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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The Week in Food Tech Funding: Perfect Day’s Big Raise & Gorillas Quits Monkeying Around

The week’s big news is a $350 million Series D raise by precision fermentation unicorn Perfect Day. There’s a whole lot packed into this announcement, so let’s get right to it:

First, the funding raises Perfect Day’s total to $750 million and sets the company on track for a possible IPO. The timing couldn’t be better, as tech startups continue to see rising valuations and the market is hungry for more food tech (see Oatly). And while Ginkgo Bioworks was the first company with significant precision fermentation (PF) capabilities to IPO, Perfect Day will be the first true future food PF pure-play to go public.

As part of the news, the company announced an expansion of its consumer products company, the Urgent Company (TUC). TUC, Perfect Day’s wholly-owned CPG company behind the Brave Robot ice cream brand, will add new “household staples” to its portfolio with Modern Kitchen, the second consumer brand under the TUC umbrella. Modern Kitchen’s first product will be dairy-free cream cheese, which the company will make with its animal-identical whey. As part of the announcement, TUC revealed Brave Robot is now in 5 thousand stores and that they’ve moved a million pints of ice cream.

Speaking of Brave Robot, it always struck me as a risky choice for a product name. Sure it stands out, but Brave Robot also doesn’t exactly make one think of tasty ice cream, which I think is the biggest challenge for a product that also wants to somehow communicate to the consumer it is made differently from traditional ice cream. With Modern Kitchen, I have to wonder if Perfect Day went purposefully conservative, choosing a brand this time around that doesn’t create extra work for itself.

Perfect Day also announced their third line of business (the other two being ingredient innovation and consumer products) in enterprise biology scale-up services. This move is a formalization of its enterprise biology efforts that started with the company’s 2020 acquisition of bioprocess scale-up facility SBF. With its new business line, Perfect Day hopes to help other food companies with technology transfer and scale-up consulting services.

“We first got into the ingredient business because food companies, big and small, were eager to work with the ingredients we had successfully scaled,” said Perumal Gandhi, Perfect Day co-founder, in the news release. “Today, something analogous is happening on the technology side. There are innovators all over the world with ideas and ambitions similar to our animal-free milk protein, but need help getting there. We’re standing up business models to be able to share our demonstrated capabilities in a way that maximizes upsides for all, yet ensures that Perfect Day remains at the forefront of our new industry.”

What struck me about the series of announcements is they illustrate how Perfect Day has matured in both its business and how it talks about itself. The addition of business services not only adds a new revenue line to the company, but it is a strategically savvy move that will set Perfect Day up with a pipeline of long-term IP licensing and ingredient supplier opportunities.

On the company messaging front, it wasn’t all that long ago that Perfect Day struggled to describe its technology and the animal-free dairy products that resulted from it. That’s changed, however, as this announcement brims with confidence. The company has clearly figured out how to communicate the benefits of its product while also giving just the right touch of details around the technology behind it all.

And now, the rest of this week’s funding news:

Cultured Meat

New Age Meats – $25 Million: California-based New Age Meats has raised a $25 million series A to help fund product development and ramp up production of its pork sausage products. Founded in 2018, the company hopes to bring its products to market next year as it uses the funds to double its workforce and build a first pilot production plant.

Ghost Kitchens/Virtual Restaurants

All Day Kitchens – $65 Million: Ghost kitchen startup All Day Kitchens announced this last week they’ve raised a $65 million series D to expand its distributed network of satellite kitchens. The company, which launched in 2018, focuses on helping small independent restaurants expand their reach via a unique model; Unlike traditional ghost kitchens with often treat restaurants like a landlord, All Day Kitchens helps to launch its new restaurant partners across its entire network of kitchens in a given metro area.

Plant-Based

Ripple – $60 Million: Pea-protein alt-dairy specialist Ripple has raised a $60 million Series E. Ripple, which basically is to pea milk what Oatly is to oat dairy products, has continued to grow its products ever since its 2015 debut and plans to use the funding to expand into even more new products and markets. While not all pea-protein products from Ripple have succeeded – see our review of the pretty-bad and now discontinued Ripple yogurt here – I’m intrigued to see what new products they bring to market (well, of course, except maybe yogurt).

