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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Mill

Food Recycler Startup Mill Hits $20M in Revenue as It Launches Mill for Workplace

Today, food recycler startup Mill disclosed (via Axios, scoop by my ex-Gigaom colleague Katie Fehrenbacher) that it has reached $20 million in trailing 12-month revenue. It also announced it is launching a new product line extension in Mill for Workplace.

The company, which makes a home food recycler, made headlines when it launched over two years ago, thanks to both its pedigreed founders (the CEO co-founded smart home startup Nest) and its upcycling service that turns processed food scraps into chicken feed.

Since then, Mill has continued to check off key milestones—an achievement worth noting, especially in today’s tough startup climate and in a niche category like home food waste management. Today, they hit another couple of big ones with the launch of a new product line and positive revenue growth.

The move into the business market makes sense, particularly since, as founder Matt Rogers shared in a LinkedIn post, Mill’s food recyclers are already in use at offices like Duolingo and Bristol Myers Squibb. The company’s Mill for Workplace landing page emphasizes how it will help businesses meet their sustainability goals and highlights Mill’s fleet management software.

As for revenue, while $20 million in sales is impressive, the analyst in me wants to know how much of that is hardware vs. recurring subscription revenue, and what their year-over-year growth rate looks like. My concern for any hardware company right now isn’t just the tough funding environment (though I expect Mill will look to raise another round), but also how their bill of materials and overall costs will be impacted by Trump’s new tariffs.

That said, Mill’s management has proven savvy from the start, offering a digestible monthly rental plan ($35/month as of today). I’d also expect they can command a higher monthly rate for business customers. Given their track record, I expect them to continue to navigate this space relatively well.

If you want to hear more about Mill’s business and their new business line, Mill President Harry Tannenbaum will be at Smart Kitchen Summit in July.

The Food Tech News Show: Gene-Edited Tomatoes & Rethinking Robots Restaurants

On this week’s episode of the Food Tech News Show, longtime podcaster, former host of NPR Marketplace, and all-around nice person Molly Wood joins Carlos and Mike to discuss the food tech stories of the week.

Here are the stories covered in this week’s show:

Tune in to The Spoon’s new dedicated weekly Food Tech News Show! You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can just click play below!

Is Food Waste Reduction About to Have Its ‘Nest Moment’?

When the Nest came out in 2011, it quickly became popular for its innovative design and its ability to allow users to track their energy usage more accurately. While the Ecobee thermostat is largely recognized as the first true smart thermostat, most would agree it was Nest—especially after Google acquired the company in 2014—that exposed a much broader swath of the population to the concept of using smart home technology to manage energy and reduce energy bills.

Nowadays, about one in six households has a smart thermostat, and using one to reduce energy bills is often listed at the top of home energy management and budget-saving tips.

Meanwhile, although most people recognize that food waste is also a waste of money, only a tiny fraction of US households use any innovative technology to avoid it. The main reason is that tracking food waste is difficult. Until recently, it required users to pull out a spreadsheet and make numerous estimations of how much food ended up in the waste bin.

But that may soon change, in part because those who helped build the Nest are now trying to bring the same type of management and tracking dashboards that helped users become more aware of how much money they could save by better managing their home heating and cooling. Mill, co-founded by Nest co-founder Matt Rogers and one of the thermostat company’s first hires, Harry Tannenbaum, helps users keep track of how much food they are keeping out of the waste bin. According to the company, this is helping them reduce waste and save money.

According to Mill, their device is resulting in changed consumer behavior. In a new report published today, Mill states that users of their device reduced the amount of food they throw out by 20% within a few months of using the food recycler.

From the report:

Mill aggregated millions of device days of data from April 2023 to May 2024 and found that the median Mill household added around 5.5 pounds of food scraps per household per week. Notably, the median amount of food scraps added to Mill decreased over time—by over 20% in the first four months—and then stabilized.

With the average US household wasting up to $1,900 in food annually, this translates to roughly $380 in savings over the course of a year. If you’re doing the math, that’s about three times the savings a household gets from using a Nest.

With such obvious bottom-line benefits, will users start embracing smarter food waste management tools? Possibly, but with a couple of caveats. While energy management is something that is easy to track via lower energy bills, the savings from food waste reduction are less direct and obvious to the consumer. It’s also more expensive to buy a Mill recycler, setting a home back a thousand dollars (or $30 a month if on a subscription plan). There are cheaper products—the Lomi costs about $379—but from my experience using it for six months, the Mill is quieter and compacts more food than competing composters.

There’s no doubt that food waste reduction is having a moment. Just last week, the Biden administration announced the first national White House strategy on food waste reduction, and businesses have finally begun taking it seriously, in part because of state and local laws forcing their hand. All this comes against a backdrop of higher consumer prices for food, which has translated into consumers buying less food and being a bit more mindful of the food they already have in their fridges and pantries.

