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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Little Spoon

Little Spoon’s Blueprint Aims to Match Food Delivery with Baby Development

Little Spoon, the San Francisco based baby food delivery company, today announced the launch of Blueprint, a new service that sends specific meals to match the nutritional needs of your baby at different developmental stages.

According to Little Spoon Co-Founder, Michelle Muller, Blueprint was launched in response to questions parents kept asking them about the types of food they could feed their babies at different ages. “Parents wanted guidance,” Muller said.

So now, when you go to Little Spoon and sign up for the baby food delivery, you can also answer a series of questions about your child. What is their height and weight? Were they premature? Can they hold their head up? Are they babbling? Etc.

Based on your answers to these questions, Little Spoon suggests meals that are optimized for your child’s particular developmental stage needs. As your baby grows you update your answers so the Blueprint is constantly evolving. And this is not just an example of Silicon Valley thinking it knows best — Little Spoon has a “Nutrition Council” with two pediatricians and a dietician to help with recommendations.

Little Spoon also asserts the benefits of Blueprint go beyond helping inquisitive parents. The company is touting its service with regards to the microbiome and health benefits that extend into adulthood. Not being a scientist, I can’t speak to the veracity of such claims and anyone interested should do their own research.

But the Blueprint also provides a point of differentiation for the company. Now in addition to baby food delivery, which many other players offer, Little Spoon gives you pediatrician-driven feeding advice.

When my child was a baby, I remember being awash in a sea of steamed and pureed carrots and avocados. On the one hand, it would have been amazing to have an authority guide and reassure me that I’m feeding my child proper food. On the other hand, the Blueprint seems to prey on the fears I and other parents have. Suddenly, organic, non-GMO food is no longer enough! Your food needs to be specifically targeted for different developmental stages!

The Blueprint, then, becomes not just a recommendation engine, but a way to fight off churn. Once on it, will nervous parents be willing to jump off before their baby is on to solid foods? Additionally, Little Spoon will have loads of data from parents continuously updating their baby’s profile that will no doubt come in handy.

Little Spoon’s Blueprint launches today across the continental U.S.. There is no extra charge for the Blueprint, and meal plans start at $35 a week.

Newcomers Try to Innovate and Deliver on the Lucrative Baby-Food Market

Baby food is big business. While it might not be an industry ripe for innovation, several startups feel they have the magic formula to grab marketshare and mindshare.

One of the latest to enter the fray is Little Spoon, a San Francisco baby food manufacturer and delivery company in its early “invite” stage.  The company believes it can provide our little ones with healthier meals offered with great convenience. According to Statista, the baby food market in the United States has more than seven billion in annual sales. To date, a few newcomers such as Caer (now Yumi) and Gather have tried and failed, or been forced to rebrand.

The biggest challenge to break into the baby food market is competing with giants, such as Gerber, as well as a growing number of organic brands. Many new baby food meal kit ventures, even with offering delivery, have yet to successfully crack the baby food market.

Little Spoon co-founder Michelle Muller does have a new angle which she believes will give her company a real shot at success. Little Spoon uses a technology known as HPP (High Pressure Processing) which is a cold pasteurization process that improves shelf life, while allowing the food to retain its natural nutritional value.

“Modern parents have been forced to choose between two options when it came to feeding their children: Either they can spend hours a day cooking fresh baby food themselves or they can buy highly processed, in-store options that are filled with sugar, low in nutrition, and in many cases are older than the baby eating it,” Muller told tech publication Snapmunk.

She continued, “It is crazy to us that parents have to make the tradeoff between their baby’s nutrition and their own time and sanity. Using the latest in HPP technology, we change all this by making fresh and homemade baby food available anywhere in the nation, direct to your door, and at an affordable cost.”

Little Spoon - Organic baby food, delivered.

In most ways, the Little Spoon service is similar to other subscription meal delivery providers. Choices range from one meal per day at $4.99 per meal through a three-a-day plan at $3.99 per. Customization includes selecting a child’s preferences such as flavor and texture. The company currently is accepting customer invites, with no start date set for delivery.

Even though the landscape is riddled with failures, Little Spoon is not alone in sensing opportunity in the baby food space. Thistle already is in market with traditional meal kits but has expanded to include Thistle Baby--prepackaged baby food meal kits. The difference for this San Francisco Company is that the meals are plant based and come flash frozen to customers in California and Nevada. Also a subscription service, the meals currently cost $2.15/each or $45 per box, including free local or overnight delivery. Each box includes enough food for 21 meals or one week’s worth of food.

Similar to Little Spoon, Chicago’s Nurture Life uses a process called MAP (modified atmospheric packaging) which allows food to stay cold and fresh without freezing.  The company says it sources locally whenever possible and also emphasizes organic ingredients. Nurture Life states that it uses a team of chefs skilled in appealing and customizing meals to meet a wide variety of young diets. The subscription plans offer food for babies up through 18-year-olds. An eight-meal-a-week plan for a baby is $45, while a 14-week plan clocks in at $75.

Then there is Raised Real, a startup by Orange Chef cofounder Santiago Merea (see our interview with Merea here). Raised Real, which offers subscription meal kits with raw ingredients, has its own baby food machine called the Meal Maker that steams, blends and purees the raw ingredients into finished baby food. The Meal Maker comes complimentary with a biweekly or monthly subscription plan or can be purchased for $99. A monthly plan runs $180, or $4.50 per meal.