Food Delivery

Avo – $45 Million: Israel-based food delivery startup has raised a $45 million Series B. Avo, which offers white-label food and consumer products delivery to landlords and employers, says it plans to use the funding to expand into 10 new metro markets over the next year. From the release: Avo’s mission is to deliver everything from groceries and alcohol to electronics and personal care items to millions of people daily. The company’s customizable amenity platform enables residential and commercial customers to obtain everyday items, the same day, without any minimum order size or incurring any delivery fees of any kind. The platform also excludes a tipping fee, as Avo has a full-time salaried team. Stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Avo is currently adding a new major market every month – a dramatic increase in growth that has helped drive revenue 1000% over the past two years.

HUNGRY – $21 Million: Chef-powered catering delivery company HUNGRY has raised a $21 million Series C from a mix of athletes, reality TV talent show singers, and the usual mix of corporate venture capital funds. The company, which lets companies cater food from chefs, works with a variety of high-profile chefs such as Tom Colicchi and has claimed it allows chefs to earn up to half a million per year on the HUNGRY platform.

Swiggy – Half a $Bil?: Indian food delivery startup Swiggy is reportedly in talks to raise a $500-$600 million funding round that would value the company at one Oatly ($10 billion). Invesco will likely lead, while others like Softbank will also throw in capital.

10 Minutes Grocery Delivery

Gorillas – $950 Million: Gorillas, the fast-growing, fast-grocery delivery business has raised an eye-popping $950 billion in funding. The news comes even as the company has reportedly decided to stop monkeying around with a US expansion, at least for the time being. According to Business Insider Germany, Gorillas has decided to scale back its US expansion plans outside of New York City and is laying off employees beyond the Big Apple. This funding comes in large part from Delivery Hero as Gorillas continues expansion in as Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France.

Plant-Based Fish

Hooked – €3.8 Million: Sweden’s Hooked has raised €3.8 Million for its plant-based fish products. Like many new alt-protein funding rounds nowadays, Hooked’s with news of a celebrity backer, Swedish music star Danny Saucedo. The company launched its plant-based tuna brand Toonish into retail last month in the Swedish market.

Food Robots

Piestro – $4.7 Million: Piestro, a maker of robotic pizza-making kiosks, has raised just under $4.7 million via equity crowdfunding. The campaign, which the Wavemaker Labs portfolio company ran using StartEngine, will be used to fund the second-generation Piestro, which will be the first pizza robot from the company to be deployed in consumer-facing locations and take payments. The company hopes to have its new prototype deployed by December of this year. Wavemaker Labs, which describes itself as a “robotics and automation corporate innovation studio”, has shown a preference for using platforms such as StartEngine and SeedInvest to raise funds with its portfolio companies like Piestro, Miso Robotics, Future Acres and Bobacino.

Spoon Newsletter: Food As The Messaging Medium

A couple of years ago on a plane ride to Las Vegas for CES, I struck up a conversation with a guy sitting next to me by the name of Nathan Shields. When I asked Nathan what he does for a living, he told me “I make pancake art.”

Like many dads who make flapjacks for the kids, I consider myself something of an amateur pancake artist, but as I soon found out, Nathan’s work goes way beyond the Death Star and Mickey Mouse cakes I’ve made for my kids on Saturday morning.

Of course, we know food as an artistic and messaging medium is nothing new. All one has to do is watch an episode of The Final Table to understand the potential of food as a form of artistic expression. But Nathan’s work got me thinking about food as a medium for communication.

My thinking that was further sparked when I went to the opening press event in Vegas and saw a gigantic ice sculpture with the CES logo. This ice sculpture is there every year at CES, and it’s always a pretty cool sight, in part because there’s something fascinating about using a temporary medium like ice as a branding vehicle.

I was reminded of the CES sculpture a week ago when I saw an Instagram post by Scott Heimendinger. Scott, who is the technical director for Modernist Cuisine, can usually be found doing something crazy with food, and so while I wasn’t all that surprised to see him laser etching ice cubes, it made me wonder anew about the possibility of food to communicate ideas.

Photo: @SeattleFoodGeek

While ice is perhaps the most temporal of “food” items in that it’s only going to last hours if not minutes, the idea itself of food as a way to communicate is one I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The early success of companies like Selffee or Ripples, both companies which print in real-time on food at events, are proof that food itself is a fairly underutilized medium for highly personalized marketing and personal messaging.

