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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

marketplace

Russian Digital Ag Marketplace Agro.Club Raises $1.5 Million

While North America and Western Europe have seen fairly strong adoption of digital marketplaces by farmers and their buyers, the Russian market has lagged a little behind when it comes to digital transformation.

But Agro.Club hopes to change that and, according to a report from Agfunder, the Russia-based digital marketplace just raised a $1.5 million seed round to help them do so.

According to the report, it looks like they’ve already made good progress since they started the company just under two years ago. From Agfunder:

Since launching in Russia in August 2018, the self-described fintech startup said that 20% of farmers in the region signed up for the service within 18 months leading to millions of euros in transactions. Over 4,000 grain companies have signed on to the platform and Agro.Club reports agreements with multinationals like Cargill, Bayer, and EuroChem.

While Agro.Club allows farmers to connect with buyers, it also has other features:

(AgroClub) allows users to monitor grain prices with automated logistics, obtain analytics, trade grain, obtain ag inputs, receive weather forecasts for specific fields, and share best practices with other farmers. Users can also seek advice from experts.

Digital marketplaces had already been a hot vector for investment, with startups like WeFarm and Indigo Agriculture raising rounds in the last year and a half or so. Now, with the pandemic disrupting many farmer’s traditional supply chains, we might see an even greater interest in these types of markets as farmers look to accelerate their digital transformation.

Fieldcraft is an Online Marketplace Helping Companies Develop New Plant-Based Products

Say a bakery chain wants to add a vegan blueberry muffin to its menu. First, they’d have to find substitutes for butter and eggs — depending on their preferences, maybe even ones that are certified organic or locally made — and ensure that these producers could consistently keep them supplied.

Maybe they should take a look at Fieldcraft. The Austin-based startup, which just launched last month, is an online B2B marketplace for plant-based ingredients. Growers and manufacturers can list their products — everything from specialty grains to kale chips — on the site, and buyers can search the database by production method, certifications (organic, non-GMO, etc.), location, supplier production capacity, and more.

If buyers can’t find what they need, they can submit requests to Fieldcraft for new products or even contract out farmers to sow a certain crop, such as an heirloom grain. On the farmer’s side, this is also a win since it gives them a guaranteed marketplace and, by putting in demands for new/different crops, promotes biodiversity.

Though it’s just over a month old, Fieldcraft already has over 7,000 companies in its marketplace. Yesterday the company rolled out a new solutions tool to help people who might not be sure exactly what they’re looking for — which, according to Fieldcraft CEO and co-founder Michael Chapman, is about one-third of their users. “We want to give buyers the chance to find new products that they didn’t even know were out there,” he told me.

For example, the aforementioned bakery might not know what type of egg substitute would be the best fit for their new vegan blueberry muffins. In this case, they could search Fieldcraft for a list of plant-based egg alternatives, which include minute details about the properties of each ingredient (emulsifying, thickening, etc.), and then determine which one to purchase.

On the other hand, for those who know exactly what they’re looking for, Fieldcraft can get pretty granular. So instead of just searching for broad “egg alternatives,” users could track down a “clean-label, non-GMO upcycled aquafaba.”

With so many new players — both young startups and veteran food corporations — entering into the plant-based protein space, I think there’s certainly a market for Fieldcraft’s, well, market. It offers a couple obvious benefits: it cuts out the middleman and gives suppliers instant access to new audiences.

But Fieldcraft’s greatest asset is its opportunity for discovery. When I visited the JUST offices last year I was wow-ed by their high tech plant research center, where the company tests plants sourced from around the world to suss out their properties: if they foam, thicken, etc. A resource like Fieldcraft, with its wide-ranging database, could help smaller startups who don’t have the warchest or lab space of a JUST to discover new ingredients that could lead to better plant-based products.

There are certainly other wholesale ingredient supply companies out there, including major players like Sysco or U.S. Foods, which carry plant-based ingredients. However, Fieldcraft is targeting buyers who want a more direct relationship with their supplier or need hard-to-find ingredients with exacting specifications. As of now, they sell to CPG brands, meal kit makers, bakeries, brewers, and even food manufacturers.

From my conversation with Chapman, it seems like the size of growers and suppliers using Fieldcraft varies pretty widely. I’ll be curious to see if they ever run into the problem of a grower running out of an ingredient (or just having a bad harvest) which a supplier relies upon for its product. That being said, his cofounder (and wife) Kristy Chapman, CPO of Fieldcraft, has a background in data science, so maybe they’ll be able to set up a backend that can nimbly adjust based on suppliers’ yield.

Fieldcraft is free for buyers to use and costs $195/year for suppliers. The company currently has four employees (including the Chapmans) and has yet to seek any external funding.

Obviously, Fieldcraft isn’t for everyone. Big players like Tyson or even Beyond Meat clearly have their own ingredient supply chains nailed down. But for newer startups, or even medium-sized players looking to develop new animal-free products, Fieldcraft could be a valuable resource.

There also seems to be a new trend of pick-and-play plant-based ingredient companies, like Motif Ingredients, a new company that makes ingredients for vegan products from genetically engineered yeast. With the plant-based market as red-hot as it is — sales grew by 20 percent in 2018 alone — I imagine we’ll see a lot more food companies and manufacturers looking to develop their own animal-free products over the coming years. Fieldcraft seems to be entering the market at just the right time.

ChefSteps Working On Marketplace To Connect Cattle Ranchers With Consumers

Just last week, ChefSteps announced the rollout of a new Facebook Messenger bot to assist users of its Joule sous vide cooker in the process of making a meal. This just a few months after adding an Alexa skill for the Joule, and we know from conversations with the company they have plans to create a platform that would enable influencers like chefs to create branded content for the Joule.

If this wasn’t enough to convince you the busy Seattle cooking startup has a whole lot of balls in the air, there’s one more business they’d like to add to their juggling act. According to a job posting on ChefSteps.com, the company also has plans to launch a new line of business that allows independent ranchers to sell their meat directly to users of the Joule.

According to the job listing, the new product manager position will oversee a marketplace that connects “independent ranchers with ChefSteps users, offering them direct access to high-quality meat and ingredients at great prices.”  The new position would oversee the marketplace and help to manage the home delivery service portion of this new line of business.

It’s an interesting move for ChefSteps. The world of high-quality meat is one that is largely still dependent on the traditional wholesale food distribution business, with the vast majority of meat still being bought through grocery and food retail.  Changing this business would take a heavy lift, but given that sous vide customers are already somewhat enlightened when it comes to the quality of food, ChefSteps probably believes it can extend that higher awareness into the actual steak purchase itself.

Could it work? Maybe. Success would be dependent on whether there is an underserved market for quality steaks and if ChefSteps can provide a unique way to connect producers of meat and consumers that has interesting economics for both parties.

The motivation for moving into ancillary areas to their current hardware business is clear. The consumer sous vide appliance market is heating up, as companies like Anova, who is now part of Electrolux, and ChefSteps are starting to see increased competition from low-cost brands such as Gourmia and InstantPot.  ChefSteps early success with the Joule resulted from successfully tapping into the company’s large online community, but recent moves suggest that they see continued innovation around new features and services as a way to keep ahead of the crowd.