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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News Roundup: Fungi Burgers, Pineapple Beer, and Chatbot Bartenders

Summer has descended upon us like a thick, laze-inducing haze. If you’re like us, all you want to do is head to the local pool and drink cool beverages out of our stainless steel straws.

Steamy weekends are not the time for more work, so we went ahead and rounded up some news-worthy food tech stories from around the web for your reading pleasure. Bonus: you can peruse while you’re lounging in air conditioning.

Bronx Brewery Beer Fights Produce Waste
On July 30th New York’s Bronx Brewery will release a beer made with repurposed food scraps. Called More To The Core, it’s a Kolsch style ale brewed with pineapple cores and skins, which are normally tossed into the trash and end up in landfills. This tasty, waste-y beer is a collaboration between Baldor Specialty Foods and The Bronx Brewery, and is available in their taproom.

 

Capital sprouts up for fungi-based meat company
This week Terramino Foods, a startup which uses fungi to make meat and seafood alternatives, raised $4.25 million in a seed funding round co-led by Collaborative Fund and True Ventures. In a press release, True Ventures indicated that Terramino Foods has already developed a plant-based salmon burger, and has plans to create alternatives to beef, chicken, and pork with its new capital. 

 

Costco partners with Zest Labs to optimize food supply chain
Wholesale giant Costco announced this week that it would start working with Zest Labs, a company which works in fresh food supply chain traceability. According to a press release, Costco is expecting this partnership to help modernize and optimize their fresh foods, reducing food waste up to 50%.

 

McDonald’s workers are short on soft skills
This week McDonald’s released the results of its Workplace Preparedness Study, which analyzed skill development across multiple age groups. The survey polled 6,200 people and discovered that many were missing soft skills, such as teamwork, customer service, and responsibility. We’ve addressed the restaurant labor shortage before on the Spoon, and have wondered if companies will pad their meager workforce with robots in coming years. But will robots have better soft skills than teenagers looking for a summer job? Or maybe the robots will take over the physically repetitive jobs, like food prep and dish running, freeing up people with soft skills to interact with customers.

 

Allrecipes & Tito’s vodka launch Barkeep, a chatbot ‘bartender’

Ready to get your drink on through Facebook? Allrecipes and Tito’s vodka got you covered. The recipe site is working with the Austin, TX craft vodka maker to launch a chatbot by the name of Barkeep using Facebook Messenger chatbot platform. After checking if the user is of legal drinking age, Barkeep suggests a few cocktails (using Tito’s, natch) and then walks the user through a conversation branch flow that has the user ultimately choose a cocktail recipe. Once a recipe is picked and the user is sent to Allrecipes, they can then order their some Tito’s or other liquor through Drizly. You can try Barkeep out for yourself here.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Mosa Meat Raises $8.8 Million to Bring Clean Meat to Market by 2021

This morning The Wall Street Journal reported that Mosa Meat, the Netherlands-based clean meat company making slaughter-free beef from cattle cells, raised $8.8 million (€7.5 million) in funding from German drugmaker Merck KGaA and leading Swiss meat manufacturer Bell Food Group.

Mosa Meat was founded by Dr. Mark Post (now their Chief Scientific Officer), a professor of physiology at Maastricht University who made history when he created the world’s first lab-grown burger. The burger, which was cooked and eaten live on air in London in 2013, cost $330,000 (€250,000) to make and was funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. While it received mixed reviews from its tasters, the project prompted Post to create Mosa Meats in 2015.

Merck and Bell Food Group join the ever-growing list of Big Food and biotech companies investing in cultured meat companies. Tyson Foods has funded both Future Meat and Memphis Meats, which also counts Cargill amongst its investors, and poultry producer PHW Group has backed Israeli clean meat company Supermeat.

This investment is strategic for Mosa as well, beyond the obvious money part. Merck, one of Mosa Meats’ investors, has expertise in producing cell media, one of the biggest costs behind cultured meat. Combine that with the other investor, meat manufacturer Bell Food Group, and the Dutch startup has both the upstream and downstream of clean meat production covered.

