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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

personalization

Report: How Microbiome and DNA-based Personalized Nutrition Will Change the Way We Eat (Spoon Plus)

The “first wave” of personalized nutrition is already here. These are companies that use data from wearable devices to track consumers’ weight, exercise quantities, temperature and other factors that can shape food and beverage suggestions.

The next step, or “second wave,” on the evolutionary path of personalized nutrition will get even more granular in terms of the information about each individual that services can pull and analyze. Instead of drawing on data from wearables, third-party companies will use information gathered from inside individual bodies, either from gut microbes or DNA sequences. Using this data, companies will be able to create truly personalized diet plans driven by lab results and deep analysis, instead of the more generalized metrics that are available through wearables. These second-wave services can create meal journeys that are absolutely unique to each individual based not on of general trends or self-reported data but actual biology.

This report will examine the biomarker-driven, personalized nutrition landscape. It will examine key drivers, market players, opportunities and challenges, and make forward-looking predictions about what this market will look like over the next 12 months, 5 years and 10 years.

Companies profiled in this report include Viome, Sun Genomics, Genopalate, DNANudge, DayTwo and Nylos.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

GrowSquares Will Personalize Your Garden With Data Science, Microbiology, Feathers

“High-tech gardening” usually brings to mind the automated indoor vertical farming devices everyone from startups to major appliance makers are pushing these days. Those are great for time-strapped folks or those who tend to just kill plants. But for people who want to keep their hands in the soil, technology in the smart garden will need to play a different role — that of assisting the human rather than automating their entire process.

NYC-based GrowSquares has found a way to leave the human element in the gardening process while still taking advantage of tech to improve the grow process. 

“We’re the opposite of automated gardening,” GrowSquares CEO Zachary Witman said over the phone last week.

The company uses data science (advanced LIDAR and location data) as well as microbiology to determine the best plants for a specific user’s space as well as the most optimal elements to include in the soil. An accompanying app then helps the user monitor the plants, though watering and feeding them are still manual tasks.

“We look at sun, wind, taxonomy of the soil. We capture those things and then using a lot of data science we create a microenvironmental profile and say, ‘Based upon this, the attributes of your space, (time of year, etc.) these are the plants that will grow best,'” Witman explained.

Users see a scoring system where plants are rated Optimal, Good, Fair, and Poor based on location data. For example, in Nashville, TN, Basil grown at my address gets a score of 93 for this time of year, which means it’s an optimal plant for growing right now. Spinach, on the other hand, just scores 51, making it a bad fit for my backyard at the moment.

The system can actually get even more granular in terms of a users’s location than just their city. Using a customer’s geo-coordinates, the company then uses data science and machine learning models to determine which plants are best for that particular user’s garden. The recommendations may or may not be the same as the person two doors down.

“We break down each individual client’s soil. Fidelity of our data showcases the difference between you and your neighbor.”

Once a user has purchased the right plants, GrowSquares sends the necessary seeds along with optimal spacing and depth and a soil formulation for your individual garden. That might include green sand, coconut husks, feather, alfalfa, or other elements the company uses to formulate soil. Meanwhile, the app also sends notifications for when it’s time to water the plants and time to harvest them.

The actual squares in which the plants grow are made of palm leaf that naturally decomposes over time. Since it’s a modular system, users can add more squares over time, and the squares can be configured to fit different environments, balconies, backyards, and rooftops among them. Since the squares decompose, they actually replenish the soil. 

Like other consumer-grade smart garden companies, GrowSquares has seen an uptick in sales thanks to the pandemic. Witman told me the company started out servicing just three cities, Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles. Because of COVID-19, demand spiked and GrowSquares went national — a decision that’s temporary stressed the supply chain. Right now, new users must reserve their GrowSquares and wait, though Witman told me it would not be too long before things return to normal. 

He was also cautious to attribute too much of the product’s popularity to the pandemic. “I think everybody has their own reason for why they want to garden,” he said. The pandemic is one, but so is a desire to eat locally or the wish to avoid industrial-scale farming companies. And for some, going out to the balcony or backyard to grab some herbs is just easier than ordering them via Whole Foods or going to the store.

Gousto Raises $41M for High-Tech Meal Kit Business

London, UK-based Gousto announced today it has raised another £33 million (~$41 million USD) for its meal kit subscription service, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The round was led by Perwyn, with participation from BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures and online fitness guru Joe Wicks. It brings Gousto’s total funding to $179 million.

