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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Kittch Partners With Qualcomm for Augmented Reality-Powered Cooking

Why wear beer goggles when you can wear bing goggles?

Well, now you can, at least if you’re using Kittch’s new AR cooking mode to make chef Ming Tsai’s MingBings. Today Kittch, a culinary video community, announced they have teamed up with Qualcomm to integrate AR features into their cooking app, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The collaboration, done in partnership with technical design company Trigger, is being demoed this week at Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California.

Kittch app users can access the Kittch AR cooking mode by plugging in AR glasses to a mobile phone and clicking the “view in kitchen” button. From there, users can follow interactive videos and recipes, set timers, and order ingredients via AR gesture control. The new feature was demoed by Ming Tsai and his MingBing recipe here.

Kittch & Qualcomm aren’t the first to show off AR-powered cooking for the home kitchen. Back in 2021, AR designer Lauren Cason went viral after spending an afternoon hacking together an AR cooking prototype to demonstrate to her father the power of augmented reality.

The Kittch demo shares some of the same features, including showing recipes and the ability to place visual timers in the designated places around the kitchen, but unlike Cason’s demo, the Kittch app lets you order ingredients.

It’s a cool feature for home cooks, but I’m still waiting for someone to create an AR app for the professional kitchen. A non-obtrusive AR tool made for busy cooks to monitor their different meals in process, access order info, check food inventory, and more would be a hugely valuable tool if done right. Get on it, AR people!

The Spoon Weekly: An OnlyFans for Foodies, Bear Ships 5K Robots, The Mini-Dishwasher Golden Age

This is the Spoon Weekly, a collection of some of the most interesting stories from the past week. Make sure to subscribe to get the top food tech news delivered straight to your inbox.

Can Food-Centric Streaming Platform Kittch Succeed Where Others Have Failed?

In 2016 I got a pitch about a hugely successful entrepreneur who was launching a streaming site dedicated to foodies.

Steve Chen, the co-founder of Youtube, was combining a love of food with his proven experience building online video to launch a new site that would “allow anyone to direct, produce, and host their own food show.” Called Nom, the site debuted at SXSW on March 9, 2016, and went live to the general public a few days later.

Two years and $4.7 million in funding later, Nom shut down.

There have been other sites with similar pitches since 2016, including YesChef, an “online education platform dedicated to cooking” complete with James Beard award-winning chefs like Nancy Silverton to teach cooking techniques and recipes. Or World Chef, a “platform for foodies; a place where truly special Chefs can share their extraordinary food experiences directly with their fans.”

And then was Fanwide’s hot-minute pivot to a chef platform in the middle of the pandemic, or GE’s attempt to create a video streaming platform for chefs called Chibo that has since shuttered.

So you’ll have to forgive me when my first reaction upon hearing the pitch for Kittch, a site that Vanity Fair calls Onlyfans for Chefs, is one of skepticism.

You can read the full story here.

Consumer Kitchen

The Golden Age of Tiny Dishwashers? Bob and Tetra Begin Making Their Way to a Countertop Near You

Ever since we first stumbled upon the diminutive dishwasher named Bob in the basement of the Sands convention center at CES 2019, we’ve been wondering when the little guy would arrive stateside.

The answer is this year. Daan Technology, the French startup behind the Bob, started shipping the small footprint dishwasher in Europe in 2020 and had originally slated the Bob to arrive in the US the same year. While that model Bob stayed in Europe, an updated global version is finally set to start shipping this year.

The company started a Kickstarter campaign this month and has bundles featuring Bob starting at $379 with an expected ship date of September 2022. For those who don’t want to buy through Kickstarter, my guess is the company will begin up selling Bob on its own website later this year.

Order options include a hose to connect the dishwasher to a faucet (Bob also has a one-gallon water reservoir that can be filled manually) and a range of colorful faceplates. The Bob Premium also includes an interesting UV-C ultraviolet option that allows the user to disinfect items (like phones) that can’t get wet.

You can read the full post here. 

Web3/Crypto

This Farmer’s Market Vendor Has Accepted Bitcoin for 5 Years. Here’s How Things Have Changed.

