food Association to help consumers pick out products from companies like these that are focused on reducing food waste.

RIND’s snacks are available for purchase on the company’s website, and in over 3,000 retail locations throughout the U.S., including Whole Foods, Wegmans, Meijers, and CVS. The company has also partnered with food delivery services like HungryRoot and Imperfect Foods.

Witness the Many Forms of Food Waste Innovation

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Since the start of 2021, we’ve seen numerous developments that showcase how vast and varied the efforts to fight food waste have become. Sachets that slow food spoilage. Hyperspectral imaging to analyze avocados. Vodka made from old crackers. A skincare line. 

All of these examples (and many others) underscore both the need for innovation and the fact that we’re getting more of it nowadays when it comes to food waste. Food waste, after all, is a global problem with environmental, monetary, and human consequences. To mitigate climate change and build a more resilient food system, the planet needs to meet food waste reduction targets set down by the United Nations, the USDA, the EPA, and others, including the UN Sustainable Development Goal of cutting food waste in half by 2050 (UN SDG Target 12.3.1).

Even just a few years ago, both the issues and the UN goal were mere abstraction to many outside the food industry. After all, it’s hard to visualize statistics like “one-third of the world’s food goes to waste” or “food waste’s global footprint is 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases.”

Fortunately, groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ReFED, the World Wildlife Fund, and others have worked tirelessly over the last several years to bring the topic of food waste closer to center stage in the conversations about our food system. In fact, ReFED estimates that the total amount of food wasted in the U.S. has leveled off since 2016, while food waste per capita has decreased 2 percent over the last three years. Meanwhile, investment is slowly but surely trickling into the space, with companies like Apeel, Imperfect Foods, and Silo closing large rounds of funding in the last several months.

Still, there is a lot of work to be done, which is where innovation can play a big role. Food waste happens at every stage of the food supply chain, from items left in the field to rot to those dumped own the drain or sent to the landfill. To curb the waste, we need more investment in the kind of infrastructure that can measure, rescue, and recycle organic waste and prevent it from going to landfills and incinerators. We also need a huge collective effort from food producers, manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, capital providers, and others, with innovation at the center of those actions. 

Many are already bringing new technologies and processes to the food supply chain to try and make waste less possible. One need only glance briefly at the level of innovation currently happening around food waste to understand the breadth of entrepreneurs, companies, and agencies using their collective brainpower to build more food-waste-fighting solutions.

But rather than read a big ol’ list of companies, I instead encourage you to join us next week, on June 16, for the Food Waste Insights + Innovation Forum. The Spoon has teamed up with ReFed for the all-virtual event, which will include chats with experts across the food supply chain as well as panels and innovator demos.

At this event, we want to highlight innovators in the food waste space, acknowledging the work of companies developing everything from biosensing technology for the supply chain to shelf-life extension tools for grocery retailers to those evolving and improving the date-labeling system in the U.S. Add grocery order automation, upcycling, solutions to at-home food waste, and many other areas to that list.

The event will also connect innovators — whether you’re onstage or in the audience — with investors and capital, and will even include a session dedicated to how companies can go about raising money for their company. An open networking/demo time will also allow investors to ask one-on-one questions to innovators and vice versa.

Got ideas you want to share about how to reduce food waste? Or maybe you’re looking for a new idea or partner to help supercharge your own company’s efforts in this area, or you just want to learn more about this growing movement. Whichever the case, register today for this half-day event.

More Food Tech Headlines

LIVEKINDLY Collective Acquires Seaweed Burger Maker, The Dutch Weed Burger – The Dutch Weed Burger makes a range of meat analogs using seaweed as the hero ingredient. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Print a Drink 3D Prints Designs Inside a Cocktail, Develops Smaller Machine for Corporations – Print a Drink has created two working robots (one in the U.S. and one in Europe) that can print out custom designs inside drinks.

NPD: Shipments of Plant-Based Proteins to Restaurants Up 60 Percent Year Over Year – Shipments of plant-based proteins from foodservice distributors to commercial restaurants were up 60 percent year-over-year in April of 2021.

Surge Alert Uses Climate Monitoring Devices and IoT Technolgy to Reduce Food Waste

Food waste occurs at every step of the supply chain from the farm to the consumer’s kitchen, and globally, approximately 30 percent of food produced for human consumption is lost somewhere within this chain. A company called Surge Alert aims to reduce food waste through its climate monitoring devices and 24/7 alerts.

