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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Pipedream Labs

Pipedream Raises $13M as It Looks to Build Underground Middle Mile Delivery Network

Underground delivery startup Pipedream Labs announced it has raised $13 million in funding. Company CEO Garrett McCurrach disclosed the funding, led by Starship Ventures, with participation from Cortado Ventures, Myelin Ventures, and others, in a post on LinkedIn.

The new capital infusion will primarily be utilized to enhance Pipedream’s “Instant Pickup” service and kick-start the construction of an ambitious middle-mile network in an as-yet-unnamed city. This network aims to facilitate quicker, more cost-effective urban deliveries.

What the company calls its Instant Pickup service is when it deploys its underground delivery technology at a grocery store, restaurant, or retail store. According to McCurrach, an Instant Pickup system enables a restaurant or grocery store to hand off an order to a customer in less than 15 seconds. The company says it has 100 preorders for Instant Pickup systems, a number which likely includes its Wendy’s pilot announced last year.

The company says it will also select a city to build its first large-scale middle-mile network installation. While McCurrach doesn’t say in which city they will first break ground, he did include a graphic of a map of the Phoenix metro area with a diagram outlining a “small middle mile network”

McCurrach: “This year, we will be selecting a city to build our first middle-mile network (a large-scale underground delivery network that makes current deliveries faster and cheaper in a city) and collaborating with local government and city officials to maximize the benefits of our low-cost, fast delivery system for all their citizens. Construction is set to begin this year, with plans to start utilizing the network by next spring.”

My guess is the company will likely find a lot more near-term traction for its Instant Pickup business, as extremely short-range delivery within a given plot of land is much easier to deploy than a city-wide installation. It also doesn’t hurt that the company’s push into curbside pickup and fast food drive-thrus comes at a time when grocery stores are growing their pickup business and quick service restaurants are reimagining how they handle drive-thru.

The Weekly Spoon: Sugar Alternatives Are the New Sweetness for Food Tech

Here in America, we like the sweet stuff. Whether it’s sodas, candies, or ice cream, we consume more added sugar than any other country.

Not surprisingly, all this sugar consumption can lead to health issues like diabetes, which has given rise to a massive sugar replacement industry offering up a variety of synthetic replacements like aspartame or sucralose and natural ones like stevia and monk fruit.

But as it turns out, even low or no-calorie alternatives sometimes come with their own health risks. For example, synthetic replacements like sucralose and saccharin have been shown to spike blood sugars, wreak havoc on your gut health and even become toxic when exposed to high temperatures. And while many have embraced natural alternatives like stevia and monk fruit sweeteners over synthetic sweeteners in recent years, recent research has shown that the sugar alcohol erythritol, which is often added to stevia and monk fruit as a sweetener, has been linked to heart attack and stroke.

Despite these problems, consumers continue to eat up sugar substitutes around the world. In fact, the market for sugar substitutes is expected to grow from $18 billion in 2022 to over $28.5 billion by 2032, fueled by increasing demand for healthy lifestyles and growing interest in sugar alternatives in Asia.

This continued interest in sugar replacements could mean a big payoff for those innovators who can create alternatives that sweet taste without all the downsides of the current offerings. This week The Spoon covers two of these startups creating new sugar alternatives that represent a significant departure from those currently on the market.

First, there’s Oobli, which has figured out how to sweeten its teas and chocolates using a sweet protein called brazzein. While brazzein is a sweet protein found in the Western African oubli fruit, it is incredibly costly and difficult to extract. Oobli (which takes its name from the fruit) has discovered a way to create a chemically identical version of brazzein via microbial fermentation. They launched their chocolate line earlier this year and launched their sweet teas this week.

The other company we covered this week is Incredo, which doesn’t replace sugar but maximizes its sweetness properties while minimizing its impact on the body. The company does this by binding cane or beet sugar to a natural carrier, which then maximizes the sweetness as it hits the sweet taste receptors on the tongue. According to Incredo, their sugar reduction solution results in 30-50% less added sugar in foods.

As I wrote earlier this week, I had a chance to try out the Oobli peach sweet tea on stage at the SynBioBeta conference, and I think the company may have a hit on its hands. It tasted just as good as the sugary sweet stuff!

If you get a chance to try either of these new sugar alternatives – or know of one we haven’t written about – drop us a line! 

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Is Amazon Serious About Underground Delivery?

In 2017, Amazon was awarded a patent for something one might find in a science fiction novel: underground package delivery.

And while it seemed like they ripped a page out of a Hugh Howey novel, the argument for underground delivery tunnels – no carbon emitted into the air, reduced traffic, etc.- kinda made sense. 

But even so, the idea still sounded a bit nuts, and for the next few years, there wasn’t any signal the company was serious about the idea until last month when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was seen checking out the prototype for an underground delivery to home solution from Pipedream Labs. 

Spoon readers might remember Pipedream Labs as the company with big plans to build an underground delivery network of pipes around cities to shuttle food or other items all the way to the home. The company is working with Wendy’s and other restaurants in the near term – you gotta pay the bills after all – but still has hopes to build the bigger vision of a citywide underground delivery network.

