Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

indiegogo

Meet Bloom, a Machine That Aims to Make Growing Spirulina at Home as Easy as Brewing Coffee

Spirulina is a blue-green algae considered a “superfood” due to its nutrient density, and it contains iron, B vitamins, and Vitamin E. A start-up called Canopi launched an Indiegogo campaign for its countertop machine named Bloom, which enables people to cultivate spirulina in their own kitchens.

Canopi aims to make growing spirulina with its system is just as easy as brewing coffee. Once the user adds water, a nutrient tablet, and living spirulina culture to the Bloom’s two growing pods, the machine optimizes light, heat, and airflow to create a perfect environment for spirulina to bloom.

With Bloom’s mobile app, users can track the growth of the spirulina, and be notifed once it is ready to harvest. After day five, users can simply press a button on the machine to turn the liquid spirulina into a paste. This paste can then be used in smoothies, soups, dressings, sauces, water, or even frozen into cubes for later.

The double pods provide a total of 10 grams of spriulina every five days (the recommended serving size is 5 grams), which equates to 14 servings per month. The Early Bird pre-order price for Bloom is £174 GBP (~$237 USD), and it comes with three months worth of nutrients.

In 2018, we covered a company called Spirugrow that had launched a campaign on Kickstarter for its at-home spirulina growing machine. This machine was bulky and costs €471 ($549 USD). Spirugrow, as The Spoon predicted, failed. Rob Russell, one of the creators of Bloom, said that the company learned from Spirugrow’s mistakes, and used this to inform its own machine design. Bloom is cheaper, smaller, and appears to be more streamlined compared to Spirugrow.

Of course that’s if and when they deliver the product. While Canopi has finished the Bloom design, they still need to go through testing and ramp up manufacturing. As readers of The Spoon know, manufacturing is usually the most challenging phase for young hardware startups.

Finally, although Bloom seems like an overall better design and concept compared to Spirugrow, it still begs the question: is there enough demand for homegrown spirulina? According to its Indiegogo campaign, there might be. Bloom has raised $116,987 USD of its $20,462 target, exceeding its goal by 571 percent. There are four days left in the campaign, and preorders for Bloom are still available.

Crowdfunded Home Beer Maker iGulu Appears to Be a Goner

If you love beer and are contemplating backing a crowdfunded home brew machine — don’t. This free advice is brought to you by more than a year of covering Kickstarted beer campaigns, most of which have taken the public’s money, only to shut down before shipping any product.

Following in the steps of Brewbot and HOPii, it now looks like iGulu is the latest automated home brewing appliance to fold. The following update was posted to Indiegogo and Kickstarter on April 4:

Dear Backers,

We regret to announce that we have to put our project in ‘hibernation’ and pause our regular update. For the past few weeks we have experienced some of the hardest challenges for our company and the project. Our funds were exhausted and we experienced a significant team downsizing due to the financial constraints.

While I still maintain great working relationships with all of our key team members, I couldn’t keep them as employees before I secure new funds from the investor. We have been talking with several prospects since last year, but the financial markets are unfavorable to start-ups like ours recently so I haven’t had any luck yet.

I’m still trying but I cannot at present give any specific timeline for recovery of this project. I will share any further updates whenever we have tangible progress that we are able to report. I deeply apologize again. We have shipped the first machine to one Australian backer. We will continue to fix existing bugs, optimize our product, ship 2nd, 3rd and more machines. Please believe us. We won’t give up.

Regards,

iGulu Team

This development isn’t actually that surprising for anyone who backed or followed the project. iGulu met its funding goal in May of 2016, and after a litany of production and manufacturing delays, the CEO publicly apologized to backers in December of 2017 and said the company had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from three Chinese VC firms to supplement the $1.1 million it had raised via crowdfunding. At that time, the company was expecting to ship its product in July 2018.

This projected ship date obviously came and went with no (well, one?) iGulus brewing up frosty mugs of beer for the backers who ponied up at least $489 a pop to get one. And though the latest update seems to offer those who funded the project a ray of hope, history shows its unlikely that all of the 1,000+ backers will ever get their iGulus.

We’ve reached out to iGulu for comment and will update if we hear back.

At this point, we sound like a broken record, but there’s a HUGE caveat emptor when backing hardware projects from untested companies on crowdfunding platforms. Designing a one-off prototype is relatively easy. Manufacturing that same device at scale in China brings up a host of unforeseen and expensive issues (see: Rite Press, Cinder).

Some home beer brewers have come out of crowdfunding unscathed — Picobrew and BrewArt, for example. I am also optimistic about BEERMKR because that was built by an existing company that had previous experience with beer-related hardware.

It doesn’t look, however, like iGulu has got what it takes to succeed. Appliance giant LG is getting into the home brew appliance business; maybe it can do what Desora did with Cinder and buy up iGulu’s assets for cheap.

Oh, and if that lone Australian who received their device is reading, please drop us a line to let us know how it works.

