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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Afresh Adds $12M in Funding for its AI Approach to Fresh Food Stocking at Grocery

Afresh, a startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help grocery retailers manage fresh food inventories, announced today that it has raised a $12 million follow-on to its Series A round of funding. The round was led by returning investor Innovation Endeavors with participation from Food Retail Ventures, Maersk Growth, Impact Engine, Better Food Ventures and existing investor Baseline Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Afresh to $20 million.

A grocery store’s fresh food sections (think: produce, bread etc.) are trickier to manage than the aisles of CPG products as fresh foods have a limited shelf life and expire. The goal is to keep a store stocked with enough product that they don’t run out, but not so much that there is a lot that goes to waste.

That’s where Afresh says its technology can help out. As we wrote previously:

Afresh’s technology uses machine learning to analyze customer data and forecast product demand. Retail managers can then use the Afresh software to order the exact amount of fresh food that they’ll need — no more, no less.

Of course, maintaining fresh food stocks in-store has only gotten trickier since COVID-19 hit in full force. When the pandemic first started here in the U.S., panic buying translated into lots of empty store shelves. Since then buying habits have shifted too, with record numbers of people buying groceries online. All of these new buying patterns need to be taken into account as we adjust to this current pandemic and brace for any resurgences of the virus.

Afresh isn’t alone in its mission to cut down on food waste and help grocery retailers better manage their inventories. Crisp uses data and AI to offer a similar service to grocers. And online grocer Farmstead is built around algorithms that help it predict and better manage its inventory.

Though the world seems to be in a continuous state of unpredictable flux, we all still need to eat. Hopefully technology like Afresh’s can help mitigate any future shocks to the food system.

How a Materials Scientist Invented an Edible Way to Keep Your Avocados Ripe for Longer (Spoon Plus)

Apeel just raised $250 million from investors including celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Katy Perry. I spoke with Rogers a few days before they announced the funding to learn more about how he, a materials scientist, got the idea to switch from creating solar panels to developing produce technology. We also got into bigger discussions around food waste, how tech is mitigating it, and the ways in which COVID is affecting our relationship with food (and waste).

The interview is an exclusive offering for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here. 

Apeel Sciences Raises $250M to Extend Produce Shelf Life

Apeel, the startup that makes a natural coating to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, announced today via a release emailed to The Spoon that it had raised $250 million in fresh financing. The round was led by GIC with participation from Viking Global Investors, Upfront Ventures, Tao Capital Partners and Rock Creek Group. Celebrities Oprah Winfrey and Katy Perry have also joined as minority, non-participatory investors.

Founded in 2015, Apeel is fighting the global fresh food waste problem by creating a foodsafe powder coating out of plant oils which, when applied to produce, can double or triple their lifespan. The “peel” functions as a barrier to keep water in and oxygen out, fighting the two main causes of produce rotting. Each fruit or vegetable has its own proprietary coating.

Currently, Apeel avocados are available in retailers in the U.S., including 1,110 Kroger stores. Last year the company launched its Apeel-treated avocados on store shelves in Denmark and Germany. In Germany it also offers coated mandarins and oranges.

Apeel’s CEO James Rogers also told me in an interview last week that, in addition to citrus and avocados, the company also has coatings for asparagus and cucumbers in the works.

Extending the lifespan of fresh produce can not only cut down on food waste but can also equate to major savings for retailers. So it’s no surprise that Apeel isn’t the only company working to make your fruit stay fresh for longer. StixFresh has a sticker that can extend produce shelf life by two weeks, and Hazel Technologies makes packaging inserts for bulk fruit and vegetable harvest boxes to slow ripening. Perhaps most similar to Apeel, Italian company Sufresca also makes an edible coating which it claims can extend produce shelf life by several weeks.

According to Rogers, Apeel distinguishes itself by using only edible, natural elements to “copy the way that Nature does it.” They also develop different coatings for each fruit or vegetable to optimize its lifespan. “Every piece of produce is a living, breathing thing, [and] it needs its own optimized little microclimate in order to survive optimally,” said Rogers.

Food waste is one of the leading contributors to global warming, and fresh foods — like fruit and vegetables — are one of the most common foods to go to waste. Of course, wasting food is also bad news for a grocery store’s bottom line — and consumers, for that matter.

Thus far, both consumers and grocery stores seem to be on board by Apeel’s products. Rogers told me that when markets put signs indicating that their produce has been coated with Apeel, they see double-digit increases in sales. “That starts to make sense when you realize that a lot of people are pricing waste into their purchase decisions.”

Today’s raise brings Apeel’s total funding to $360.1 million. With its new capital, Apeel will continue to focus on expansion in U.S. and Europe, but it will also allocate funds to support its initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America.

AgShift Expands its Deep Learning Food Inspection to Nuts and Seafood

AgShift, a startup that uses computer vision and deep learning to determine food quality in the supply chain, is broadening its capabilities beyond produce into edible nuts and seafood.