In fact, in a recent Twitter thread, Pipedream CTO Canon Reeves said the company is now courting master-planned community builders with a system that would deliver into the home.

Check out the full article on PipeDream Labs here.

Google Wants to Put an End to Single-Use Plastic, So It Put Out a Call For New Ideas

We all know plastic is bad for the environment, but despite all the videos of plastic bottles and wrappers floating in oceans and piling up in landfills, billions of single-use containers are used and tossed every year.

Google has decided to do something about it, so it’s launched a call to food companies with sustainable packaging to submit their products to the Google Single-Use Plastics Challenge. According to the company, Google will test out those products that meet state and federal requirements and pass muster with Google’s Food program standards in the company’s U.S.-based cafes and MicroKitchens. Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their products to Google and “leading global food operators” to scale them across Google’s U.S. offices.

Reading the fine print, Google is prioritizing reusable serviceware and packaging but will also accept packaging concepts that are edible, fiber-based, or unlined serviceware/packaging. The company will accept some post-consumer recycled packaging for certain categories, and while it will accept glass and aluminum, it makes clear these are “not preferred.” Those with plastic, bio-based, compostable, multi-layer, or PFAS-lined products need not apply.

While big corporates have made progress in recent years in eliminating plastic in the form of straws and drink containers, a whole bunch of plastic is still being used in food service and cafeterias every day. Google’s effort goes further by emphasizing food service plastic in all forms, including plastic containers and wrappers, a huge problem that has gotten less attention than plastic bottles, straws, and cutlery.

For those interested in applying to the Google Single-Use Plastic Challenge, you’ll need to hurry since the deadline is May 30th.

Restaurant Tech

Wow Bao Launches the ‘Hot Buns Club’, a $99-a-Year Web3 Loyalty Program

Wow Bao, the digitally nimble Asian food startup that’s expanded nationwide in recent years through an asset-light virtual restaurant model, announced the launch of its NFT program last week. The new NFTs, called Digital CollectaBaos, will be proof of membership in a new super-fan tier called the Hot Buns Club within the company’s Bao Bucks loyalty program.

Wow Bao laid out a web3 vision last November that will eventually include such far-out concepts as metaverse vending machines, but before they take their steamed buns fully into the virtual realm, it’ll start onboarding dedicated customers through its NFT-powered subscription program for $99 bucks a year.

The initial benefits for Wow Bao NFT holders include 10% off delivery orders, double Bao Bucks points on purchases, 10% off merch orders, and contest giveaways.

The Wow Bao NFT program is built on the Polygon network, a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm blockchain that proponents say is more environmentally friendly than many other Ethereum-based digital currencies. Despite the blockchain underpinnings of its new loyalty supertier, Wow Bao is – at least for the time being – downplaying the crypto angle given all the bad press the technology has gotten over the past year, positioning it instead as a digital collectible with associated member benefits.

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

Finalists for NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge Include Astronaut Oven & Air Protein Technology
 

Last week, NASA announced the finalists for the final phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition designed to help explore and better understand how these agencies can feed humans in space. The US Space Agency awarded $750,000 in prizes in the second phase of its Deep Space Food Challenge, and the winning teams will compete in the final phase of the challenge and $1.5 million in prize money.

The kickoff of the third phase is the culmination of almost two years of competition that saw hundreds of applicants get whittled down to 28 competing in the first round to eleven finalists for phase 2, and as of last week, eight companies competing in phase 3.

The following five US teams are among the eight finalists in phase 3:

  • Air Company of Brooklyn, New York, developed a system and processes for turning air, water, electricity, and yeast into food.
  • Interstellar Lab of Merritt Island, Florida, created a modular bioregenerative system for producing fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects.
  • Kernel Deltech USA of Cape Canaveral, Florida, developed a system for cultivating mushroom-based ingredients.
  • Nolux of Riverside, California, created a solution that mimics the photosynthesis that happens in nature to produce plant- and mushroom-based ingredients.
  • SATED (Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient, and Delicious) of Boulder, Colorado, developed a space cooking appliance that would allow astronauts to prepare a variety of meals from ingredients with long shelf lives.

Read the full story here on The Spoon.

Is Jeff Bezos Eyeing The Buildout of an Underground Delivery Network?

Today, Wendy’s announced they will trial an underground delivery system later this year in partnership with Pipedream Labs. According to the announcement, the system will deliver orders to customers via a carside pick-up portal using “autonomous robots” that traverse an underground pipe system.

Spoon readers might remember Pipedream Labs as the company with big plans to build an underground delivery network of pipes around cities to shuttle food or other items all the way to the home. The company is working with Wendy’s and other restaurants in the near term – you gotta pay the bills after all – but still has hopes to build the bigger vision of a citywide underground delivery network.

In fact, in a recent Twitter thread, Pipedream CTO Canon Reeves said the company is now courting master-planned community builders with a system that would deliver into the home.

