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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

NFT

We’re Bringing Food and the Metaverse Back Together This May

We’re in the business of finding and reporting what’s happening on the bleeding edge of food and technology. Discovering invention and innovation and bringing together the people doing this work to talk about it and help others whose business and work will eventually be impacted — this is what we did in early February at SimulATE Food Metaverse & NFT Mini-Summit.

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Watch SimulATE mini-summit sessions like “Building a Crypto Powered Food Future” and “Making an NFT Restaurant with Gary Vee’s Flyfish Club” by joining Spoon Plus here.

And we were blown away at the response. Not only in registrations but in requests after the fact for the recorded sessions after the fact when recaps were being shared. Each session generated many questions and follow-ups and mentions of other work that we wanted to learn more about too.

That’s when SimulATE Spring Summit was born. Happening May 4, 2022 on our virtual platform, we’re coming back with even more sessions, talks and demonstrations to help shed more light on the metaverse, NFTs, cryptocurrency (and all Web3 technology) and their impact, disruption and role in food and related industries.

To take a look at more details and early-bird ticket options, visit the SimulATE Spring Summit registration page. For more info on how to get involved with speaking or sponsorships, email events@thespoon.tech for more details.

The Halal Guys NFT Contest is a Fast Casual Amazing Race For a Lifetime Supply of Falafel

I’ve never eaten at The Halal Guys, but I think the food looks great. I love gyros, falafel, baba ganoush. All of it, right up my alley.

But as much as I like this food, there’s no way I could envision traveling around the world to eat at every single The Halal Guys location. Unfortunately, this puts me out of the running for the NFT the chain is awarding to whoever eats at all 100 locations first. According to the announcement, the owner of this NFT will be able to eat for free at The Halal Guys for the rest of their life.

So how close is someone to winning this food for life pass, which would require not only traveling around the US but heading overseas to South Korea, Indonesia, and The UK? According to the company, the worldwide leader in The Halal Guys visits is “Michael P. from California,” which has visited 12 locations so far.

“Keep going, Michael, only 88 more to go,” says the announcement.

It’s a fun idea, but I’m not sure there is anyone crazy enough to complete the round-the-world in 100 falafels competition The Halal Guys have set up. That’s probably why they set up a lesser “Century Club” for superfans who may not have enough time or resources to travel the globe but have managed to eat at a The Halal Guys 100 times. These Century Club members get a free hat, a Century Club Coin, a 3D printed cart desk ornament, and an NFT.

That second package isn’t nearly as enticing as a lifetime of free food, but maybe just being a member of a club is enough for some The Halal Guy customers. And who knows, maybe there is a bigger community of Halal Guys enthusiasts than I ever imagined and we could see an Amazing Race finish for a lifetime supply of gyros and falafel.

Emily Elyse Miller Wants to Reinvent Breakfast Cereal. That Means Vegan Ingredients, Edgy Mascots, and (Of Course) NFTs

Emily Elyse Miller knows a thing or two about breakfast.

Not only has the one-time journalist and fashion trends forecaster written a book on the topic (complete with 380 recipes from 80 countries), but she’d also run a consulting company that helped world-renowned chefs like Enrique Olvera develop breakfast events.

But after years of writing and teaching about first-meal, Miller realized that cereal, the centerpiece of the American breakfast for generations of kids and adults, had gone stale. So she decided to start a cereal company of her own to reinvent the category.

Called OffLimits, Miller’s company created a line of irreverent brands like Dash and Zombie, each with its own ‘moody mascot’ and a clean ingredient list.

The funky mascots were important for Miller, because while she loved the rainbow-colored pop culture she grew up with in the cereal aisle, she felt it was time for something new.

“Tony the Tiger is not cool,” said Miller. “Cereal is one of the only products that carry culture in this unique way, and that culture has not been updated in decades.”

Emily Elyse Miller

Miller worked with artists to design the cereal brands’ characters and boxes. Now, she sees NFTs as a natural evolution to bring the creations to life and connect directly with the OffLimits’ community.

“The mascots have moody personalities, and there are highs and lows to those personalities too,” said Miller. “They have mental health issues as much as they have kind of successes and wins, and I think that’s what makes the brand so right for building out in the Web3 space.”

New to Web3, Miller initially started small by giving away NFTs during a pop-up at the Art Basel art fair last December in Miami Beach. Attendees of the pop-up scanned a QR code to claim an NFT for what Miller describes as the first-ever “NFT cereal toy.” The giveaway was gamified, so some who scanned got an “exploding cereal” NFT and given an OffLimits cereal variety pack.