Surge Alert produces what it calls beacons, which are small devices that can be placed in greenhouses, refrigerated transportation, restaurant walk-in fridges and freezers, or throughout a farm. The beacons most importantly measure temperature and humidity, which can quickly cause crops and produce to perish. Another variable measured is light, which effects the rate of which the plant grows and therefore If there is an environmental change (like the temperature getting too hot for example), wherever a beacon is placed, the user receives a notification on the Surge Alert app.

The company trialed the beacons and IoT technology on farms to determine how this solution could reduce food waste at the start of the food supply chain. One example from the trial came from a farm called Geneva Lakes Produce in Wisconsin, which used beacons to monitor a greenhouse. When the temperature dropped considerably on a winter night, the farmer received the temperature notification right away and was able to adjust the temperature before any of the crop spoiled.

It is estimated that the value of food wasted globally is worth around $1 trillion in a single year. Besides Surge Alert, a few other companies are focused on similar climate monitoring solutions to reduce food waste. SensorPush and UbiBot are two competitors both offer a few different sensors that can be used for food, agriculture, in the home, for pets, and other various industries. Some indoor greenhouse companies, like Element Farms and BrightFarms for example, integrate their own technology to monitor light, temperature, and humidity to create optimal conditions for crops within greenhouses.

Surge Alert recently launched an e-commerce platform for its starter kits and additional products, and its customers include individuals, food companies, restaurants, farms, distributors, and buyers from other industries. Currently, the company is offering a special of three months of free cellular data and cloud storage with the purchase of a starter kit. Normally, the hardware for Surge Alert’s beacons starts around $110 with a $14.99 monthly fee for cellular data and cloud storage. In addition to specialized kits for the food and agriculture industry, Surge Alert also offers solutions for hemp growing and storage, wine, cigars, and heat monitoring for pets.

Food Rescue Hero Now Makes Home Deliveries of Potential Food Waste

According to the EPA, 20 percent of what ends up in municipal landfills is food. Yet at the same, 35 million Americans experience food insecurity, and that number jumped to 42 million due to the effects of the pandemic. Keeping food out of the landfill and redistributing those in need of it is an ideal solution to this massive problem, and one non-profit trying to do this is Food Rescue Hero.

Food Rescue Hero, which calls itself the “DoorDash of food waste”, was launched in 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The non-profit uses an app (available for both iOS and android) to notify its volunteers when food donations are available for pick-up at different retailers like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Giant Eagle, Ralph’s Market, and Albertson’s. From there, volunteers are routed to the end destination, typically a food bank, community center, or non-profit with the food. According to the company, about 99 percent of the donations are successfully picked up and dropped off.

This week, Food Rescue Hero announced that it will now be offering home delivery of food that its volunteers rescue. This will also be operated through the app, and volunteer drivers will need to pass a background check to participate in these home deliveries. Throughout the pandemic, those who have the funds to do so could order through grocery delivery services like Instacart and Postmates. However, these services are often too pricey for those who face food insecurity. Additionally, many who depend on food assistance do not have access to a car or transportation, or may be housebound.

Local non-profit food banks often take on the task of rescuing wasted food independently, but there is often an issue with food transportation and delivery. Food banks typically only collect shelf-stable foods because they usually schedule pick-ups and deliveries on specific days. Food Rescue Hero employs volunteers able to pick up food on-demand, so therefore it can rescue and distribute fresh fruits, veggies, and bread products.

Too Good 2 Go is another start-up that uses an app to distribute soon-to-be food waste to consumers, and it operates throughout Europe and the U.S. Flashfood’s app allows consumers to select imperfect food items from their local grocer, and earlier this year the company partnered with Meijer to expand throughout the Midwest.

Food Rescue Hero currently operates in 12 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. The non-profit aims to be in 100 cities by 2030 and is currently accepting more donation partners and volunteer drivers.

Subpod Takes the Mess (and Smell) Out of Composting

Composting is a seemingly simple solution that all of us could participate in to help reduce the amount of food waste that enters the landfill. However, we offer plenty of excuses not to do it, like our available space or the smell. Enter the Subpod. This startup is producing mini composting units that are buried directly into your garden, keeping it out of sight — and smell.

The Subpod Mini is capable of composting up to 22 lbs of food per week, which is impressive considering its small size (16.93″ high by 19.45″ wide and 17.72″ deep). What makes this composting system different than other traditional models is that it is inserted directly into a garden bed and functions as a worm farm. It requires the same amount of effort as a traditional system, as the user’s job is only to dump composting scraps into the unit. From here, the worms and microbes in the soil do the work of breaking down the scraps. A head of lettuce takes roughly seven days to breakdown in the Subpod Mini.