StixFresh Can Double Your Avocado’s Shelf Life with a Sticker

Whenever I head to the grocery store I can’t leave without buying a bunch of bananas. But I find that a) they all get ripe at exactly the same time, and b) I can never eat them quickly enough.

Thankfully this leads to a lot of amazing banana bread, but product waste is a huge problem in this country (and in my house). In the U.S. between 30 and 40 percent of all our food ends up in the trash, with fruit and vegetables being some of the most likely to be wasted.

StixFresh is trying to curb our produce food waste problem with a sticker. Just pop one on a piece of fresh fruit and it’ll extend its shelf life by up to 14 days.

I was initially skeptical too. StixFresh’s CEO and co-founder Moody Soliman explained the technology to me over the phone. “Interestingly, the non-sticky side is the effective one,” he said. The sticker’s coating contains compounds that plants naturally make to protect themselves from predators. When said compounds vaporize, they travel far enough to “cloak” the fruit in a protective compound, inhibiting bacteria growth to prevent premature spoilage and over-ripening.

So far, StixFresh works with apples, pears, avocados, dragon fruits, kiwis, mangoes, and citrus, and Soliman said that they’re working to grow the list. They’re also trying to branch out into more vegetables and the holy grain of food waste: berries. Not only do they spoil quickly, it’s also unfeasible to put a sticker on every single blueberry. “We’re exploring alternative delivery methods,” explained Soliman.

StixFresh has a patent pending for the technology. The stickers are Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA, which means they’re cleared to be used in food contact applications. They’re also made of paper, which means they’re better for the environment than all the plastic Chiquita banana stickers out there.

Then again, StixFresh’s end game is for their technology to end up on those branded stickers. “We’re envisioning that you’ll be able to apply our formulation to standard stickers,” said Soliman. “It will have Chiquita or Dole written on it, but it will have our [technology] in it as well.”

In addition to selling to distributors, StixFresh wants to make a consumer-facing option. Theoretically, people could pick up a pack of StixFresh stickers in the produce aisle and stick them on their avocados when they got home. “The simplicity of application allows it to be adapted at any point along the supply chain,” said Soliman.

This versatility is what sets StixFresh apart from Apeel, another produce-saving technology. Apeel creates an edible coating that farmers and distributors can apply to produce to extend shelf life. Which is super cool, but limiting; Apeel has also only been tested on avocados, asparagus, and some citrus fruits. The beauty of StixFresh is that it can be applied to a relatively wide variety of produce at any time, from harvest to home.

Of course, the downside is that you have to use stickers, which will eventually end up in a landfill. But that seems a small price to pay if it could significantly reduce the amount of food waste.

StixFresh recently launched an IndieGoGo campaign, which has exceeded its goal with 26 days left to go. The company is currently doing R&D out of a facility in Belgium and plans to send stickers to their early backers by August of this year. Soliman didn’t disclose pricing yet, saying it depended on how quickly they could scale production, but Early Bird backers on IndieGoGo can snag a pack of 50 stickers for $30.

As always when crowdfunding is involved, we have to have a healthy dose of skepticism about whether or not the product will actually make it to market. But StixFresh is a really good idea and (at least seemingly) pretty cheap to produce. Plus the company has a pending patent and some seed funding to back them up. If they do pull it off and I see their stickers in the grocery store someday, I’d definitely give them a try — even if that means less banana bread for me.

Cinder Rises From the Ashes, Backers to Get Their Grills Courtesy of Desora

Cinder Grill, the crowdfunded smart countertop cooking device that, errr flamed out last year (read our coverage of the legal saga), appears to be reborn, courtesy of an acquisition by Desora, who announced the news today.

In a pretty rare turn of events, the nearly 1,000 people who backed Cinder on Indiegogo will actually be getting the product they paid for! Most backers of failed hardware project get bupkis, but Desora posted the following on the crowdfunding platform today:

The Cinder Grill and its technologies were acquired and absorbed by Desora. Cinder is now being reintroduced as part of the Desora family of precision grilling and food products, including iKamand, a smart grill controller, ProJoe, Classic III, and Big Joe III, high-caliber grills powered by Desora. All of you who have supported Cinder previously will be receiving your grills as we bring the product to the U.S. market.

The Cinder can also be purchased online now for $429.

Upon hearing the news, we had a few questions, the first of which being, who is Desora? The company hadn’t come across our radar, but it has the aforementioned line of outdoor grill and grill control products including the iKamand smart grill temperature controller, so the Cinder acquisition is on brand for the company. According to Crunchbase, Desora has raised an undisclosed Series A round from Morningside Group, a Shanghai-based “private investment group founded in 1986 by the Chan family of Hong Kong.”

In the press announcement, Desora said it acquired Cinder in November 2018, which is a month after Cinder filed for bankruptcy UPDATE: Following the publication of this article, I learned from Desora’s CEO that his company’s acquisition offer was made before Palate Home actually filed the bankruptcy paperwork.. As we wrote back in October:

Chapter 7 bankruptcy means that Palate Home’s assets will be sold off to pay its creditors. What this means for the future of the technology behind Cinder is unclear. Will the underlying IP be acquired and baked into a different product?