The new funds will go towards further developing Gousto’s technology, which is a huge component of both its customer interface and back-end logistics. On the consumer-facing side, Gousto uses an AI-powered personalization tool to recommend the most relevant meals to customers, who can select from over 50 recipes each week. Customers can choose a 2-person box or a family-size box, with recipes ranging from around $30 to $60, depending on the size of the box. According to the press release, Gousto currently delivers over 4 million meals to 380,000 U.K. households each month.

Behind the scenes, Gousto uses AI to automate parts of its supply chain and optimize overall logistics. The company also plans to launch a Next Day delivery service and build out its tech team over the coming months. 

If fundraising and headcount growth sounds a little out of place in today’s troubled economic times, remember that Gousto is a meal kit company whose primary goal is to serve people in their homes. The UK, where the service is available, is currently on lockdown in response to coronavirus that’s set to be extended until early May. That makes for a plenty of potential customers where a service like Gousto is concerned. The company told TechCrunch that demand for its business “has spiked upward” in recent weeks. In particular, Gousto has seen a 28 percent increase in family-style boxes. 

All that said, if you’re hoping to become a new Gousto customer, you’ll have to wait. A note on the Gousto website says the company is not accepting orders from new customers at this time, due to “extremely high demand.” There’s no word of how long that will last. Presumably, the new funding round and corresponding plans to increase headcount and tech development will help Gousto better reach the high demand for meal kits that will be around for some time.

Yes Health Raises $6M for Personalized Weight Loss and Nutrition Platform

We all know that sticking to diets is really hard work — especially when you’re stuck at home and the snack cabinet is never far from reach.

Yes Health is a digital health platform meant to help people reach their weight loss or diabetes prevention and management goals. Today, the startup announced that it had netted $6 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures (hat tip to Techcrunch).

Yes Health’s mobile platform is meant to help people do one of two things: lose weight, or prevent diabetes. New users select one pathway and answer a short questionnaire about what sort of coaching you prefer (cheerleader/straightforward), your top goals, and the biggest challenges you struggle with to reach those goals. The system then creates an individualized health plan and schedule which outlines when you should eat meals, exercise, and sleep, and tracks your progress via photos and a daily weigh in.

Yes Health costs $49/month for the one year diabetes program (which comes with a Fitbit and digital scale), or $69 for coaching only. The four-month weight loss program costs $49/month (and includes a Fitbit). Yes Health sells both directly to consumers and is included in some employee health plans.

The real value add of the app seems to be the ease with which the personalized coaching is woven into the system. Users can take a picture of their meals, which Yes Health shares with nutritionists for assessment — no need to manually enter every ingredient in their salad or soup. Users also get access to personalized coaching for their workouts, including feedback when they complete certain exercises.

Yes Health isn’t the only app out there to offer nutrition coaching via photo. Bite.ai is a food journal that automatically breaks down the nutrition info of your meals based on photos, and in France, Foodvisor does much of the same thing. But neither service offers the same level of exercise recommendations and coaching that Yes Health does.

True, the messages all come from computers, not actual humans, so the interaction isn’t as powerful as it would be with an in-person coach. But an in-person coach is going to cost a lot more than $69 per month — plus, we’re not allowed to see people in person anymore.

For that reason, I think COVID-19 will present some appealing growth opportunities for online healthy lifestyle services like Yes Health. Since we can’t go to gyms or restaurants, we have to create our own exercise and dining plans. Tools like Yes Health could help folks to create a structured plan for nutrition and exercise to stay on course during social distancing. And that’s especially critical at a time when health is on the top of mind for all of us.

I Tried Hungryroot, the Healthy, 10-Minute Meal Kit. And it Actually Delivered

Whenever I get a pitch in my inbox asking me to sample a new product, my first reaction is usually skepticism. Could this cricket bar really be that good? Is it actually feasible that this pill will help me avoid a hangover? Will this meal kit really make me eat healthier in less time than other meal kits, or just cooking for myself?

That last pitch came from Hungryroot, the grocery-slash-meal-kit hybrid delivery service aimed at millennials trying to eat better. And the answer, much to my surprise, was yes. Hungryroot actually did make good on its promise: to provide simple, healthy recipes that can be prepared in under ten minutes.

How it works

On its website Hungryroot refers to itself not as a meal kit or a grocery delivery service, but a sort of hybrid of the two. The ingredients included are a mixture of known brands, like Beyond Meat sausages or Banza chickpea pasta, as well as Hungryroot-made offerings, including a range of sauces and pre-cooked grains. To get started you go onto HungryRoot’s site and create an account. Then you input any dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, etc.). You then choose your subscription plan, which is anywhere from 3-6 two-serving meals per week, plus snacks. I selected the smallest option, 3-6 meals, and chose a vegetarian meal plan.