Mosa Meats is aiming to get the first lab-grown meat product to market by 2021 at a price point of $10 per patty. This is on par with the timeline from other leaders in the field, namely Memphis Meats. JUST Foods, formerly Hampton Creek, claims it will make the first clean meat sale by the end of this year — though some are skeptical. Cultured fish production is on a slightly faster timeline; Finless Foods estimates they’ll be able to produce clean bluefin tuna at cost with the “real stuff” by 2019.

Mosa’s news comes less than a week after the FDA held a public meeting on cultured meat. We spoke with Annie Cull, Director of Communications at the Good Food Institute, who said that the FDA was very open and receptive to the idea of bringing clean meat to market. “They set a strong tone, which was ‘we’re ready for this,'” she said.

In short, clean meat is coming — and pretty darn soon. But we have a ways to go in terms of regulation, terminology, and public perception before it gets here.

Where in the World is Food Tech Investment? Apparently, It’s Global.

Is it just us, or has this past week been a hot one for international food tech startup funding announcements?

A few days ago, British ‘virtual farmers market’ grocery delivery service Farmdrop raised £10 million ($13.3 million) to expand their territory. And just yesterday French meal replacement company Feed raised €15 million ($17.4 million) to grow their reach into the U.S.

Here are a few more international food tech and innovation startups that have raised some serious funds in the past few days — because the food tech investment bug expands way beyond the U.S.

India: Food delivery service Swiggy adds to sizeable war chest

Earlier today, Indian food delivery service Swiggy announced that it had raised $210 million. The funding round was led by South African media conglomerate Naspers Ltd and Hong Kong-based DST Global, with participation from Meituan Dianping and Coatue Management.

This was a Series G round for Swiggy and their largest capital raise yet. This brings their total investment to $465 million, making them the most-funded food delivery company in the fast-growing Indian market.

Founded in 2014, the Bengaluru-based Swiggy now has 35,000 restaurant partners and 40,000 delivery workers across 15 cities in India. The company will use their new capital to expand into new markets and ramp up their supply network.

 

Italy: Supermercato24 raises funds for same-day grocery delivery

Italian same-day grocery delivery service Supermercato24 just raised €13 million ($15 million) in Series B funding. The round was led by FII Tech Growth, with participation from current investors 360 Capital Partners and Innogest, and new investor Endeavor Catalyst.

Like Instacart and Amazon Fresh, Supermercato24 offers same-day (or, for an added cost, same-hour) grocery delivery from local supermarkets. The company currently has 15 merchant partners and delivers to more than 23 Italian cities. It plans to use their new funds to expand their marketplace and reach.

 

Canada: Restaurant POS system TouchBistro closes hefty Series D round

Toronto-based TouchBistro announced today that it raised a C$72 million ($54 million) Series D funding round led by JPMorgan Chase and OMERS Ventures with participation from Relay Ventures, Recruit Holdings, and others. The company makes an iPad-based POS system that can integrate into restaurants to manage payments, menu options, accounting, orders, inventory, and more.

This new fundraise bumps TouchBistro’s value to approximately C$117 million ($88 million). It currently works with over 12,000 restaurants throughout 100 countries.

TouchBistro recently teamed up with Chase to power their WePay payments; the partnership is scheduled to go live this summer. According to TechVibes, the company will use their new capital to grow operations, increase employees, and look into expansion into Europe and South America.

French Meal-In-A-Bottle Startup Feed Snags $17.4M, Looks Beyond Europe

Today, French startup Feed raised €15 million ($17.4 million USD) from investors Alven, Otium Brands, and Financière Saint James. This recent raise brings their total funding to €18.5 million ($2.1 million).

Feed makes powdered drinks and bars for meal replacements in the vein of Soylent. All of Feed’s products are gluten-free, lactose-free, vegan, non-GMO, and made in France, and they contain enough fats, fiber, proteins, and other nutrients to act as a standalone meal. The company plans to use its new funds to add 25 to 30 more team members and expand their international reach into the U.S., according to La Tribune. 

Founded in January of 2017, Feed originally made only powdered drinks intended to supplement or replace meals, and recently added meal-in-one bars to their lineup. A single-serving meal replacement drink from Feed retails for €2.40 ($2.78), which is on par with Soylent’s pricing. Feed currently sells their products in French supermarkets and online, and delivers to over 30 countries.

