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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Mealhero Raises €2.5M for Its Frozen Meals-by-Mail Service

Mealhero, a Belgium-based frozen meal kit delivery service, has raised €2.5 million (~$2.97M USD) in funding. Mealhero’s CEO, Jeroen Spitaels announced the fundraise via a Linkedin post today (though according to Crunchbase, the close date was November 1).

At the time of this writing, there wasn’t an English press release announcing the funding, so the following details are taken from a Google Translation of a Dutch article running in De Tijd:

The lead investor is Mealhero’s new round is Jan Haspeslagh, whose family is behind the European frozen meal giant Ardo. The founders of Deliverect and Bavet also participated, and this brings Mealhero’s current total funding to €3.5M (~$4.15M USD).

Mealhero is a little different from other players in the meal kit space. It ships frozen ingredients that can be mixed and matched to create different dishes. The frozen ingredients are “cooked” in a steaming device that people rent for €5 a month (~$6 USD).

The article in De Tijd had a number of interesting tidbits from Spitaels, including:

  • The company is shipping “tens of thousands” of meals every month
  • COVID-19 “turned on the turbo button” for the company. The number of orders during the pandemic has doubled, and the company’s customer base has quadrupled.
  • Mealhero is doubling its workforce to 60 employees.

The meal-by-mail space has experienced new life during the pandemic, largely due to the fact that restaurants have had to shut down dine-in operations. Meal kit pioneer Blue Apron said it added 20,000 new customers during the pandemic, while Nestlé recently acquired prepared meal-by-mail service Freshly in a bid to gain a direct-to-consumer distribution network.

Mealhero has expanded into the Netherlands, and has plans to expand to other countries across Europe.

Spoon Plus: The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report

Nowadays, governments, grocery retailers, industries like agriculture and grocery, tech companies, and many others are working to fight food waste at both the local and international level. In the developed world, at least, much of that focus over the last 12 months has been on the consumer kitchen, which is responsible for by far the most food waste in those regions.

This report will examine why so much food is wasted in the consumer kitchen, what new technologies and processes can be leveraged to fight that waste, and the companies working to change consumers’ relationship to both food and waste.

Report highlights include:

  • One-third of the world’s food goes to waste annually. In the U.S. and Europe, the majority of that waste happens downstream, at consumer-facing businesses and in the home.

  • Food waste at home is a three-part problem that stems from a lack of awareness about waste, inadequate information and skill sets around home cooking, and the convenience economy driving consumer behavior.

  • Grocery store shopping, current recipe formats, inconsistent date labels, and a lack of smart storage solutions for grocery purchases and restaurant leftovers are the main drivers of at-home food waste.

  • The refrigerator itself may be one of the single biggest contributors to food waste. Moving forward, appliance-makers will need to consider overhauling the appliance’s entire design to help consumers fight food waste.

  • Solutions for fighting food waste will come from a range of different players. For tech companies, areas of focus will include more smart appliances and more tech-enabled storage systems as well as meal-planning and meal-sharing apps.

Companies profiled in this report include LG, Samsung, Vitamix, Smarter, Ovie, Bluapple, Mimica, Blakbear, Silo, Mealhero, MealBoard, Kitche, No Waste, Ends & Stems, and Olio.

Introduction: The Size of the World’s Food Waste Problem

In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released the first edition of its now-famous report, “Wasted, How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill.” That report proved to be a groundbreaking look at the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system that lead to massive amounts of food waste from the farm all the way into the average person’s kitchen. 

The report also proved to one of the biggest catalysts for change in recent years. Since its publication, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced federal targets to cut food waste by 50 percent by 2030 — the first goal of its kind in the U.S. Similarly, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 seeks to “halve global food waste at retail and consumer levels, as well as to reduce food loss during production and supply.” As NRDC noted in the second edition of “Wasted,” published in 2017, food businesses have made commitments to reduce waste, and 74 percent of consumers polled say fighting food waste is important to them. Most recently, the Consumer Goods Forum launched its Food Waste Coalition that aims, in part, to support SDG 12.3 by focusing on consumer-facing areas of food waste like home and retail. And these are just as sampling of the countless efforts happening on both international and local levels in the war on food waste.

Even so, the oft-cited figure, that one-third of the world’s food supply goes to waste, is as relevant now as it was nearly a decade ago when NRDC first published its report.

In 2020, food waste is a multibillion-dollar problem with environmental, economic, and human costs that grow more urgent as the world advances towards a 10-billion-person population. The United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates food waste’s global carbon footprint to be 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases, and that economic losses of this food waste total $750 billion annually. The United Kingdom’s Food Waste Recycling Action Plan (WRAP) notes that keeping food scraps out of landfills would be the equivalent of removing 20 percent of cars in Britain from the roads. Meanwhile, over in the U.S., rescuing just 15 percent of the food we waste could feed 25 million Americans each year, or well over half of the 40 million Americans facing food insecurity.  

