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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Seattle

Smart Kitchen Summit Returns to Seattle in 2024

The Smart Kitchen Summit, the pioneering executive summit focused on the digital transformation of the consumer meal journey, is excited to announce its return in 2024. In 2024, SKS will return to its birthplace, Seattle, Washington, scheduled for June 4-5th.

“I’m thrilled that SKS is making its return to Seattle next year, where our journey began,” said Michael Wolf, SKS founder and Spoon publisher. “While we had over ten thousand of the SKS community join us for virtual events during the pandemic, there’s nothing like seeing, touching, and tasting innovation. I look forward to connecting with those helping rethink how we do things in the world of food and cooking in person.”

Themes For 2024

SKS 2024 will focus on some of the most important themes around the innovation-driven transformation of how we shop, cook, consume, and convene around food. Some of the key themes and questions that will be explored during the two full days at SKS include:

AI’s Impact on Food: Exploring how AI is transforming every part of the food value chain, including how consumers find, purchase, and prepare food. How can food companies, appliance brands, retailers, and more harness the power of this incredible technology?

Food Waste and Sustainability: How can innovation-powered changes can we make to reduce food waste along the consumer meal journey?

Food and Nutrition Personalization: The technology and tools exist to create personalized food and nutrition plans that lead to better health outcomes. How can the food industry adapt in a world in which GLP-1-based drugs are creating a murky outlook for traditional food brands?

Automation & Cooking: Automation is becoming critical in the commercial kitchen. How will it fit in the consumer kitchen and our food lives?

On-Demand, Decentralized Food Manufacturing: The packaged-goods food ecosystem is wasteful. Can new forms of on-demand, decentralized food production technologies like 3D printing reduce the packaging and waste of traditional CPG models, and how will these systems scale in commercial and consumer settings?

Food Discovery & Meal Planning: We’re more likely nowadays to find a new recipe on TikTok than in a cookbook. As food retailers & CPGs lock into these new discovery channels to enable purchase journeys, will the consumer of the future join them?

Kitchen Electrification: Induction cooking systems are both more efficient and better for the environment, but consumers are hesitant to adopt them. When will the electrification of the consumer kitchen happen, if ever?

Startup Showcase

In addition to two full days of TED-style presentations, panels, workshops, and networking, SKS is bringing back our pioneering Startup Showcase. Launched in 2015, the SKS Startup Showcase has been instrumental in connecting startups with investors, corporate partners, and even opportunities like appearing on Shark Tank. Startups who are building the next great technology that they believe will change how we shop, cook, store, or consume food in the home are encouraged to apply today.

Location Details

SKS 2024 will be held at the beautiful Block41 event center in the heart of Seattle. Block41 has two full floors of event and exhibition space, two full kitchens, and an outdoor space for our celebration and happy hour on June 4th.

Join Us

Mark your calendars and save the date for June 4-5th in Seattle. If you are interested in speaking at SKS, submit a speaker application today. If you’d like to bring your company’s product to Seattle and share it with the SKS and Spoon community, please fill out our sponsor form. And if you’d like to purchase a ticket, you can get our Super Early Bird pricing between now and February 29th, 2024.

We look forward to welcoming you in 2024!

Picnic Partners With Modular Kitchen Manufacturer To Deliver Pizza Kitchen in a Box

Picnic Works, a Seattle-based maker of food-making robots, today announced a new partnership with ContekPro, a manufacturer of modular kitchens. Under the newly announced partnership, the two companies will deliver custom-built, pre-fabricated kitchens to quick service operators, hotel chains, or anyone else who wants a pizza robot restaurant in a box.

For those unfamiliar with Picnic’s newest partner, ContekPro builds modular kitchens for food service companies, including quick-serve restaurants, ghost kitchens, and resorts. The Portland-based company was founded in 2017 as a modular construction company and pivoted in 2019 to focus exclusively on modular kitchens after it found over half of its orders were for modular kitchens.

The deal marks the second partnership for Picnic over the last few months with a fellow Northwest startup. In August, the company announced an agreement with Minnow to offer its Pizza Station with the fellow Northwest startup’s pickup pods. The company has also been announcing a string of new trials with operators big and small for its pizza robot this year.

The combined solution from Picnic and ContekPro offers something of an answer to one of Picnic’s competitors, Hyper-Robotics, an Israel-based startup that builds shipping container food robots. Last year Hyper announced it had made a shipping container-based robot restaurant for Pizza Hut Israel (Hyper’s founder happens to be the master franchise owner for all of Pizza Hut Israel).