We reached out to Desora to see if we could suss out any further details around the acquisition, the state of manufacturing and the future of the Cinder.

Rite’s Wrongs, Crowdfunded No-Mess French Press Is a No Show For Many Backers

Looks like you can add the Rite No-Mess French Press to the long list of crowdfunded hardware projects that have a hard time making it to market. Upset backers that haven’t received their product almost a year after the promised delivery date, have been venting their frustrations here at The Spoon and on Kickstarter:

Backers have been sharing information and screengrabs with us from Rite’s backer-only updates posted to Kickstarter, and here’s what’s happening:

What happened to the money?
Backers got riled up in earnest last week, when on February 4, of this year when Rite’s CEO, Sargam Patel, posted a video on Kickstarter saying that there have been manufacturing challenges (a factory quitting, filter issues) and they need more money (we watched a screencapture of the video). Patel says he sank most of his life savings ($280,000) into the project and has not paid himself. He then goes on to ask backers for $30 a pop to pay the factory as well as the shipping and duties.

In the video, Patel also says that the company raised over $1 million in pledges, which is technically true if you look at the Kickstarter page, where it says “21,771 backers pledged $1,086,974 to help bring this project to life.” But sifting through the multiple Indiegogo campaigns the company ran, it looks like Rite pulled in $220,400. Plus it won $25,000 in “flash funding” from Ingram Micro, bringing the total to $1,332,374. It’s not a huge gulf between what he says they crowdfunded versus the apparent reality, but it’s good to get the full picture.

In the video, Patel says he’s spent the money “responsibly,” and blames pricing the product too low ($25 – $50 depending on the model and when you pledged) and offering free shipping in the U.S. for the company’s woes.

Additionally, the company experienced manufacturing issues, which is pretty common for crowdfunded hardware projects.

In an update on February 7, Patel shared the financials in a backer-only update via Kickstarter, which were sent to The Spoon:


What’s missing from these numbers is the $220,000 raised on Indiegogo. Granted the number Rite would actually have collected was less as Indiegogo charges 5 percent commission, and Stripe charges 3 percent + .30 per transaction, but money earned should be included. Patel may not have included it as this was a message to Kickstarter backers, but the omission is relevant when you’re going back and asking people for more money.

Patel said that 7,000 people have received their presses so far. That means at least 14,771 backers still don’t have theirs (and that number doesn’t include any Indiegogo backers).

One other point, in the video Patel says that asking for the $30 from existing backers was a “non-starter” for the Kickstarter legal team so he is going out directly via email. Kickstarter confirmed via email to The Spoon that it determined asking backers for more money “was not an appropriate use of our platform.”

Why did Rite only allow for two months for delivering its product?
The Rite Kickstarter campaign happened in January 2018, and featured a number of variations on the product: a half-liter version, full liter, different colors, etc.. The estimated delivery date for most of these was March 2018. That’s just two months after the campaign reached it’s initial goal.

The Kickstarter campaign, which launched in January 2018, says that the first off tool samples of the french press happened in September 2017, and in November 2017, product testing had occurred. If this happened as listed, then perhaps the company felt that in all honesty, they could flip the switch, have the products produced, shipped and delivered in that short window.

But that obviously didn’t work out. In his February 7 update, Patel explains what happened:

The first factory built tools in 2017 for both the 1 liter and ½ liter. The factor started production on the ½ liter because they felt it was easier to produce than the 1 liter. The parts they were making had repeated problems that should have been an easy solve. At the same time the factory was not chasing 1 liter production schedule effectively. I feel the factory felt producing products to our quality standard was not going to be profitable for them so they told us they would not be producing product going forward. At this point we asked for our money back for the material deposits and tooling. They responded by saying they had already spent over hundred thousand dollars on development would not return the tools or deposits back. We spoke with an attorney in South China about this. His feedback was that we would spend far more than the cost of the tools and deposits in legal fees and it could take years to find a resolution. In my years of working with China, I have never had a factory do this.

Regardless, Rite obviously did not build in enough of a buffer in the schedule to accommodate unforeseen hiccups. Aside from poor planning, however, this created a certain expectation with the backers, and not only were those expectations dashed, the short window made it that much easier for a year to pass and raise the ire of backers.

What is happening with direct sales?
While Rite fields comments from angry backers on crowdfunding platforms for failing to deliver, the company is taking pre-orders on its website for the product. The site says pre-orders are shipping in Summer of 2019. How can they take money to fulfill that promise when they can’t even fulfill their all of their initial commitments?