A few days later a box arrived with 11 ingredients meant to create three plant-based meals: a Pasta (Banza chickpea pasta, HungryRoot Cashew Cheddar, baby broccoli), a Market Plate (shaved brussels, pre-cooked grain mix, and Beyond Meat sausage), and a Warm Bowl (HungryRoot lemongrass tofu, snap peas, and Lotus Foods brown rice ramen). There was also a tub each of Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Black Bean Brownie Batter, which were gluten-free, vegan, and surprisingly delicious. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

Test
My HungryRoot recipes [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The Good

One of Hungryroot’s main selling points is the speed and ease with which you can prepare the meals. And, at least from my experience, they really deliver. The recipes I tried consisted of only three ingredients each, all of which were pre-prepped (the brussels sprouts were shredded, tofu nuggets pre-cooked, etc.). All I had to do was some light vegetable chopping, boil some water, sauté, and mix. Even if you have very, very few kitchen skills — and the bare minimum of appliances (read: pressure cookers) — you’d be able to nail these recipes. You don’t even need a microwave.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the meals were meant to be ready in 10 minutes and… they actually were! Some even took less time than that. In the past when I’ve tried meal kits, the dishes often end up taking much more time and effort than their glossy recipe cards promise, so it was nice to be eating something warm and filling and full of vegetables mere minutes after I pulled the ingredients out of the fridge. All of the meals also had enough leftover for me to take them into lunch the next day.

A HungryRoot Pasta meal, with cashew cheddar sauce. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The Bad

There’s always a catch, and for Hungryroot that catch is its cost. Smaller deliveries, which include groceries to make 3-4 two-serving meals plus snacks, cost $69 per week. Medium deliveries (4-5 two-serving meals plus snacks) cost $99 per week, and large deliveries (5-6 two-serving meals plus snacks) are $129 per week. Shipping is free for all orders and you can pause your subscription at any time.

[Update: A representative from Hungryroot emailed me to note that the company has just rolled out a new food profile survey that allows them to design custom pricing plans based on family size, personal health goals, etc. Most plans range from $60 to $100 per week. Orders over $70 will receive free shipping.]

Hungryroot updates its offerings every Thursday, so there are always fresh options to choose from on their site, and deliveries happen weekly.

Cost-wise, Hungryroot’s service shakes out to $8-$12 per meal, depending on which service you choose. The pricing is in line with other meal kits on the market right now, like Blue Apron and Purple Carrot. HungryRoot meals also have the added benefit of taking less time than other meal kit competitors and requiring less elbow grease and fewer dishes. However, $70 will buy me groceries for 2-3 weeks’ worth of meals, so it felt indulgent to spend it on a single week’s worth of ingredients, even if they do save me a few minutes in the kitchen.

Hungryroot’s Market Bowl prepped and ready to eat. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

When talking about food delivery of any kind, it’s required that we wag our fingers at the amount of packaging they use. Hungryroot did indeed come in a large box lined in foil insulation with ice packs, but the box and foil were home recyclable, as were the drained ice packs. At least they claimed. Regardless, I didn’t have to suffer the guilt that comes with shoving a bunch of bulky packaging into my garbage can, knowing it would end up in a landfill somewhere.

Is Hungryroot Worth It?

So do I recommend Hungryroot? Surprising no one more than myself, I actually do. For consumers that want to prioritize healthy eating and don’t mind paying for it, but are tired of prepackaged $15 takeaway salads, Hungryroot makes a lot of sense. In that way it’s similar to Daily Harvest, the frozen, pre-prepped smoothie and microwaveable meal service. Hungryroot requires more work than Daily Harvest, but it also has a bigger and tastier payout.

In the end, I think that Hungryroot is one of the rare direct-to-consumer meal companies to actually deliver on its promise of healthy, easy, plant-based meals. The question is whether there are enough of those consumers out there to save Hungryroot from the struggles that are affecting other meal kit and prepared food delivery companies.

Customize 2020: 3 Things Businesses Must Consider When Personalizing Their Products

Yesterday, The Spoon held its first-ever summit around food personalization in NYC. Customize, as we dubbed the event, brought together startups, researchers, investors, and innovators across the food industry to discuss the concept of personalization in the food industry and how companies can strategically apply it to their businesses. 

