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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Phood

Phood Raises $2M in Seed Funding to Fight Food Waste

Phood, the New York City-based startup that uses a combination of weight scales, computer vision and AI to help foodservice operators reduce food waste, announced today that it has raised a $2 million Seed round of financing. The round was led by New Stack Ventures and Story Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Phood to $2.1 million.

Phood’s technology helps foodservice companies better understand and optimize how their food is being used. As we wrote earlier this year about the company:

There are three parts to the Phood system: a scale, a camera and a software backend. Food is placed on the scale either before going into a dish (to see how much is being used to make meals) or afterwards (to see how much waste is being generated). There’s a camera mounted above the scale that uses AI to automatically identify what each food item is.

The company’s system also connects with a restaurant’s POS and inventory management software to track what particular items are being used and who supplied them. So, if a cafeteria ends up with a lot of extra brussel sprouts, Phood tells the manager to adjust the business’s purchasing.

On its face, food waste is a huge problem because it means food has been, well, wasted instead of consumed, especially during a time when there are so many in need. Food waste is also an acute problem for restaurants, which already operated under thin margins coming into the pandemic. Now with dining rooms going through a second round of closures, restaurants need to get the most out of every dollar spent and literally can’t afford to let food go to waste.

Thankfully, there are a host of companies fighting the good fight against food waste all along the supply chain. Both Winnow and LeanPath offer similar services like Phood’s to help restaurants manage their food usage and inventory. Restaurant supplier Choco recently held a pop-up event in L.A. challenging chefs to come up with foods based on by-products. And earlier this month the nonprofit ReFed launched a $10 million fundraising campaign to help fund projects that reduce waste in the supply chain.

If you want to learn more about the problem of food waste, and what companies are doing to combat it, check The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report over at our Spoon Plus membership service.

Phood Fights Food Waste with Scales, Computer Vision and AI

With the pandemic still raging, restaurants are struggling to stay in business. One way restaurants can help stave off permanent closure is to make sure whatever money they have now is being spent properly and not going to waste. One way to do that is to measure the food being used in meals… and the food going to waste.

Phood is a company that uses a combination of scales, computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to help restaurants, cafeterias and other eateries better understand and optimize how their food inventory is being used.

There are three parts to the Phood system: a scale, a camera and a software backend. Food is placed on the scale either before going into a dish (to see how much is being used to make meals) or afterwards (to see how much waste is being generated). There’s a camera mounted above the scale that uses AI to automatically identify what each food item is.

Phood’s system also integrates with a restaurant’s existing POS and inventory management software to track how much of a particular item is being used and who supplied it. Based on that information, restaurants can then realign both production and ordering to reduce waste. So if a cafeteria or restaurant winds up with too many leftover mixed vegetables, that point is highlighted in a Phood dashboard so the manager can take appropriate action (make less or order more).

On its website, Phood claims that its solution can help reduce food waste by 42 percent. I spoke with Phood Founder, Luc Dang, by phone this week and he said Phood can provide a cost savings of 8 – 10 percent. In the thin margin world of restaurants, those savings can go a long way.

Phood, which began using computer vision and AI in its product last year and has raised $100,000 in seed funding, isn’t the only company fighting food waste in this manner. Winnow, which raised $12 million last year, uses a similar scale, computer vision and AI approach. LeanPath does much the same thing to help change behavior in the kitchen (e.g., less wasteful chopping of veggies or trimming of meat).

During these unpredictable times when the future of just about every eatery hangs in the balance, using a tool like Phood could not only help close down food waste, but also play its part in helping keep restaurants open.