Worldwide, different regions waste food in different ways. UN estimates show that per capita waste by consumers in Europe and North America totals to 95-115 kg/year. That number drops significantly, to 6-11 kg/year, in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeastern Asia. Overall, 40 percent of losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels in developing countries. Not so in developed nations, where over 40 percent of food waste occurs at retail and consumer levels.

Given the enormous amounts of waste occurring at the consumer level in Europe and North America, it makes sense that recent efforts towards fighting food waste now go towards understanding how and why food gets wasted downstream, at grocery stores, restaurants, and, most importantly, within consumers’ own homes.

The full report is available to subscribers of Spoon Plus. To find out more about Spoon Plus, click here. Use discount code NEWMEMBER to get 15% off an annual or monthly subscription. 

Robots + Connected Kitchen Appliances Can Help Diabetics Manage Diets

Anyone with kids knows that getting them to eat healthy can be a challenge. That challenge is compounded if your child has a disease like diabetes, where their diets must be strictly managed. That’s where Belgium-based IDLab thinks robots can help, especially for older kids who are a little more independent. In the video below, IDLab demonstrates how a home robot working in conjunction with a connected cooking device like mealhero’s can help people with diabetes watch their carbohydrate intake and regulate their insulin accordingly. The video shows more of a use case scenario, rather than a full-blown production level solution (it also over-simplifies the carbs in carrots). It’s also pretty complicated, requiring the robot, a mealhero meal plan and steamer, a connected food scale and a calculator to figure out the carb count of a meal to enter into an insulin pump. But it’s easy to see from this proof-of-concept where the technology could eventually go. The robot provides a “friendly” interface to guide the child or whomever through a meal planning process. A product like mealhero works in this scenario because it has a standardized set of ingredients that are shipped individually and its connected cooking device automatically cooks the food. Similar companies like Tovala, Suvie or Brava could provide the same type of meal+connected appliance. Given these basic building blocks, there’s no reason the process couldn’t work with any number of diseases that require adherence to a particular diet. When we write about robots, there are often two big caveats: first is that there will be a human employment cost as automation continues; second, useful robotics applications in the home are still a ways off in the future. What IDLab is demonstrating here is that food-related robots can actually be helpful to people and while clunky, that robotic future is closer to today than some distant tomorrow.

Mealhero Raises €900,000 for its Frozen Meal Kit and Smart Cooker Service

Mealhero, the European meal kit delivery startup, announced at the end of last week that it has raised a €900,000 (~$1.04 million) seed round of funding.

According to Dutch publication datanews (translated via Google Translate) roughly one-third of the €900k comes from loans, another third from subsidies from the Flemish Enterprise Agency and the final third from IMEC and an investment angel.

The Belgium-based Mealhero differentiates itself from other meal kit services on the market through its combination of frozen food and a dedicated connected cooking appliance. As we wrote about the company last year:

The mealhero service is comprised of three parts: a box of frozen ingredients delivered to your home, an app to help you assemble your ingredients into a recipe, and a connected three-container steamer to cook them automatically.

The app knows what [Mealhero] ingredients you have and can suggest a recipe, or you can assemble a combination of foods how you like. The frozen ingredients include vegetables, starches, and meats and come in their own containers, each with an RFID label. Once selected, you scan each container on the steamer and place the ingredient in its own compartment. The steamer knows how long to cook each individual component, so you don’t have to actually do any cooking.

One of the benefits of Mealhero’s approach is that since it ships frozen food, the ingredients will last longer, so you can make them when you like. More traditional meal kit companies send fresh ingredients that spoil more quickly, so you have to make them relatively quickly, whether you want to eat that meal or not.

This new seed funding adds to the €79,151 Mealhero raised on Kickstarter last year as well as an undisclosed amount of funding the company had prior to Kickstarter. The Mealhero device is available for purchase (the company’s website says 100 smart steamers are available for delivery at the end of Sept.), with the Starter Pack costing €299 (~$350 USD).

Mealhero was also a finalist at the Startup Showcase at our first Smart Kitchen Summit: Europe earlier this year. Be the first to see the next generation of food tech startups at our flagship Smart Kitchen Summit: North America event in Seattle next month!

Q&A with Jeroen Spitaels, Cofounder of Mealhero

Last week we announced the 8 finalists who will participate in SKS Europe’s Startup Showcase. Next month they’ll head to Dublin to pitch our panel of judges on how their company will change the future of food and cooking.