One slight downside to this setup is that worms are required for it to work. Approximately 500 composting worms must be purchased separately, which can be found locally or online for about $40-$50.

Roughly 108 billion pounds of food is wasted each year in America, which is a lot of extra (and unnecessary) weight in our landfills. In addition to reducing the amount of food in landfills, composting can also reduce methane emissions, and increase water retention and carbon sequestration when added to the soil. A German-based startup called Kalea launched an in-home composter that converts food scraps to compost in 48 hours, but the appliance will set you back $889 USD. Vitamix also released an in-home composter that is compact enough to fit on a counter, and it is priced more affordably at $399.

It’s great the startups all over the globe are offering different equipment to deal with food waste on an individual level. There are a growing number of options to choose from for managing food waste, but it seems to come down to simply getting people to commit to composting. For those who are interested in composting, the Subpod Mini is available at a reduced pre-order price of $119 for a limited time. Pre-orders are expected to ship out in June 2021.

Ryp Labs, Formerly StixFresh, Goes Beyond Stickers to Protect Produce

Back in 2019 at The Spoon’s Smart Kitchen Summit, judges were so impressed by a company called StixFresh they dubbed it the winner of the event’s Startup Showcase competition. At the time, StixFresh was wholly focused on a single product, a food-safe sticker that, when affixed to a piece of produce, could protect against post-harvest bacteria, over-ripening, and premature spoilage.

Fast forward to 2021, and the company has since rebranded as Ryp Labs and expanded its capabilities for protecting crops after they are harvested. Its flagship product remains a sticker (which is still called StixFresh), but company cofounder and CEO Moody Soliman told me over the phone recently that Ryp Labs is now testing multiple technologies on different types of produce.

The company’s “core competency,” he says, isn’t simply about making stickers that prevent food waste. It’s about “develop[ing] formulations that can be applied to a variety of surfaces to combat post-harvest disease.” Hence the recent name change.

Protecting any given type of produce involves a two step process: finding the right formulation that can fight post-harvest disease and spoilage, and engineering a release vehicle for that formula.

Plants naturally emit compounds that can protect against disease and environmental hazards. What Ryp Labs essentially does is capture these compounds and use them in formulations that can then be applied to the produce to better protect it after harvest, a process that also extends the food’s shelf life. The specific application, or release vehicle, depends on the type of produce.

Stickers, for example, work well for larger pieces, such as apples, pears, avocados, and mangos. Ryp Lab’s patent-pending StixFresh product contains the aforementioned plant-produced compounds. When those compounds vaporize, they “cloak” the fruit, protecting it from bacteria and over-ripening.

Applying a sticker to a mango is one thing. Fixing them to every single berry in a case, on the other hand, would be far too unwieldy and time-consuming a process to be feasible. Smaller pieces of produce, such as grapes or berries, are better suited to other release vehicles, according to Soliman. 

Berries have actually been on Ryp Labs’ radar since 2019, and partly provided the inspiration for the company to explore release vehicles beyond stickers. For berries, a sachet that emits protective vapors can simply be dropped into a crate post harvest.

Other companies are also putting formats like sachets and edible coatings to work: most notably Hazel Technologies and Apeel, respectively. 

For Ryp Labs, the release vehicle and specific formulation each produce type gets depends on a number of factors, from when the formulation is being applied to the conditions in which the food will travel (e.g., cold storage versus room temperature). Ryp Labs works with each individual customer to understand the issues in their specific food supply chain. The goal is to match that customer with the best formulation and release vehicle without drastically interrupting the day-to-day operation.

Ryp Labs says it is already doing pilot studies with retailers and distributors and have seen a 15 to 30 percent reduction in losses on strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, and mandarins with its sachets and stickers.

Meanwhile, the company is in the final stages of development for its StixFresh product and plans to launch it to the consumer market in early 2022, most likely in the U.S. and Europe. Other products, including sachets, may be more of a B2B play, with Ryp Labs licensing them out to food producers and distributors. Soliman did not officially confirm as much, only suggesting that licensing its tech is an option on the table for the company.

Preserving other types of food and even flowers is also a possibility. As Soliman explained, Ryp Labs is essentially building a library of formulations that could eventually protect everything from mangos to poultry to freshly cut roses. That focus on the formulation could greatly differentiate Ryp Labs in the future. So while we might be seeing StixFresh stickers in grocery stores soon, those are just the beginning of Ryp Labs’ technological journey to better protect crops and fight food waste.