In the Feb. 7 update, Patel says:

We will continue to ship Rite Presses to Kickstarter backers as funds become available. Right now our best source of funding toward this effort is the sale of products on our website and Amazon. The stronger the sales are in these channels, the faster we will be able to get all backers’ units. I understand this is not an ideal situation, but it is a path forward. THIS DOES MEAN THAT WE WILL START SELLING RITE PRESS ON OUR SITE IN A FEW MONTHS AT FULL RETAIL, and will use a portion of these sales to help ship backers units.

Rite also made 5,500 of its Essential+, a plastic version of its french press. It sells on on Amazon (but not directly on its site) for $50.

In his Feb. 7 update, Patel explains how the plastic version came to be when the metal versions are MIA:

3) Did you use backers funds to develop the plastic Essential+?

No. I see this question a lot in the comments section. When we decided to partner with Amazon for the plastic press, the first thing I did was raise separate funds for development and inventory of Essential + from outside investors. We used these outside funds to develop, tool and build it. The Essential + however is a backers biggest help. The funds that we can generate from sales of it on Amazon will help us ship backer rewards faster. We will deploy part of the profits from Essential + to ship Kickstarter backer funds.

So, was it naivete or hubris that bogged down Rite? Making crowdfunded hardware is, well, hard. That’s why Kickstarter launched its own hardware studio to help the platform, and backers, make sure product campaigns reach the market.

We reached out to Patel, as well as other people listed on Rite’s team page for clarification via email and Linkedin.

Like the Spinn, the Cinder and the iGulu, the Rite french press is another cautionary tale for would-be backers of crowdfunded hardware projects. Buyer beware, and be prepared for delays.

This article has been updated because of a typo in the crowdfunding number. The amount raised on Indiegogo was $220,400.

Court Ordered Cinder Grill Maker to Repay Tony Fadell’s Investment Firm $294,736

Palate Home, the company behind the Cinder grill, was ordered by a San Mateo court in August to pay $294,736 to Tony Fadell’s investment firm, Future Shape LLC. The default judgment compels Palate Home to repay a $250,000 loan to Future Shape plus $43,737 in interest as well as $999 in costs.

We are not lawyers, but from reading the court documents it looks as though on January 14, 2015, Future Shape provided a $250,000 loan in the form of a convertible promissory note to Palate Home. The original $250,000 plus five percent interest came due on July 14, 2016.

We uncovered this judgment working on a story chronicling the troubles Palate Home was having manufacturing and shipping Cinder to its crowdfunding backers. The Cinder is countertop electric appliance that delivered sous-vide like precision cooking without the need for plastic bags and a circulating water bath, plus the ability to sear meats — something sous vide wands can’t do. Our very own Mike Wolf was a big fan of the appliance.

The fact that Future Shape was involved at all must have been a feather in the cap (and money in the bank, evidently) for Palate Home. Future Shape is the investment firm of Tony Fadell, who is famous for helping invent the iPod and for founding Nest Labs. The fact that he was involved at all seems like validation, at least at the time of the loan, that there was something promising in the Cinder.

Indiegogo updates provided by Palate Home Co-Founder and CEO Eric Norman over the past year outline manufacturing issues that his company was experiencing that were, in turn, delaying the shipment of orders to its crowdfunders.

What’s interesting is the timing. The Future Shape convertible note was issued in January of 2015, came due in July 2016, and Palate Home closed its Cinder Indiegogo campaign in June of 2017, raising $552,405 from 800 backers, almost a full year after the loan was due. The lawsuit from Future Shape was brought in April of 2018.

According to Indiegogo updates from Norman:

February 6, 2018 – A factory in China has 500 built Cinders (after delays caused by a faulty cooking plate) ready to ship to California.

April 2, 2018 – Palate Home still has not shipped grills to California. “Consequently,” writes Norman, “We’ve done everything we can to reduce our expenses. As things started to get tight, we reduced headcount and stopped taking any salary.

April 9, 2018 – In a Q&A style post, Norman writes:

What is the status of the grills?
They are built and accepted at the factory. Your grills are part of a larger order and the factory is not willing to release part of the order without payment in full. We’re in a bit of a Catch-22 situation: Selling more grills without shipping yours is (quite reasonably) difficult. At the same time, shipping your grills without the money to pay the factory for the full order would require us to sell more grills or secure a loan. We are exploring a few ways to solve this and ship to you.

That same day, Future Shape filed its complaint against Palate Home for breach of contract. Curious sidenote: according to a service of process court document filed August 23, 2018, a Summons and Complaint was sent to Eric Norman at the address listed for the designated agent on the corporation’s Statement of Information. “According to the process server’s declaration dated April 24, 2018, no company called Palate Home, Inc., is listed at this address. The current company at that location is called Shenzhen Valley Venture and the process server was informed that no one at that location had ever heard of Palate Home, Inc., or Eric [middle name removed by The Spoon] Norman.” To be fair, as you will read, there is a connection between Palate Home and Shenzen Valley, there could be any number of reasons someone at Shenzen didn’t know about Norman, especially depending on whom was interviewed.