My hope is that companies like Mill will now start eyeing how to keep food from going to the bin in the first place. Other startups like Wisely, Silo, and Ovie are making products that help consumers more smartly store in their fridges, while big companies like Amazon have been researching ways to make the fridge smarter when it comes to food waste management. If someone, Mill or otherwise, can finally build food waste management systems millions of consumers use – before and after it goes bad – then we might finally be able to make a dent in our national home food waste problem.

Podcast: The Story of Mill With Matt Rogers

If you follow the world of kitchen and consumer food tech startups, you know there hasn’t been much in the way of venture-funded startups targeting food waste in the home.

That changed last year when Mill lifted the veil on the company and its first product, the Mill Bin, a smart food recycler. The company’s unique approach included a subscription-based home food waste recycler and an accompanying service that would turn the food grounds into chicken feed. 

We decided to catch up with the company’s CEO, Matt Rogers, to hear about the journey to making Mill. During our conversation, we also talk about:

  • The early lessons in building a tech-powered food recycling appliance and service
  • Why Matt decided to target food waste after building a smart home company in Nest
  • The challenges in getting consumers to think about wasting less food
  • How better data can help us change consumer behavior 
  • The future of food waste reduction technology in the consumer kitchen

You can listen to the full episode below or find it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also watch the video of our conversation on YouTube or below.

A Conversation With Matt Rogers from Mill

If you want to learn more about Mill, you can head to their website or join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit where we will be hearing from company cofounder Harry Tannenbaum. Use discount code podcast for 15% off tickets.

After Hitting Ten Thousand Users, Mill Unveils Second-Generation Hi-Tech Food Waste Bin

Last week, Mill unveiled its second-generation appliance, one year after introducing its high-tech food waste bin (don’t call it a composter!). The news comes as the company reaches ten thousand customers and claims it has helped divert one million pounds of food waste from landfills.

Both the first and second generation Mill turn food waste into inputs for chicken feed called grounds. The significant difference between the two machines is that the second-generation Mill will do it faster and more quietly.

According to the company, one primary area of feedback from users of the first-gen Mill was that the appliance processed food too slowly. When the company returned to the drawing board to build the second-generation device, it redesigned the food chopping blades from horizontally mounted to two vertically mounted blades, according to an interview Mill CEO Matt Rogers gave Fast Company.

Video Credit: Mill

Another upgrade speeding the break down of food faster is a change to how the food waste is heated. While the first-gen Mill was heated only from the bottom, the new Mill’s heating element is connected to the entire bin interior, resulting in faster overall food breakdown.

Finally, unlike the first Mill, this new one comes with a purchase option from the get-go. Spoon readers will remember that the company started opening the doors to purchase the first-gen appliance a few months ago after hearing feedback from many of its customers that they’d prefer to own the appliance, especially those that used the Mill to process food waste for use in their garden rather than sending it back to Mill to use for chicken feed.

According to Mill, the new appliance will sell for $999. For those who still want to rent the appliance, the monthly service (without grounds pickup) will be $29.99, $49.99 with grounds pickup. For those who purchase the Mill and want grounds pickup for the Mill chicken-feed service, that’ll cost an additional $10 monthly.

Stepping back, my guess is the biggest challenge Mill will face is its high price point. Consumers looking for high-tech help processing their food waste into compost can find options like the Vitamix Food-Cycler or the Lomi for less than half the price. I worry that just like June and those bringing new approaches to cooking, products hovering around the thousand-buck mark are too expensive for most customers to roll the dice on what is essentially a new product category. While rental lowers the cost, Mill learned that most customers prefer to own their kitchen appliances, which is why they opened up the purchase option.

We’ll keep an eye on the Mill and how they perform with their second-gen appliance.

Mill, Maker of a High-Tech Home Food Waste Bin, Adjusts Plans and Enables Purchase Option

It’s been just over a year since the Mill, the company behind a high-tech home food waste bin, was announced to the public. The company, which made an initial splash with a unique waste-to-chicken feed service and a management team with impressive smart home pedigrees, has spent much of the past year shipping to initial customers and working on partnerships with local municipalities in Washington and Arizona to integrate their product into places with limited curbside composting pickup.

And, starting last month, the company began allowing customers to purchase the Mill bin, adding a new option for a product that had previously only been available as part of a monthly subscription fee option. Before, customers had to pay a $33-a-month subscription service to Mill that included the home bin and the Mill grounds pickup service. Now, they have the option to purchase the Mill bin for $999 a year ($899 with promotion), which gets them the bin, a year of Mill essentials like charcoal filter refills and parts and maintenance, the option to opt into Mill pickups, and a 12-month warranty. 