One of the more interesting aspects of Feed is that it has several savory shaken drink options — in tomato olive, mushroom, carrot and pumpkin, and garden vegetable flavors — which I haven’t seen before from any other meal supplement company. While it may seem off-putting to drink a salty blended shake, I imagine that these flavors would be a welcome shake-up (pun intended) to the typical vanilla/chocolate/coffee.

According to Research and Markets, the global meal replacement market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.83 percent from 2017-2021. And there’s no shortage of options on the market: Soylent just announced that it will retail in more than 1,850 Kroger stores (apparently recovering from last year’s obstacles of recalls, leadership changes, and getting banned in Canada). Bear Squeeze raised over $200,000 on IndieGoGo earlier this year for their meal-in-one health shakes (though as far as I can tell they have yet to ship), and Ample Foods closed a $2 million funding round a few months ago.

And that’s just in the U.S. In Europe, both Amsterdam-based Jimmy Joy and Huel in the U.K. make powdered meal replacements aimed at the busy, health-conscious consumer. Feed’s hefty fundraise signifies not only that these type of drinkable supplements aren’t going anywhere, but that there’s room for expansion — both geographically, and in the product lineup.

Finless Foods Raises $3.5 Million for Cultured Bluefin Tuna

Today cultured seafood company Finless Foods CEO & Co-founder Mike Selden wrote a piece on Medium announcing that they had closed a $3.5 million seed round. The round was led by Draper Associates, with participation from Softmatter VC, Blue Horizon, Hemisphere Ventures, Yakumi Investment and more.

In the piece, Selden wrote that this invesment would bring them “to the end of our initial R&D phase,” and give them “the tools necessary to move into production pending the closing of a Series A.”

Finless Foods uses cellular biology to grow fish (and, eventually, other seafood) in bioreactors. They’re doing similar work to Memphis Meats or JUST Foods, but are focused on fish instead of meat. Wild Type is another startup using cellular agriculture to develop seafood (specifically salmon) grown outside the animal, and similarly raised $3.5 million a few months ago.

The company got its start in the legendary IndieBio accelerator program in 2017, where they created the first fish product grown in a lab. They later got investment from Hatch, a Norwegian aquaculture accelerator, as well as Hi-Food, an Italian company focused on sustainability in food.

Their first product will be bluefin tuna, a species which is threatened with overfishing. They plan to bring it to market by the end of 2019 — and with this funding, they just got a lot closer to that goal.

Online Grocery Farmdrop Raises £10M to Expand Local Food Delivery

When I lived in London last year I used to get really excited when I saw a pale pink van pull up outside my flat. Because inside that van was a selection of local, (mostly) organic vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and bread from ethical grocery delivery service  Farmdrop.

Yesterday Farmdrop raised £10M ($13.3M) in a Series B round from investors including the founder of Skype, according to the Guardian. This brings their total funding to £17M ($22.6M). Founded in 2014 by Ben Pugh, an ex-broker, the London-based company plans to use its funds to expand to the north of England and double their delivery area. They currently deliver to London, Bristol, and Bath.

According to their website, 80% of Farmdrop’s produce comes from within 100 miles of their delivery radius. Their meat is all free-range, and at least 70% of the price of each head of lettuce or grass-fed burger goes back to the producer. According to Pugh, the average retailer only pays farmers at most 50% of the final price. And if that weren’t enough, Farmdrop’s vans are also electric!

In addition to fruit, vegetables, and meat, Farmdrop offers more variety than, say, an Imperfect Produce or Good Eggs. The 2,000 products on offer also include organic home cleaning products, baby food, pantry staples, beer and wine, and bakery items.

By eliminating wholesalers and retailers from the supply chain, Farmsdrop is able to offer high-quality food at a price that is pretty competitive with big retailers — and it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf for days on end.

Farmdrop doesn’t require a subscription or a minimum spend (though they do add £4 to any order under £30). Customers can choose a 1-hour delivery window for a small fee (it’s free if their order is over £80), or else select a 6-hour time slot. The day before delivery, the driver will send an updated 60-minute window for their arrival.

Clearly Farmdrop doesn’t have the instant gratification or convenience of a 2-hour Amazon/Whole Foods/Albertsons/etc grocery delivery. (The fastest turnaround they have is next-day delivery, which is available for orders before noon.) However, their recent raise signifies that there are enough people that don’t mind dealing with a little extra inconvenience in exchange for ethically sourced, high-quality produce.