July 2, 2018 – Norman says that he had reached an agreement to sell Palate Home to a Buyer that he says would have meant:

  1. All Indiegogo perks to be shipped with a target delivery of 3 months.
  2. Improvements customer service, software and recipe development, and shipping times.
  3. Initial cash payment earmarked to satisfy obligations to vendors.
  4. Royalties on future sales to provide a potential return for Cinder investors.

The problem, he says, is that the deal is being blocked by one of his investors. We should take a moment to recognize that Palate Home has more than one investor. According to Crunchbase (which, to be fair is not always up to date), Palate Home/Cinder has six:

  • Highway 1 (convertible note)
  • Zillionize Angel (seed round)
  • Scrum Ventures (seed)
  • Y Combinator (seed)
  • Angel List (equity crowdfunding)
  • Shenzen Valley Ventures (seed)

    • (Shenzen was mentioned by the process server in the previously mentioned court document)

This doesn’t appear to include the $552,405 raised on Indiegogo. Further, the $376,000 in total funding raised listed in Crunchbase seems to be just from the Angel List funding. Future Shape isn’t listed as an investor, and it doesn’t look like it’s $250,000 convertible note is listed. Doing the math, it looks as though at some point, Palate Home/Cinder had taken in at least $1.17 million, plus whatever money the company received from the remaining investors.

Going back to Norman’s update on July 2, 2018:

While investments in startups are generally considered to be long-term and non-refundable, we used a convertible note with one investor that gave them control over how to proceed at the maturity date. These notes are made to convert into equity at a future funding round. If a convertible note matures before such a funding round, there’s an expectation in Silicon Valley to either extend the maturity date – so much so that most notes give the company the ability to initiate conversion, and recent vehicles like the YC SAFE do away with maturity all together and simply convert at an equity event. While extremely unusual and unexpected, one of our investors asked for repayment at the maturity date. When we were not able to do so, they threatened legal action. This began a chain of problems for the company.

Norman writes that the “investor,” which is presumably Future Shape from the descriptions, agreed to a sale of the company and using that money to repay the loan. But, he writes: “Despite agreeing to this concept, this investor would not execute a written forbearance which killed any chance of moving forward.” Norman also alleges a number of clerical errors made by Future Shape in its filings.

August 5, 2018 – Norman writes “Since we were unable to reach a settlement agreement, we are essentially waiting for the court hearing which happens later this month.”

On August 17, 2018 a default judgment from the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo (filed August 23), was issued against Palate Home ordering the company to pay $294,736. As we understand it, the default judgment was given because Palate Home basically did not present a defense.

In an update last week, on September 6, Norman wrote “Hello everyone. We are in discussions and I expect to have things wrapped up by the end of this month one way or the other, so if you can please bear us just a little bit longer. I greatly appreciate your patience.”

What exactly went wrong with Cinder? Is it dead dead, or does this lauded device still have a chance? Will Palate Home appeal? We have reached out to both Norman and Future Shape for more information, and will update this post if we hear back.

TimberFish Launches IndieGoGo to Raise Trout on Brewery Waste and Wood Chips

It’s no secret that wild-caught seafood is fraught, what with its declining supply and associations with inhumane labor practices. Many tout farmed fish as a more ethical and sustainable (not to mention cheaper) way to satisfy our seafood cravings, which is why aquaculture is the fastest growing food-producing sector. In fact, as of 2016, aquaculture produced half of all fish for human consumption.

While aquaculture doesn’t lead to overfishing of limited ocean resources, it can have other unsavory consequences. Farmed fish produce a lot of waste (AKA fish poop), and can sometimes cause chemicals to leak into our drinking water.

And then there’s the fish food. Often, farmed fish are fed pellets of corn, soy, unwanted chicken parts, or even fish meal. Sometimes people even catch smaller, less popular fish from the ocean and grind them up to feed their farmed bretheren. Obviously, it takes a lot of energy and environmental resources to create all this fish food, and even more to filter out waste from fish enclosures.

TimberFish Technologies‘ eponymous technology promises to offer a more palatable alternative to aquaculture. The company launched in 2008 and have so far raised or won $260K, which they used to build a test facility at Five & 20 Spirits & Brewing facility in Westfield New York.

There, they feed their fish not with animal parts or corn, but with a combination of nutrient-rich wastewater from food processors (such as breweries, distilleries, and wineries) and woodchips. Microbes grow on the woodchips, small invertebrates (like worms and snails) eat the microbes, and the fish eat the invertebrates. The fish poop is grub for the microbes, and the whole cycle starts again.

In addition to seafood, the TimberFish system’s only outputs are clean water and spent wood chips, which can be used as a biofuel or soil supplement. Another benefit is that TimberFish can build their aquaculture farms close to cities, shortening the supply chain and guaranteeing fresher fish.

This is obviously not as idyllic as plucking salmon from the Alaskan seas or catching trout in a mountain stream, but, as aquaculture operations go, it’s not bad. And it’s certainly cost-efficient; diverting a waste product to make it profitable.