Where the company works with local pickup partners, plan options may be slightly different, according to Mill. Today, that primarily applies to the Phoenix market, where the company has partnered with a local compost pickup company called R.City. This Phoenix business makes a business out of picking up residential food waste and using the compost to regenerate the soil on its farm in South Phoenix.

I’ve been trialing the Mill myself, and I have to say the device works really well. I’ve tried the grounds pickup service, and it was as easy as advertised. However, since I prefer to put the grounds into the ground, buying the machine probably makes the most sense for me in the long term. That said, I imagine most folks might balk at coughing up almost a grand for a high-tech machine to manage food waste.

Mill Celebrates Standards Group Approval of Upcycled Kitchen Scraps As New Animal Feed Ingredient

Last week, Mill, a company that makes a kitchen scrap upcycling appliance, announced that a standards group had voted to approve a new ingredient feed definition, effectively giving a thumbs up to the output produced by the Mill appliance.

According to the announcement, the ingredient definition committee of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) had unanimously approved a new animal feed ingredient definition for Dried Recovered Household Food. The approval follows a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year.

This is good news for Mill, which pitches its hardware and service as a way to put calories destined for landfill back into the food system through what it calls food grounds. The way Mill’s service works is the food grounds – the heated, dried-up material resulting from processing within the Mill kitchen bin – are sent back to Mill, which then turns it into chicken feed. Now, with the leading animal feed standards group giving this feed ingredient category an official thumb’s up, Mill might have just helped pioneer a new upcycling pathway for standard household food waste to make its way into animal feed.

For Mill, the news follows the recent opening of its new facility in Mukilteo, Washington, its first dedicated facility for processing food grounds into chicken feed. While the choice of a Seattle suburb might be a bit surprising for a northern California startup like Mill, it makes sense when you consider the company’s first municipal partner for its Mill service is the city of Tacoma, which is working with Mill to pilot a service which offers Mill bins and the processing service to Tacoma city residents for a monthly fee.

According to the company, while this is a significant milestone in general for this emerging category of food scraps upcycling, there are a few i’s to dot and t’s to cross.

Although the new definition still needs to clear two procedural votes later this year before its expected inclusion in the AAFCO Official Publication (OP) in January 2024, the committee vote and FDA recommendation were the most rigorous regulatory reviews required and demonstrate significant confidence in and momentum around the definition. 

With this news, I’ll be interested in watching if other consumer food waste recycling product companies attempt animal feed as a new potential service opportunity. Mill is the first company to offer an associated service with a home food scraps bin and likely has filed patents around the entire bin and service concept, but there probably will be some space for others to produce products here.

Smart Composters Are Heading to Retail, But Will Consumers Bite?

Earlier this month, Costco shoppers in select cities across California and Washington State may have stumbled upon a product demo for an item called Lomi. This white countertop appliance, roughly the size of a sewing machine, sat atop a table adorned with a tablecloth, with boxes stacked high just behind.

The images on the tablecloth hinted at the machine’s purpose – perhaps it was a pressure cooker? An air fryer, maybe? The only way to truly discern the machine’s function was to request a demo from one of the beaming representatives or squint and read the sign that proclaimed “Lomi, Smart Waste Composter, $449.99”.

Don’t get me wrong – The very presence of a compost machine at Costco built to help food scraps avoid the landfill is a good thing, a possible sign that better management of food waste is inching toward more mainstream acceptance. But I still had to wonder: will consumers bite on a machine whose main function is to process food waste into something that can be used as fertilizer?

How Big Is Home Composting?

The answer to that question may lie in how many people want to compost their food scraps but don’t currently have an easy way to do it or access to a curbside compost service.

Approximately a quarter of US citizens aged 30 to 59 years own a compost bin in their homes. That number dips to 14% for those over the age of 60, and rises slightly to 32% for those under 30. One reason for these relatively low numbers is that only 27% of households in the US have access to curbside compost pickup. Curbside pickup is crucial because, unless someone is an avid home gardener, they likely have little need for home-generated compost. By offering curbside compost pickup, local municipalities make the diversion of food scraps as simple as recycling your cans and bottles or disposing of your garbage.

However, with a home compost appliance, anyone can compost food in their kitchen and either sprinkle it on their garden or discard the processed scraps into a patch of soil on the side of their yard. Some products, like the Mill, offer a pickup service for processed food scraps (which they turn into chicken feed) via mail-in packages.

But Will Consumers Bite?

All of this brings us back to the question of how many people would be willing to buy a home composting appliance. Past studies indicate that a majority of consumers are open to using home composting services if they’re readily available, but most aren’t prepared to pay extra for a curbside pickup service. And even when folks say they will compost if access is available, in practice, they don’t always follow through.