For those who don’t want to/don’t have time to trek to the farmers market but still want to buy local foods, Farmdrop, like Good Eggs and Farmstead in the U.S., is a good option. Though it seems they have updated their van aesthetics.

Drinkable Meal Startup Ample Foods Raises $2M

San Francisco-based nutrition startup Ample Foods announced today that it has raised an additional $2 million in funds for the seed round, led by the VC firm Slow Ventures. The company has received previous investments from 500 Startups, Hawkshead Capital and Compound. In 2016, Ample raised $370K on Indiegogo, making it the site’s top-funded nutrition campaign of all time.

Ample CEO Connor Young founded Ample Foods to help his friends working long hours at startups eat healthy, convenient meals which didn’t require any planning. And planning they truly do not need. The drinks come in powdered form, so all you have to do is add milk or water and shake. Which means that Ample’s meals don’t expire like other liquid meal replacements; all but one of the varieties have 10-month shelf lives, with the vegan option lasting for 8 months. So you can keep one tucked into your desk at work for when you need to work through lunch, or even bring it with you on an airline (they’re TSA compliant). 

Each bottle is 400 calories and contains 25 grams of protein, 2 to 6 grams of sugar and 10 to 15 grams of fiber. They contain whey protein and collagen from grass-fed cows (except for the vegan version), probiotics, carbohydrates and healthy fats from nuts, chia seeds, and coconut. They also feature some more obscure ingredients, like organic Jerusalem artichoke insulin and acacia fiber. All drinks are gluten-free, soy-free, and non-GMO. 

In addition to their original product, the startup also offers Ample V, a vegan option which skips the whey, collagen, and honey, and Ample K, which is aimed at low carb, high fat ketogenic diet followers.

With these two options, Ample is hoping to cash in on two dietary trends: ketogenic and plant-based. “We wanted to make sure we hit not just a different market with each drink, but a different use case,” said Young. “We don’t do one-size-fits-all nutrition.” Orian Research estimated that the value of the global ketogenic food market was $5.07 billion in 2017, and forecasted it would grow to $6.5 billion by 2023. At the same time, demand for plant-based foods has been steadily climbing. 

Ample Original costs $6/bottle, with Ample V and Ample K priced at $7 and $8 each, respectively. (Prices reduce slightly if you buy in bulk.) That’s roughly double the price of Soylent, though I suppose those acacia fibers don’t come cheap.

The meal replacement business has been steadily increasing over the past few years. Soylent recently expanded its retail operations through a partnership with Walmart (despite a few obstacles last year with recalls, leadership changes, and getting banned in Canada). Meal-in-a-bottle Bear Squeeze, which is both ketogenic and vegan, broke records for first-day funding on Indiegogo (they have yet to ship). And a few months ago bone broth supplement company Ancient Nutrition raised $103 million. These types of drinks cater towards health-conscious people working long hours, who don’t have time to stop for a meal (much less cook one) but still want to have a balanced diet. 

“We’re selling to really busy people who care about health,” Young told The Spoon. “No matter how much they care, it’s difficult to keep up with the latest dietary trends. We’re simplifying the process from a product level.” He also told me that they hope to introduce a heavier focus on health and nutrition knowledge as they grow.

The latest investment brings Ample’s total funding to $4 million. If you want to try it out, or stock up for the inevitable zombie apocalypse, you can purchase Ample’s powdered drinks on its website.

Food Tech News Roundup: SmartPlate Updates, Localized Meal Kits, & Food Alternatives

Forget the crossword and stack of pancakes — get ready for the best part of your weekend. We’ve rounded up the food tech and innovation-related stories that caught our eye around the web this week for your perusing pleasure. From plant-based sliders at White Castle to (maybe) smart plates, get ready for your weekly dose of news.

Photo: Kitchen 1883

Kroger to expand in-store restaurant chain

Kroger recently announced that it will open a second in-store restaurant in the Greater Cincinnati area. Dubbed Kitchen 1883, its menu features new American comfort food. Kroger launched the first Kitchen 1883 restaurant last November in Kentucky.

