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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kickstarter

Kickstarter: Is Neoven’s Promise of a Portable Oven with Fridge and Mixer too Good to Be True?

Is there any promise less trustworthy than a Kickstarter promise? Crowdfunding campaigns intentionally paint a pretty picture to attract your dollars, but sadly those promises often go unfulfilled, literally (looking at you Rite Press and iGulu).

With that in mind, I’m casting a bit of the ole’ side eye at the NEOVEN, a product now on Kickstarter that promises to be a portable oven to heat your lunch, as well as a fridge and smoothie mixer and kettle.

The NEOVEN has two main compartments: a larger one for holding a food container and heating it, and a secondary one to hold a smaller container of food, or in which to plug in modules like the mixer, kettle and cooling unit. The heating supposedly only takes five minutes and can be controlled via the NEOVEN mobile app.

This is the second heated lunchbox that we’ve written about in as many weeks. The Heatbox also promises to heat up your meal when you’re ready to eat, but it only promises to heat and uses steam to do so. The NEOVEN says it uses a Heta heating element, and it will make smoothies and coffee.

That all sounds great, and I hope they can pull it off. But I’m always leery of Kickstarter devices that try to be so many things. Developing a prototype is one thing but manufacturing something at scale is quite another, and it’s in that leap where so many crowdfunding campaigns go off the rails.

What is interesting is that most of the people commenting on the Kickstarter campaign page aren’t worried about the device not actually coming to market. Instead they’re concerned that it’s made out of plastic. Plastic waste is definitely an issue for the planet, but if it works NEOVEN seems like it could help people use less plastic by eating out less frequently and creating less food waste.

NEOVEN was looking to raise $20,000 and has already hit more than $77,000 in backing with 19 days left in its campaign. Backers can pledge $199 to order a NEOVEN (without any attachments) that is supposed to ship in July of next year.

Kickstarter: Heatbox is a Stylish, Steam-Heated Lunchbox

Pardon me while I put on my old man hat and shake my fist: Back in my day, we didn’t have fancy lunchboxes! They were made of metal, had one compartment, and they definitely didn’t heat your food up!

Times have changed and so have lunchboxes, as evidenced by the Heatbox, the portable, self-powered, steam-heating lunchbox, which recently launched its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

While it isn’t emblazoned with old school Marvel superheroes, from the pictures, the Heatbox is one good-looking lunchbox. It has a minimalist, European design (which makes sense given that the company is in Amsterdam), complete with a bamboo lid. But all that form appears to have a function.

There’s a removable compartment that you put your food in, complete with lid to prevent leaks. Add 20 ml of water to the device and charge it using a USB-C cable. When you’re ready to eat, remove the inner lid and push the button. Heatbox doesn’t say how hot it will make your food, only that it takes 8 to 12 minutes to warm it up (there are different intensities of heat depending on what you are heating), and that it will heat three times on the low setting on a single charge.

You can order a Heatbox for $132 with an estimated ship date of July 2020. The campaign beat its goal of raising $33,000 in 24 hours and has since gone on to raise nearly $53,000. Though as always, caveat emptor when it comes to crowdfunded hardware projects as they may never materialize.

If you don’t want to wait until next summer, you could go for the LunchEaze, which also launched on Kickstarter and is shipping now. LunchEaze is $150, doesn’t use steam, and is more like a portable slow cooker.

Another reason to like Heatbox is that it could make taking your leftovers to work more attractive. Instead of nuking them, steam them back to life. Enticing you to eat more leftovers means less food waste. And that’s not something I’d shake my fist at.

GoSun Crowdfunds Reusable Cutlery Set The Size of a Credit Card

For those who give a fork about single-use plastic waste, there’s a new crowdfunding project with your name on it.

GoSun, maker of the eco-friendly battery-powered fridge and solar oven, just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its GoSun Flatware, a patent-pending set of reusable cutlery that’s so small it fits in your wallet. The stainless steel fork and spoon come in two pieces in a thin metal case roughly the size of a credit card. The pieces are dishwasher-safe and can be snapped together to make small (but functional) cutlery. The theory is you can keep the case in your wallet, so that whenever you go out to eat or pick up to-go food you can use it then and there and don’t need to take the single-use plastic utensils restaurants offer.

