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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

NFT Restaurant

Food Tech News Pod: The Wendyverse, 15-Minute Grocery Struggles & Roku’s Big Food Play

It’s another weekly food tech new wrap-up.

The stories we discuss this week include:

As always, you can find more episodes of The Spoon Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also just click play below to listen to today’s show.

Food NFT + Metaverse (in a) Minute: NFTs for Purpose Driven Restaurants, Cereal DAO

It’s still early days at the intersection of food and Web3 and that means there’s almost always something new happening and more to learn. Stay up to date with our coverage and these 3 things in this week’s Food Metaverse Minute:

NFTs for Purpose-Driven Restaurant

Chefs using NFTs to fund their next restaurant is becoming a regular thing — but even more inspiring is chefs using NFTs to give back to the workers who are the backbone of the restaurant industry. That’s what St. Paul-based chef Brian Ingram and his group Purpose Restaurants are doing with their next project.

Partnering with Chicago artist Joey Africa, the NFT collection will feature 71 original digital and physical pieces, each token serving as a membership to Ingram’s newest restaurant. The Apostle Supper Club, opening this summer across from the Xcel Energy Center, will hold VIP events like private chef dinners and menu tastings. Ten percent of the NFT raise will go back into the community; Ingram’s restaurant group regularly contributes to Give Hope, his charity created to give funds directly to people in their community, particularly restaurant workers dealing with housing insecurity or addiction.

We’ll be keeping an eye on hose this project performs. The NFTs went on sale last week on Opeaseas but so far there’s been little activity. While there’s been lots of inspiration from the success of the membership of Flyfish Club, no one – not surprisingly – has been able to replicate the success of the Gary Vee-affiliated group.

The DAO-Driven Cereal Company

NFT-branded cereal makes a debut from the “first decentralized CPG company” last week at Bitcoin Miami. The new CPG DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) — named gmgn supply co — launched with its first product, gm cereal and introduced its governance structure. The goal of DAOs is to spread collective decision-making rights along with ownership benefits to all of the involved members.

To drive hype for their launch, gmgn used Web3 marketing with BoredBecky, a curated personality with famous NFT social influencer group Bored Ape Club. The new group hopes to “revolutionize the CPG industry and drive the next generation of beloved brands,” and will be the first consumer packaged goods company to embrace NFTs as a way to fund and the DAO structure to run and grow the organization.

“If you look at the current CPG landscape, the majority of brands we eat every day are owned by 11 giant CPG conglomerates. gmgn supply co is changing this and our members will have a say in what they eat, what products are going to be made and help lead the CPG industry in a new direction that’s been elevated by Web3. We are excited to be leading this change and kicking it off with the launch of our first brand, gm Cereal, slated to drop in the Fall of this year,” said Phillipe LeBlanc, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Funday.” Funday is one of the founding companies that started gmgn.

SimulATE is Back

SimulATE is coming back! We’re bringing back the first virtual event dedicated to the emerging food, NFT, metaverse + crypto space and we’re going to be announcing our speaker lineup and agenda soon. Preview some of that here and if you use THIS LINK, you’ll get 50% off ticket prices through the end of this week (FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11:59 pm PST).

What Do NFTs and Web3 Mean for Small Restaurants?

So while it may not be surprising that a restaurant concept by alpha-adopter and Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk can raise millions of dollars selling NFTs, what about that mom & pop place on the corner?

In other words, how does a small restauranteur that doesn’t have the followers, fame and early adopter advantage of a Vaynerchuk take advantage of web3?

This is a problem Adam Brotman has been giving some thought to. As the former head of digital for Starbucks and CEO of a company that powers digital loyalty programs for restaurants big and small in Brightloom, he’s been imagining what a world looks like when more consumers know what an NFT is and how to hold it.

I asked him how a corner restaurant like the one in my neighborhood called Portofino’s might eventually use an NFT. According to Brotman, local restaurants like the one at the end of my street will eventually be able to put NFTs to use, but not in the same way celebrities as Vaynerchuk can.

“Portofino’s could say, ‘Yeah, we know who our best customers are, either by name or some loyalty program,'” Brotman said on the Spoon podcast. “And they give them an NFT. Say, ‘here’s a code to claim your free NFT. And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the Portofino’s NFT.’