Whether it’s for a QSR building a small footprint drive-thru or a ghost kitchen operator expanding into new markets, modular kitchens make a lot of sense in many scenarios. For example, instead of finding land, breaking ground, and going through the often arduous process of zoning a new building, dropping a shipping container kitchen into a parking lot or some other easily accessible location can provide a much easier way to expand.

Typical ContekPro containers range anywhere from 320 square feet up to 960 square feet in size (according to ContekPro, the rendering in the announcement is 320 square feet). And while the announcement doesn’t describe the economics of a pizza-robot-in-a-box, ContekPro told The Spoon that operators can probably expect to pay from $240 thousand up to $400-$500 thousand or so for a restaurant container. As far as the cost of a Picnic, operators can expect to pay Picnic its typical robot-as-a-service monthly fees (which can range from $3,500 to $4,500 a month).

I Visited the Canlis Seattle Pop-Up and Honestly I Feel Conflicted

Even before Seattle, along with many other regions, announced the forced closure of restaurants and bars, one of the city’s most well-known establishments was already a few steps ahead.

Canlis, a James Beard Award-winning restaurant known for its high-end food and even higher-end prices, announced last week, before the mandated restaurant closures, that it would be shuttering its dining room and transitioning to a to-go-only menu. Beginning today Canlis is offering takeout-only breakfast via The Bagel Shed from 8am-11am; pickup lunch via Drive on Thru from 11am-6pm; and a “Family Meal” delivery on weekday evenings.

Since I live only a few miles from Canlis I decided to swing by this morning to see how the acclaimed restaurant is navigating this transition. My first inkling that I might have gotten more than I bargained for is when I arrived just after 8am to see the cars backed up for blocks, all idling as they waited for the doors to open. Thinking walk-up might be easier (and more environmentally friendly) I parked nearby and walked up to the restaurant, where I was greeted with a very long line of individuals, all drawn to Canlis to get their bagels and see what all the fuss is about.

The line waiting to get their bagels at Canlis’ Bagel Shop. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

In a time when we’re all supposed to be social distancing and keeping six feet apart, it was a little unnerving to see so many people out of the house and waiting so close together in a line (though, admittedly, I was one of them). At first people did keep a solid amount of space between each group, but as more folks arrived the line squished. However, we were outside, so maybe people were more willing to take a risk in the fresh air.

I got in line around 8:30am and reached the front to place my order in 45 minutes. That’s a lot of time to take off of work just to grab a bagel sandwich. From the people I spoke with, everyone who was waiting for breakfast was working from home and looking for a) an excuse to get out of the house, and b) an opportunity to try food from Canlis, a dining experience that’s typically beyond their budget.

That said, Canlis’ Bagel Shop is not cheap. The menu is also pretty limited. You have the option of buying half a dozen bagels and one of three schmears, or getting a breakfast sandwich. You can’t get an individual bagel with schmear, butter, etc. Since there’s only one of me I opted for the breakfast sandwich (no sausage). That came out to just under $9, which has an automatic tip built in.

When I was in line I chatted with a Canlis staff member who told me that the day before, when they launched the Drive-Thru Only lunch option, they’d sold 1,000 burgers. He expected they would sell just as many for the rest of the pop-up.

The bagel sandwich from Canlis’ pop-up [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

So how was the bagel? Honestly… just fine. As someone who lived in New York I’ll admit I’m a bit of a bagel snob, but if I’m shelling out almost $9 for a breakfast sandwich I had to wait 45 minutes in the cold for from a world-renowned restaurant I’m expecting my mind to be blown. The egg was perfectly cooked (look at that yolk ooze) and the American-style cheese melted perfectly. The bagel itself had a pleasant chew but was very pale on the outside — it lacked that mahogany, crackly exterior of a well-cooked bagel. The everything topping was also quite sparse.

I left Canlis at 9:15am, bagel in hand, just as the staff had just announced that the Bagel Shop had sold out. It was meant to last until 11am. Canlis may be a well-oiled machine when it comes to innovative dining or excellent service, but it seems like even they are not immune to the difficulties of pivoting over to takeout- and delivery-only. And if that’s true, how are restaurants with fewer resources supposed to navigate this tough time?

Cars lined up to pick up their to-go bagels. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Overall, my visit to the Canlis Bagel Shop pop-up was a pleasant excuse to leave my house and support a local restaurant. But I don’t think that Canlis is the restaurant I should be choosing to support. All restaurants, bars, and cafés are struggling as coronavirus restrictions force them to pivot to takeout or delivery-only. Smaller establishments might not have the capacity to make that shift and be forced to shut down altogether. Those are the places that need my dollars. Not Canlis.