With the popularity of food delivery and our collective obsession with convenience, single-use cutlery has become a massive problem. According to National Geographic, more than 100 million plastic utensils are used every day in the U.S. alone. Since single-use cutlery varies in shape and material, they’re super difficult to recycle — which means that the vast majority of spoons, forks, and the like wind up clogging landfills or killing ocean turtles.

While there are plenty of other reusable cutlery options out there, GoSun’s convenience sets it apart. If you keep the set in your wallet, you can’t forget it when you go pick up your Chipotle burrito bowl. It’s self-contained, which means you don’t have to worry about cleaning your cutlery after use, lest you walk around with a dirty fork in your pocket until you find a sink

Clearly I’m not the only one intrigued by this credit card-sized solution to cutlery waste. The GoSun Flatware Kickstarter campaign has raised over $179,000, way more than its $2,500 initial goal, with nine days left in the campaign. Early backers can snag their own set for $20 before the price doubles as it heads to retail on the GoSun website.

The GoSun Flatware is set to deliver in February of 2020. As always, it’s good to be healthily skeptical towards crowdfunded hardware projects. However, this is GoSun’s seventh crowdfunded project, and several of its products are already shipping, so it seems like a relatively safe bet that backers will actually get the goods.

GoSun isn’t the only one thinking outside of plastic when it comes to single-use cutlery waste. Another notable company is Planeteer, which nabbed first prize at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition. The startup makes edible single-use spoons, so instead of ending up in the trash or recycling bins they truly leave no trace.

Single-use cutlery waste is an immense problem, so it’s refreshing to see companies developing creative solutions. I actually ended up backing GoSun Flatware myself, so hopefully that means at least a few plastic forks in the ocean.

HomeBiogas’ Backyard System Turns Home Food Waste into Green Cooking Fuel

I started composting when I moved to Seattle last year. I felt very virtuous depositing my banana peels and coffee grounds into a special organic waste bin at the back of my house, but I didn’t get to reap any benefits. Besides, you know, helping the planet.

Those who want to get more bang for their food scraps could consider investing in a HomeBiogas (Ed note: Roommates, I promise I’ll ask you before I buy one.) HomeBiogas LTD just launched a new version of its eponymous closed-loop system which turns kitchen leftovers into cooking fuel and fertilizer. The company started a Kickstarter yesterday, which reached its $50,000 goal in less than two hours. At the time of this writing, the project has raised roughly $170,000.

The HomeBiogas is about the size of a large doghouse and resembles a black bouncy castle. Only instead of letting kids crawl in to play, you fill up the system’s chute with waste materials like food scraps, animal manure, and even, um, human waste, if you’re feeling especially hardcore. Bacteria digest the organic matter to create biogas, which can be used to cook on the countertop biogas stove which comes with each purchase. Two kilograms (or 1.5 gallons) of food waste makes enough fuel for two hours of cooking, with the added byproduct of liquid fertilizer.

According to the Kickstarter page, the new HomeBiogas is easier to put together, fully recyclable, and 30 percent taller than the previous version.

Interested backers can nab a HomeBiogas for the Super Early Bird price of $399. Normally with crowdfunded physical products, we have to issue a warning that hardware is hard, and not all projects make it through the manufacturing process in the estimated time, or at all. However, since HomeBiogas has already shipped over 5,000 of its last-gen systems, it seems pretty safe to assume they’ll be able to deliver on this upgrade.

The question is whether or not you’d actually want to have a sizeable inflatable bacteria factory in your backyard. Admittedly, the HomeBiogas is a pretty extreme solution for the average environmentally-conscious Joe. It’s big, expensive and requires you to be willing to adapt our cooking to a small countertop stove. If you’re looking for a way to turn your food scraps into compost, there are a number of easier, cheaper options out there. HomeBiogas is pretty self-aware, however; its promo video notes that it’s suitable homesteaders and off-the-gridders.

