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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

roundup

Food Tech News: Vegan Powdered Eggs, More Vertically-Grown Lettuce & India’s Red Hot Cloud Kitchen Market

Happy weekend from sunny Victoria, Canada! I took the ferry from Seattle for a quick weekend of high tea, touring gardens and whatever else one does in the capital of British Columbia.

But first, this week’s food tech news. We’ve got stories about blockchain, vegan eggs, and vertical farming to get your Saturday started right. Enjoy!

Gotham Greens expands to Providence, RI
Indoor agriculture company Gotham Greens announced plans to expand into Rhode Island this week. The company currently operates four farms: three in the New York City area and one in Chicago. The new 110,000 square foot greenhouse farm in Providence will open in early fall of 2019 and will operate year-round, serving local residents and foodservice establishments. Gotham Greens estimates the new facility will produce around 10 million heads of lettuce and leafy greens annually.

 

South America’s biggest egg producer creates a vegan egg
This week Grup Mantiqueira, South America’s largest producer of eggs, announced it had developed a vegan egg product in collaboration with nonprofit the Good Food Institute (h/t Livekindly). Called N.Ovo, the plant-based product is made of pea starch and comes in powdered form packaged in a traditional egg carton. (Cute, but is it practical?) N.Ovo will debut March 31st at the Rio Super Expofood event.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Ripe.io teams up with FlavorWiki
Ripe.io, the company developing a blockchain for the food industry, has partnered with digital sensory platform FlavorWiki. Basically, ripe.io will be able to access FlavorWiki’s collection of data around consumer flavor, texture, and aroma preferences, and in turn Flavorwiki will store its database on ripe.io’s blockchain-based platform.

That’s a lot of jargon. Essentially, food producers and sellers will be able to use the data from FlavorWiki and ripe.io to better understand how things like seasons and soil conditions impact customers’ taste perceptions. In theory, this improved transparency will be able to help producers make better-tasting foods.

 

Box8 raises $15 million in India’s red hot cloud kitchen market

India’s Box8 is the latest startup to benefit from the rapid growth of a food delivery market that is fueling investment in cloud kitchens across every region of the globe. The Mumbai based startup, which has 110 kitchens across five cities, just raised $15 million for its series C. It’s the second big raise for an Indian cloud kitchen startup in just one month, with Pune-based Faasos raising nearly $16 million in a series D earlier this month.

Box8, which currently serves 1 million meals a month across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Gurgaon, plans to use the new funding to expand to open 100 more kitchens over the next 12 months and expand to five more cities.

Did we miss anything? Tweet it out to us @TheSpoonTech!

Food Tech News: GMO Salmon, Robots at the Olympics and the World’s Best Wine

I’m off to run my first ever half marathon this weekend in Portland, and looking forward to carbo-loading and that post-run endorphin rush. But before that, I’m excited to share this week’s roundup of food tech news with you. Here are some of the latest eye-catching stories from around the web, from GMO salmon to the best wine in the world:

Genetically engineered salmon to be grown in the U.S.
As of last Friday, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) lifted an import ban and will now allow genetically engineered salmon eggs to be raised in the U.S. The eggs are made by AquaBounty Technologies, a company which alters the DNA of salmon so they grow more quickly. The FDA approved these GM salmon (known as AquAdvantage salmon) back in 2015, but has been tied up in debates around labeling until last week. The salmon are already available in Canada and could be on store shelves in the U.S. as early as 2020.

Photo: Karma.

Food waste startup expands operations to Paris
This week Karma, a Swedish food waste-fighting startup, launched in Paris. Karma has a mobile app which helps retailers — from restaurants to grocery stores — sell excess food to consumers at reduced prices. This is the third market for the startup, which, in addition to its home country of Sweden, also operates in London. Maybe they’ll bring their waste-reducing smart fridge to Parisian supermarkets next?

Photo: Vivino.

Vivino announces “best wine in the world”
Well, we’ve finally settled it. According to a press release from Vivino, the Danish wine information app/marketplace, the company has selected this year’s best wine in the world: a 2015 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine was the winner of Vivino’s 2019 Wine Style Awards, which selects wines based off of Vivino user ratings and feedback. The Awards also charted up-and-coming trends in wine, from new styles of bubbly wine to “evolving identities of American Chardonnay.”

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash.

Robots will help bring food to 2020 Tokyo Olympics spectators
It seems that not all of the eye-catching action at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be in the field/track. According to an English version of Kyodo News, robots will be used at the Olympics and Paralympics to guide people to their seats, provide event information, and bring food and drinks to spectators after they place their orders on tablet computers. Developed by Toyota, the robots are around 1 meter tall (3.28 feet), have an articulating arm, and can move at 2.2 kilometers (1.36 miles) per hour.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us news updates @TheSpoonTech or send them to our tip line!