Brotman says that there are plenty of benefits popular smaller restaurants can give loyal customers that would make an NFT valuable such as reservations whenever they want, free valet parking, special offers, and events.

Brotman acknowledges some things need to fall into place before small guys can use NFTs, the first of which is to make the onramp for customers to buy and hold NFTs a whole lot accessible.

“99% of their customers wouldn’t even know how to hold an NFT,” said Brotman. “You have to have a crypto wallet today. They ask, ‘what is a crypto wallet? How do I get one?'”

Brotman says the entire crypto tech space is working on this problem and believes big consumer-facing crypto companies like Coinbase will eventually offer easy-to-use solutions.

He also thinks the cost needs to come down, both in terms of transaction fees and the impact on the environment. He believes newer blockchain platforms that claim to be carbon neutral like Solana will help here.

Brotman also admits better tools are needed since offering something like an NFT is beyond the capabilities of most restauranteurs and says that this is a problem that Brightloom is working on.

Brotman also thinks the broader metaverse holds potential for restaurants, but it will be a while before all that is figured out.

“I think we’re a ways off from that,” said Brotman. “NFTs being used multi-purpose loyalty, access identity, digital collectible community formation tool is going to be more relevant first before there’s going a critical mass of people living in some virtual reality.”

But, just in case restaurants are already thinking of moving into the metaverse, Brotman doesn’t think they should be overly focused on being transactional, but instead on enabling experiences that are on-brand.

“If I’m a Starbucks in the metaverse, I’m not just serving coffee. I’m growing coffee. I’m giving people tours of my farm in Costa Rica. What are the things that I wish I could transport people to experiences that I can’t scale in real life because of distance or cost or physics?”

You can hear the rest of my conversation with Brotman in the latest episode of The Spoon podcast.

Would Someone Pay $1 Million For an NFT to Get VIP Access to a Restaurant? We’re About to Find Out

Lots of people would like to walk into a restaurant and get VIP treatment. But is it worth paying $1 million for?

We’re about to find out. That’s because a restaurant group called Chotto Matte is going to offer up a $1 million NFT to a bidder to get a singular NFT called The Founder.

According to the release, The Founder “collectible chip card grants exclusive membership access with an array of bespoke benefits, redeemable all over the world and ranging from personal invitations to every Chotto Matte restaurant opening around the world, plus first-class flights and five-star accommodations to major sports event tickets for two people per year (FIFA, F1, boxing, etc.); and more! “

A few months ago, the folks behind Flyfish Club launched a successful NFT campaign that drew thousands of bidders to buy NFTs that granted them membership to a new restaurant backed by social media influencer and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. At the time, I suggested that Flyfish’s success might influence other restauranteurs to jump into the NFT game, perhaps modeling their NFTs on the membership model designed by the group.

From the looks of it, Chotto Matte is not modeling their NFT on Flyfish, but instead hoping for a big “fish” to drop a million bucks to gain VIP access to benefits at the Chotto Matte restaurant. It’s a riskier strategy since there’s a high probability they don’t find anyone willing to part ways with a million bucks for this NFT.

Don’t get me wrong. Exclusive membership benefits that offer true real-world utility are an absolute must for any restaurant going down the NFT route. I just don’t know if VIP treatment at Chotto Matte is enough to convince someone to part ways with that kind of money.

Either way, we should know soon. The company plans to launch its NFT via a special launch event on April 5th at NFT week in Miami.

Tomorrow: Learn about the food metaverse at SimulATE 2022

Tomorrow (Feb 1st) we’re kicking off our first virtual event of the year, tackling a fast-growing area of food tech: the metaverse. We’re bringing together those helping to build the food metaverse and experts in crypto, NFTs and mixed reality to discuss the seismic shifts coming to the world of food tech.

SimulATE: the Food Metaverse + NFT Mini-Summit will kick off The Spoon’s virtual event series in 2022 and host speakers like David Rodolitz, the CEO of Flyfish Club who is working with Gary Vaynerchuk to build the world’s first NFT restaurant.

Another session with Amber Case from Unlock Protocol and Shelly Rupel from Devour Token will focus on cryptocurrencies and the role non-fungible tokens, the blockchain, DAOs and crypto overall will play in the future of dining, food retail and delivery.