Nonetheless, the HomeBiogas is an inventive way to upcycle home food waste into something of added value. Plenty of companies are upcycling discarded food ingredients into new products, edible or otherwise, but very few are targeting the home. Though it might not be for everybody, especially space-strapped urban consumers, HomeBiogas shows that when it comes from cutting down on food waste, sometimes it pays to think outside the (compost) box.

Decafino Promises to Decaffeinate Any Cup of Coffee in 3 Minutes

Decaffeinated coffee gets a bad rap, since coffee snobs often think it’s a poor substitute for the real thing, with less flavor and nuance.

Decafino is a startup out of Seattle that’s trying to reinvent people’s attitudes towards decaf. The company has developed a small biodegradable pouch — about the size of a tea bag — which, when inserted into coffee, will decaffeinate it in three to four minutes. “We’re the first company in the world to decaffeinate coffee after brewing,” Decafino founder Andy Liu told me over the phone yesterday.

Liu, who has a background in engineering, was inspired to start Decafino because he loved the taste of coffee but not the jitteriness of caffeine. He found decaf bean selections limiting and often less flavorful. So instead of settling for pre-decaffeinated coffee, he decided to make a product that would allow him to turn any coffee into decaf. In 2016 he founded Decafino, which currently has a team of four.

Today the company launched a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign. Decafino is currently self-funded and Liu said they would use the crowdfunding to initialize production.

Decaf coffee is actually primed for some disruption. For consumers, buying decaf beans severely limits your selection. And since there’s less demand for decaf than regular coffee, roasteries often only make one or two decaf roasts at a time. Those who want to try a particular Ethiopian single origin but don’t respond well to caffeine might never get to taste it unless the company decides to make a decaf roast. Pop in a Decafino bag, however, and you can turn any coffee (or tea, or even soda) into a decaf, which widens your selection.

There’s also the fact that the process to decaffeinate green coffee beans often relies on chemical solvents that, Liu says, can remove some of the beans’ flavor. Decafino, on the other hand, relies on a physical process called “adsorption” that doesn’t involve any chemicals. Mineral beads in the porous tea bag attract caffeine molecules from the liquid and trap them, sucking in up to 200 mg of caffeine per bag (an average cup of coffee has around 180g).

Liu said that each bag can decaffeinate 16 ounces of coffee. The decaffeination process takes three to four minutes, but if you want to ensure every last caffeine molecule is gone you can let it soak even longer. For those who are concerned about losing heat by letting their coffee sit out for four minutes, you can also put the bag directly into your preferred coffee brewer and let it suck up the caffeine as you brew (or just use an Ember mug to keep your coffee hot!).

Decafino is aiming for a commercial release in Q2 2020. They’ve already developed partnerships with several local Seattle coffee shops, which will sell their bags and also use them behind the bar to make decaffeinated drinks. The bags will also be available via Decafino’s website.

Liu plans to price the decaffeinating bags at $1.50 to $2.00 each. Added onto your regular coffee drink, that can make a modest coffee purchase into a pretty pricey one — especially if you’re going for multiple cups per day. But considering that decaf coffee beans are already generally priced higher, and many stores add on an extra $1 charge for decaf espresso, it’s not out of line. Plus I’m guessing many consumers will be willing to shell out for the novelty effect, especially if they’re only having one cup of coffee as a decaf.

The real advantage in my mind, though, is on the side of the café staff. I worked as a barista for years and it was always such a hassle when someone ordered decaf. We never made a full pot of it since there wasn’t much demand, so making decaf coffee entailed hunting down the decaf beans, then specially grinding and brewing them. With something like Decafino I could just make a regular coffee drink, pop in the bag, then in three minutes voila! You’ve got decaf.

Seattle has become a bit of a hub for cutting-edge coffee tech (oh how far we’ve come from Starbucks). It’s also home to Atomo Coffee, a startup which makes molecular coffee without the beans. Pop in a Decafino and, come 2020, you could have a bean-free, caffeine-free cup of joe. What a world.