With 12 sessions and dozens of panelists, way more was discussed than I could reasonably fit into a single post. So to start, here’s a high-level view of some of the major takeaways from the event, and a hint of what businesses should be considering when it comes to making food more personal for their users.

1. “Personalization” means many things in many contexts.
The repeat theme of the day was that personalization has no set definition — nor will it ever. In a restaurant, it means using tech to make a person feel like a regular, even when they’re a brand-new customer. When it comes to grocery shopping, it might be getting a food prescription from a doctor, then getting help planning your weekly meals from an in-store nutritionist, as Kroger is currently doing in Cincinnati. And if we’re talking about fighting or preventing chronic disease, personalization is about understanding the microbiome in your gut and using that information to make healthier food choices unique to you.

Panelists and attendees agreed that we won’t see a rigid definition of the word “personalization” any time soon. Rather, it will remain fluid. In response, tech companies must make their products and services flexible enough to be useful in many different personalization contexts. 

2. Data is key. But so are valuable customer experiences.
You don’t get personalization without data, and the key to building more personalized products and services lies in getting users to part with their personal information. That’s not too tall an order when it comes to restaurants, where customers happily fork over their names, addresses, and hatred of cilantro in exchange for faster service and more accurate orders. When it comes to more sensitive information — say, health conditions — the idea of personalization gets a little more controversial. 

In her keynote at the event, Mintel Analyst Melanie Bartelme pointed out that customers will be more willing to share their data if the product, service, or experience they get in return has real value for them. Other panelists echoed her words throughout the day. That value could come in the form of actionable diet and cooking advice, food products that noticeably improve our health, or simply a faster, more seamless experience with a piece of technology. Providing that “transaction of value,” as Bartelme called it, is what will separate the winners from the losers when it comes to personalization.

3. Personalization must have empathy for the entire food system.
At the end of the day, Mike Lee pointed out that personalization is the ultimate example of human-centered design, where making the user happy is the driving force behind every step of business and product development. 

That may or may not be a good thing, depending on the context. Lee pointed out that sometimes this user-centric approach can actually negatively impact other areas of the food system. Food delivery is a prime example. Customers crave speed and convenience, and restaurants have responded by offering on demand meals at the touch of a button. Those meals, however, come packaged in plastics and other non-biodegradable materials accompanied by disposable cutlery and other waste items that go straight to the landfill. Convenience has social impacts as well. The model for food delivery, whether it’s restaurant meals or grocery orders, rarely factors in the conditions of couriers shuttling the food to customers’ doorsteps.

As Lee suggested, successful personalization in the future needs to be “empathetic” to the entire food system. On the same panel, Food-X’s Peter Bodenheimer agreed with Lee, adding that part of creating this empathy will rest with VCs, who ideally should invest in companies that are prioritizing social and environmental responsibility alongside growth and profitability. 

These takeaways are just a tiny sample of the topics, ideas, and advice covered yesterday at the event. Over the next few days, we’ll be posting more recaps and lessons on what it takes to offer true personalization in the digital age. Stay tuned, and check back often for more.

Recipe Database Yummly Will Personalize “The Entire Digital Kitchen” to Help You Cook The Perfect Steak

If you’ve ever searched for a recipe online, odds are you’ve perused at least a few offerings on Yummly. This massive database started out with a focus on personalizing recipe discovery. Then, almost three years ago, appliance giant Whirlpool bought the company and the stakes changed. In the words of Greg Druck, Chief Data Scientist at Yummly, the company has now expanded from “personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen.”

Curious? So were we, which is why we invited Druck to speak at Customize, our food personalization event happening next week in NYC. (Hot tip: There are still a few tickets left, and you can get 15 percent off with code SPOON15.)

To ramp up to the main event we asked Druck a few questions on what exactly a personalized kitchen might look like and what tools it’ll feature (hint: digital assistants and something called a “virtual pantry.”). And yes, the kitchen of the future should be able to perfectly cook a steak to your personal definition of doneness, every single time.

Check out the Q&A below. We’ll see you in New York!

Tell us a little bit about what Yummly does. 
Yummly is the most advanced AI-powered digital kitchen platform with over 25 million users. Yummly started out as a personalized platform for discovering online recipes. We are now expanding our offering to support the future of the kitchen. We want to help our users achieve their cooking-related goals with smart appliance integrations, premium guided recipes, and tools for meal planning and shopping.