According to Reeves, the Home Portal system would look something like this:

Pipedream Labs Home Portal. Photo: Canon Reeves

And the delivery robots look like this:

Pipedream Delivery Robot. Image Credit: Canon Reeves

Building these systems into new master-planned communities makes lots of sense for a couple of reasons, the first of which is retrofitting existing homes for underground to in-home delivery would be extremely hard and very expensive. Master-planned communities present greenfield build opportunities for concepts like this, where customers can be presented with the option as a feature in a new home, and the cost of the home system can be rolled into a mortgage. Home builders can also build out the delivery infrastructure as they lay down other infrastructure, either going underground or along the community right-of-way areas (as they did in Atlanta in a public right-of-way).

But even if the company just focuses on new build opportunities, the idea is still a little far-fetched, the kind of far-fetched where you almost need a utopia-curious billionaire who invests in crazy ideas to get behind something like this.

Someone like, I don’t know, Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos watching a demo of Pipedream Labs Home Portal. Image Credit: Canon Reeves

According to Reeves, Bezos stopped by last month to check out the home delivery prototype. And while Reeves didn’t say anything beyond that – like Bezos is interested in investing in the system – one could speculate that the guy who founded the biggest online ordering marketplace in the US might just be curious about what a future with an underground delivery network might look like.

Could he be there on behalf of Amazon? Maybe. It’s not like Amazon doesn’t invest in delivery infrastructure, and, in fact, the company invested around $40 billion from 2014-2020 and continues to do so. And, let’s not forget, Amazon itself has explored the idea of underground delivery before and was granted a patent for the idea in 2017.

And even if this isn’t an Amazon thing, but a billionaire-investor-Jeff-Bezos-thing, Bezos has shown a penchant for investing in big ideas like space flight, and if Elon can build underground tunnels for shuttling people around in Teslas, Bezos would be entirely in his right to think sending items around underground in pipes might have a future.

Forget Sidewalk Robots or Drones. In the Future, Food Could Travel to Your Home in Underground Pipes

Why use a drone or sidewalk delivery robot to deliver packages when you can have them sent directly to your kitchen via a series of tubes?

No, I’m not referring to Ted Stevens’ imagining of the Internet or a plotline from a Steampunk novel, but one startup’s vision of an underground delivery network that would send packages hurling towards their end destination at speeds of up to 75 miles per hour.

That startup is Pipedream Labs, which has a plan to build an underground pipe network for near-instant delivery of physical goods. The idea, which is one of those that is so crazy you can’t figure out if it’s brilliant or stupid, works like this:

The Pipedream delivery system would be a citywide underground delivery network that utilizes pipes and electric-powered delivery pods to shuttle things around at high speeds. It’s essentially a Hyperloop for delivery, only instead of transporting people, it will bring you the latest Amazon package or hamburger from your favorite restaurant.

While the initial plan is to create a “middle mile” network for long-haul delivery across cities, the company’s CTO says they have a vision for eventually delivering products directly into consumers’ homes. He envisions a new kind of home appliance called the Home Portal which would enable “cheap, fast, and environmentally friendly delivery of groceries, food, and packages.”

The delivery infrastructure will be PVC piping, the same kind used by city utilities for plumbing or electrical systems. In fact, the company says they plan on making all infrastructure usable by utilities “if needed” or “in the event that PipeDream migrates to an alternative delivery method (Star Trek Transporter?) or ceases operations”.

Packages would be delivered “intra-district” to different parts of the city and would go to what the founder describes as delivery nodes.

The nodes will utilize delivery portals, vending machine like kiosks that would hand off goods to a customer or to a last-mile delivery person or robot. Portals hand off packages through a hatch and can cache up to 8 delivery pods at a time, allowing it – for a limited amount of time at least – to act like an Amazon storage locker.

Source: Pipedream Labs

Delivery pods are 10.8″ in diameter by 18″ in length and have a theoretical speed of over 110 miles per hour (but will likely move around at a speed of 60 to 75 miles per hour when in operation). They have two sections, a drive section (which includes the motor, electronics, and battery) and a removable cargo carrier section.

Pipedream envisions all sorts of products delivered via their pods, including food. According to the company, the internal capacity has room to carry 95% of grocery items and most any type of prepared food from a restaurant (except for pizza, which the company says they are working on).

The analyst in me looks at an idea like this and says there’s no way it would work. The cost of building out the network, the difficulty of navigating city bureaucracies to get a network deployed, not to mention the many technical challenges of creating an underground system and operating it all seem insurmountably difficult.

But as I think about a world where ever-more products are delivered to our homes, it doesn’t take long to realize we’ll need a variety of creative solutions beyond the status quo. Car delivery doesn’t make sense long-term for small packages, but we also don’t want to live in a dystopia with drone darkened skies or sidewalk robots congesting our walkways. Taking a portion of package delivery underground may make the most sense long term.

Of course, it will take a while before we ever know if Pipedream’s, um, dream comes true. The company has only raised $1.6 million in seed funding so far and would need to tap into utility loan funding to build a network of the size they envision.

But who knows? Maybe Elon Musk will embrace underground delivery the same way he’s helped push underground transportation forward and invest in the company, or a forward-looking city will work with Pipedream to fund an underground delivery network for stuff over the next decade.

Either way, an operating underground delivery network is an interesting new idea and one that might have a future in an increasingly e-commerce-driven world.