As grocery sales move online, this is a bid from Kroger to get shoppers to physically go to their stores, and to stay awhile. It’s a similar concept to this frozen yogurt kiosk or Ikea’s beloved meatballs and cinnamon rolls; keep people around, and they’ll buy more.

 

Photo: Smartplate.com

Smartplate (Might Be) About to Finally Ship

A few days ago Anthony Ortiz, founder of Smartplate, the plate/app combo that tracks the nutrition of what you’re eating, posted an update on their IndieGo page stating that they had built the first 15 production-grade Smartplate TopViews. These new plates are flatter, with updated software.

We’ve covered Smartplate before on the Spoon, with some healthily skepticism. Their update claims they’ll be ready to ship by July 2018, but they’ve already missed a few ship dates. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Smartplate is finally ready for the real world — but in the mean time, you can go ahead and download the Smartplate app.

 

Photo: Soylent

Soylent at Walmart!

Soylent, the powdered meal replacement drink aimed at busy millennials, became available at Walmart this week. The beverage made the leap into brick-and-mortar retail last year when it launched in 2,500 7-Eleven stores. Previously it was only available online.

Rosa Foods, the maker of Soylent, announced that it will be available in 450 Walmart stores across 14 states. This latest expansion signifies that the beverage, which had a few ups and downs over the past few years, is becoming more mainstream. It also indicates a strong market for meal replacements aimed not at people who want to weight loss, but who want to save time and brainspace.

 

Photo: Local Crate

Local Crate Raises $1.4M for Fresh Food Delivery

Minnesota-based meal kit service Local Crate raised $1.4 million this week. The startup focuses on sourcing local ingredients from smallholder farmers and local producers, which they pre-portion and deliver in their meal kits, along with chef-inspired recipes. With this new fundraise, they plan to expand into Wisconsin and Iowa. They also want to develop their brick and mortar presence, following recent announcements by Weight Watchers, Walmart, Plated and others who also placed their meal kits on supermarket shelves.

 

Photo: White Castle

White Castle Now Offering Impossible Burgers at Affordable Price

On Thursday, April 12th, White Castle, the fast-food chain known for its tiny, square hamburgers, will offer a version of its sliders made with Impossible Foods’ plant-based patties. The sliders will come with smoked cheddar, pickles, and onions, but customers can nix the cheese to make it vegan.

White Castle is rolling out the plant-based sliders in 140 locations and will eventually offer them nationally. We tried the patties last month and decided that while they tasted pretty good, their high price point could be a barrier to widespread acceptance. This partnership will make Impossible’s “bleeding” burgers much more widely available — and more affordable, too. White Castle’s Impossible sliders will cost only $1.99 each. It will be interesting to see how the bleeding burgers fare in a fast food environment, instead of the fast casual and high end restaurants where they have been offered up until now.

Cannabis Edibles Market Is Riding High — For Now

If you have ever had a pot brownie (and we’re not saying you have), more likely than not you don’t remember it as an especially pleasant ingestion experience. The brownie probably tasted bad, was from dubious sources, and might have even been given to you by an unwashed person at a house/frat party.

But today the edibles game has completely changed. Thanks to legalization and technological advances, edibles now come in a huge variety; users can choose not only how they want to ingest their weed, but also its strain and strength. And their popularity is exploding.

According to Arcview Market Research via Forbes, consumers in California purchased $180 million worth of cannabis-infused food and drinks last year, which amounted to 10% of the state’s total marijuana sales. Per BDS Analytics and Green Market report, that percentage rose to 18% in February 2018. And there doesn’t seem to be any sign of slowing.

Edibles are becoming commonplace and democratized. They are no longer a means to an end; consumers want to enjoy the consumption experience itself, not just the resulting high. They also have a wider appeal than smoking marijuana, since they’re less conspicuous to consume and don’t have the same harmful effects on your lungs.

Advances in technology enable edible makers to tweak things like the concentration of THC (the psychoactive element in cannabis) and CBD (the relaxing element) in their goods to produce the desired effect. Cannapreneurs (trademark The Spoon) can now also infuse a really wide variety of goods with marijuana, from gourmet sweets like gummy bears and truffles to stouts and IPAs. There are even marijuana-infused sodas and lattes with cannabis (think of the latte art possibilities!).