The Art Basel NFT giveaway gave Miller confidence to go bigger. “My first NFT protect was just so I could understand who would claim it and if people would care at all,” said Miller. “People very much cared, so that helped just like solidify that I get to pay a lot more attention to this.”

That extra attention resulted in a new NFT project announced this week called “Best Cereal in the Metaverse.” The project will feature a collection of 2,500 NFTs (.111 Etherium (~$290)), each with its own unique artist-created spin on an OffLimits’ mascot. In addition to unique artwork, NFT owners gain access to the private discord and can participate in the custom cereal box design process by submitting an NFT they own to be featured on a custom-designed cereal box. Each NFT holder will also get four of the custom-designed boxes of cereal shipped to their home.

OffLimits is part of a bigger trend of upstart food brands pushing into NFTs. Startups like Bored Breakfast Club, Liquid Death, and Yerb have all launched NFT projects over the past few months as a way to directly connect with their customers and create a new commerce model. For Miller, while all of this is exciting and represents opportunity, there’s still lots of work to do.

“While people were excited to learn about an NFT (with the first project) and potentially claim it, the amount of questions that we got and education that we have to do for our community who are not crypto native is a lot,” said Miller. “So brands need to take their responsibility.”

That responsibility also means talking to other brands curious about the Web3 space and conveying what she’s learned.

“I’ve been talking to so many brands about how they can be more involved in the space,” said Miller. “For me, everything’s about functionality, which is why I wanted this project to have a lot of layers. I wanted to involve our existing community to help grow a larger community of artists and just keep a circle of engagement going. That’s why I feel like there needs to be a physical product for something digital, trying to keep a good balance.”

If you want to sign up for the OffLimits NFT, you can do so here.

The Spoon Weekly: Home Delivery Lockers, Shopify For Food Robots

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Are Food Delivery Lockers the Next Must-Have Home Amenity?

Everywhere you look there are delivery lockers. Grocery stores, apartment buildings, office lobbies.

So why not at our home?

If you’re Jeremy High, the idea makes lots of sense. As a luxury home builder in the central California market of Monterey, High works closely with clients spec’ing out features customized around their lifestyles. A recurring ask he hears from his customers is they want a way to ensure that food delivered to their home is safe and kept at the right temperature.

The more he heard this, the more High wondered if a solution existed to help his customers. When he realized there wasn’t, he decided to build it himself.

High’s product, eventually called the Fresh Portal, is a food and package delivery locker built into the side of a home. It has temperature control zones for either hot or cold food and would be accessible both from the outside and inside. It would be managed by an app and integrated with third-party delivery service providers like UberEats or Amazon Fresh so they can access the outside of the locker and insert a delivery.

To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.

Read The Top Food Tech Stories of The Week!
Home delivery storage lockers, cow-free milk, and more!   Subscribe to the Spoon to keep up on the latest!

SIMULATE IS BACK THIS SPRING!
So much is going on in Web3 meets food, we’re going to bring SimulATE back in May! Use The Spoon newsletter discount code NEWSLETTER for 10% off early bird tickets!

New Podcast!
This week we caught up with Stephen Klein, the CEO of Hyphen, who is trying to democratize restaurant robotics with his modular makeline. Listen at The Spoon or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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A Conversation With Wildtype’s Justin Kolbeck About Building a Cultivated Seafood Company

Wildtype, a San Francisco-based cell-cultivated seafood startup, today announced it has raised a $100 million Series B funding round. The round, the largest to date for a cultivated seafood startup, is being led by private equity firm L Catterton and includes a number of high profile investors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr. (through his Footprint Coalition and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions) among others.

The new funding comes after the company’s June 2021 launch of its pilot production plant. With its new funding in pocket, Wildtype plans to expand the production capacity of its cultivated salmon and to begin work with culinary and restaurant partners.

I sat down with company CEO Justin Kolbeck to learn more about what he sees in Wildtype’s future. According to Kolbeck, expanding production would not have been possible had it not been able to build a pilot production plant with its $12.5 million Series A.

“The organizing thought there was let’s build a pilot plant on Series A money,” Kolbeck said. “And we built the world’s first operational cultivated seafood pilot plant. Was it intended to be our go-to-market plant? No, the idea was, how could we set something up quickly and modularly, that we could add capacity to, and start learning from as we scaled.”

And according to Kolbeck, they learned a lot.