What’s up with the Rite Press? Backers Still Haven’t Received Product, Rite’s Website and Email are Down

What’s going on at the Rite Company, makers of the crowdfunded Rite Press coffee maker? As of this morning, backers on Kickstarter say they still haven’t received their “no-mess” French presses, the company’s website is down and an email The Spoon sent to the company’s CEO bounced back to us. We are in the midst of investigating the situation.

For those new to the saga, Rite Press started as a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign in March of 2018, crowdfunding $1.3 million. But then in February of this year, almost a year after the Rite Presses were supposed to ship, we reported on how backers still hadn’t received their units and Sargam Patel, CEO of the Rite Company, had asked backers for an additional $30 each to fulfill the orders. The situation was aggravated in May of this year when the Rite Press website launched, allowing people to buy the Rite Press directly from the company. Customers who did so would get their Rite Presses first and help fund the fulfillment of outstanding pledges.

That Rite Press website is now down, and evidently has been for about a week and a half. According to a GoDaddy message on the site: “This domain name expired on 8/22/2019 and is pending renewal or deletion.”

Based on backer comments like this one on Kickstarter, many customers still haven’t gotten theirs:

Has the Rite Company finally been ground down? We reached out to Patel via email over the weekend, but as noted, our message bounced back, which would make sense if the web and email domains are no longer active. We also reached out to him via LinkedIn.

We will update this story as we learn more.

uKeg Nitro Cold Brew Maker Blasts Past Kickstarter Goal

Summertime is cold brew season, and no cold brew is trendier than nitro cold brew.

Nitro cold brew is essentially cold brewed coffee infused with nitrogen gas and dispensed out of a tap. The result is smooth, lightly-carbonated beverage that drinks like Guinness, and is now so ubiquitous that you can find it at Starbuck’s nationwide.

Since it requires nitrogen gas and a tap, one place you can’t typically find nitro cold brew is in somebody’s home. But uKeg Nitro, a new device on Kickstarter from Portland, OR-based company GrowlerWerks, is aiming to change that. The device lets at-home baristas brew, store, and pour nitro cold brew coffee on their countertop.

To brew, users can either brew their own cold brew in the keg itself or just fill it with pre-made cold brew coffee. Charge the keg cap with Nitro gas, let the pressure build to desired carbonation level, shake to infuse the gas throughout, and that cold brew is ready to pour. The homemade nitro cold brew will stay fresh and carbonated for two weeks.

Suggested retail price for the uKeg Nitro is $199. Early backers can get it for $169, along with two Nitro gas chargers, four coffee filter bags, a coffee funnel and a drip mat. Considering that nitro cold brew often goes for at least $5 a pop at trendy coffee shops, the uKeg Nitro could actually pay for itself in just one summer (though you still have to buy the coffee beans themselves).

Clearly I’m not the only one intrigued by GrowlerWerks’ new product. The uKeg Kickstarter launched on June 5th and reached its $75,000 goal within 90 minutes. At the time of this writing, the uKeg has raised just over $262,000 with one month left to go.

As cold brew rises in popularity, companies large and small are husting to provide solutions to make it at home. PicoBrew has cold brew capabilities for the Pico Z and Pico C. Cuisinart and Dash have devices that will let you make a cup of cold brew — which typically takes at least 12 hours — in just 30 minutes (with varying degrees of success).

I never quite got why people would pay for a device to make cold brew when it’s so easy to do at home: cover ground coffee with water, let sit overnight, and boom — cold brew. (Maybe that’s why the Gravity Cold Brew Coffee Maker failed to meet its Kickstarter goal.) However, the uKeg Nitro adds an extra benefit that most people couldn’t DIY: the creamy fizziness of nitro. Its booming Kickstarter shows that there’s clearly consumer demand for more accessible, affordable nitro cold coffee, especially as summer rolls in.