Source: Wikimedia

Edibles’ growing appeal is, obviously, a direct result of marijuana’s march towards legalization. So far, nine states plus Washington D.C. have legalized recreational weed for those 21+. This means more open access to cannabis, so producers can not only openly source marijuana, but also select the exact strain they want. As marijuana’s legalization spreads, the stigma that surrounds it is starting to decrease. It’s no longer a drug of hippies or high school dropouts; in fact, millennials increasingly view marijuana as a safer form of relaxation than alcohol.

Of course, there are still some very real obstacles standing in the way of the marijuana industry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has openly said that he wants to exert federal law that criminalizes marijuana, superseding individual state laws which have legalized the drug. If he goes forward with this, it would have a huge impact on the marijuana — and, hence, the edibles — market. There are different opinions on whether or not this news has affected investments in cannabis/cannabinoids: some sources say investors aren’t spooked, others disagree. We’ll have to wait and see if lawmakers will go the way of former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, whose thinking on marijuana has “evolved.”

While these challenges might make things difficult or unsteady for the marijuana industry going forward, within the industry the edibles market is still booming. The Specialty Food Association named cannabis edibles as one of the top 10 food trends of 2018. In Colorado, BDS Analytics reported that edible sales jumped 67% between February 2016 and February 2017.

Venture Capitalists and Big Food are noticing the growth in this sector and starting to invest in cannabis tech and edibles. Just last week Palo Alto-based marijuana edibles company Plus Products closed a roughly $6 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Serruya Private Equity and Navy Capital, only the latter of which identifies itself as a specific cannabis investment fund.

The edibles market may be in a precarious situation until marijuana is legalized on a federal level, but for now its popularity is riding high.

Personalized Nutrition Analytics Platform Nutrino Raises $8M

Yesterday Nutrino, the Israeli personalized nutrition company, announced the completion of its $8 million Series A funding round. Nielsen Ventures, Pereg Ventures, and Gandyr Group joined existing investors, including the New York Angels group, who led the company’s seed round. This latest raise brings their total capital to $10 million.

Founded in 2011, Nutrino synthesizes information from scientific reports, menus, and food nutrition breakdowns and matches that to data points on your health and eating habits, which it gets from wearables, health apps, or information you input directly into their Nutrino app. It feeds all this information into FoodPrint, their analytics platform, which then uses machine learning and AI to create an individualized nutrition profile and personalized dietary recommendations.

Nutrino isn’t the only company out there offering personalized nutrition. Just a few weeks ago we wrote about Sage Project, a platform which breaks down nutritional information for a variety of products and will soon offer individualized dietary recommendations. Habit uses personalized nutrition information to create customized meal kits. And last year, Amazon partnered with EatLove to offer meal planning and recipes tailored to personal health profiles.

Photo: Nutrino blog.

Two things seem to set Nutrino apart. First is its specialization in curating dynamic nutrition profiles for people with diabetes. In 2016 Nutrino launched a partnership with Medtronic, a producer of continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, to help people with diabetes better customize their diets. Users could sync their monitors and pumps to the Nutrino app, which would use data from the person’s glucose and carbohydrate levels to offer food suggestions. They can also use the app to scan grocery barcodes and get a nutritional breakdown of each item, or, if they’re in one of the 200,000 restaurants that fits with Nutrino’s technology, get personalized menu recommendations based on their glucose and carbohydrate levels.

Which, if you’re someone suffering from diabetes, is critical. There are an estimated 415 million people around the world living with diabetes, and the number is expected to grow to 642 million by 2040. Managing diets is a key part of staying healthy with the disease, and Nutrino’s responsive app seems like a helpful tool.

The second thing that sets Nutrino apart from other personalized nutrition platforms is its food database, which collates information on the eating habits of its millions of users. Companies in food & beverage and fitness use this data to shape their products and marketing strategies. So Nutrino doesn’t only serve individuals; it also uses their data to market its services to companies who want more data on nutrition and consumer eating habits (though promises to protect user confidentiality).

Nutrino will use its funding to expand its database, grow its personalized nutrition services, and explore new partnerships in food analytics for diabetics.

Personalized nutrition and meal recommendations are getting a lot of buzz right now. And Nutrino’s recent funding raise seems to indicate that these trends aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.