Back in 2017, before much of the general public had given cryptocurrency a second thought, Alessandro Stortini started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment at his local farmer’s market stand, La Pasta.

Since that time, virtual currencies have become mainstream as everyone from grandmas to pro athletes have jumped into the world of crypto. In fact, from 2017 to 2022, the number of crypto wallets went from under 12 million to over 81 million by January of 2022.

If you’re like me, you’d figure with almost seven times as many cryptocurrency wallets out there, the number of people looking to spend their virtual currency to buy pasta at their local farmer’s market would have gone up. Not so, according to Stortini.

“We got way more customers paying with bitcoin in 2017,” Stortini said.

Stortini told me the reason for that is because back in those early days, crypto owners were more willing to use it as a form of payment.

To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.

Emily Elyse Miller Wants to Reinvent Breakfast Cereal. That Means Vegan Ingredients, Edgy Mascots, and (Of Course) NFTs

Emily Elyse Miller knows a thing or two about breakfast.

Not only has the one-time journalist and fashion trends forecaster written a book on the topic (complete with 380 recipes from 80 countries), but she’d also run a consulting company that helped world-renowned chefs like Enrique Olvera develop breakfast events.

But after years of writing and teaching about first-meal, Miller realized that cereal, the centerpiece of the American breakfast for generations of kids and adults, had gone stale. So she decided to start a cereal company of her own to reinvent the category.

Called OffLimits, Miller’s company created a line of irreverent brands like Dash and Zombie, each with its own ‘moody mascot’ and a clean ingredient list.

The funky mascots were important for Miller, because while she loved the rainbow-colored pop culture she grew up with in the cereal aisle, she felt it was time for something new.

“Tony the Tiger is not cool,” said Miller. “Cereal is one of the only products that carry culture in this unique way, and that culture has not been updated in decades.”

Read the full post at The Spoon.

Alternative Protein

SuperMeat Partners With Japanese Food Giant Ajinomoto To Scale Cultivated Meat Production

SuperMeat, a cell-cultured meat company based in Israel, and Ajinomoto, a large Japanese food and biotechnology conglomerate, announced today the formation of a strategic partnership to “to establish a commercially viable supply chain platform for the cultivated meat industry.”

According to the announcement, the partnership, which will include an investment by Ajinomoto in SuperMeat, will combine SuperMeat’s expertise in cultivated meat with Ajinomoto’s R&D technology and expertise in biotech and fermentation capabilities.

One of the main focuses of the new partnership will be in the development of cell-cultured growth media, the broth which contains the nutrients needed for animal cell growth, which remains one of the biggest overall cost drivers in the creation of cultivated meat. According to a study by the Good Food Institute conducted in 2020 of cultivated meat producers, 72% of respondents indicated that cell growth media represented over 50% of their operating costs, and 38% said growth media represented 80% or more of operating costs. By combining SuperMeat’s technology advancements in cultivated meat with Anjinomoto’s biomanufacturing expertise, the two companies hope to drive down costs while increasing the supply of food-grade growth factors.

You can read the full story at The Spoon.

Food Robots

Meet Don Roverto, X’s Robotic Rover on the Hunt for The Next Magic Bean to Feed a Hungry Planet

When you spend thirty years looking for a magic bean, you’re open to a helping hand when trying to find the next one. For the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, that help has arrived in the form of a crop-roving robot nicknamed Don Roverto.

The farmbot is part of Project Mineral, an endeavor from X – Google’s famous R&D subsidiary that researches challenging problems and searches for moonshots – to scale sustainable agriculture. In a blog post published today, project head Elliott Grant describes how Mineral has been assisting the Alliance for Biodiversity and CIAT to accelerate their work to understand and uncover hidden crop traits within the world’s largest bean collection.

From the post:

The Alliance’s team has been using Mineral’s technologies at their newly opened Future Seeds genebank in Colombia, which contains over 36,000 varieties of beans. The hope is that what the Alliance discovers with Mineral’s tools can be used to grow better beans for the world, faster.

