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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Givaudan

Givaudan Partners with Israeli Food Tech Incubator The Kitchen

Flavor and fragrance company Givaudan just announced a new partnership with The Kitchen, an Israeli food tech incubator.

Founded by the Strauss Group, the largest food & bev manufacturer in Israel, The Kitchen is a hub for emerging startups (many from Israel) looking to reinvent different parts of the food system. The program’s 12 current participants from cell-based meat company Aleph Farms to personalized recipe service MyFavorEats to food safety detector Inspecto.

According to an Givaudan announcement, The Kitchen’s partnership with Switzerland-based Givaudan will enable the latter to “expand its innovation ecosystem further by connecting with Israel-based food entrepreneurs who are contributing to the creation of healthier and sustainable products and solutions.” As details in the announcement were pretty scant, we’re still waiting to find out exactly what that means. We’ve reached out to Givaudan and will update this post if we hear back.

But it’s not too difficult to guess what the flavor and fragrance company will be getting out of the partnership: a direct line into the cutting-edge Israeli food tech ecosystem and a source for potential new company acquisitions. Working with an incubator like The Kitchen is also a great way for Givaudan to refresh their brand image as a company that’s hip with what’s new and not stuck in the past.

In fact, Givaudan has been slowly amassing partnerships with food tech innovation hubs around the world. In addition to The Kitchen, the company also works with Bits x Bites in China and EIT Food in Europe. Last December, Givaudan teamed up with Danone, Mars, and Ingredion to launch MISTA, a platform to help businesses solve problems in the food system, in San Francisco. And earlier this month, the company co-founded the Future Food Initiative, a joint venture with Swiss universities, Nestlé and food production company Bühler to encourage nutrition research in its native Switzerland.

Lately we’ve seen quite a few Big Food companies partnering with/creating their own accelerators to tap into emerging food trends. It seems like Givaudan is really taking the whole invest-in-innovation thing to heart — and I’m betting the company has more incubator partnerships in the pipeline.

Food Tech News: Cutting Edge Food & Bev Incubators and Seaweed Bread

Happy weekend, food techies. Hopefully your plans include nothing more strenuous than curling up under a blanket with a cup of cocoa watching The Final Table. But before you enter full binge mode, catch up on a few of our favorite food tech stories from around the web this week, featuring some new food and beverage incubators, pizza acquisitions, and bread made of seaweed.

Givaudan launches “optimizer” platform for food innovation companies
Flavor and fragrance company Givaudan has teamed up with Danone, Mars, and Ingredion to unveil MISTA, a new platform meant to help businesses develop innovative new products, strategies, and solutions for nagging food system problems. MISTA will open the doors of its 7,000 square foot San Francisco facility in 2019. The program will launch with 10 startups, including Wild Type (cell-based fish), Analytical Flavor Systems (AI-powered flavor prediction), and Drop Water (eco-friendly bottled water).

 

Pizza Hut to acquire online ordering provider QuikOrder
This week Pizza Hut announced that it would acquire QuikOrder, an online ordering software and service provider for restaurants. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With this acquisition, Pizza Hut is working to distinguish itself from high-tech competitors like Domino’s (who has an ordering chatbot) and Little Caesar’s (who, despite not offering delivery, has a pizza portal), and develop a so-called “personalized online ordering experience” for its customers.

 

Photo: Pixabay

USDA gives Maine company $600,000 to develop kelp-enriched bread
Seaweed snacks are taking off in popularity, and now there will be a new way to chow down on kelp: bread. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded VitaminSea, a Maine-based company that harvests and processes seaweed for use in food and supplements, a $600,000 grant to develop a bread made with seaweed (h/t FoodDive). This funding is on top of the $100,000 VitaminSea raised last year to develop the bread, called SeaKelp+. By putting kelp in bread, the USDA and VitaminSea hope to bring the health benefits of seaweed mainstream.

 

Grocery tech startup Fetch Rewards raises $8 million
This week Fetch Rewards, a Madison, WI-based grocery tech startup raised an $8 million funding round (h/t BizTimes). With Fetch Rewards’ app, users upload photos of their grocery receipts for points, which they can then redeem for in-store rewards. The company works with thousands of supermarkets, including Costco and Kroger. This latest round brings Fetch Rewards’ total funding to $35.3 million.

 

Food business incubator The Hatchery opens in Chicago
This week The Hatchery, a food & bev incubator, officially opened in the East Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago. Members will have access to the Hatchery’s kitchen production space as well as business incubation services, classes, and networking events. The space will also become the new permanent home for the Garfield Park Garden Network Neighborhood Market.

Did we miss anything? Give us a shout @TheSpoonTech!

Smell-O-Vision Meets VR with Givaudan’s Technology

Sure, you may have walked, flown, or even blasted aliens on a virtual world — but did you ever stop to smell the virtual roses?

With Givaudan‘s technology you can smell not only the roses but a variety of other scents in a virtual kitchen.

Here at the Food IT conference presented by The Mixing Bowl in San Francisco, Givaudan had their virtual-smells-in-a-box on display. Being the intrepid reporters we are, we strapped on a VR headset, grabbed a hand controller and stuck our nose in a scent emitter to smell bananas and strawberries as we made virtual smoothies, as well as (very strong) garlic and onions for our virtual steaks.

This tech will be making its way to consumers at some point, so if you plan on gaming in the near future, you’ll be able to smell gunfire or smoke as you wander the apocalyptic wasteland, or, more appropriately, the enticing aromas of cooked steak in The Legend of Zelda.

Check out the sites of virtual smells in our video below:

Smell-O-Vision Meets Virtual Reality with Givaudan from The Spoon on Vimeo.