“If we had waited till now to start building the thing, we wouldn’t have had the data, we wouldn’t have the know-how to inform something like what is a sensible floor plan? Because we wouldn’t have gone through the motions of growing cells, creating the scaffold, seeding the cells on the scaffold, and so on. And now we’ve done that, we’ve learned a heck of a lot.”

You can read and listen to our full conversation with Justin at The Spoon. 

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Food Robots

Hyphen Wants to Be The Shopify for Restaurant Robots

Imagine you’re a culinary student with dreams of owning your own restaurant.

In days past, that journey towards restauranteur would take 10 to 20 years as you cut your teeth, gained experience, and saved enough money.

But imagine if you could build a restaurant today or in the near future leveraging automation and software? There would be no big location remodel and a big loan to pay for it. Instead, you’d use a virtual restaurant model powered by fractional pay-as-you-go food robotics, food ordering apps, and third-party delivery, all allowing you to bring something to market in months instead of a decade?

That’s the kind of world that Stephen Klein wants to build. Klein’s company Hyphen announced this week that they’d raised a $24 million Series A funding round, and so I decided to catch up with him to hear about his vision for the company and the food robotics marketplace.

In short, what Stephen and his co-founder Daniel Fukuba believe they are building a Shopify for restaurant robots.

“Instead of enabling merchants to compete with the likes of Amazon, we’re enabling restaurants to compete with the likes of DoorDash,” said Klein.

According to Klein, the big delivery companies are sucking up data from smaller restaurants and using that to compete with them. He believes if the smaller and regional players – as well as new food entrepreneurs – were able to use Hyphen’s automation technology to scale up new offerings, they’d have a much better chance to compete with the big players.

To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.

Alt Protein

Kraft-Heinz and NotCo Form Joint Venture for AI-Powered Food Products

This week Kraft-Heinz and NotCo, the food tech company behind the NotCo brand of plant-based foods, announced they are forming a joint venture to develop a lineup of plant-based food products.

According to the announcement, the new company will leverage the strengths of both companies to develop and bring to market a new line of plant-based products. Called The Kraft Heinz Not Company, it will leverage NotCo’s patented AI platform to develop the food products, while Kraft-Heinz will offer up its production capabilities and formidable sales channels to help bring the products to market.

In joining forces with NotCo, Kraft-Heinz is partnering up with one of the hottest new brands in the fast-growing alt-milk category. The Chilean-based startup has secured distribution deals with a number of premium natural and organic food retailers such as Whole Foods, Sprouts and others since entering the US market in late 2020. The deal also gives the CPG stalwart access to the startup’s patented AI product development platform.

And its this AI platform, which goes by the name Guiseppe, which NotCo cites for its fast success in the US market. Guiseppe works by sifting through huge datasets from the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Library and other sources to find ingredient and processing combinations that would best mimic the elements (flavor, texture, etc.) of real meat or dairy in plant-based analogues. The goal is to find the types of combinations that can create a product that completely mimics traditional meat and dairy — a feat few if any plant-based protein-makers have yet to achieve.

You can read the full story at The Spoon

Betterland Foods Debuts Cow-Free Milk Powered by Perfect Day’s Animal-Identical Protein

This week Perfect Day and betterland foods announced the debut of betterland milk, a new cow-free milk using Perfect Day’s animal-identical whey protein produced via precision fermentation. According to the announcement, the new alt-milk will deliver “the same cooking, whipping, steaming, frothing, and baking functionality” as animal milk.

The partnership with betterland foods follows a familiar playbook for Perfect Day, which has previously gone to market with consumer brands incubated within The Urgent Company (TUC). Like Brave Robot ice cream and Modern Kitchen cream cheese brands, betterland milk will use Perfect Day’s genetically engineered whey (beta-lactoglobulin). However, unlike TUC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Perfect Day, it appears betterland foods is a young startup formed independently of Perfect Day.

That’s not to say that betterland founder Lizanne Falsetto, an experience consumer products founder who previously cofounded thinkThin (a maker of nutrition bars), didn’t create the company with Perfect Day’s cow-free proteins in mind. From the announcement:

“When I saw what Perfect Day founders Ryan and Perumal were doing to cultivate nutritious, more sustainable milk proteins, I felt the pull to not only get back into the industry, but to help build a portfolio of products that taste great, while being better for the planet,” said Falsetto. “That’s when betterland foods was born.”

You can read the full story at The Spoon.