Yummly places strong emphasis on personalized recommendations for the consumer. How do you optimize those suggestions? 
The Yummly recipe ingestion pipeline (pun intended) builds comprehensive representations of over 2 million recipes by inferring latent structure. Machine learning models parse the recipe and map it onto our food knowledge graph, inferring nutrition information, cuisine, techniques, difficulty, and more. This provides a foundation for content-based recommendation algorithms. 

Yummly also learns taste profiles for 25 million users by combining explicit and implicit feedback based on behavior and usage. Machine learning systems synthesize this data along with other contextual and ambient signals including day of the week, season, and location to create dynamic personalized feeds for each of our users. 

Has Yummly’s acquisition by Whirlpool changed its approach to personalization (by gathering data from home appliance usage, etc)?
Whirlpool’s acquisition of Yummly has allowed us to expand from personalizing recipe discovery to personalizing the entire digital kitchen. We believe personalization is the key to helping people achieve their goals, such as eating healthy, saving money, and reducing stress. Combining Whirlpool appliances as the hardware with Yummly software and machine learning systems allows us to personalize the experience to each home cook.

For example, Yummly will recommend personalized meal plans and shopping lists — in addition to individual recipes — based on a user’s tastes, goals, and appliances. We’ll keep track of the ingredients they have on hand and incorporate information from their “virtual pantry” into recommendations that will help them save money by reducing food waste.

Integrations with the Yummly Smart Thermometer and Whirlpool ovens will allow Yummly to adapt cooking algorithms to each user’s needs: for example, cooking a steak to a user’s personal definition of doneness. Combining these ideas into one seamless experience will substantially reduce friction in the kitchen. 

How do you envision recipes (and the recipe recommendation process) getting even more personalized over the next 5 years?
Conversational digital kitchen assistant AIs will help people create plans and recommend custom recipes that are much more personalized to specific needs and more useful for achieving goals in the kitchen. AI will guide you through the week, providing ongoing personalized advice, as well as gamifying and tracking progress against goals over time.

Your AI services will personalize a weekly meal plan and schedule for your household and then have the ingredients delivered to your home. Your plan may include a custom stir-fry recipe that uses up the carrots and chicken that were going bad (recognized using in-kitchen cameras) to save money and reduce food waste. It may avoid pasta or adjust ingredients according to your personalized nutrition plan to help you maintain a low-carb diet (because your assistant knows you’re not tracking well against your weight-loss goal). It might include a cheesy broccoli recipe to help you achieve your goal of getting the kids to eat more vegetables. It may even suggest cooking the chicken dish on Sunday to have an easy meal ready for Monday, reducing the stress of meal planning. Lastly AI may automatically adjust the bake time and temperature to make the dish extra crispy for you, and monitor cooking using a smart thermometer, notifying you when it is done.

This is just the tip of the iceberg — get your tickets to Customize to hear Druck’s fireside chat, where we’ll discuss how personalization will reshape the consumer kitchen. Get 15 percent off tickets with code SPOON15.

Future Food: Personalizing the Alt-Protein Revolution

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Right now at The Spoon, we’ve all got personalization on the brain. That’s because we’re in the final sprint towards Customize, our food personalization summit happening in NYC one week from today, on February 27. (Want one of the last remaining tickets? Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off.)

So it’s pretty natural that I’ve been marinating on how personalization could affect the alternative protein space in the future. Here are a few thoughts:

Nutrition
I recently tried out GenoPalate, a service that gives you personalized nutrition recommendations based on your DNA. My end report stated that, for me, a high protein diet would lead to “reduced waist circumference,” AKA weight loss. It also gave me a list of my “ideal” protein types, including eel, chicken liver, and tofu.

I’m a vegetarian, so the first two proteins on that list aren’t especially relevant. But the report nonetheless got me thinking about how these personalized nutrition services could promote alternative protein consumption, especially amongst folks that are trying to avoid meat for health reasons. As these platforms get more sophisticated, they could sync up with your specific diet (pescetarian, vegan, flexitarian, etc.) to recommend plant-based proteins that are the ideal fit for your health goals — high-protein, low fat, low sodium, etc.

Novameat’s 3D printed plant-based steak

3D Printing
In order to accurately replicate the texture of whole muscle cuts of meat (e.g., steak, chicken breast), some companies, like NovaMeat and Redefine Meat, are turning to 3D printing.

The technology is still in the R&D phase, but down the road it could open possibilities for serious plant-based meat customization. Do you like your “steak” thin-cut and tender? You can print it out that way. Maybe a restaurant is trying to create chicken breasts that are shaped a certain way for a high-end dish. Set the printing specifications and go.