Food Tech News Roundup: DIY Food Printers, Salad Analytics, Ramen Robots

It’s time for your weekly dose of food tech news! This is when we take a look at some of the stories from the week which intrigued us and put them all in one convenient place.

This week we’ve got stories about lab-grown meat, DIY 3D bioprinter building, and sushi-serving robots. Get yourself a big mug of coffee and settle in for a read.

Lab-grown meat company Wild Type gets a funding boost

Cultured meat company Wild Type raised $3.5 million this week in a seed round led by firm Spark Capital with participation by Root Ventures, Mission Bay Capital, and other investors.

Wild Type is yet another player in the growing field of clean meat, along with startups like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meats, and Supermeat. Startup Finless Foods is also using cellular agriculture to culture fish in a lab, though they’re focused on bluefin tuna while Wild Type is working on salmon.

Wild Type hopes to use its new capital to speed up the development of its cultured salmon, increasing manufacturing capabilities while lowering costs. Their first product will be minced salmon meat intended for use in sushi, but they hope to eventually develop an animal-free lox and salmon filets.

 

 

Image: Adam Feinberg, HardwareX

Carnegie Mellon bioprinter could democratize 3D printing

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently developed a low-cost 3D bioprinter and are publishing the designs as open source so that anyone can build their own.

The researchers were able to cut costs by applying a syringe-based large volume extruder onto a standard desktop 3D printer (you have one at home, right?), essentially DIY-ing a 3D bioprinter. Bioprinters typically start at $10K to $20K and can cost up to $200K, but this MacGuyvered one can be built for under $500. It’s also easier to modify than a traditional 3D bioprinter.

Though the CMU team’s original research centers around organ tissue printing for transplants, their instructional abstract notes that these homemade bioprinters can perform “a wide range of 3D printing applications, including bioprinting, embedded printing, and food printing.” As we’ve covered on The Spoon before, 3D food printing is a massively underexplored area of food tech. Maybe these (relatively) affordable bioprinters will change that and make 3D food printing more accessible.

 

Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP via Mashable

Ramen-serving robots invade Seattle

Plenty USA will launch the new version of their AI-powered, Japan-made robot, dubbed ‘SOTA,’ in Seattle next month. The robot will premiere at JUNKICHI, a robota izakaya restaurant scheduled to open on April 15th in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

SOTA sits atop restaurant tables and uses AI to recognize diners’ faces. It is meant to facilitate communication between customers and servers, though it seems like having a table-bound robot as the middleman would make communication more confusing, if anything. Users can also use the SOTA app to make the robot speak, having guided conversations while they snack on hot pots and grilled meats.

This will be the North American launch for SOTA, but the robot is already a regular fixture at an izakaya restaurant in Japan. (They’e begun their integration into restaurants in America, as well.) According to Market Insider, the restaurant reported a 10% jump in sales since it started using SOTA, and the robot is a popular attraction for dinners. We’ll have to wait and see if it has the same success in an American market.

P.S. Keep an eye out for The Spoon team to make a field trip and interact with these robots ourselves! And eat some sushi, of course.

 

Beer gets high

For those who hate to choose between their vices, there’s a new product for you. Keith Villa, the inventor of Blue Moon beer has partnered with Ebbu, a company that works with marijuana compounds, to launch a THC-infused, non-alcoholic beer in Colorado this fall. The brew is designed to have the marijuana hit the drinker at the same rate as if they were consuming a beer.

The team plans to develop a wheat beer, a light beer, and a stout. The product will launch in Colorado, but producers want to eventually sell it in all states where marijuana is legal.

Other brewers, such as Lagunitas, have infused beer with CBD, a cannabanoid which does not produce any hallucinatory effects. However, this Colorado-based brew will be the first to incorporate THC, which is what gives marijuana users the trademark “high.” Its success (or lack thereof) will speak to how flexible Americans are willing to get with their cannabis consumption.

 

SweetGreen harnesses analytics to inform its new menu

Earlier this week, fast-casual salad chain SweetGreen made a major menu chance. At first glance, it seemed that all they had done was tweak their offerings — but it’s the why, not the what, that’s so interesting.

SweetGreen’s menu changes were apparently a direct result of tech-driven insights. The company recently told Bloomberg that they now use blockchain to track their produce, and also to inform their app (which they launched in 2013). Through the app they collect customer analytics to determine which salads to keep, which to introduce, and which to take off their menu, all of which led to their new menu — the first major menu change in 10 years.