Food & Web3

GourmetNFT Want to Help Culinary Creators Monetize Recipes & Food Experiences Using NFTs

The tried-and-true cookbook is dead. Long live the fractional cookbook.

The movement toward secure, one-of-a-kind recipes and food experiences are fueled by advances and acceptance of the technology surrounding Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). It could be a way to move beyond one-dimensional food presentations and feed the growing number of foodies who want more bells and whistles in their gourmet interactions. And then, there are chefs, who, faced with shrinking margins and the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses, are always on the hunt for new revenue streams.

“It has always baffled me as to why chefs and culinary creators, who are essentially IP creators and artists don’t get royalties unless they get into the whole hassle of writing and publish a cookbook,” Ruth McCartney, part of the team behind GourmetNFT, said in an interview with The Spoon. “When NFTs came along, my mind went to individual recipes and for foodies to be able to curate and compile all of their favorite recipes and cook from their iPads.”

To read the full story, click here!

Smart Kitchen

Haier Patents a Fridge That Cooks Eggs

If you’re like me, you think the refrigerator can use a rethink. Outside of adding a few smart features like Wi-Fi, internal cameras, and touchscreens, the biggest and most expensive appliance in our kitchen hasn’t changed a whole lot in recent decades.

Which is why I was intrigued to see this patent by Haier for a fridge with an internal egg boiler.

The patent, which was issued earlier this month to GE Appliance’s parent company, describes an appliance with an internal system for boiling eggs.

It works like this: The egg boiler is built into the refrigerator door. Once the system controller determines the boiler has eggs loaded into it, it orders hot water into the boiler to cook the eggs. After the eggs are cooked, the cooking chamber is flushed with cooler water to cool the eggs off. An alert is then sent to the user which would open the egg boiler and remove their finished eggs.

To read full story, click on The Spoon. 

GourmetNFT Want to Help Culinary Creators Monetize Recipes & Food Experiences Using NFTs

The tried-and-true cookbook is dead. Long live the fractional cookbook.

The movement toward secure, one-of-a-kind recipes and food experiences are fueled by advances and acceptance of the technology surrounding Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). It could be a way to move beyond one-dimensional food presentations and feed the growing number of foodies who want more bells and whistles in their gourmet interactions. And then, there are chefs, who, faced with shrinking margins and the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses, are always on the hunt for new revenue streams.

“It has always baffled me as to why chefs and culinary creators, who are essentially IP creators and artists don’t get royalties unless they get into the whole hassle of writing and publish a cookbook,” Ruth McCartney, part of the team behind GourmetNFT, said in an interview with The Spoon. “When NFTs came along, my mind went to individual recipes and for foodies to be able to curate and compile all of their favorite recipes and cook from their iPads.”

McCartney believes those in the food industry—from three-star Michelin chefs to up-and-comers making indigenous pasta in Brazil—need to be rewarded for their skills. Like her brother—Sir Paul McCartney of that minor band from Liverpool.

“I think it’s a good way not only for chefs to be treated like rock stars,” she said. “It’s an iTunes for chefs.”

Liquid Avatar, a Canadian firm that focuses on the verification, management, and monetization of personal identity, and its subsidiary Oasis Studios, a multimedia NFT content-creation company, provide the technology and artistry that powers Gourmet NFT. David Lucatch, Liquid Avatar’s co-founder and president, believes GourmetNFT can take advantage of his company’s technology to securely and quickly allow consumers to purchase a range of recipes and culinary adventures.

One such adventure is a multisensory weekend at David Skinner’s Houston restaurant, eculent. Skinner’s reputation in the food world could have a Pied Piper effect inspiring other noted chefs.

“The road to publishing a cookbook is paved with good intentions however schedules get in the way,” said Skinner. “But with Gourmet NFT, Chefs can upload one recipe, one image, one video at a time as they are already creating a short form variant of the content for social media. Over time, they will have amassed what amounts to a digital cookbook.”

But, as the people behind GourmetNFT and others who follow the space know, using NFTs to share recipes alone will not cut it. For a recipe to be considered “copyrightable”—not to mention entertaining— “bonus material” such as inside tips or custom videos must be part of the deliverable. Beyond such individual digital assets as instructions on making George Harrison’s favorite custard, McCartney explained that goods and services could be delivered using the secure platform.

“Chefs can also make money by putting put a QR code on their dedicated Gourmet NFT website as well as put (the code) on their menus, to-go boxes, and build their own fan clubs and traffic to their fractional cookbook page,” McCartney said. She pointed out the example of Brazilian Chef David Rivillo, a man noted for his inventive pasta creations. Rivillo is signed to an exclusive deal with GourmetNFT and will sell singular pasta with his digital presence.

