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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

logistics

Bringg Releases Its Delivery-Focused Software Feature BringgNow Early — and for Free

Delivery orchestration platform Bringg today announced a new product meant to help smaller restaurants, grocers, and convenience stores scale and manage their delivery operations. Called BringgNow, the product was slated for a release date later this year. In light of the surge in delivery orders as more people stay home, Bringg decided to launch the product now — and offer it to businesses for free.

Bringg is essentially a logistics platform for businesses that rely heavily on delivery orders. The Chicago-based company’s platform provides automatic driver dispatch, route optimization, real-time tracking, and reverse logistics. Arcos Dorados, Panera, Just Eat, and Walmart are among the company’s clients.

BringgNow’s features include a web dashboard that simplifies the process of creating and managing orders as well as tools that make it easier to assign deliveries to drivers and see their location in real time, manage driver fleets, and provide customers with real-time tracking of their orders. Since most smaller restaurants don’t have the means to employ their own driver fleets, the system also integrates with DoorDash and Postmates’ third-party delivery platforms. 

Quick onboarding is another feature Bringg is pushing with this release, though how long that actually takes is not quite clear. Upon submitting basic details (name, company name, phone number), users receive a message saying Bringg will be in touch with them “in the next 24 hours.”

Speed is key when it comes to delivery right now. As mentioned above, Bringg was meant to release BringgNow later this year. However, with so many businesses — particularly restaurants — now having to rely on digital ordering and delivery to even do business, the company is making the product available now, for free to new users.

They’re not the only tech company pushing new features and products at companies right now. Also this week, Presto announced it is giving away its Presto Kiosks to restaurants, and last week Sevenrooms unrolled a new feature called Direct Delivery that existing customers can add at no extra cost. Platforms like Ordermark, Chowly, and Toast are reducing or outright waiving various fees for restaurants as they look to quickly pivot to an off-premises model for the foreseeable future.

ImpactVision Raises $1.3M Led by Maersk

ImpactVision, a startup that uses hyperspectral imaging to assess food quality, has raised $1.3 million, according to VentureBeat. The round was led by logistics and transportation company Maersk, and brings the total amount raised by ImpactVision to $2.9 million.

As we wrote last year about ImpactVision:

Using a combination of digital imaging, spectroscopy and machine learning, Impact Vision’s technology allows food companies to take a picture of food, analyze the unique spectral reflections of the light, and determine nutritional content, fat and protein content and freshness level.

With this automated and non-invasive technique, ImpactVision hopes to help make the food chain more transparent, improve the quality and freshness of food available, and reduce food waste.

But what’s just as interesting as the fundraise itself is who led the round. Maersk, which is mostly known for shipping, has made a number of investments in supply chain-related startups throughout the year:

Given that Maersk moves good and services around the world, investing in startups that can make those movements more efficient makes a lot of sense.

ImpactVision is among a number of companies leveraging computer vision and light to improve the quality of food that reaches our plate and reduce waste. Others include AgShift, which uses computer vision platform assesses food quality as it moves from buyer to seller, and SomaDetect, which uses light scattering to determine milk quality on dairy farms.

ImpactVision says that the company will use the new funds for product development and to hire up sales and engineering staff.

Kroger Selects Cincinnati Area for First Ocado-Robo “Shed”

Baby, if you ever wondered, wondered where grocery giant Kroger was going to build its first Ocado-powered automated robot warehouse, then get ready because it will be in…. Cincinnati. Well, a suburb north of the city, but it’s basically in Cincinnati-based Kroger’s backyard.

Kroger today announced that the first Ocado-powered customer fulfillment centers (CFC) will be in the suburb of Monroe, OH. Kroger says it will spend $55 million on this automated warehouse, which the company is referring to as a “shed” (ed. note: we don’t know why they call it a shed, they don’t explain it in the release, perhaps it’s a holdover from U.K.-based Ocado’s home country?).

Earlier this year, Kroger upped its investment in Ocado, taking a 6 percent stake in the company. As part of that deal, Kroger and Ocado will build twenty such automated warehouse facilities across the U.S. over the next three years. If the original timetable still holds, Kroger could announce two more CFC locations before the end of this year.