GrowlerWerks is aiming to ship the uKeg Nitro in early October of this year. As always with crowdfunded hardware projects, there’s a risk that the uKeg won’t meet that October ship date — or even ship at all. However, GrowlerWerks already launched their original uKeg product (for beer, not coffee) on Kickstarter in 2014, which raised over $1.5 million.

While they had a few production hiccups, hopefully GrowlerWerks can leverage the lessons they’ve learned over the past three years — as well as their existing manufacturing partners — to make sure the same problems don’t happen with the uKeg Nitro.

Why is the Mosi Mobile Tea Brewer and Thermos Killing It on Kickstarter?

Mosi Tea, a portable tea brewer plus thermos, launched on Kickstarter recently with the lofty goal of raising $15,000. As of this writing, Mosi has blown past that and raised more than $325,000. My first reaction upon discovering this was… why?

To be fair, from the promotional video, Mosi Tea looks like a nice product. It’s a clear, double-walled insulated thermos with a food-grade silicone infuser built in. Pour your loose leaf tea in the infuser, add hot water, and flip it upside down to steep. Once it’s done, pop on the lid and enjoy your fresh tea. Yum.

Early backers can shell out $32 and get their Mosi Tea shipped to them in December of this year.

Or — and this is the part where I have a hard time understanding Mosi’s success — someone could just head over to Amazon and order a different tea infuser + thermos right now for around $25 and have it arrive in two days (if they have Prime shipping).

Perhaps it’s Mosi’s silicone — as opposed to steel — infuser, or the BPA-free Tritan plastic which feels like glass, or maybe the folks at Mosi are just really popular and have a lot of friends willing to fork over $32 a pop for a tea tumbler. Mosi’s founder wrote on the products Kickstarter page, “Although there are tea infusers out there, they had their limitations and just didn’t feel or work right. So, I decided to make my own.” He doesn’t say what exactly those limitations are, but evidently, enough people out there agree with him and are willing to pay for something different.

To be clear, I’m not begrudging Mosi, it’s just that crowdfunded hardware projects have a spotty record at best (See: Rite-Press, Cinder, etc.). There is a big jump between building a prototype that works and manufacturing at scale. But, given that Mosi still has 16 days to go on its campaign, the company has been infused with enough cash to make an (hopefully) honest go of it.

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.

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.

Atomo Coffee has Developed Less-Bitter, Sustainable Coffee. The Secret? No Beans.

For many of us, our morning cup of coffee is the only thing that makes us functioning humans. But I’m betting that rarely (if ever) our morning fuel-up do we consider the negative impact of coffee farming on the environment.

We should. Coffee consumption is on the rise, and according to a report by Conservation International, coffee growers may have to triple their demand by 2050 to meet demand. At the same time, global warming is making it harder and harder to grow coffee beans. In January of this year, Science Advances estimated that 60 percent of wild coffee species are under threat of extinction.

Seattle-based startup Atomo claims to bring you all the goodness of a cup of coffee — without the bean. Atomo’s so-called “molecular coffee” is made by reverse engineering the flavor and aroma compounds in coffee bean to make a substance that, when brewed, tastes and caffeinates like java. It’s made with natural ingredients and can be brewed one-to-one for coffee in French presses, refillable K-cups, pour-overs, etc.

Atomo’s original product was a liquid, which the team creates in small batches in their food scientist’s garage. But today they’re launching a Kickstarter to raise $10,000 to sell a ground version of their coffee, which they’re aiming to launch in Q4 2019. During a phone interview, Atomo CEO Andy Kleitsch told me that Atomo’s coffee would cost anywhere from $0.33 to $0.55 cents per cup — at least a fourth of the price of a cup from Starbuck’s. But if you’re a latte lover, Atomo might not be for you: as of now they only make ground coffee for drip, not espresso.

It’s no secret that plenty of crowdfunding projects don’t ever make it to market. But there are two reasons I think Atomo can pull it off. First of all, Atomo’s team has a good experience set: Kelitsch is on the board of the UW entrepreneurship program, and Atomo’s chief scientist Jarret Stopforth has helped develop products at Soylent, Campbell’s, and Chobani, and more. Secondly, Atomo is partnering with food and beverage development company Mattson to help quickly develop and scale their coffee.