We’re launching a series of Q&A’s so you can get to know these founders a little bit better. First up: Jeroen Spitaels. He’s the cofounder of Mealhero, a Belgian startup which combines a frozen meal kit service with a connected countertop steamer. Head to the SKS Europe blog to read our Q&A with Spitaels and learn what inspired him to start Mealhero, the power of a good vacation, and why he wants a smart tech chef in every home.

If you haven’t already, register to join us for SKS Europe this June 11-12 in Dublin! You’ll get to meet these ambitious founders, rub shoulders with kitchen innovators, and hang out in the Guinness Brewhouse.

Mealhero Combines Ice, Steam and the Cloud for European Meal Kits

The biggest hurdle I’ve had with meal kit subscriptions is all the work it takes once you get the ingredients. Sure, they’re portioned, but you still have to do a ton of prep work and be a halfway decent cook to make them turn out. Plus, you have to use up the ingredients before they go bad.

Mealhero, a two-year old startup based in Belgium, wants to have overcome these issues through a combination of frozen food plus connected high-tech steamer, and have taken to Kickstarter to expand their European footprint.

Quick note: It’s not easy to suss out all the mealhero details outside of the subtitled Kickstarter video, as almost all of their promotional materials are in Dutch. We reached out to them with some questions, and didn’t hear back at the time of this writing. UPDATE: Jeroen Spitaels, Co-Founder and CEO of mealhero, emailed us back with answers to our questions, which are pasted below.

The mealhero service is comprised of three parts: a box of frozen ingredients delivered to your home, an app to help you assemble your ingredients into a recipe, and a connected three-container steamer to cook them automatically.

The app knows what ingredients you have and can suggest a recipe, or you can assemble a combination of foods how you like. The frozen ingredients include vegetables, starches, and meats and come in their own containers, each with an RFID label. Once selected, you scan each container on the steamer and place the ingredient in its own compartment. The steamer knows how long to cook each individual component, so you don’t have to actually do any cooking.

According to mealhero’s Kickstarter video, they offer 100 ingredients, which can be combined into 300 different meals. And since everything is frozen, it keeps longer.

While most people probably don’t want every meal steamed, mealhero does seems to be taking the friction between meal kit delivery and actual usage. In a similar vein, Tovala combines specialized meal kit delivery designed for its own oven appliance. And Nomiku offers a similar prepared meal service for its connected sous-vide cooker. And elsewhere in the Netherlands, IXL has it’s E-cooker, another three compartment cooker that uses pulsed electric fields for precision heating (and it took home the Innovation Award at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit).

Mealhero currently has customers in Belgium and the Netherlands, and is using Kickstarter to raise $75,000 to grow the business.

THE SPOON: 1. Is mealhero currently available anywhere?

Jeroen Spitaels: mealhero is available in Belgium and The Netherlands. It is geographically limited because of the recurring food service, which we aren’t able yet to ship worldwide.

2. Do you currently have any funding, or are you doing this entirely through Kickstarter?

We already have some funding, Kickstarter is mainly to get more customers and further expand our market. Besides the funding aspect as well.

3. It looks like if successfully Kickstarted, you will roll out in September of 2018. Is this correct? Where will you be rolling out to first?

Correct. We will be rolling out in Belgium and The Netherlands.

4. What is the Kickstarter money going towards?

The production of the smart steaming devices. For now we have funded everything ourselves together with our partner. Which basically means the entire technological development. So the Kickstarter support will be used to – in fact – manufacture all the devices.

5. How much to does mealhero cost? Will the price change once you reach the market?

Retail price is 319 [EUR, $369 USD] for a smart steamer and 1 foodbox. Kickstarter price is 229 [$265 USD] for the smart steamer and 1 foodbox. Afterwords, customer are able to order as many foodboxes as they like for which the price will vary between 9,5 [$11] and 6,5 EUR [$7.54] per meal, depending on the total order size.

6. How do you plan to avoid the challenges other Kickstarter hardware projects have encountered?

At first we did all of the developments ourselves, afterwards we teamed up with an experienced partner in hardware product development for electronics, mechanics and design. Doing so allowed us to gain access to a broad range of possible suppliers for the devices. Furthermore, there is also a consumer guarantee as is the case for all consumer electronics.

7. How do you plan to avoid the challenges other meal kit delivery services have faced?

I’ve been lucky enough to grow up in a family food business in which I’m the 3rd generation. So we already have quite a bit of experience within the food industry. Besides that I believe it is also one of our core strengths that we’re always very open towards partnerships. For instance for the logistical supply chain, we are partnering up with specialized firms.