We’re going to talk with Supreeet Raju, co-founder of OneRare about the work happening to build the “foodverse” and what it looks like to create a gamified and immersive food experience for users.

What does a Web3 burger chain restaurant look like? Co-founder of BurgerDAO Al Chen will discuss the work of building and funding a completely new operational model for quick service restaurants and the role NFTs will play in supporting the opening of each chain.

Register for SimulATE tickets + use SPOON for 25% off

Between sessions, you’ll have the chance to network with professionals across the channels and industries involved in Web3, crypto, blockchain, NFTs and mixed reality.

If you don’t work in those spaces but you’re trying to put your finger on the pulse of the “food metaverse” and need a crash course in the future disruption of food with metaverse tech, SimulATE is the place to be.

Check out the full agenda for SimulATE here and get your tickets; the event starts at 9:00 am Pacific on Tuesday, February 1, 2022 and runs until 1:00 pm Pacific. But, if you can’t make it live, grab a VIP pass that gives you total digital access to each session after the event.

We’re running a last-day sale — just click “TICKETS” in the upper right corner and use code SPOON to get 25% off both live and VIP tickets.

Here Are The Details About Flyfish Club, Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT Restaurant Opening in 2023

While we already knew some of the basic details about Gary Vaynerchuk and VCR Group’s NFT restaurant concept, we’ve learned more in the last week about how the whole thing will work.

Here’s some of what we’ve learned and my quick thoughts:

Token as Membership. At a high level, the Flyfish Club and its NFT membership is essentially a new, crypto-ized spin on an old idea: a member’s only dining club. To start, VCR initially made a total of 1,501 membership tokens for the Flyfish Club available to the public and reserved 1,534 for the company. Membership remains valid as long as a person owns the token. As just like most NFTs, the owner can resell the token (and many are already trying to do just that) on marketplaces like Opensea.

Flyfish Has Two-Tiered Membership. Flyfish has two types of tokens available: a Flyfish token and a Flyfish Omakase token. The Flyfish token, initially offered at 2.5 Ethereum (~$8,400), gets you into the restaurant and cocktail lounge while the Omakase token, offered at 4.25 Ethereum (~$14,300), gets you all that plus entry into the exclusive Omakase room.

Frequency and Guests: A token owner can eat at Flyfish pretty much whenever they want, but they’ll have to make a reservation first. Token owners will need to call ahead up to 14 days in advance for a table. Each token holder can make as many reservations as they’d like (capacity willing) per month, and each token member can bring the number of guests allotted for a specific table (for example, if they reserve a four-person table, they can bring three guests).

Flyfish Token Owners Still Have to Pay for Food. So you just spent $14 thousand on your new membership? That’s great and all, but you better have some left over to pay the bill. As with a traditional exclusive dining club, membership fees to Flyfish are just that, the cost of entry. Food, payable in US dollars, will be purchased for each meal just as if you were at any other restaurant.

Flyfish Has Raised $14 Million in Funds So Far. That’s right, $14 million in about a week. This is impressive and signals a potentially game-changing way to start a restaurant. Of course, there can only be one ‘first’ and not everyone has millions of followers like Gary Vaynerchuk. Still, I can certainly see a lot of celebrity chefs jumping into NFT-driven membership restaurants in the next couple of years.

The Tokens are Leasable. This is an interesting (and smart) twist: Flyfish permits token owners to lease them to others on a monthly basis. Leasing essentially turns a semi-liquid asset with a limited ability for near-term recurring revenue into a potential cash cow. Say, for example, you buy a Flyfish token for $4 thousand and lease it out to executives or curious upscale foodies for $1,000 a month. This would allow you to essentially treat a token as say you would a home you purchase to put onto Airbnb: An investment with potential for both long-term appreciation potential and near-term short-term recurring revenue.

There are a lot more details on the club’s FAQ page, which I would recommend reading. Overall, I think Gary Vee and crew have created a fairly common-sense initial framework for an NFT-as-membership concept that will undoubtedly become a template for others (of which I expect will be many).

If you’d like to learn more about how NFTs will chance the restaurant and food business, make sure to join The Spoon’s Food NFT/Metaverse mini-summit on February 1st. Registration is free (but limited), so hurry up and register today!