Because while you can’t make cows or chickens grow meat in a certain shape or texture — at least not without a couple hundred generations of breeding — 3D printing technology could allow everyone from foodservice establishments to individuals to create their own custom alt-meats.

Cultured
Cultured (or cell-based) meat also has a lot of potential for customization — though none of it will happen for a while yet. Cultured meat is not even available on the market, but for the sake of argument let’s project into the future:

Say a restaurant is looking for an especially tender cut of beef that is also low in cholesterol. Or they want a super-fatty piece of beef for an especially indulgent dish. That might be tricky to do with meat from a cow, which has biological constraints and also takes much longer to create. However, with cell-based meat, a scientist could theoretically tweak a formula to make exactly what’s needed with a much quicker turnaround than actually raising an animal. This opens up some real possibilities for customized protein.

Okay, so the idea of hyper-personalized protein is pretty futuristic. But there’s plenty of time to develop it. After all, we’re currently in the midst of the plant-based revolution — and just at the forefront of the cell-based one. Once these technologies become more mainstream (and affordable), the possibilities for customized protein could become a lot less out-there and a lot more feasible.

Photo: Impossible Foods

An argument for plant-based burgers

This week nutrition scientist Dr. PK Newby wrote a guest post for The Spoon outlining all the reasons why meatless burgers are not only beneficial for the planet but also a strategic business play for restaurants.

It’s a pretty inspirational post. But to me, Dr. Newby’s most intriguing point was the sheer heat that plant-based burgers are attracting because of their newfound popularity. We’ve already seen widespread criticism in the form of negative SuperBowl ads, online smear campaigns, and even lawsuits against vegan meat and dairy alternatives.

“Novel food technologies will always have haters,” writes Dr. Newby in her article. As the popularity of plant-based meat grows, those haters will likely become more vocal. But what shape will their protests take, and how much will they threaten the growth of meat alternatives?

Keep an eye on this newsletter to find out.

Photo: White Castle

Protein ’round the web

  • White Castle will start offering vegan cheese on March 1st to complement its Impossible Slider (h/t VegNews).
  • Is insect fat a viable butter replacement? Food & Wine says… maybe.
  • Israeli startup Equinom raised $10 million to develop higher-protein seeds, like pea and sesame.

I’ll miss you all next Thursday since I’ll be busy moderating panels and networking at Customize. I’d love to see you there — get your tickets now and come hang in NYC!

Eat well,
Catherine

The Secret to Food Hyper-Personalization? According to Meal Hero’s CTO, It’s AI

What should you eat tonight? That question can be tricky to answer, especially if you’re trying to use up leftovers while feeding folks with diverse eating preferences and dietary restrictions.

It’s also the exact question that Erik Andrejko is trying to solve. Andrejko is the CTO of Meal Hero (formerly wellio), a personalized meal planning app that’s part of Kraft-Heinz’s Evolv group. At The Spoon’s Customize event in NYC next week, he’ll be speaking about how AI is the secret sauce that will shape the food personalization revolution.

So how exactly will AI reinvent data, discovery, public policy and more within the food ecosystem? You can learn some of the answers by reading Andrejko’s Q&A below, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you want the full story you’ll have to see Andrejko speak at Customize next week! Use code SPOON15 to save 15 percent on your tickets.

Tell us a little bit about what Meal Hero does, and how it fits within Kraft Heinz.
At Meal Hero, we are empowering people to improve their lives by eating well. The consumer relationship with food is evolving, and we see supporting personalized food experiences, in particular supporting home cooked meals, as an essential part of a broader strategy of nourishing a growing world.

To that end, we have developed a personalized meal planning application that connects seamlessly to digital grocery fulfillment. It solves the problem of “what’s for dinner tonight?” for the 89 million US households that cook dinner 5+ times a week, making those occasions tasty, nourishing, convenient, and personalized to each household’s needs.

What are some opportunities to bring customized dining into the consumer kitchen? 
Dining at home is a complex challenge with multiple participants. One household we studied led by Susan, a working mom of three, exemplifies this complexity. Susan’s decision-making process starts in the morning as she glances at her fridge while cooking breakfast to determine what to use up for dinner. She then revisits the decision at the end of her workday, going through a complex decision tree that takes into consideration the ingredients she has available, one kid’s tree nut allergy, two kids’ distaste for spicy food, and her own desire to make something pescatarian at a reasonable cost before deciding that she can make fish tacos. As shopping for the missing ingredients and cooking take longer than expected, she’s forced to give the kids some snacks, and by the time the meal is ready, the kids are no longer hungry. We can reduce or eliminate the obstacles that people like Susan face in realizing their aspirations to nourish their households through software technology that embodies the expertise of a personal chef, a personal nutritionist, and a personal shopper.