The CEO of Selffee, David Weiss, told me recently that they’ve worked at over 200 events this year, including at this year’s Super Bowl where they printed customized pictures on about 60 thousand marshmallows. Weiss also told me how they’d spent practically zero on marketing because the product – essentially a food-based selfie – markets itself (and the message printed on top) in an age of Instagram and social media.

Which is part of the reason I wanted him at our upcoming FoodTech Live event in Vegas (as well as the fact I just want my face printed on a cookie). And while David and his team likely won’t be printing on 60 thousand marshmallows, they will hopefully be printing hundreds of faces and other personalized requests on cookies on January 8th. We’ll also have Ripples printing on drinks as well.

If you’re headed to CES in Vegas in January, and you want to have your face or logo printed on food – not to mention the opportunity to check out over forty interesting foodtech companies – you’ll want to make sure to RSVP for our FoodTech Live event as well.

Of course, it’s not just food itself that is evolving as the messaging medium, but the packaging itself. This week Jenn Marston wrote about how prog rock band The Lights Out recently teamed up with craft brewer Aeronaut brewery to release their new album on the side of a beer can. The “album” came in the form of a Spotify digital album and was accessible to the purchaser of a can of Aeronaut IPA via a scannable QR code.

Packaged food brands have experimented with electronic messaging integrations for the last couple of years, but a digital album is a new wrinkle. While I don’t expect to see the next U2 album released via a package of Jimmy Dean sausage links, it might be interesting to see where the idea of digital distribution via food packaging goes in the future.

This week had lots of other interesting news, including a recent patent issued to Amazon for personalized restaurant recommendations. The patent, issued just yesterday, describes a system that utilizes contextual information such as a person’s past behavior, their location and information from their social graph to suggest restaurant recommendations and possible reservations. Combine this recent patent with the Amazon patent issued earlier in the year for predictive restaurant ordering, and you have to wonder if Amazon is cooking up a next-generation restaurant reservation and delivery marketplace to compete with the likes of OpenTable.

There was also some good news coming out of NYC this week in the form of a reopening of the Pilotworks Brooklyn facility under new management. The location was shuddered along with all of Pilotworks locations over a month ago when the shared kitchen startup abruptly shut down, instantly putting hundreds of indie food entrepreneurs without a kitchen home. The facility, reopened and managed by Nursery, has offered to welcome back all of the previous food business operators.

You won’t want to miss our latest episode of the Smart Kitchen Show, which features a conversation from the Smart Kitchen Summit between the Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman and Malachy Moynihan. Malachy was the head of product for both the first Amazon Echo and the Juicero, and he shares insights about product success and failure from these two vastly different products.

That’s it for now. Have a great week.

Mike

Updates from the Spoon

Video: Soggy Food Sucks Uses Thermodynamics to Keep your Fries Crisp During Delivery
Watch founder Bill Birgen’s winning pitch at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase. His company Soggy Food Sucks uses condensation wicking to keep food crisp and crunchy (and decidedly not soggy), even after delivery.

InnovoPro Raises $4.25M to Bulk Up its Chickpea Protein
You’re hard-pressed to find a space undergoing more innovation right now than protein. In addition to soy, whey, wheat, pea and even cricket-based protein varietals, chickpeas are also making waves — and the Israel-based InnovoPro announced yesterday that it has raised $4.25 to bulk up its garbanzo protein.

Good Dot Paves Way for Plant-Based Meats in India with Vegan “Mutton”
Plant-based meat companies are largely based in two continents: Europe and North America. One company working to change that is Good Dot, a startup making plant-based meats, as their website states, “in India, for India, by India.”

Beast Mode: Chirp’s Launches Kickstarter for Cricket Protein Powder
For openminded bodybuilders who want to get ripped, there’s a new type of protein powder out ready for you to chug it down on the way to your morning CrossFit shred sesh. Today Chirps, the San Francisco-based company which makes insect chips in flavors like Sriracha and BBQ, launched a Kickstarter for its newest product: cricket protein powder.

Amazon Patents Personalized Restaurant Suggestions. Could a Reservation Platform be Next?
Michael Wolf stumbled upon a patent by Amazon for a personalized restaurant suggestion system. The patent will suggest restaurants to individuals based on their behavior, family and friends network, and specfic time-based events (birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.)

Pilotworks’ NY Space Re-born as Nursery, Invites Former Tenants Back
The team at Chew announced today that it is opening a new food and beverage incubator called Nursery in the former Pilotworks Brooklyn location, and will invite back all former tenants to the space.