This change is an indicator of how fast casual joints, like Eatsa, are integrating tech into their service models to distinguish themselves from the competition. They’re also harnessing platforms like Toast and Ingest.ai to help run restaurant operations for efficiently and increase revenue. Which all goes to say that this restaurant market is one that will likely see a lot of growth and change — in salad toppings and beyond.

 

Farmer Peer-to-Peer Network Wefarm Scores $5 Million Funding Boost

What does a smallholder farmer in Kenya do when they want to know the best way to control weeds in their coffee crop? If they use Wefarm, all they have to do is shoot off a text.

Wefarm, the world’s largest farmer-to-farmer digital network, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $5 million in seed funding. The round was led by the Silicon Valley-based True Ventures, who were joined by WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg, Blue Bottle Coffee CEO Bryan Meehan, and Skype founder Niklas Zennström. The Norrsken Foundation, LocalGlobe and Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) also participated.

Wefarm is aimed at the more than 500 million smallholder farmers in the world. These small scale farmers produce over 70 percent of the world’s food and spend over $400 billion on farm inputs and other services, annually—but many of them struggle to gain access to agricultural education, inputs, such as fertilizer, and traditional markets.

Because of these challenges, many small scale farmers come up with innovative, low-tech solutions to improve their yield. And with Wefarm, they can share their know-how with other farmers who might be struggling with the same obstacles, without leaving their farm. And it’s all available at no cost to the farmers.

Their recent funding indicates a growing interest in supporting and educating smallholder farmers, whose role will become all the more critical (and difficult) thanks to a growing world population and the threat of climate change.

What’s makes Wefarm’s 660,000-strong peer-to-peer network so special is its ability to connect farmers via the internet, even if they themselves don’t have access to the internet. Which means that a farmer in Kenya can ask a question about irrigation methods which might be answered by farmers in Uganda and Tanzania—even if none of them have access to wifi.

To get around the internet hurdle, Wefarm turns to SMS to exchange information. According to their website, while many smallholder farmers don’t have internet, over 90% of them have access to mobile phones. Wefarm decided to capitalize on that to make an information sharing network that’s facilitated by text messages. So if farmers run into a problem about the right spacing for their beans or how to feed their cattle to optimize milk production, they can just shoot off a (free) SMS to the local Wefarm number. Their question is instantly posted online, and crowdsourced responses are sent back to their mobile phone. Wefarm also offers translation services for their SMS’s, so farmers can ask questions and receive answers in their own languages.

Wefarm connects farmers, even those without access to the internet. 

Wefarm’s platform is open for discussion on any aspect of agriculture, which is obviously a pretty far-reaching subject. In addition to seeking advice on crops, water, and disease prevention, farmers also use this service to compare notes on input costs. That way, they know the right price to pay and won’t get ripped off. Some also use Wefarm as a platform to sell and buy their crops, or just get advice about how to find the right marketplace for their goods.

Unlike many ag-focused startups that take the top-down approach by starting with tech and trying to pitch it to farmers, Wefarm uses a bottom-up model. They start with the farmers, and then connect them with simple technology. Really, all it’s offering is a bare-bones way for farmers to communicate; a sort of chat room which can operate without the internet. It’s sort of like a more low-tech, freestyle version of the online analytics-sharing platform Farmers Network, only Wefarm is free and covers a much wider range of topics.

As of now, Wefarm is operating in Kenya and Uganda, with plans to expand into Eastern and Sub-Saharan Africa. With a user retention rate of 90%, it seems that there is an actual need for this type of peer-to-peer information resource among farmers.

With their latest injection of funding, they hope to develop a set of new features for their farmer network. So far, they’ve only given details on one: Project Farmlog. This is a “smart farming assistant” that uses machine learning to give farmers crop and livestock support based on their questions. Wefarm has said that Project Farmlog will be interactive, though it doesn’t give concrete details on how it will actually help support farmers any more than their current services. It does promise, however, that it will work for anyone with a mobile phone.

And it’s from that simplicity where Wefarm derives it’s power and value. As more people join the service, more knowledge is immediately available. Which means that as Wefarm grows, so too will the crops across even more farms.