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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

future of drink

Bevi Fights Plastic Bottle Waste With Its Smart Beverage Machine

What’s twice the size of Texas, floats on water, and weighs as much as 500 jumbo jets?

That would be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

By recent numbers, there are roughly 1.8 trillion plastic pieces floating in the patch, which sits in the North Pacific ocean between Hawaii and California. Much of that debris comes from plastic drink bottles, which can take hundreds of years to disintegrate. The U.S. alone buys about 29 billion water bottles per year, and only one in six of those are recycled. The rest wind up in landfills or, more often, the ocean.

Finding an alternative to those plastic bottles is the core mission behind Bevi, the smart beverage dispenser currently making its way into offices, gyms, schools, and hotels. In the words of cofounder and Head of Marketing Frank Lee, the company is “building a future without plastic bottles and cans.”

The Bevi machine dispenses both still and sparkling water, which can also be flavored, and comes in two sizes: a five-foot-tall dispenser and a countertop model. It’s hooked up to a tap water source, and that water runs through the machine’s custom filtration system. Users, meanwhile, can select flavors (the machine can hold up to four at one time) and adjust their drink’s sweetness with a sliding scale that appears on the touchscreen. All flavors are vegan, kosher, and sweetened naturally, according to the company.

But back to the floating garbage patch: Bevi Cofounder and Head of Product Eliza Becton started reading about it when she was studying industrial design at Rhode Island School of Design. “[Bevi] was essentially a way for her to figure out how to clean up the ocean,” says Lee. Becton, Lee, and CEO and cofounder Sean Grundy joined forces in 2013 and started making smart beverage prototypes, from which Bevi was eventually born.

Besides being an eco-friendly alternative to bottled drinks, Bevi is also trying to offer more consistency and precision when it comes to flavor. A traditional soda gun (which the trio reverse engineered at one point in the name of research) has no consistent flavor level or carbonation settings. So instead, Bevi used some of the same technology found in medical devices, where dispensing the correct dosages is life or death. In other words: precision is paramount.

Water flavors may not fall in the lifesaving department, but digitizing the way people get them still delivers a much more consistent product.

Lee points out a couple other advantages to being digital:

For one, Bevi is an internet-connected machine, which means the company can monitor flavor data in real time. That makes it much easier to know when a machine’s flavor supply needs to be refilled. Office managers, Lee points out, typically have to restock beverages by going to a place like Costco and buying cases that have to be lugged back to the office or facility. By proactively monitoring levels and dispatching someone to refill them before they run out, Bevi eliminates this particular task, along with the wasted time and back pain that goes along with it.

The other advantage to being digital is that it allows Bevi to analyze which flavors are working, which are less popular, and any other noteworthy trends. At the start of the year, for example, cucumber-flavored water spiked as people were making their new year resolutions. That’s great information for Bevi, who can plan ahead to next January and push “cleansing” flavors accordingly.

Right now Bevi is focused on putting their devices in public places, where they see the most opportunity. While many, including myself, have asked about a home version of the machine, Lee didn’t have any specifics as to if or when that might materialize. Currently, both models of the machine are only available for business use. Pricing varies by company, but the Bevi website notes that “Bevi can cost as low as 26 cents per drink.”

Bevi is all about changing consumer behavior, which is a cornerstone of any true innovation. It’s also not easy to accomplish, and when it comes to plastic water bottles, there are decades of conditioning to undo in consumers before the majority of them opt for a more eco-friendly alternative. That’s really true for any kind of beverage receptacle, plastic or otherwise. I’d love to see a future where everything from fast food joints to Starbucks to the gas station has a Bevi or Bevi-like machine that’s not only digital but also offers a a real alternative to those fridges full of plastic.

No telling if that’ll actually happen, but in terms of changing the way we think about what we drink, the folks at Bevi seems up to the challenge.