According to Andy Jarvis, the Associate Director-General with the Alliance, the organization has spent decades building and analyzing its bean collection. Finally, after thirty years of searching, they found a “magic” bean with intrinsic drought-resistant characteristics. With tools like Don Roverto, the organization can process its discoveries at lightning speed and find the next game-changing bean faster than ever before.

To read the full story, click here!

With 5 Thousand Robots Shipped, Bear Robotics Raises $81 Million Series B to Accelerate Growth and Expand into New Markets

Today restaurant robotics startup Bear Robotics announced they have raised an $81 million Series B. The round was led by IMM, with participation by Cleveland Avenue. The new funding brings the company’s total venture investment to $117 million.

Bear, co-founded by former ex-Googler and restauranteur John Ha, makes server robots that help hospitality businesses do everything from delivering food to tables to bussing tables. A few years ago, the company started trialing its first robot, Penny, in Ha’s restaurant, the Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas, CA. Since those early days, the company has shipped 5000 robots, with much of the volume coming last year.

The company has been on a roll lately, winning contracts with big names like Denny’s to Chili’s and a sports stadium or two. Bear’s biggest markets today are in South Korea and Japan, with the US quickly catching up. With their new funding, the company plans to expand further across the US, Europe, and additional countries in southeast Asia

According to Bear COO and cofounder Juan Higueros, the volume they’ve experienced over the past couple of years is the result of a concerted effort to ramp up mass production in 2020.

“It took us all of 2020 to get it done,” Higueros told me via Zoom. “We really started ramping in Q1 of 2020 in the US. It’s been growing at a nice steady pace ever since and we anticipate the US market will continue to grow.”

You can read full post here.

Can Food-Centric Streaming Platform Kittch Succeed Where Others Have Failed?

In 2016 I got a pitch about a hugely successful entrepreneur who was launching a streaming site dedicated to foodies.

Steve Chen, the co-founder of Youtube, was combining a love of food with his proven experience building online video to launch a new site that would “allow anyone to direct, produce, and host their own food show.” Called Nom, the site debuted at SXSW on March 9, 2016, and went live to the general public a few days later.

Two years and $4.7 million in funding later, Nom shut down.

There have been other sites with similar pitches since 2016, including YesChef, an “online education platform dedicated to cooking” complete with James Beard award-winning chefs like Nancy Silverton to teach cooking techniques and recipes. Or World Chef, a “platform for foodies; a place where truly special Chefs can share their extraordinary food experiences directly with their fans.”

And then was Fanwide’s hot-minute pivot to a chef platform in the middle of the pandemic, or GE’s attempt to create a video streaming platform for chefs called Chibo that has since shuttered.

So you’ll have to forgive me when my first reaction upon hearing the pitch for Kittch, a site that Vanity Fair calls Onlyfans for Chefs, is one of skepticism.

I hope my initial reaction is wrong, and after spending some time looking at Kittch, I suspect it could be. Kittch has assembled an impressive team that includes successful TV producer Brian Bedol, former Plated head chef Elana Karp, and big names on the investor list, including LeBron James and uber-agent (and Supermensch) Shep Gordon. Throw in a sprinkling of celebrity chefs like Marcus Samuelsson and Daniela Soto-Innes, and the team has a roster of talent and star power to make this thing work on paper.

Kittch’s design and feature set are impressive. One particularly smart feature is the marketplace that allows chefs to sell products and private dining lessons or tableside conversations with the chefs. With chefs and culinary influencers, appearances on TV and online are often loss leader activities to push a product like a line of sauces or even a visit to one of their restaurants. Kittch is building in this monetization directly into the service.

Finally, it’s worth noting that 2022 is a different time than 2016, and we’ve seen the full emergence of a robust and mature creator economy in the intervening years. Consumers are accustomed to patronage models, where sites like Patreon, Substack, and, yes, OnlyFans allow them to give directly to their favorite influencers without a greedy media corporation intermediary sitting in between them.

Of course, Kittch still faces some headwinds, including potential competition from big social platforms like TikTok, which has started experimenting with food-centric monetization features for influencers. But I’m willing to give Kittch a try, and I hope they can finally create the food-centric streaming and engagement platform that has been the holy grail of the food industry for much of the past decade.