Food Tech News: The Molson Brewmboni, Ikea’s Plant-Based Promise

Happy weekend! We hope you can fit in some time during this lovely spring weekend to catch up on some interesting news in the food tech space. This week we rounded up stories on a new material used to determine seafood spoilage, Molson Canada’s beer cooler vacuum invention, Ikea’s food accelerator program, and a search for startups disrupting the retail sector.

If you haven’t heard, The Spoon is hosting “ArticulATE: The Food Robotics Summit” on Tuesday, May 18th. The event is approaching fast, so get your ticket today!

Scientists create color-changing material to detect seafood spoilage

German and Chinese scientists used inspiration from chameleons to create a material that changes colors to indicate when seafood has gone bad. The new material incorporates luminogens, which glow and change color when exposed to different factors like a change in temperature of pH. The scientists put test strips of the material in boxes of fresh shrimp and fish for 50 hours, with one box stored at 14 degrees and the other at 86 degrees. The test strip in the 14-degree box stayed red (indicating the seafood was still fresh), while the strip in the 86 degree box changed to a vivid green (indicating spoilage).

Molson Canada designs hybrid beer cooler and vacuum

Cleaning the house and drinking beer goes together nicely (especially when you don’t need to leave the couch), and this week Molson Canada created a part beer cooler part vacuum to accommodate just that. The robot is called “Molson Brewmboni”, which holds four Molson Canadian tallboys and functions as an autonomous vacuum. The NHL (National Hockey League) will be mostly virtual for fans in Canada for the second year in a row, so this invention was created in hopes of emulating the familiar sounds of the Zamboni on the hockey rink. Unfortunately, it is not available for purchase, but it may be in the future on the product’s website. In the meantime, the company is offering the CAD files of the robot vacuum for anyone interested in building it themselves.

Photo from Ikea’s website

Ikea launches accelerator program to meet goal of serving 50% plant-based foods

Last year, Ikea made the announcement that by 2025, 50 percent of its menu items and 80 percent of its packaged foods would be vegan. To take steps towards that goal, the Scandinavian chain just launched its Food Innovation Accelerator Program. The program is looking for food startups that are focused on sustainable solutions and the ability to scale plant-based food businesses. Ikea currently has a few vegan options like its plant-based hot dog, and “plant balls”, and alternative for meatballs made from oats and pea protein.

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Sonae Mc is scouting for start ups to disrupt retail sector

Sonae Mc, a food retail market chain in Portugal, is currently accepting applications for the second edition of its Disrupt Retail. The corporation seeks to find start-ups specifically focused on the categories of health and wellness, e-commerce, crowdsourcing, sustainability, personalized shopping experiences, and others. Those who are accepted will receive mentorship, in-store testing of the technology, access to a network of partners, and exposure to potential investors. Applications are open until June 30 on Disrupt Retail’s website.

Apeel Acquires ImpactVision to Fight Food Waste With Hyperspectral Imaging

Apeel officially announced today is has acquired machine learning company ImpactVision for an undisclosed amount. The plan is to integrate ImpactVision’s hyperspectral imaging technology into Apeel’s applications systems at produce packing houses and distribution centers in North America, South America, and Europe. This is Apeel’s first major acquisition, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. To date, ImpactVision has raised $2.8 million.

Apeel’s existing application systems involve coating different types of produce with what the company calls its “shelf-life extension technology” — an edible, plant-based coating that gets applied to produce after harvest. The coatings extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables by keeping moisture trapped inside the produce and oxygen out. In doing so, the rate of decay significantly slows. 

With the ImpactVision acquisition, Apeel will be able to add further analysis of the produce to its operations. ImpactVision’s tech collects and processes hyperspectral images of each individual piece of produce. Through machine learning models, the system can identify cues in the produce around its freshness, degree of maturity, and phytonutrient content.

Based on those elements, suppliers and distributors can then decide where each piece of produce should go. Those  with a shorter ripening window can ship to retailers geographically closer to the supplier, for instance, to avoid excess food spoilage. By way of example, today’s news announcement gave the following scenario: “If a produce supplier sees that one avocado will ripen tomorrow while another will ripen in 4 days, they know that one has more time to travel and should be sent to the retailer that is further away.”

Writing in a blog post today, Apeel CEO James Rogers noted that through the acquisition, “Apeel will now be able to integrate hyperspectral imaging technology into our supply chains, enabling us to provide new insights to our customers, both upstream and downstream, ranging from ripeness prediction to nutritional characteristics, even information on how the produce was grown; the very aspects that make every individual piece of fruit unique.”  

Rogers added that Apeel has already started the process of upgrading its application systems to include hyperspectral camera capabilities. The company says it has 30 supplier integrations on three continents with plans to double that number by the end of 2021.