5 Interesting Things We Saw at the Specialty Coffee Expo 2018

This past weekend was the Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle, and it was a playground for all things java, joe, and bean juice-related. We saw robot baristas, we saw electric coffee roasters, we saw coffee connection apps — and we also drank lots and lots of free samples.

Here are five things that piqued our highly caffeinated interest on the show floor. Maybe they’re hinting at the new wave of specialty coffee trends to come?

Beanscrop’s handheld espresso machine

For those who love their espressos (and macchiatos, cappuccinos, etc.) but don’t have a few grand to drop on a home espresso machine, Beanscrop might be a good investment.

From South Korea, Beanscrop’s coffee makers require no electric power, disposable filters, or cups. Their Cafflano Klassic is a coffee grinder, filter, and travel mug all in one — just add hot water. But the product that really caught our eye was their handheld espresso maker: it weighs less than 6 ounces and uses hydraulic water compression to help users push down with exactly 9 bars of pressure — the magic number for espresso-making. The coolest part? According to their team at the booth, it works with hot or cold water. The Kompresso is available on Amazon for $109.95.

Ground Control’s flashy batch brewer

Ground Control‘s Cyclops coffee brewer machine won Best New Product (Commercial Equipment) at the expo. The machine looks like something that would be in Frankenstein’s lab, complete with coils and glass bulbs. What Ground Control says makes its coffee so special is the multiple infusions. Basically, the machine siphons hot water over a bed of coffee grounds, then extracts all that coffee and siphons it out into the glass bulbs on top of the machine. It then re-infuses the grounds with more hot water and combines the two extractions, resulting in what is, apparently, an amazing cup of coffee.

I couldn’t taste the difference, but I did really enjoy the awesome-looking brewing process as the coffee spews out of the top.

 

SpeedETab mobile ordering platform

You know when you really want a latte but the line at your local coffee shop is too long to mess with? SpeedETab wants to help you skip right to the front by allowing its users to order and pay for drinks and food ahead of time.

The Miami-based company provides a white label ordering platform independent coffee shops. Other companies like QuickCup and Joe Coffee also let users order their coffee ahead and skip the line, but what sets SpeedETab apart is its malleability. They work with their coffee shop clients to make specialized apps tailored to their particular brand. SpeedETab starts with their templated app, then adds in the icon, logo, and color palette of their clients’ coffee shop in an effort to push brand loyalty.

SpeedETab charges shops flat fee for all their services and ingrates directly into their PoS system. The platform seems like a valuable tool for smaller coffee shops which don’t have the money or staff to design and run their own app, but want to get in on the order-ahead trend.

 

Individual pourover coffee bags

Quite a few booths featured single-serving pourover coffee bags. Individually packaged like tea bags, these pre-filled coffee filters balance over your coffee mug. All you have to do is slowly pour hot water over the top, stirring once or twice to agitate the grounds and extract all the flavor. Coffee Blenders and Twin Peaks are two that I noticed specifically, but this coffee delivery system was definitely out in fine form at the expo.

As someone who is quite the coffee snob and sometimes finds myself in situations without good coffee, these little on-the-go bags could be lifesavers. Many are also compostable, so they would be great options for camping or other trips where you’re not sure you’ll have access to a high-quality cup of joe.

Twin Peaks pourover coffee bags.

 

IceColdNow keeps your cold brew chilled

We’ve seen products that can keep your coffee hot or keep it cold, but how about one that can go from one to the other? Ice Cold Now‘s electric chiller, the Cafe Cold Wave, takes hot, freshly-brewed coffee and cools it in one minute thanks to a refrigerant-filled stainless steel coil. Users can set their desired temperature on a screen on the machine.

“Basically all iced coffee being served is old,” said Ice Cold Now founder David Dussault. “This is going to be fresh, just like your hot coffee.” This enables coffee shops to serve cold coffee without spending 12 to 24 hours cold-brewing, which requires a lot more coffee beans and also doesn’t extract all of their flavor. With Ice Cold Now, you also don’t have to use ice, so there’s no dilution.