This week TimberFish Technologies launched an IndieGoGo campaign to raise funds for their no-waste, sustainable aquaculture system. If they reach their $10,000 goal, they’ll use the funds to design plans for a larger commercial facility, which they estimate could produce 2 to 3 million pounds of fish per year.

Investment has been slow so far, but personally I hope TimberFish gets the funds it needs to keep swimming along towards its goal of creating a more sustainable agriculture.

If you’re in New England and want to learn more about blue tech and sustainable seafood, join us for our next food tech meetup in Providence, RI on July 17th!

Kickstarted or Stopped? We Check In On Food Tech Crowdfunders To See How They’ve Fared

We are always looking for the next big thing in foodtech here at The Spoon and one of the first places we look is Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

But covering a campaign doesn’t guarantee success and, even when a product hits or exceeds its funding target, success doesn’t always mean shipping product. With that in mind, we thought we’d check back in on some of campaigns we’ve covered to see if they reached their funding goals and how close they are to shipping to backers.

NutriScale

Project: A chopping board + food scale in one
Funded? No. Raised just $1,239 (Canadian) of a $50,000 goal

GardenSpace
Project: A connected watering device for home gardens.
Funded? Yes. Raised $34,069
Delivering? No. Campaign creators said they did not receive the minimum number of orders, so they said they are refunding all backers.

Mealhero

Project: A combination of frozen meal kit delivery and countertop steam cooker.
Funded? Yes. Raised €79,151.
Delivering? Mealhero is using the money to expand farther into Europe, said it will roll out in Belgium and The Netherlands in September 2018.

Forktula

Project: A silicon spatula you affix to a fork to scrape up sauce.
Funded? Yes. Raised $11,215 (Canadian)
Delivering? In a Kickstarter update on December 17, campaign creators said people who bought Forktulas should expect them to arrive “any day now!”

Nomsly

Project: Kids’ lunch meal delivery service.
Funded? Yes. Raised $30,977
Delivering? Nomsly was already delivering lunches in the Boston area, and was using the money to buy equipment and expand into New York and Philadelphia.

Boiling Beeper

Project: Floating alarm that beeps when your water is boiling
Funded? Yes. Raised $10,088
Delivering? A campaign update in December said the company was on track to deliver devices by the end of January 2018.

iGulu

Project: Countertop beer brewing appliance
Funded? Yes. Raises $1.1 million
Delivering? No. Shipment of devices has been delayed until July 2018.

BrewArt

Project: Home beer brewing system
Funded? Yes. Raised $33,957
Delivering? Yes. According to comments left on Kickstarter in October, people were receiving their devices. BeerDroid and BrewFlo are available for purchase on the BrewArt site, on Amazon as well as, of all places, select Bloomingdales locations.

Hopii

Project: Countertop beer brewing appliance
Funded? Yes. Raised $382,321
Delivering: Estimated delivery for backers is June 2018.

Yomee

Project: Countertop yogurt maker
Funded? Yes. Raised $136,808
Delivering? Estimated delivery is April 2018

While this is a small sample size, it looks like crowdfunding is still a robust option for the right foodtech device. Fulfillment, especially for higher-end devices remains a challenge and something potential backers should still be wary of. We’ll keep tabs to see how shipments scheduled for later this year go.

Do you have a cool project going up on Kickstarter? Send me an email and let me know.

Smart Gardens Follow a Familiar Business Path

Entrepreneurs behind the recent raft of smart indoor gardens are following the digital commerce wisdom of those who understand the value of subscription-based businesses. The old, “buy the camera for cheap and we will sell you lots of film” concept has been successful for companies such as Keurig and Nespresso in maintaining multiple revenue streams.

Ava Byte, an Indiegogo project billed as “the world’s best automated smart garden,” may be the most trouble-free indoor growing appliance on the market. The Vancouver, B.C. startup has taken many of the features of its competitors such as Aerogarden and taken them to a new level. For example, the growing pods are soil free and include the necessary nutrients for optimal growth. The kit, with the standard smart garden goodies such as a base and grow light, also has an HD camera to monitor growing and sensors for precise watering. After getting Ava Bytes gardens into the hands of consumers, the company will be able to realize money from purchases of additional pods for about $6 per unit.

AVA Byte: World's Best Automated Indoor Smart Garden. Get #AVAByte Now at AVAgrows.com

Ava Byte also jumps on the voice-based smart home assistant bandwagon by being compatible with amazon’s Echo and Apple’s HomeKit. The company is led by Valerie Song and Chase Ando, a former chef, born out of Startup Weekend Vancouver 2015. Song was frustrated by her inability to keep plants alive in her sunlight-challenged apartment. She teamed up with engineers, designers and horticulturists to develop the smart garden that brings a bit of nature indoors.

Another difference between Ava Byte and others in the market is that it claims to be able to grow more than the usual herbs, lettuces, and small tomatoes. According to the company’s crowdfunding page, it can grow peppers, berries and mushrooms in addition to the standard fare.