What’s the biggest challenge facing companies trying to tap into consumer demand for personalization?
The biggest challenge centers around data: gathering it, organizing it, and sharing it. The cold-start problem is well noted in the field of data science and continues to be a hurdle for food personalization as companies struggle to initially gather or generate useful data. Once sufficient data is gathered, a system must be devised that is comfortable working with natural inputs and outputs to derive domain intelligence, which we have done with our Food Intelligence Platform. For the system to improve, it must continuously ingest data from users, whose app fatigue can impede the learning process if the system cannot yet generate sufficient value to combat abandonment. Finally, no firm operates in a vacuum with only its consumers, so the whole value chain must mobilize to adopt standardization, transparency, and accessibility of data. 

What do you think personalized food or drink will look like 5 years down the road?
Personalization will evolve to hyper-personalization as consumers’ expectations in the food domain increase over time to match those in other, more digitally mature domains (e.g. entertainment). We see that evolution occurring in the following sequence:

1. Convenience – How do we bridge the gap from the 80 percent of consumers who use digital tools for grocery planning and discovery to the 3 percent of grocery transactions that occur online? As consumer adoption of digital grocery grows, the connectivity from planning & discovery to commerce must become seamless. 

2. Lifestyle – Diet and lifestyle-based digital shopping journeys are increasingly becoming available, but none close the loop on going from what to eat to getting access to them conveniently and at a reasonable cost. 

3. Health – Food as medicine is just beginning to kick into gear. In about 5 years, we see food tech and health tech converging to create new and powerful consumer experiences. While we see this beginning to happen in pockets, it is not at scale.

In order for the food ecosystem to deliver on those personalized consumer values, a complete evolution is necessary across the value chain (ie: in data, discovery, public policy, standards, etc.). AI will be critical in accelerating the solutions to these challenges.

Newsletter: As Food Gets Personal, What Happens to Our Data?

With Customize, The Spoon’s daylong NYC summit, just around the corner, we’re talking all things food personalization these days. And with personalization comes personal data, which you, me, and a growing number of consumers endlessly hand over these days to CPGs, grocery services, nutritionists, and, of course, restaurants.

I was reminded of the data portion of personalization earlier this week when I came across a new report from Technomic that noted just over half of U.S. consumers want to know more about how restaurants use their personal information. To be honest, I was surprised the exact number, 56 percent, wasn’t higher, though it probably will be by the end of this year.  

Restaurants now have a growing number of ways to find out more about their customers, and since food preferences aren’t the most high-stakes form of personal data, we’re more willing to part with that information. As one survey respondent noted, “The benefits of using technology to order/pay for food and beverages from restaurants outweigh the risks to my personal data.”

Still, as more kiosks land in the front of house and more brands implement AI to better understand their customers, proving themselves trustworthy with customer data is crucial. So what does that look like?

There are the obvious steps around safety, of course: staying PCI-compliant, vetting third-party vendors, etc. Those are all back-end policies and procedures consumers neither see nor probably care about unless something like a data breach occurs. 

What consumers do care about is getting a consistently good experience with a food or brand. I don’t just mean having an easy-to-use mobile app or quick drive-thru times. Restaurants must also be able to show customers that the personal data they hand over is what creates that consistently good experience. If a chain has my birthday stored in its system, it should automatically be able to offer some kind of reward (e.g., dessert) on that day. If a coffee chain already knows I can’t have sugary syrups in espresso drinks, its system should stop offering me those upsells when I order. Use the digital real estate to try selling me something I would actually buy, like a bagel.

Many restaurants, multi-national chains and indies alike, are already working to offer these kinds of experiences. Many more will follow as personalization becomes as common in restaurants as mobile apps have. Right now, however, it’s no sure bet your personal data is going to create your most optimal experience from one restaurant to the next, or even from one chain’s store to its next. Figuring out how to standardize some of these processes will be the next step in restaurant personalization. 

Can Customization Lead to More Food as Medicine?

Food customization and personalization are happening outside the restaurant, too. Some of it involves using your DNA to tell you exactly what foods you should be eating. 

My colleague Catherine Lamb explored that this week when she wrote about her experience with GenoPalate, a service that uses information gleaned from a user’s DNA to create a personalized nutrition plan for them.