Here’s a video we took of the Cafe Cold Wave in action on the Expo show floor. The product is available for preorder now on Ice Cold Now’s website.

Did we miss any other cool coffee gadgets, tech, or trends at the Specialty Coffee Expo? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @thespoontech!

A Brewery In Australia Is Developing Beer For Space Travel

Since we’re officially going to Mars, it’s time to sort out what we’ll eat and drink once there. Freeze-dried food is alive and well. We’ll be able to grow produce. And, as Food & Wine noted recently, you can pair those leafy greens and Styrofoam-like entrees with a bottle of beer.

Vostok Space Beer is the brainchild of Australia’s 4 Pines Brewing Company and research and development company Saber Astronautics. Branding themselves, “space guys who love beer,” the two companies have come together to create a brew you could actually drink once you’re beyond gravity’s pull.

Brewing beer for space takes a somewhat different set of skills than traditional brews, and the Vostok team faced multiple challenges in creating a beer that would actually work in space.

For one, the human body absorbs alcoholic beverages differently in zero-gravity environments. Traditional beer drunk in space would not only taste different, it could also do strange and possibly gross things to your digestive system. There’s also the whole drinking-and-flying debate to consider.

Packaging, too, is an issue the folks at Vostok have had to work through. Because you can’t pour liquid properly without gravity, the team had to design a special bottle that would defy gravity. To address that, Vostok went to great lengths to develop something that would give drinkers the experience of holding an actual beer bottle, using “modified technology from fuel tanks.”

“We’ve created the beer and created the bottle. Now it’s just piecing them altogether,” says 4 Pines’ Jaron Mitchell.

The reality is probably not quite so simple. Alcohol and space have a complicated history together, one that’s rife with politics. Buzz Aldrin may have had a glass of wine on the moon, but booze is actually banned from the International Space Station today. That’s probably a good thing, as far as the astronauts are concerned. Whether regulations change once the average tourist starts taking trips to space is a question we’ll see debated more in the coming years.

Right now, the product appears to be more in the conceptual stage than anything else. Vostok is raising funds via an Indiegogo campaign, though as yet it only has a few thousand of its $1 million goal.

Also, space tourism may be inevitable, but not for some years. So at present, your $90 minimum donation will only get you the bottle, sans beer. But based on the concept designs, it’s still a pretty cool piece to have in your collection, and if you’re lucky enough to win a spot on this parabolic flight, you might actually be able to use it.

PepsiCo’s Drinkfinity: Bad Name, Tasty Beverages.

The inescapable feeling I got upon receiving my Drinkfinity package was that its parent company PepsiCo was trying too hard. Drinkfinity feels like your dad spinning a baseball cap backwards and suddenly beatboxing in some misguided attempt to connect with you on the way to soccer practice.

Which is too bad because independent of that, Drinkfinity is actually pretty good.

Basically, it’s a way to create flavored drinks. You buy a special “Vessel” (ugh) that comes with a piercer on top. You then buy special flavor pods that you press down on the piercer to transform your water into a colorful beverage.

You can see why PepsiCo is trying this out. Soda sales are declining as people turn away from sugary drinks and a raft of natural upstarts like LaCroix are taking market share.

The company is also really pushing a conscious capitalism type of message with Drinkfinity. The pod-infused drinks range from 30 to 80 calories (though some still contain 11 to 17g of sugar). PepsiCo says the reusable vessel and smaller sized pods use up to 65 percent less plastic than a 20 oz. ready-to-drink bottle, and you can recycle the pods via mail.

I ordered the “One for Me” bundle, which came with the Vessel plus four flavor packs (each containing four pods) for $35. Fill the Vessel with water, pick your flavor, push the pod down on the top of the bottle and shake. I tried Pomegranate Ginger Flow and Oatberry Flow, and of the two, Oatberry Flow — which includes whole oat flour — tasted better. Additional four packs of pods cost between $5.95 and $6.50 (so roughly $1.50 per drink).