The company has surpassed its $30,000 goal by 125% and expects to ship in March 2018.

The smart growing pods are an interesting component of the smart garden space. Even though Aerogarden pods are affordable, there are a number of hacks that show how to inexpensively make replacements pods. Using proprietary growing pods does offer the ability for smart garden companies to license their technology to third parties, but could be a turn off to the DIY crowd.

Going from super high-tech to cool low-tech, another crowdsourced entrant in the indoor garden space is from Urban Leaf and is billed as the world’s smallest garden. The product is a growing pod insert that slips into the neck of a bottle (green or brown preferred). First, the bottle is filled up to the neck with water and the insert is popped in. The pod is filled with additional water and then placed in a sunny spot. An interesting component of this option is that it reuses bottles you already have (wine, soda, etc.) and does not require investment in additional containers.

The company founders are Nathan Littlewood and Robert Elliott. Nate worked in the finance industry before leaving to become a chef and took cooking classes around the world. Rob is a PhD whose focus is on Vegetated Infrastructure. After meeting Nate in 2016, the pair began working on urban food growing systems.

Kickstarter - The World's Smallest Garden

Urban Leaf has an all or nothing goal of $40,000. As of June 14, with less than a week to go, the offering is a little under $7,000 short of reaching its goal.

Make sure to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking, and the kitchen. Use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

Maker Of A Much-Changed SmartPlate Hopes To Ship This Summer

When the Sharks bite, sometimes you just have to pivot. Or, at the very least, tweak your hardware design a bit.

That’s what happened with Fitly and their product SmartPlate.

The original SmartPlate, which managed to raise $110 thousand on Kickstarter, included three embedded cameras, a weight sensor, and wireless connectivity. The product worked like this: the plate’s embedded cameras would analyze the food using image recognition software and, combined with the embedded weight sensor, spit out a nutritional analysis in the associated smartphone app.

If that sounds like an overly complicated and expensive solution, that’s because it is. And when Fitly employee Martin Dell’Arciprete appeared on Shark Tank in the fall of 2015 (the show aired in February 2016) to pitch the SmartPlate, the Sharks were quick to smell blood in the water. Cuban and company echoed what many others had thought: why would someone buy a $200 plate with embedded cameras and sensors when you could do much of the same with a phone app?

Kick Calorie Counting with SmartPlate - Shark Tank

It was a brutal showing. Not long after the appearance, Dell’Arciprete was fired by company CEO Anthony Ortiz. A partnership with former Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee, announced about the time the company was going on Shark Tank, was never mentioned again.

But less than a year after the episode aired, Ortiz and the SmartPlate were back raising funds, this time with a much different product. Now called the SmartPlate Topview, the product was now modular and included a base with all the embedded electronics and separate plastic plate that looked much like the previous tri-portion plate, but only this time without any embedded electronics. Gone were all of the cameras, as all picture taking duties and image analysis were now performed by the smartphone and the SmartPlate app.

For the new campaign, Ortiz and company moved the revamped SmartPlate to Indiegogo. The pitch was much the same, including some of same original video clips and backstory as told by Ortiz on the Kickstarter campaign. However, the price for the new SmartPlate were also lower this time around, with estimated retail for the revamped product at $149 (with three plates and a base), compared to the $199 for the original SmartPlate.

Most would look at this changes and say they were necessary; after all, one has to wonder why a plate would ever need its own camera, let alone three.

Still, even now, I am not sure why an actual plate system is necessary. While the company states that the base and associated plates together give the best overall performance, they admit that you can use the app by itself to analyze food without the plate.

But after a long journey which included two crowdfunding campaigns, the company looks like they may accomplish what looked pretty impossible just a year ago: shipping product. According to a recent update by Ortiz on their Indiegogo page, Fitly has ordered 10 thousand units for production.

And sure, with all the bumps in the road, it’s easy to be skeptical. But the company has someone vouching for them this time. According to an Arrow spokesperson, the new SmartPlate’s electronics and software are ready for manufacturing. My guess is that Arrow probably wouldn’t put their name on this campaign if they didn’t think it could ship, so it looks like backers may actually soon getting their SmartPlates.

Want a sneak preview of SmartPlate? You can download the app and check it out. And who knows? Maybe you’ll like the app so much you’ll buy the plate.

Are These Crowdfunding Projects the Next George Foreman Grill?

We talk a lot about the high-tech kitchen here at the Spoon, but we’re also fascinated by low-tech kitchen sensations, and no low-tech kitchen gadget has been more successful than the George Foreman Grill.

A few weeks ago we interviewed the inventor of the George Foreman Grill, Michael Boehm, who told us the story behind the infomercial sensation. But that was back in the ’90s. These days blossoming startups don’t take to TV but rather connect on crowdfunding sites to make their fortune.