In addition the environmental and novelty draws, Atomo is also marketing its product as a less bitter version of coffee. During their re-engineering process, Kleitsch and his team decided not to add back in the chlorogenic acid, which gives coffee its bitter taste. For those who need to doctor their java with cream and sugar, Atomo could offer a welcome alternative. In fact, during a blind taste test on the University of Washington campus, 70 percent of students preferred Atomo’s “coffee” to Starbuck’s. Admittedly, the experiment had a sample size of just 30 students. However, it goes to show that in situations where people are just looking for a pleasant-tasting jolt of caffeine, “to bean or not to bean” might not be such a big deal after all — especially with Atomo’s attractive price point.

Learning about Atomo’s reverse engineering process made me think of Ava Winery. Instead of coffee without the bean, Ava is making wine without the grapes, yeast, or fermentation by mimicking its chemical compounds. It makes me wonder: what other popular foods and beverages will we see “hacked” in the future?

At the end of the day, Atomo might not make the cut for true coffee aficionados. But for the average Joe (ha), Atomo’s “molecular coffee” could be just fine and dancy — and taste all the sweeter knowing they’re saving the environment with every cup.

Beast Mode: Chirp’s Launches Kickstarter for Cricket Protein Powder

For openminded bodybuilders who want to get ripped, there’s a new type of protein powder out ready for you to chug it down on the way to your morning CrossFit shred sesh.

Today Chirps, the San Francisco-based company which makes insect chips in flavors like Sriracha and BBQ, launched a Kickstarter for its newest product: Cricket Protein Powder. The powder has 20 grams of protein per serving and is made of peas, brown rice, chia seeds, and, oh yeah, insects.

Typically, protein powder is made either with soy, which can lead to deforestation, or whey, which can have, um, undesired gastrointestinal outputs. Crickets are also one of the more sustainable protein sources out there: it takes one gallon of water to produce one pound of crickets, but it takes roughly 300 gallons to grow one pound of soybeans, and over 1,000 gallons to make one pound of whey (because cows).

It should be noted, briefly, that not all proteins are created equal. Both cricket and whey are complete proteins, meaning they contain all 9 essential animo acids, but whey stands out because it absorbs super quickly into the body to stimulate post-workout muscle growth. I couldn’t find any solid information about cricket absorption rates online, so muscle-heads, take that as you will.

The one-pound tubs of protein powder, which come in chocolate or vanilla, are priced at $39 for one, $65 for two, and $78 for three (share one with a friend!). There’s no information on what the retail price of the powder will be. Until Dec. 16th backers can take advantage of the “Holiday Special,” which basically means you get a free cricket cookbook and a guarantee that your order will arrive in time for “Crickmas.”

In fact, Chirps promises to have the first ~3,000 units delivered before December 25th, with the rest shipping in February 2019. Yes, that’s three weeks away — but I’m optimistic they can pull it off. The company already managed one successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to launch their cricket chips, in which they reached their $30,000 goal in three days.

Judging from some sleuthing on the Updates page, however, they did seem to have struggled with a 9-month shipping delay. But that was four years ago. Since then Chirps seems to have fixed any production snags; the chips are available in dozens of shops around the U.S. and on Amazon.

Chirps isn’t the only company working to bring insects to the mainstream: Seek Food also launched a crowdfunding campaign for their cricket-based baking flour, fried grasshoppers are a fan favorite at Seattle’s Safeco field, and even celebrities have hopped (heh) on the edible insect bandwagon. Crik Nutrition also makes a cricket-based protein powder, though theirs is quite a bit pricier.

If their goal is to make insect-eating the norm, it makes sense for Chirps to target the health food market. Crickets are a great source of protein, iron, and B12, and when they’re pulverized into a powder or an energy bar a lot of the “ick” factor goes away.

Hopefully Chirps and others can help de-stigmatize bug-eating in the U.S. — and help you shred your quads along the way.