But it’s when you examine the flavor pods that you can start to see Pepsi turn its hat backwards and slide in the Biz Markie cassette. Flavors are grouped into modes like “Charge,” “Flow,” and “Chill” depending on whether you want to energize or relax or, one presumes, hang with Poochie.

Popping the flavor pod, you can almost hear the Pepsi marketing department say “millennials love to chill.”

Then there is the name, Drinkfinity. I can’t won’t bring myself to say it out loud.

Again, this is too bad because, despite all the over marketing, I kinda like Drinkfinity. The water bottle’s a good size, and features a magnetic holder to keep the lid in place. The two pods I tried were pretty tasty. And I like the idea of having a bunch of drink choices taking up a small footprint in my pantry.

But then again, I’m a bit older (and a dad), and this product is clearly not aimed at me. Which is fine, though perhaps I’ll re-up my initial flavor pod order when I’m done with this set. Beatboxing can leave you pretty dehydrated.

One-Stop Shop Wine App Vivino Snags $20M in Funding

It’s a good day for wine lovers (and wannabe lovers) everywhere. Vivino, the world’s most downloaded wine app and largest online wine marketplace, just raised $20 million in series C funding.

The latest funding round was led by SCP Neptune International, the investment arm of former Moet Hennessy CEO and Chairman of VinExpo Christophe Navarre. This comes about two years after Vivino’s series B funding round which raised $25 million, also led by SCP Neptune International. Put ’em together and that puts Vivino’s total aggregated funding at $56.3 million.

Vivino plans to use the new investment capital to expand its wine marketplace and add key team members. They’re aiming to reach $1 billion in wine sales by 2020 and have plans to expand into Hong Kong

The Denmark-based company launched in 2010 with the goal of easing consumer’s wine purchasing experiences. After downloading the app, users can take a photo of their wine label and proprietary image recognition technology will promptly deliver pricing, ratings, and provide them with an option to purchase. And, with an annual subscription of $47, users can get their curated wine selections delivered to their door at no added cost.

According to Vivino, since its series B funding round closed, their user base has skyrocketed from 13 million to almost 29 million. They haven’t cornered the wine delivery market yet, though: companies like Winc, Blue Apron Wine, and retail behemoth Amazon also offer vino delivery.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this announcement is what it could mean for the specialty foods purchasing experience in general. Vivino brands themselves as “an online wine community, database and mobile application” aimed at easing the user’s wine-buying experience. Which, let’s face it, can be pretty confusing and inconvenient: Do you prefer Bordeaux or Zinfandel? What’s a good bottle to go with fish? And once you’ve found a grape you want to try, you’ve got to track it down and find the best price. (Delectable is an app that offers wine label scanning, recommendations, and pairings, but you have to download a companion app for delivery.)

We’ve already written about direct-to-consumer wine delivery and Ai-powered sommeliers, but the interesting thing about Vivino’s is its abililty to combine these into one neat app. They provide a trusted review platform, suggesting new bottles for their users, then deliver them to their door, creating a seamless purchasing experience across multiple channels. Plus it would really come in handy for those times your party ran out of rosé but you don’t want to go to the store to get more.

Vivino’s move to combine mobile commerce and an online marketplace with their personalized wine recommendation system is an exciting example of vertical integration in the grocery-delivery sphere. It’s a model that I could see expanding into other specialty consumable goods, such as artisan coffee or even marijuana; areas where delivery apps may already exist but not with such a heavy emphasis on customer guidance and handholding.

I could also envision a future where Vivino (or similar apps) link up with food delivery services like UberEats, delivering you a bottle of wine paired perfectly with your tofu pad thai. I’d be hyped to try this combo, just as long as it doesn’t involve my wine nemesis: Pinot Noir.

You can hear about Vivino in our daily spoon podcast.  You can also subscribe in Apple podcasts or through our Amazon Alexa skill. 