Grocery logistics has been a hot topic this year, especially as giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target and Kroger are all investing in infrastructure to get your goods to you super fast.

Kroger specifically has been on a tear lately. In addition to Ocado, the company started piloting deliveries via self-driving cars, launched Ship, its direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform, and expanded its deal with Instacart.

In addition to all that investment, in August, Kroger teamed up with the University of Cininnati to create an innovation lab, which makes the Monroe CFC location make even more sense. Having a high-tech fulfillment center just miles from your innovation lab can breed a lot of, well, innovation. Given that it’s almost Thanksgiving, perhaps they can find a way to finally make turkeys fly.

Deliv Raises $40M for Same Day Delivery, Brings on Google as Investor

Deliv, the appropriately named same day delivery service, announced today that it has closed a $40 million Series C round that includes Google as an investor. This brings the total amount raised by Deliv to $80.4 million.

Founded in 2012, Deliv provides crowdsourced, same-day shipping services for more than 5,000 retailers including Walmart, FreshDirect and Plated.

Bulking up its war chest was a necessary play for Deliv, as the logistics and delivery sector is red hot and loaded with competition. So far this year, $3.5 billion has been invested in food and grocery delivery startups, with players like Instacart, Postmates and DoorDash all raising hundreds of millions of dollars as they try to provide last mile logistics as a service. Even mega retailers are getting in on the delivery game: Target acquired Shipt, while Amazon and Walmart both launched their own homegrown delivery services.

Not only that, but delivery is being revolutionized beyond the standard cargo van cruising down roads. Autonomous delivery vehicles are (slowly) becoming a thing, with players like Kroger and Farmstead piloting the technology for grocery delivery. On a smaller scale, companies like Starship are using li’l robots to autonomously deliver packages to your door.

Deliv is distinguishing itself from the others in at least one way: it coordinates not just the last mile, but the last feet of delivery. Last year, it partnered with Walmart and August smart locks to provide grocery delivery directly into your fridge when you weren’t at home (with permission, of course).

That type of delivery may be too personal for some, but it illustrates how companies vying for market share in this competitive space won’t be able to rely just on delivery speed. They will also need to innovate to stand out.

Trendwatch: Flat is the New Black for Bottles

One of IKEA’s more genius moves was to break down their products so they could fit into flat boxes. These flat boxes made stacking, shipping and delivering odd-shaped Malm-style dressers and such easier and cost-effective. In much the same way, we are starting to see the containers for your favorite liquids get flattened to facilitate easier shipping and delivery.

Case (pardon the pun) in point: Food and Wine reports Garçon Wines’ Flat Wine Bottle, which was just listed as a Diamond Finalist in 2018 30th Awards for Packaging Innovation put on by Dow Chemical Company. (You know, like the Oscars, but without all the glitz.)

The Garçon flat wine bottle is pretty much what it’s name suggests: a squished wine bottle made from recycled plastic that is narrow enough to fit through the standard U.K. (where the company is located) mail slot. The company says it is made from 100 percent recycled, food-safe PET plastic. The plastic also makes the bottle lighter to ship and helps it withstand tumbles in transit as well as the drop from the mail slot to the floor.

Garçon is actually a B2B company, and has protected the intellectual property behind its bottle design. According to its website, Garçon is actively seeking out relationships with various wineries and “with those working at every stage of the drinks supply chain,” according to its website.

Garçon seems to be hitting the market at just the right time. Beverage Daily writes that by one estimate, 34 percent of beer drinkers in the U.K. buy booze online. Here in the U.S., DRINKS said that it shipped 10 million bottles of wine in the U.S. in 2017, and has 500,000 active households as customers.

Garçon is thinking bigger and partnering up with bottling facilities to expand beyond wine. Other companies are taking this flat approach as well. As we wrote about last month, Olivery’s smart olive oil bottle/system uses flat, plastic pouches that can fit through a mail slot to get you your olive oil refills.

Better packaging for shelf-stable beverage and liquid delivery will beget more types of bottled products that can be ordered online, which will beget even more types of packaging modified for easier/cheaper transport. And unlike IKEA, when the flat bottle of wine arrives, you don’t have to assemble it.