All of which begs the question: Will NFTs spell the end of printed cookbooks and the vast expanse of subpar YouTube cooking videos?

Ruth McCartney said she has spoken to leading publishers about the opportunity; the response, she says, is, “We don’t do NFTs—That’s art.”

Giant Black Truffle Goes Up For Sale Via NFT Auction

Renowned French trufficulteur (truffle grower) Bernard Planche has decided to use an NFT auction to sell one of the largest truffles ever unearthed.

Planche, who has been growing truffles for over 30 years, believes putting the giant fungi on the blockchain would prove the truffle’s provenance, quality, and authenticity. According to Planche, he sees the use of NFT as a well to demonstrate how new technology can be used to support and even strengthen long-standing cultural traditions.

The truffle, seen above, is one of the most sought-after edible fungi in the world: the black truffle (tuber melanosporum). With the average black truffle weighing in between 2 to 18 ounces, Planche’s truffle comes in at nearly triple the size of what is considered a typical large truffle. And while it’s not the world’s largest truffle (or even the largest black truffle) ever discovered, its big size puts it in pretty rare company.

The winner of the auction on the Opensea marketplace can pay for the truffle in crypto or everyday money. The winning bidder will not only get the giant truffle and an NFT to prove the big fungi’s authenticity but will also receive a copy of a physical certificate of authenticity (pictured above).

While the auction of a giant truffle via NFT is new, using blockchain as a way to establish food provenance is something startups have been working on for years. A Boston-based started called LegitFish has been working on blockchain traceability solutions since 2018, and Ecogistix has been developing produce traceability solutions using blockchain for at least half a decade.

If you’d like to put a bid in on the giant truffle, you better hurry since the bidding ends Friday. To sweeten the pot, Plance is throwing in a private day of truffle-hunting demonstrations (including searching for truffles with dogs or pigs) on his private estate, the Périgord, followed by a Surprise du Chef dinner.

Ready or Not, OneRare’s Supreet Raju Wants to Welcome You to the Foodverse

While we can’t (yet) enjoy food in all its multisensory glory in the virtual world, Supreet Raju thinks connecting food to the metaverse makes perfect sense.

“Food has to be eaten in the real world,” said Raju, co-founder OneRare, a food-centric metaverse. “But there’s a lot of things that can happen in the virtual world apart from tasting it.”

Raju, who spoke last week at SimulATE, the Spoon’s Web3 food summit, pointed to the popularity of Instagram and TikTok videos and how people love cooking shows, even if they can’t taste the food being made on their screens.

“We as audiences, we never eat that food, but we look at that food, and we are so tempted to tune in. So I think virtual food also makes a connection with people.”

Raju and her husband started OneRare during the lockdown of the pandemic. They began with the idea of food NFTs, where users would collect ingredient NFTs and would use them to claim a dish NFT. The vision grew quickly, and soon they were thinking of a full metaverse with in-world games, chef and brand partnerships, and exchanges of virtual assets for real-world utility. Adding to the momentum was the $2 million-plus raised in November via an NFT drop.

“It was supposed to be a simple project where you collected ingredients to claim your dish NFT. But from there, we’ve added layers. We started thinking about games. Then we started thinking about the utility of NFTs. And here we are, creating the first foodverse in the world.”

Part of the vision includes working with food brands, chefs, and restaurants to bring them into the metaverse and offer residents of OneRare real-world utility in the form of coupons for food, unique recipes they can use, and more.

This week, the company struck its first brand partnership with Urban Platter, an India-based ingredient provider. OneRare players will be able to use tokenized Urban Platter ingredients in in-game recipes and eventually will be able to exchange them for ingredients in the real world. Over time, the ingredient company plans to launch a virtual store in OneRare’s Foodverse where visitors learn about products and even shop.

Not surprisingly, in a world where most people still can’t explain Web3 or blockchain and virtual reality is still for early adopters, there are lots of skeptics when it comes to the idea of a foodverse.

While it may take some time, Raju thinks the skeptics will come around.

“When Instagram came in 2009, brands never took it seriously for the first two, three years,” said Raju. “And then they saw a chef who was just making recipes at home get to like 5 million followers, get his own cookbook, and then get his own restaurant. That’s when chefs and brands started saying, ‘oh my God, we need to make an Instagram account.'”