FirstBuild Wants to Crowdsource A Next-Gen Drink Machine For Your Sink

FirstBuild, the idea incubator and microfactory from GE Appliances, and the company behind the popular Opal Nugget Ice Maker, is hoping to crowdsource a drink machine that could go directly in your sink. The company is teaming up with cloud-based CAD software company OnShape in what they are calling the Drink Sink Challenge, a contest where makers will submit their CAD-based concepts to a panel of judges and the top three winners will be awarded cash prizes.

The contest follows a recent hackathon by FirstBuild in which the winner was a group that proposed the idea of integrating a drink dispenser directly into a sink. From the contest starter kit:

Last month, GE Appliances’ FirstBuild hosted a hackathon where the winning team developed an idea for a drink dispenser combined with a kitchen sink. With the growth of pod-based beverage centers for both coffee and cold beverages, this totally makes sense: Users are looking for more streamlined experiences, especially when precious kitchen countertop space is at stake.

The thing is, this does totally make sense. The great unspoken problem in the digital kitchen revolution is a lack of counter space for all these cool new products, so I really like the idea of building more stuff into the actual counters. And besides, who wouldn’t want a next-gen drink machine built into the sink the dispenses hot, cold and fizzy drinks?

According to the contest rules, any design must dispense one or more of the following:

• Ice
• Hot water served at 170° F or higher
• Single-serving coffee using a Keurig or
similar beverage pod
• Chilled water served at 40° F or lower
• Chilled carbonated water
• Chilled flavored beverages

Making things even more interesting is the contest is cosponsored by Lowe’s and Delta Faucet.  While early FirstBuild products like the Opal Ice Maker and the Paragon have been innovative, they’ve yet to really become mass market products. I’m intrigued to see if whether working with a large retailer and faucet company in these types of competitions could ultimately lead to productization of some cool ideas that reach wider audiences.

Another interesting angle to the competition is it looks like it’s one of the first big competitions for the new Giddy platform from GE Appliances and the folks that created FirstBuild. The platform is primarily an app that enables designers and creators to enter contests that range from ones with cash prizes (like the Drink Sink) to smaller ones like the Napkin Sketch Challenge for reimagining the future of the spice rack. This paper napkin sketch concept is really cool since folks are actually turning in what looks like sketches on napkins. One of my favorites is this Spice Jar Table RFID Reader.

An RFID Spice rack. Source: Giddy creator AaronMcD.

Giddy is somewhat reminiscent of Quirky, the crowdsourced creation company that was closely tied to FirstBuild in its early days.  Quirky, which just debuted a new version of itself under its new owners, had raised $30 million from GE in 2013 to design and build connected home products. Quirky was founded by Ben Kaufman. In a sign that old collaborations never die but are just reinvented, Kaufman’s Buzzfeed Labs teamed up with FirstBuild this summer to help build the Tasty One Top.

Move Over Coffee Pot, Chime Is The Keurig For Chai

Coffee gets all the glory – the fancy machines, the social media memes, the cute mugs. But outside the U.S., different forms of tea are even more popular than coffee. First created in India, chai tea is renowned for its unique, spice-based flavor and has a cult-following of devotees across the globe. The team at Camellia Labs believe that the chai tea latte is just as special as a cup of coffee and deserves its own unique experience and they inveted Chime, the first authentic chai tea brewer to create just that.

INTRODUCING CHIME - AUTHENTIC CHAI IN 3 MINUTES!

Like a Keurig or similar cup-based brewing machine, Chime is a single touch brewer. Chime simmers milk for the beverage while combining whole tea and spices in a brewing chamber. When the two are ready, the milk and steeped tea come together for the ultimate chai tea. The machine uses recyclable capsules called Chime Caps that are filled with Indian tea, similar to K-Cups. The current flavor lineup includes black tea, cardamom, ginger, cardamom ginger, and masala.