As Catherine rightly points out, a tool like GenoPalate isn’t yet terribly useful to the average person, other than telling them to eat a healthy diet. However, for those who suffer from chronic illness or other issues, the service could offer an easier way for people to adjust their diets in order to live healthier, more comfortable lives.

I wonder about the food-as-medicine angle here. If GenoPalate can recommend certain foods and recipes for someone with, say major digestive issues, could a more personalized diet keep that person from having to heavily rely on over-the-counter pills and prescription meds. And to take things a step further, can personalization tech eventually help consumers make the needed behavioral changes necessary to eat better instead of simply swallowing another pill?

There’s tech that simply informs us and there’s tech that can actually help us alter our lifestyles for the better. When it comes to personalization, companies that can accomplish the latter will be the ones who stand out. 

Last Chance for Customize Tickets

Since we’re talking food personalization today, now’s the point when I shamelessly plug The Spoon’s NYC event next week. If you want to know more about how your DNA could create a better diet or simply when The Cheesecake Factory will start offering you a free birthday dessert, head up to Manhattan on February 27 to join us for the event.  Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tickets.

Keep on truckin’,

Jenn

Viome’s CTO on why Gut Microbes plus AI can Reveal Perfect Diet

For all of us trying to eat healthier — especially those who are battling a chronic disease — figuring out exactly how certain foods will affect your body is critical. That’s what Viome is trying to help people determine. The startup examines your microbiome to create personalized dining recommendations (and recipes) featuring foods that are an ideal fit for your biology.

We’re pretty fascinated by the whole concept of microbiome-based eating, so invited Guru Banavar, the CTO of Viome, to speak at The Spoon’s Customize event in New York on February 27. If you want to join us (you should!) there are only a few tickets left, so get on it! (Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off.)

To give you a taste of what’s to come, we asked Banavar a few questions about microbiome-driven eating, his time learning about AI with IBM Watson, and the biggest challenges for selling personal nutrition.

This interview has been edited for grammar and clarity,

Tell us a little bit about what Viome does.
Viome is on a mission to help people take control of their health and ultimately prevent and reverse chronic disease. We do this by understanding people’s biology on a molecular level, especially in their gut microbiome, using our proprietary metatranscriptomics technology combined with powerful AI-driven analysis to deliver them personalized insights and recommendations.

What’s the difference between personalized nutrition based on your microbiome (gut bacteria), and personalized nutrition based on your DNA?
Our microbial genome is between 2 to 20 million microbial genes, making our genetic material 99% microbial. This means that to fully understand the human body we must start by collecting data and analyzing the gut microbiome – the richest source of our microbes.  

Therefore, the first difference is that DNA tests only look at DNA (your genes), which never change throughout your life — even if you develop a chronic disease. We at Viome look at RNA (gene expression, or what your genes are actually doing within your body) which is dynamic and changes all the time. It’s a better indicator of overall wellness and chronic disease. Since any two humans share [more than] 99 percent the same DNA, but only about 5 percent of the same microbial DNA,  each person’s microbiome is incredibly unique — what works for you may not work for me.

In the past you’ve worked for a long time at IBM Watson. How do you think your AI experience has helped in the personalized nutrition field?
I was involved in solving a wide variety of problems from different industries at IBM Watson, so I quickly learned that AI is not one thing but really a toolbox of many techniques that you need to put together depending on the problem you’re solving.  Personalized nutrition based on molecular data is a very challenging field, and I brought my experience with the full range of AI tools & techniques to get the fastest and the most effective solution.

Viome currently recommends diets and recipes. Do you see it ever working in tandem with foodservice or grocery?
We already see many of our customers reporting that they use their Viome app in the grocery store, when they are choosing foods and supplements online or when they are selecting from restaurant menus. As we build new services within our app we are looking to make this frictionless, and we are in early stage discussions with a number of large grocery retailers and international food companies…. watch this space!

What do you think is the biggest challenge for personalized nutrition?
We have actually found that once people understand the technology, take the test, they see amazing results, so our job is less about acceptance and more about awareness and inspiration.

The science around personalized nutrition is advancing rapidly with multiple new papers published every day, especially connecting the microbiome and chronic diseases like Diabetes, Obesity, IBS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimers and Cancer. Our world class science team is working with partners like the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, United Healthcare and GSK, among others, to not only keep on top of the science but advance it through clinical studies and trials. Not all companies who give personalized nutrition recommendations with the same depth of scientific rigor and understanding, so education is important.

Banavar will be speaking about microbiome-driven personalized nutrition along with the CEO of Sun Genomics at Customize! Don’t miss out — use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off your ticket now, before they’re gone.