Kroger Expands Home Chef Meal Kit Sales in Walgreens Drug Stores
Kroger and Walgreens are building on a pilot program launched in October that has Kroger selling both grocery items and its Home Chef meal kits in Walgreens drug stores. Walgreens will carve out a “Kroger Express” area in some of its stores, and Kroger will also try selling Home Chef meal kits in select Walgreens locations.

Eat My Face! How One Entrepreneur Found Meaning By Printing Faces On Cookies
Entrepreneur David Weiss pivoted from being a wholesale sweater salesman to co-founding a company that prints photos (specifically selfies) on cookies and drinks. The best part: they basically market themselves.

A Prog-Rock Band Is Releasing an Album On a Spotify-Coded Beer Can
With the help of Aeronaut brewery, Boston-based band The Lights Out will soon release an album on a beer can. Again. The prog-rock outfit worked with the Somerville, Mass. brewery in 2017 on a similar concept, releasing their album T.R.I.P. via a 16-ounce can of beer.

Chewse Raises $19M for Family Style Corporate Catering
Chewse has raised $19 million to expand its corporate catering services, bringing the total amount raised by the startup to more than $30 million. There is no shortage of corporate catering services, especially in Chewse’s home base in the Bay Area, but Chewse hopes to differentiate itself with its “family-style” meals.

Ripple Yogurt Review: High Expectations Crushed By (Very) Bad Taste

Nobody wanted to like Ripple yogurt more than me. As a recently diagnosed lactose intolerant person who loves ice cream, cheese, and yogurt more than most things, I’ve been having a hard time cutting down on dairy. So this week I decided to give Ripple, a brand about which I’d heard some great things, a go.

I bought their single-serve Greek Yogurt Alternative in strawberry flavor, which packs a whopping 12g of protein in its 150g serving size — roughly the same protein as dairy yogurt. Ripple is made of pea protein, meaning it’s soy and nut-free and safe for those with allergies. It also has added active cultures, meaning it’s gut-friendly like dairy yogurt.

I was optimistic when I dug in. Sadly, that optimism disappeared almost immediately.

The texture of the yogurt was actually pretty good: it was creamy and thick, not exactly Greek yogurt-level thick but still impressive. But the taste, sadly, was straight-up bad. The strawberry flavor came through lightly — there are pieces of strawberry throughout the yogurt — but it had an overwhelmingly artificial flavor, which led to a bitter, unpleasant aftertaste. The yogurt somehow dried out my mouth and tasted gritty, though its texture was smooth. Someone sitting across from me at my office noticed my disgusted face and asked me if I was okay. I threw it away after a few bites.

A harsh review, I know. I wish it wasn’t. I’m one of the growing number of people purchasing dairy alternatives for health or ethical reasons. I’m all for non-dairy products that don’t use almonds, which are very water-intensive and are pretty protein-poor. Ripple could have fulfilled my dairy-free needs while assuaging my environmental guilt — and pea protein has served us so well with Beyond burgers!

Ripple, which launched in 2016, also makes pea milk in original, vanilla, and chocolate flavors, a product called “half-and-half,” and recently debuted nutrition powders and shakes. I haven’t tried any of their other products, but after my experience with their yogurt, I’m not really rushing to the store.

According to Crunchbase, so far Ripple has raised $108.6 million in funding. That’s some serious dairy-free dough. But while their product seems like it would hit the sweet spot, it left me with a (literal) bitter taste in my mouth. If they can’t get me — a millennial consumer who avoids dairy, is open to plant-based alternatives and enjoys trying new products — to buy their yogurt, who will?

Perhaps I’ll have better luck with coconut yogurt, which my colleague Jenn Marston tried and liked — though I’ll have to find my protein somewhere else. And maybe when lab-made dairy products, like the ones that Perfect Day is developing the technology for, come to market, they’ll be able to eliminate that pesky lactose and still make tangy yogurt and gooey mozzarella and all the things I hold so dear. Until then, it looks like I’m having toast for breakfast.

Update: Ripple Foods’ PR team reached out to me with this to say:

We saw your recent review on The Spoon and wanted to apologize for your not so delicious experience as well as share that the brand is definitely listening and will be working to revamp the yogurt line over the next few months. They want to provide consumers with a quality product and feel the current one needs some tweaks.