Chime lets users tweak the temperature, strength and milk content of the beverage to further customize their chai tea latte. The system adapts to a user’s chosen preferences and remembers for the next cup. With Chime, Camellia Labs is looking to increase the chai market presence and make chai tea more accessible to people who are currently unfamiliar with the drink to create a whole new wave of fans of the unique beverage.

To learn more about Camellia Labs and Chime, visit http://brewchime.com/

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Bubble Lab Wants Robots To Brew, Pour & Serve You Coffee

The Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, inventors, culinary makers and cutting-edge product companies to showcase what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand. Now in its third year, the Startup Showcase + PitchFest take place during SKS on October 10-11, 2017 in Seattle and is sponsored by the leading maker of soups and simple meals, beverages, snacks and packaged fresh foods, Campbell Soup Company. Campbell’s will provide a $10,000 cash prize to the winner, announced at live at SKS.

Imagine your Starbucks coffee one day being served to you by a robot – that’s the vision that Beijing based Bubble Labs had when they created the Drip barista robot. Drip is a precision engineered fully self-functioning mechanical arm that can brew, pour and serve coffee all while maintaining product consistency. It mimics the movement of a human performing every piece of the coffee brewing process.  Drip first wets the filter and warms the server. Then, it distributes the coffee cups, pours the coffee and cleans up the space, while wiping down the counter, and even discarding the filter offering a complete coffee creation experience. Every detail is considered – down to the ability to create recipes and customize parameters that Drip then utilizes to create product that is consistent.

Robotic barista making hand drip coffee by Bubble Lab

Busy café owners often run into the issue of creating consistent, quality-made product for mass quantities of coffee, while also maintaining a level of cleanliness in their establishment. Drip aims to enhance the experience of café-goers while also streamlining and simplifying operations for managers. Drip also gives baristas back their time, freeing them up to create different kinds of coffee drinks rather than wasting time on the same product. For example, Drip could be calibrated to only create black coffee so baristas in a shop are able to create lattes adorned with eye-catching designs that may be more time consuming.

Although the Drip arm is set to work for coffee making now, Bubble Labs have shared that additional robots for varying scenarios are also in the product pipeline. Robot taco makers, anyone?

Learn more about Bubble Lab at http://www.bubblelab.com/

Use this link to get 25% off to the Smart Kitchen Summit & see the startups in action!

Is Instant Aging the New Frontier for Wine?

When it comes to wine, most of us know that time for aging is essential. The last thing we want is what Steve Martin refers to in The Jerk as “fresh wine,” and many fine wines go through extensive filtration processes and years of barrel aging. At Cavitation Technologies Inc. (CVAT), though, researchers have come up with a patented process that can purportedly duplicate and even improve upon the wine aging process — all in a matter of seconds.

Specifically, Cavitation Technologies has a patent on:

“A method and device for manipulating alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to obtain desirable changes in the beverages, comprising subjecting said beverages to a flow-through hydrodynamic cavitation process and continuing the application of such process for a period of time sufficient to produce a consumable product. In the case of wine, the method includes altering the composition and accelerating the conversion of ingredients to obtain wine with a superior homogeny, an extended shelf life and a mouth feel, flavor, bouquet, color and body resembling those of wine that was subjected to a traditional oak barrel maturation.”

In the following video from MoneyTV, CVAT’s Global Technology Manager and founder, Roman Gordon, demonstrates that it only takes about two minutes for the process to execute, when applied to making cognac:

As noted in the video, the cavitation reactor changes the composition of the beverage at the molecular level, encapsulating the water clusters around alcohol clusters, and simultaneously removing the unhealthy impurities that are in alcoholic drinks, including methanol and butanol.

The folks at CVAT originally developed their patented technology for use in edible oil refining, algal oil extraction, and renewable fuel production. They are now looking into how to bring their technology to market for consumers, and, as the patent notes, it can be applied to much more than just replicating the effects of aging on wine.  As reported by Equities.com, CVAT’s leaders also claim that their process can eliminate the hangover effect following drinking. Imagine the market for that.