In the long term, Raju envisions the OneRare foodverse weaved into the broader metaverse, where OneRare powers virtual food experiences in other virtual worlds. The company plans to integrate with other Web3 platform companies to get there, and one example is Chumbi Valley, an NFT role-playing game the company partnered with last year.

“We look at ourselves as the food people here,” said Raju. ” We want to put it on the blockchain. You need an energy drink to train for a race? We’ll be there. You need pizza for your party? We’ll be there. That’s the kind of way we’re building OneRare.”

You can watch my full interview with Supreet Raju below.

It Started as a Meme. Now friesDAO Is On Track to Buy a Restaurant After Raising Over $4M Selling NFTs

When Bill Lee and Brett Beller started talking about the idea of using a DAO and NFTs to buy a McDonald’s, they were mostly joking around.

“There was always this joke since the beginning of crypto where if you just traded very poorly, or if you lost a lot of money, you could always work at McDonald’s,” said Lee, an advisor to friesDAO, in a recent interview with The Spoon. “And we just thought it would be hilarious if we got together and said let’s try and buy McDonald’s as a DAO so we can guarantee ourselves a future job.”

The two continued talking and became intrigued enough by the idea to start a Discord server, tell a few folks, and see what happens. Within a few days, a couple thousand had joined the Discord, and it became clear that what started as a meme was now something many were taking very seriously.

“As people started joining, we realized that the pressure is on now,” said Lee. “People are actually wanting to do this for real.”

Different members of the server offered to pitch in, and before long, they had assembled a crew to make it happen. One person started a website. Another registered a domain. Someone put together the documentation. And just like that, a Discord server that had launched after Christmas was a DAO with momentum and real money: As of this week, friesDAO has over $4 million in a treasury.

In the short time the project has been together, Lee and the rest of the team have given lots of thought to how it might work. For token holders, Lee said that while they will have a say in the oversight and direction of the restaurant and get access to real-world benefits like free food, what they won’t get is any ownership equity in the restaurant. That would essentially categorize the effort as equity-based crowdfunding and subject it to much stricter regulatory oversight.

As for the purchase structure and ongoing oversight of the business, the group’s considered a number of ways to do this. While one idea is an outright purchase of an existing restaurant through a contracted third party, another possibility they’re exploring is structuring the deal as a loan to an existing franchise operator to buy another restaurant. This would allow the DAO to rely on the operator’s expertise in running a restaurant, preserve capital, and scale to more cities, all while negotiating real-world benefits for token holders into the terms of the deal like coupons for free food.

With (as of today) over $4.3 million in the treasury, the DAO already has enough to buy a restaurant, but the question is what kind? Lee said the group has priced out everything from a Subway to different nationally recognized burger franchises, but they will likely go after a smaller franchise first, essentially giving them a “practice run” before scooping up a bigger franchise like a McDonald’s.

According to the group’s roadmap, that first purchase should take place around June of this year.

You can listen to my full conversation with Bill Lee of friesDAO below, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you missed SimulATE, The Spoon’s food Web3 summit last week where we talked with others working on restaurant NFTs (including BurgerDAO and Flyfish Group), you can watch all the sessions here with a subscription to Spoon Plus. (Also, make sure to not miss SimulATE II, coming in May).

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!

BurgerDAO Wants to Create a Decentralized Web3-Powered Burger Chain

Web3 has reached the burger joint.

A new community called BurgerDAO wants to create a decentralized burger franchise. According to the announcement, the group is looking to create a ghost kitchen burger chain with funding derived from the sale of tokens for the organization via Juicebox.

Owners of BurgerDAO tokens would have a say in the operational structure as well in things such as menu creation. The group also plans to use funding from token sales to eventually hire an operational staff (and likely pay service fees to a ghost kitchen company). According to the group, the operation’s profits would go back into the treasury, which would result in appreciation in the value of the tokens.

The group lays out three overall milestones for their Web3 burger franchise, the first one being the launch of the first virtual BurgerDAO restaurant location. The group puts the cost of reaching this milestone at upwards of $1 million and details four specific deliverables for getting to this first milestone: finding a ghost kitchen partner, deliver-apps integration, branding, and menu creation, and the launch of an NFT for BurgerDAO contributors.

If you think a million bucks sounds like a lot to get a virtual restaurant off the ground, you’re right, but the group explains they may not need all of it:

Will it actually cost $1M? Probably not. But we know opening a restaurant is tough (see above) even with the advent of cloud kitchens. While the DAO will help us make decisions, we will be the ones working with the cloud kitchen, testing ingredients, pay for marketing tests, and other administrative expenses. Opening a basic deli or pizza joint (brick and mortar location) costs between $200-$500K depending on the location just to give you a frame of reference.