We named AgShift as one of our Food Tech 25 companies last month because of the way it allows produce buyers and sellers to come to an objective price. AgShift’s software lets inspectors take a picture of fruit with their mobile phone and upload it to the cloud where AgShift’s deep learning algorithms would assess its quality (color, bruising, etc.) and base that against USDA, or other customized ratings, to provide a food grade.

AgShift is expanding this type of objective algorithmic grading to inspect edible nuts, starting with cashews, and is in the process of exploring seafood inspections.

To do this, AgShift has developed its own hardware to do bulk analysis. This analyzer is an enclosed box with cameras optimized for deep learning that is installed on-site at a food processing facility. Food, in this case cashews, is loaded into the analyzer which takes pictures of the product and sends the images through AgShift’s platform for analysis and grading.

Miku Jha, AgShift Founder and CEO, told me that using the analyzer on-site allows for better, and more efficient, large-scale assessments. She said that traditionally cashews are examined by hand, with inspectors looking at one or two pounds of nuts at a time. That takes time, and after being touched, those particular nuts need to be discarded. Both time and waste can add up when you’re processing literally tons of cashews. Using AgShift’s analyzer, sampling can be done faster and samples do not need to be thrown out because of the workflow at the processing facility.

Jha said that AgShift has finalized production units of its analyzer, and that the company has already been working with a global nut processor doing inspections and assessing the quality of their cashews.

AgShifts’s expansion into seafood is not as far along. Jha said that AgShift’s deep learning models can help the seafood supply chain with objective species identification and freshness assessment, as well as determine any change in quality of fish as they move through the supply chain. The company is still looking for its first customers in that field.

AgShift isn’t alone in its computer vision and deep learning approach to food inspection. Intello Labs uses the same type of technology to help farmers get a fair price from buyers in India, and it too is eyeing a move into seafood. Here at home, Walmart is using its Eden technology to assess general food freshness.

Earlier this year, AgShift raised its first $2 million seed round and announced it is working with RJO Produce marketing.

AgShift Raises $2M, Reveals RJO as First Client

Today AgShift, a startup that uses computer vision and deep learning to reduce food waste, announced its first client: RJO Produce Marketing. This news comes just days after AgShift raised $2 million in its first seed round

Agshift uses its technology to attack food waste generated in the supply chain. Right now food inspection is done manually at different points along the food system, with workers literally eyeballing product to assess its quality using their own judgment, which can vary.

“The food supply chain is fragmented,” said Miku Jha, Founder and CEO of AgShift. “Inspections are done by different people at different points.” The results, according to Jha, are “subjective and inconsistent.” One person’s Grade A is another person’s Grade B.

Jha wants to take the subjectivity out of this process with — what else? — a mobile phone app. Instead of just looking at a piece of fruit, inspectors at wholesalers and distributors hold the produce up to the phone’s camera and take a picture (like depositing a check via mobile app, the software guides you for proper positioning). AgShift’s software in the cloud analyzes that image to quantify its bruising, color distribution, average size, mold, etc. to determine its quality.

Using the USDA’s produce guidelines (or a customized set of specifications), AgShift says its software can objectively give fruit its proper rating, and provide precise reasons why it made that choice. According to Jha, this level of consistency throughout food supply chain will deliver higher-quality produce to consumers.

It will also reduce food waste on multiple fronts. AgShift analyzes color distribution better than the human eye. So if, for example, it sees some strawberries that are 90 percent dark red at a shipping point, it can tell suppliers that it is more ripe. Then the suppliers can divert those riper berries to closer destinations, rather than running the risk of them getting spoiled on a cross-country trip.

AgShift can also reduce food waste by removing human judgment from the equation. Right now, vendors and buyers might dispute the rating of a food shipment. This can lead to canceled orders and food getting thrown out. With a computer generated rating, lower quality food can be assessed earlier in the supply chain and re-sold at a lower price or re-purposed, rather than discarded.

Industry watchers may note that AgShift sounds a lot like the Eden technology Walmart recently rolled out at its grocery stores to prevent food waste. Walmart is obviously a giant and a master of the supply chain, but Eden appears to be Walmart-specific. AgShift’s agnostic platform will give it a broad range of potential customers.

AgShift’s platform is already in trial use by a number of companies, the first of which to be publicly announced is RJO Produce Marketing. According to the press release, RJO provides “quality assurance inspections, in-depth market analysis and category management services for key perishable commodities.”

While the two million raised by AgShift is a rounding error for a company like Walmart, it’s just the start for this startup. The Sunnyvale-based company was founded two years ago and currently has 12 people working in their California and India offices. Jha said the money will be used to fund R&D and expedite the product.

Jha’s mission with AgShift is a global one. As she points out, we spend a lot of time talking about growing more food for a growing population — but a good first step is reducing the amount of food we waste right now.