Beyond the wine and beverage industries, there is also active research underway on techniques for instantly fabricating food customized for your DNA and health needs. And, 3D printing is also giving rise to many new culinary approaches. Take a look at the colorful, geometrically complex sugar-based shapes and concepts seen here, which make your local diner’s sugar cubes look downright unimaginative. Many such concepts have been shown at the 3D Food Printing Conference in Venlo, the Netherlands.  Chefs have also created five-course 3D-printed meals, and scientists have created 3D-printed beef.

Calling All Startups: Apply To Pitch & Demo At 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit

One of the best parts of attending the Smart Kitchen Summit is getting a front row seat to brand new technology and innovative products that are coming down the pipeline. The event’s startup showcase is now in its third year and invites all startups in the food tech and smart kitchen space to apply for a spot.

Details

The Startup Showcase is the perfect way to demonstrate the most innovative new ideas, products and companies reinventing food, cooking and the kitchen. If you have the next great idea that will change the way we buy, cook, store, or consume food, apply today on the SKS website. Anyone with a working product that is either a late-stage working demo or actually shipping is welcome to apply free of charge.

SKS organizers will select 15 startups as finalists and they will be invited to the event to demo their product and get on the Summit stage to talk about who they are and how they’re going to change the future of food, cooking or the kitchen.

From these 15, a winner will be chosen from a mix of judges and crowd-voting and be crowned the winner of the Startup Showcase on October 10th.

To apply, fill out the application and make your case for why you deserve to be a finalist – the more articles, photos, videos and compelling info you can provide on your product and company, the better your chances are of grabbing one of the coveted tables at the 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit.

Past Startup Showcases

The Startup Showcase in 2016 proved to one of the top highlights of the Smart Kitchen Summit – attendees poured into the showcase room to see live demonstrations of 3D food printing, home growing systems, smart precision cooktops, connected spice racks and more. For startups, the Smart Kitchen Summit audience consists of directors, executives, investors and press across the tech, food, design, housewares and appliances, commerce and retail spaces.

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The 2017 Showcase will not only offer a demo table and an eager audience but a demo space in the heart of the main Summit event at Benaroya Hall and a chance to pitch a panel of judges and the audience. No event brings together the decision makers and disrupters from across the food, cooking, appliance, retail and technology ecosystems. The Startup Showcase provides a platform for exciting startups, investors and entrepreneurs to demonstrate what they are working on and let others experience it firsthand.

The deadline for applications is August 15.

Technology Drives the Future of the Self-Service Bar

Are we bidding goodbye to the days of pouring out your troubles to the neighborhood barkeep? As self-service technology eases its way into the hospitality business, a few daring entrepreneurs are willing to exchange customer intimacy for efficient and increased sales.

Case in point is Tapped, a suburban St. Louis self-serve bar where 48 taps of self-service beer, wine and even cold-pressed coffee are the stars. Using a system from iPourit, owners Ryan and Lindsay Reel converted a former pizza parlor into a modern taproom where customers use an IoT bracelet to sample the various beverages. All but one beer are from Missouri or Illinois and, in keeping with the heritage of the former pizza joint, Tapped serves pizza and desserts from a local bakery.

The iPourit technology excels in such a setting because it facilitates the tasting experience in a rather seamless manner. A customer is given a special bracelet when her or she enters (after giving a credit card for a tab) and then taps their device on a special screen to taste each beer. The screens offer additional information about the beers on tap, and just to keep things slightly human, Ryan Reel and another staffer are on hand for expert advice.

Featured on CNBC’s Billion Dollar Buyer, the company squared off against casino/restaurant magnate Tilman Fertitta’s traditional bar. The upstart not only outsold the standard-issue model by 4x, but the reaction from customers was uniformly positive. iPourit, based in Lake Forest, Calif., operates on a business model in which it receives one cent per ounce of beverage sold, with a base cost of $1,200 per tap for basic installation. The company’s clients include zPizza in Arizona, North Carolina and California, and Marriott hotels in Orlando and Baltimore.

iPourIt on Billion Dollar Buyer

While the iPourit system is on target for clients such as Tapped and other high volume establishments, the self-service model can fall flat on its face in the wrong setting and with the wrong product.