From there, the group lays out plans for further expansion of their decentralized ghost kitchen burger franchise, which includes the eventual opening of a brick and mortar location in a specific city and hiring a full-time staff.

On the one hand, the idea of a decentralized burger franchise is interesting, but I suspect it won’t be easy to pull off. In explaining the motivation for the concept, the group points to the inspiration of MrBeast Burger and companies like Virtual Dining Concepts (the virtual restaurant startup which is operationalizing MrBeast) but then asks why a MrBeast or VDC should take home all the profits? The group then explains much of their initial costs will be in finding and working with a kitchen operator (this type of work is what VDC does for the MrBeast Burger franchise and its other virtual restaurant concepts).

In other words, BurgerDAO is against the idea of centralized management and gatekeepers, but will likely need to find a group that has relationships with kitchen operators or build a relationship with and pay a for-profit ghost kitchen operator themselves.

They also haven’t answered the biggest challenge for virtual restaurants: brand building. The most successful virtual restaurants have been able to leverage an influencer’s reach, or they’ve been ones that have already tapped into the existing successful restaurant brand like Wowbao. While companies like NextBite have been able to spin up completely new virtual brands and get broad reach across several markets, they’ve had lots of venture capital to fund the brand-building for their concepts.

All that said, while the group has a big hill to climb, I’m interested to see if they can pull off their web3 burger concept. BurgerDAO is part of a broader movement in the restaurant and food space away from traditional operating models, which includes the move towards automation-powered centralized food production, the move away from physical front-of-house dine-in, and now the embrace of web3 and metaverse-powered digital concepts.

If you’d like to learn more, attend The Spoon’s Metaverse/NFT virtual mini-event on February 1st (Hurry, the first 400 tickets are free!).

The Spoon Weekly: NFT Dinner Clubs, Robocorns & Impossible’s Burger Joint

This is the web version of the Spoon weekly newsletter where we wrap up of some of the most interesting stories in Food Tech. If you’d like to subscribe to The Spoon Newsletter, you can do so here.

The NFT-Powered Dinner Club Has Arrived

After eating at home for much of the past 18 months, most of us are itching to get out into the real world and have dinner with interesting people. If this is you, may I suggest a new way to break bread: An NFT dinner club.

That’s the idea behind Dinner DAO, a new community creating IRL (in real life) dinner clubs using non-fungible tokens.

Here’s how it works: Prospective diners become members of a club – or Dinner DAO (DAO stands for ‘decentralized autonomous organization’) – by buying a Dinner DAO NFT. The cryptocurrency raised during the sale of the NFT is pooled in a shared treasury and used to purchase meals whenever the club gets together throughout the year.

For those who’d prefer to create a Facebook group, get together with friends and split the bill with a bunch a credit cards, your old-world ways go against the central organizing principle of the virtual currency and NFT movement: decentralization. Dinner DAO members are ok with taking more time to create a crypto-based dinner club because, in doing so, they are pioneering a new way to meet for a meal without having to rely on big technology companies or banks. In other words, they are getting together in real life by putting their dinner club on the blockchain.

The Dinner DAO concept is the brainchild of artist and designer Austin Robey. Robey, who lives in Brooklyn, created the first Dinner DAO NFT for New York City, and the first meal was at a restaurant in Little Italy called Shoo Shoo Nolita.

You can read the full story about Dinner Dao at The Spoon.

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show

Did you know food tech will be a featured theme for the first time ever at the world’s biggest tech show in January and The Spoon is CES’s exclusive partner to help make it happen? 

Learn more here in my announcement about the partnership. If you want to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Hacking Refined Carbs? That’s Better Brand’s Plan

So many of our favorite foods contain refined carbohydrates like white flour and white sugar. These ingredients reliably produce delicious foods, but they’re also associated with health problems like Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

California-based startup Better Brand is on a mission to hack refined carbohydrates, recreating their flavor without the health consequences. The company’s first product, the Better Bagel, has the carbohydrate content of two banana slices, the protein content of four eggs, and the sugar content of a single stalk of celery.

Company founder and CEO Aimee Yang told The Spoon that she set out to develop products that would make healthy eating easier while improving consumers’ relationships with food.

You can read The Spoon’s full interview with Yang here. 