However, I suspect that these products target a different type of consumer: the home composter with a purpose. This includes the home gardener looking to create their own compost and the food waste warrior looking for a way to reduce their carbon footprint. For those that fit one or both of these descriptions, they would likely welcome a Lomi or another smart home composter into their kitchen.

That is if they can afford one. The Lomi is $449 for the basic option, plus the extra cost to periodically buy the compost pods with microorganisms that speed up the process of breaking down the food. The Vitamix FoodCycler FC 50 costs $349, plus the cost of filters every couple of months. The Mill, whose makers prefer it not to be referred to as a composter because they turn the scraps into animal feed (though we still categorize them as composter), charges a monthly subscription of $33 for the machine and the pickup service for the processed food grounds.

None of these are cheap, especially for a fairly new product category like smart composters, which is probably why Lomi felt the need to start sending demo teams into markets in California and Washington to show people what these products are all about. When I walked up to the Lomi table and asked them about the product, the demo leader was enthusiastic and let me know how to use it.

In the end, I think this market will be an interesting one to watch, in part because it’s so new. It will take some time to teach consumers the benefits of these products, and once they do, we will learn just how many folks are willing to pay for a machine to process their food scraps.

Mill Nabs First Municipal Pilot in Partnership With the City of Tacoma

Mill, a startup that makes a home food waste management appliance that turns food scraps into chicken feed, has captured its first municipal pilot in a partnership with Tacoma, Washington, the company announced this week.

The company partnered with the city of Tacoma to launch a pilot program that uses technology to address residential food waste. As part of the program, Tacoma residents will receive priority access to Mill Memberships, which they will pay directly to Mill at the cost of $33 per month. According to the News Tribune, the city “gained priority access to at least 600 Mill memberships and access to new data that can help inform the city on waste prevention and food-waste reduction projects.”

A Mill subscription, announced last month, is a $33-a-month subscription and includes a kitchen bin and a pickup service for the processed Food Grounds. Once Mill customers activate their bin via Wi-Fi, they can start tossing food scraps. Once the bin is full, they put the Food Grounds into a prepaid box and schedule a pickup with the Mill app.

“We are proud to be at the forefront of creative public-private solutions to tackle the challenging problem of food waste in landfills. The City of Tacoma began collecting and recycling residential food waste in 2012—since then, diverting up to 1,000 tons per year of compostable food waste from landfills. With this first-of-its-kind-agreement with Mill, we are excited to be the first municipality in the country to pilot this innovative new approach to preventing food waste and to support residents who want a better kitchen experience and want to take practical action to address climate change at home,” said Lewis Griffith, City of Tacoma Solid Waste Division Manager.

It will be interesting to see how many Tacoma residents subscribe to the Mill service. One incentive could be offsetting the cost by moving to a smaller garbage can; according to the city, food scraps make up 28% of residential waste, and by taking food waste out of their garbage can by using the Mill, residents could save up to $25.60 by downsizing their container.

According to the announcement, the Mill memberships will be available to Tacoma residents starting next month.

Mill Wants You to Create Chicken Feed Out of Food Scraps

Want to stop sending food waste to the landfill?

A new device and service from a company called Mill will help you do just that while also letting you feed a chicken or two while you’re at it.

Debuting today, the Mill kitchen bin, a new eponymous device from a company founded by a couple of ex-Nest execs, will take your food waste and shrink & “de-stink” it as it turns into what it calls Food Grounds, something the company says is a “safe and nutritious chicken feed ingredient.”

Here’s how it works:

You sign up for a Mill “Membership,” a $33-a-month subscription service that includes a kitchen bin and a pickup service for the processed Food Grounds. You connect the Mill to Wi-Fi, activate it using the Mill app, and start tossing in your food scraps. Once the bin is full, you put your Food Grounds into a prepaid box and schedule a pickup with the Mill app.

While it’s tempting to call the kitchen bin one of a new cohort of smart food composters, Mill wants you to know that its box is definitely not a composter. The Food Grounds “aren’t compost,” says Mill, because instead of having the food sit and get eaten by microbes, it’s processed into an edible chicken feed ingredient they say can be put back into the food system.

Still, aside from the chicken feed system, the Mill isn’t that different from some of the other composters we’ve written about. Like the Lomi and the Kalea, the machine accelerates the shrinking and drying of the food into something other than the original food waste you dropped into the container.

The framing of the Mill is primarily about sustainability and reducing food waste, and it’s a positioning that makes sense. If we’re going to throw food out, it’s better to have those scraps turned into something that can feed chickens or your local garden than end up in a landfill.

That said, the optimal solution for food is not to have it end up as food waste at all, but instead, have it eaten by humans. That’s why I’m hoping the Mill team’s next product will be something that helps us preserve food from entering a waste bin altogether.

For those interested, Mill is taking reservations now and plans to ship the kitchen bin this spring.