Case in point, Soma, a Portland-based kombuchery, who is experimenting with a self-service kombucha bar in Southeast Portland. Soma, a popular kombucha brand, added the self-service branch to its main speakeasy location earlier this year. The reaction to this odd implementation of technology has been, at best, lukewarm.

“I would gladly have settled for yet another f****ng coffee shop with succulents and taxidermy over this monstrosity,” wrote Portland Mercury’s Megan Burbank.

Aside from the fact that kombucha does not lend itself to a self-service model, the newest Soma taproom uses a funky mix of technology including an ATM-like contraption at the door. To enter the building, a customer must swipe his or her credit card. There are no store personnel in sight with only placards and other customers to advise newbies on how the system works. Tastings are a free for all where individuals can gorge themselves on free kombucha—albeit in small cups—without buying anything. To make a purchase, there are keypads to select cups, bottles or growlers for your kombucha. After a perplexing half hour in Soma’s experimental shop, it’s safe to say that technology works best when it enhances, not confuses, the customer’s experience.

iPourit is not alone in its attempt to automate the beer dispensing experience. Pour My Beer, is a direct competitor. Meanwhile, some individual bars, such as Red Arrow Taproom near Chicago, use their own technology to offer 48 craft beers available through what it calls a “pour pass.”

We Use 50 Billion Water Bottles Per Year. Here’s An Edible Container That Can Stop The Insanity

It’s hard to deny that the food industry is experiencing lots of disruption from startups around the globe who are trying to solve the market’s tough problems. Things like delivery, supply chain, sustainability, waste and sourcing are all on the minds of startups like Skipping Rocks Lab. The particular problem they’re trying to tackle? The proliferation of plastic bottles and the waste they generate.

Skipping Rocks Lab isn’t just minimizing plastic production or coming up with new ways to recycle water bottles – they’ve created a product that basically redefines the way water can be delivered and consumed. Meet Ooho, the water “bottle” that delivers single serve gulps of water and can actually be eaten.

Ooho Short Web from Skipping Rocks Lab on Vimeo

The Ooho balls look like a cross between a gross Jello-based dessert and one of those plastic stress balls you can squeeze to get out frustration. But the balls are in fact edible – made by dipping frozen balls of ice into an algae concoction – and biodegradable, meaning they won’t sit in the ocean somewhere for eternity but rather disintegrate after about 4-6 weeks. Given that 50 billion plastic bottles are used by humans every year (EVERY. YEAR.), it stands to reason that this type of innovation would attract lots of interest.

And so far, it’s working. Skipping Rocks has successfully funded their first campaign on CrowdCube and the videos of people popping spherical water into their mouths have gone viral. The company is mainly serving Ooho at events and festivals – and you can see why. They are small and are perfect for quick hydration where storage isn’t a factor. The product is great for things like marathons and sporting events as well.

But Skipping Rocks vision is to become THE go-to seaweed-based packaging company in the world; they clearly have plans to move beyond water and adapt this packaging to all types of beverages that might be served in plastic. How they move the concept from small balls of water to actual practical implementation remains to be seen. For one, people generally like to consume more than one sip of a beverage in any given setting, and the packaging as it stands cannot be resealed. Once you’ve bitten into it, you’ve committed to consuming whatever is inside in one shot.

The other issue is distribution – the idea that they could be sold widely to consumers in stores means the balls themselves will likely need some type of packaging around them. The membranes are edible and therefore can’t just be left to sit out in the open on shelves. The retail model definitely leaves some questions around sustainability and the impact of the product as a whole.

But for now, it will be interesting to see how the startup uses the investment money and what types of unique implementations they come up with next. And of course, we’ll keep our eyes out for any Ooho balls in the wild – and be sure to document the experience.