Here are seven low-tech projects that might just be the next George Foreman Grill:

Empanada Maker

Simplify the process of making empanadas by using this tortillas-press-like device that would make Boehm proud. No muss, no fuss, no electricity. It’s even got a snappy name: the margariteña. The company wants to make the device lighter, which is why they’re raising funds.

Portable Keg

Unless you’re in college, it’s absolutely unacceptable to keep your keg cold by floating it in a trash can full of ice. DraftPak has a cooler solution: Put the DraftPak (which looks suspiciously like a cooler/trash can) on top of the keg and add ice! On the positive side, it uses CO2, so you don’t need to pump the keg.

Hipster Ice Cubes

You know how when you go to a fancy cocktail bar these days, it takes the mixologist about 30 minutes to make your drink? Well, part of that is the bespoke ice cubes. Skip the line and make your own ice and cocktails at home with the Ice Ball Press, which makes a 2.5-inch sphere. (Note: It would also make a killer snow ball to throw at that neighbor you hate.)

Edible Non-Drip Ice Cream Cones

No more melted ice cream dripping down your arm! More importantly, no more melted ice cream dripping down your kids’ arms! Halo Cone stops that in its tracks, with a weird plastic device that catches the liquid. We’re not exactly sure how it’s edible, but we believe in the future.

Water Purifier

This one is essentially a plastic bag that harnesses UV light to kill bacteria in water, making it safe to drink. The company is aiming to help during and after natural disasters like the hurricane in Haiti, and they’re raising funds to scale production of the bags.

Manual Espresso Makers

There are actually two crowdfunding projects right now that do the same thing: help you make espresso the “old-fashioned” way. With both the PREXO and the Flair makers, you tamp the coffee grounds yourself; in the PREXO a piston extracts the espresso, and in the Flair you push down on a lever with your hand. It seems like a fair amount of work, but both are small devices that can easily be stored, not like the massive La Marzocco machine.

So what’s the takeaway here? There’s much innovation in the kitchen that doesn’t necessarily have to do with technology. In particular with the espresso makers, it’s clear that people are interested in returning to making food “by hand.” Does that mean it will taste better? Not necessarily. It’s about both accessibility and the desire to be involved in the food-making process. Even if that means ridiculous sphere-shaped ice for your craft cocktail.

Kick Charting: 7 Crowdfunding Food-Delivery Services

Delivery services aren’t just for David Chang and Martha Stewart. While food delivery investment has cooled this year (see chart) as venture capitalists question the economics of these capital intensive businesses, that hasn’t stopped enterprising startups from heading to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter to fund a unique take on food delivery.

Here are seven companies trying to become the next Blue Apron via crowdfunding campaigns:

Beer-Making Kit

Every three months Bierbox sends you the ingredients you need for a new recipe: think liquid or dry malt extract, hops, and yeast, as well as detailed instructions to make these homebrew-lab-tested recipes. Pair it with the Zymatic and you’re a 21st century kind of home brewer.

Meat

Forget your local butcher or meat CSA. Grass Cow wants to deliver grass-fed beef, grass-fed bison, and wild hog to your doorstep. Right now it looks like these are onetime deliveries, which on the surface seems like they are using the same business model as Omaha Steaks. However, the quality is much better, and for people in areas without access to grass-fed meats, this could be a game changer.

Supper Club

Are you an “aspiring entertainer” (read: millennial) who wants to throw a fancy hipster supper club (read: dinner party) but hates planning (read: is lazy)? The Caramelized Supper Club might be for you. Every other month it delivers décor and nonperishable items along with recipes, grocery lists, and wine pairings. No one will ever suspect your dinner party came out of a box.

Fresh Herbs

Don’t worry about growing basil or rosemary on your porch anymore, because Herbly will deliver whatever you need. The startup partners with small-scale farmers to deliver those herbs on a monthly basis. Choose from everything from basil to stevia to chocolate mint “and indulge” with (non-medical) herbs, as their Kickstarter page says.

Mini Cocktails

Let’s be clear. SaloonBox is basically a box of mixers, delivered to your door. You have to add the alcohol. That said, they provide crafted recipes for fun drinks like mulled cider and even the ubiquitous Moscow Mule. The new mini line includes enough for four to six servings of one cocktail, so to get through the holidays, you might need, oh, about 10 of these.

Craft Beer

If you live in the U.K., Black Market Beer will send you a case of beer from a craft microbrewery each month. We’re talking seriously small microbreweries too: The goal seems to be as much to help those folks stay in business as expose you to the great beers they’re making.

Dogs

No, unfortunately, this is not a service that delivers adorable dogs to your door. But it is a service that delivers treats for your dog to your door. Each kit includes three to four types of healthy treats with real meat, chews, toys, and functional accessories. For my super anxious shih tzu, that functional accessory would probably be a Thunder Shirt.

Clearly not all of these projects will make it to the funded stage, but the high level of interest in delivery services confirms that it’s an area poised for growth. Over the next few years the space will become more and more crowded, until the few who have mastered their business model win out over the weaker offerings and the rest move on to the newest trend.