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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kabaq

Kabaq Wants to Create the World’s First Virtual Reality Food Court

There’s no denying that we live in an age of curated images, where every Instagram photo is cropped, edited, and put through a filter before it’s sent into the stratosphere.

Kabaq, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is leveraging virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) to create a more immersive food experience for our image-obsessed society. Thus far, the company has worked with Magnolia Bakery to help engaged couples see their wedding cake before the big day, and also led an AR campaign to let Snapchat users play with 3D-visualized pizzas.

But Kabaq founder Alper Guler has much grander ambitions for his company. Read our Q&A with Guler to get a better picture (pun intended) of their vision for a future in which our food choices are guided by VR and AR.

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Kabaq: As Kabaq, we create the most lifelike 3D models of food in the world through AR/VR. Our main goal is to help customers to decide what to eat, while at the same time helping restaurants to push premium items and tell stories about their food.

What inspired you to start Kabaq?
The era of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat has changed what and how we eat at restaurants. Today food isn’t just about taste; it’s also about the visual experience. Now social platforms and smartphone manufacturers have created this shift in food, investing and pushing heavily in immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality. These two emerging trends inspired us to bring Kabaq into life.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Food and technology are connected to dining experiences more than ever. Technology is improving our experience of how we grow, source, discover and order food. But adaptation of new technology has been slow, and we are experiencing a relatively slow response from the market.

How will Kabaq change the day-to-day life of its users?
In the future I believe smart glasses will replace smartphones. Everybody will use these smart glasses to engage with digital experiences around them. Imagine you are in this restaurant, using your augmented reality glasses: you can see the whole menu on your table virtually, and even order through your glasses. Don’t worry about the check — it is already paid through your glasses.

VR can also change how we order delivery. Think about how we used to connect to the internet through dial-up modems. We needed to disconnect from the internet to call and order food for pick-up. Then, companies like Seamless created platforms to order food online. With mobile phones and location-based services like UberEats, the experience became even more smooth.

In the near future I believe when you are connected to VR, you will also order your food in VR. We will create the world’s first virtual food court for people to visit through VR and order directly through the same system.

What’s next for Kabaq?
We are creating beneficial use-cases for using AR in-restaurants, delivery apps, marketing, catering and cookbooks. We’re working to bring AR to all aspects of food — and soon.

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Thanks, Alper! Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase and get a taste of how Kabaq applies VR to food.

Visualize it: Augmented Reality and the Future of Food

All around us, augmented reality technology is beginning to give us more information about our immediate environment than can be seen with the naked eye. There are (AR) apps for overlaying where nearby WiFi signals are centered, and apps that help surface unseen nearby locations and attractions to visit. Now, food production is set for transformative developments thanks to AR.

On this front, Huxley has developed what it bills as the world’s first “augmented operating system,” which mashes up augmented reality with artificial intelligence. “ By combining vision, environment, and plant data, we can now grow more with less using AI,” Huxley reports.

Imagine a smart greenhouse of the future, where farmers with augmented reality glasses can surface information about what kinds of plants at various stages of growth surround them. The same greenhouse might have smart cameras that keep track of everything from watering status, to activity from pests and threats.

Huxley is being leveraged for these kinds of food production scenarios, and is even being leveraged to optimize marijuana production. It is a hands-free system that combines AR, AI, and machine learning to optimize “plant vision,” as seen in the screenshot here.

“Intelligent Automation for Controlled Environments is the future,” the Huxley team reports. “By collaborating with the most innovative companies and organizations we can provide anyone in any language the power of a master grower. Data just got dimensional.”

According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, augmented reality can also help optimize harvesting plants: “New cameras, sensors and smartphone apps help monitor plant growth. One company is even developing augmented-reality glasses that can show workers which plants to pick.”

The same story notes that companies are also developing new ways to grow vegetables in tiny spaces and often urban spaces, including rooftops, balconies, and abandoned lots. From controlled lighting to augmented reality solutions for discerning when to harvest plants, these solutions were not found on grandpa’s old farm.

Meanwhile, Danish researchers are investigating ways to use augmented reality to optimize the trimming and boning process for pork bellies. “The AR technology has demonstrated lucrative applications in industrial QA procedures and even farm management applications appear to benefit from applying the technology,” the researchers note.

So how might augmented reality boost your food frontiers when you are at the table in a restaurant? A company called Kabaq is on top of that concept. It is developing 3D and augmented reality menu and visualization technologies so that you can see exactly what your order will look like in front of you, from every angle. Check out the technology in action in this video:

Watch how you can use Apple ARKit in Food ordering

The technology driving augmented reality devices and applications is rapidly advancing as well. Apple is one of many tech giants driving the technology forward, and the result is likely to be ever smarter AR-driven food applications. Stay tuned to this space.