Sponsor Message

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Startup Showcase Alumni Incredible Eats Lands Investment on Shark Tank

Dinesh Tadepalli has landed his shark.

Tadepalli, the CEO of Incredible Eats, appeared on Shark Tank last night to pitch his company and ended up getting four offers from various sharks before walking away with an offer from Lori Greiner for 15% of the company.

Regular Shark Tank watchers will know four offers are a lot, but it’s not all that surprising since Incredible Eats checks many shark boxes: an easy-to-understand product, proven success, and mission-driven.

That easy to understand product is edible cutlery that replaces disposable plastic spoons and forks. IncredibleEats’ edible spoons and sporks come in both sweet and savory versions — chocolate and vanilla for desserts, oregano chili and black pepper for soups and such — and in both large and small versions.

To read the full story about former Startup Showcase contestant Incredible Eats’ showing on Shark Tank, head over to The Spoon. 

Alt Protein

BIOMILQ Raises $21M in Series A Funding With Focus on Mission-Aligned Partners

In June, The Spoon reported on North Carolina-based startup BIOMILQ’s success in recreating human milk outside of the breast. The company is working toward manufacturing cell-cultured milk at commercial scale, hoping to provide parents who cannot breastfeed regularly with a nutritionally equivalent option.

BIOMILQ announced they’ve closed their Series A financing round with $21 million. This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with company co-founder and CEO Michelle Egger to discuss the funding round and BIOMILQ’s next steps toward commercialization.

“In the grand scheme of fundraising rounds in cellular agriculture, $21 million is par for the course,” says Egger. “But we’re particularly proud because we’re an all-female leadership team. It’s less about celebrating the dollar value and more about celebrating the fact that we were able to raise it with specific partnership criteria that helped us find mission-aligned partners.”

To read our interview with BIOMILQ CEO Michelle Egger, click here. 

Fruit Cells, Space Bread, and Cultured Meat Cartridges: Deep Space Food Challenge Announces Phase 1 Winners

On planet Earth, we face the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population that is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. In space, we face the challenge of feeding astronauts traveling through the galaxy for an extended period of time. Novel and innovative food technology could offer viable solutions in both realms.

For the first time ever, NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) have come together this year to host the Deep Space Food Challenge. Companies competing in the challenge must be able to offer a solution to feeding at least four astronauts on a three-year space mission. The solutions should be able to achieve the greatest amount of food output (that is palatable and nutritious) with minimal input and waste. In addition to being used in space, the solution must also improve food accessibility on Earth.

To read more about the Phase 1 winners of the Deep Space Food Challenge, head over to The Spoon.

Food Robots

Ten Chili’s Restaurants Are Now Using a Server Robot Named Rita

Want your baby back ribs brought to your table via robot?

You may be in luck as Rita the robot, a version of the Bear Robotics Servi server robot platform, has now been deployed in 10 Chili’s restaurants across the US.

The news, shared via a social media post on Linkedin, marks the latest in a string of deployments for the Bear Robotics robot over the past year. The northern California-based company has seen wins across the US in 2021, from Florida’s Sergio’s to the Country Biscuit in North Carolina to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin.

But with over 1600 locations, Chili’s is the biggest win yet for Bear Robotics, and one which looks like it’s growing quickly. Bear announced they deployed Rita to a fifth Chili’s just a week ago, and since then, new locations have been added almost daily.

Read the full story here.

Dawn of the Robocorn? Micro-Fulfillment Robot Specialist Fabric Raises $200M on $1 Billion Valuation

Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion.

Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

To read the full story and see a video of Fabric’s system, click here. 

Restaurant Tech

Impossible Foods Opens a Burger Stand in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

Nowadays, if you want an Impossible Burger, you have your choice of thousands of fast food joints or grocery stores to pick up the plant-based patty.

But last night, the Impossible Burger showed up in a new kind of place: its own.

This week Impossible and Climate Pledge Arena, the world’s first net zero-carbon sports arena, announced that the Impossible patty had been named the venue’s official burger. They also announced Impossible is opening two branded food stands in the home of the NHL’s newest franchise, the Seattle Kraken.

Called Impossible Market, the new plant-based burger stands feature a menu with the Impossible Burger, Impossible chicken nuggets, and other items made with Impossible plant-based beef like chili fries and street tacos.

Read about Impossible’s new burger stand here. 

Spyce Closes Location of First Robot Restaurant as It Turns Focus To Sweetgreen

When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.

According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.

Read about Spyce closing down its original location here at The Spoon.