It’s hard to fault Canlis. Like anywhere else, the restaurant is just trying to figure out creative ways to stay alive and keep its staff employed. But with such a strong reputation and storied legacy, Canlis is at far less risk of going under than, say, my neighborhood coffee shop. It’s frustrating to see so many folks flocking to buy overpriced takeaway meals (and wait for them) when some of my favorite local spots might not be able to weather the storm.

Next time, I’ll choose to support a restaurant that needs my patronage a little bit more. And doesn’t require me to stand outside for 45 minutes in the cold, and potentially risk contaminating or catching something from someone standing nearby.

If you’re looking to do the same, consider checking which of your favorite restaurants are offering takeout, or even try to buy a gift card to keep them afloat through this tough time. We’ve got this.

Seattle Food Tech Launches Plant-Based Nuggets at Hospital Cafeteria

The food at hospital cafeterias (and cafeterias in general) can get a bad rap. But today in Seattle, limp salads and neon jello were replaced by crispy chicken nuggets that just happened to be made out of plants.

The Swedish Medical Center in Seattle’s Capitol Hill became the first hospital to serve Seattle Food Tech‘s (SFT) signature plant-based nuggets during a one-day pop-up event. The nuggets are made of wheat protein, soy, oil, and (vegan) chicken flavoring, and covered in a crispy breading. Each five-nugget serving contains 19 grams of protein, which is about 50 percent more than a regular chicken nugget. The hospital served a special of eight nuggets plus fries for $4.95; a comparable-sized serving of traditional chicken strips with fries is $7.50.

We got to taste SFT’s nuggets at the Smart Kitchen Summit last October, and they were pretty good. The company has since tweaked the recipe, and the newest version is crispier on the outside and juicier on the inside. There’s a tiny bit of a soy aftertaste, but a swipe of barbecue sauce or ketchup easily masks that. Passers-by at the hospital who stopped for a sample seemed to be fans of the plant-based nuggets, with a few even saying that they wouldn’t have known that they weren’t eating chicken.

Photo: Catherine Lamb

While SFT’s pop-up at the hospital is just a one-day experiment, it’s been the company’s plan all along to sell their nuggets wholesale to large institutional dining establishments like corporate and hospital cafeterias and school lunchrooms. Led by CEO Christie Lagally, who cut her teeth at Boeing and the Good Food Institute, SFT doesn’t want to just make really good-tasting vegan nuggets; they want to revolutionize the plant-based manufacturing process so they can make good-tasting nuggets accessible to big groups of people at low price points.

SFT has raised $2 million in VC funding and last year completed a stint at the prestigious Y Combinator. Lagally told me the company has four institutional customers in place, though she wouldn’t disclose which ones. It also recently doubled its staff and commissary kitchen space to ramp up production to supply the new partners. Next up, Lagally and her team are developing “chicken” patties, “chicken” strips and “fish” sticks.

Judging from the reaction at the Swedish Medical Center, SFT won’t have a problem tempting customers to try its nuggets, or getting instiutional partners to serve them. Now it just remains to be seen if the startup can scale sustainably and keep costs down. A tall order to be sure, but with SFT’s team (specifically Lagally’s engineering background) and its smart go-to-market strategy, I’m betting we’ll soon see a lot more of their plant-based nuggets popping up in cafeterias.

Amazon Opens Second Go Store Amid Rising Cashierless Competition

Amazon is opening is second Go store in downtown Seattle this morning. The new Go will be slightly bigger smaller (UPDATE: initial reporting on the second location was incorrect. Turns out the store is smaller.)than the first location, and will feature the same cashierless. technology that allows customers with the Amazon Go mobile app to walk into the store, grab what they want and leave without having to wait in line or stop to pay.

We loved shopping at Amazon Go and even named the store as one of our FoodTech 25 companies that are changing the way we eat. The seamless experience points to an inevitable future where high-tech cameras, sensors and computer vision all work together to make every grocery trip faster and checkout line free.

While Amazon would still be considered the leader in cashierless shopping, the landscape for the technology is more crowded since the first Go store launched in January. Cross-town rival Microsoft is reportedly working on such technology and chatting with Walmart about putting it to use in the retail giant’s stores.

Then there are smaller startups coming to market hoping to disrupt Amazon’s disruption. Zippin just unveiled its cashierless software platform and is set to open up in San Francisco next month. Israel-based Trigo Vision is piloting its software, which the company said can already scale to a full-size grocery store. Others such as Caper and AI Poly are also launching their own solutions.

Cashierless checkout certainly isn’t a zero sum game. There are plenty of retailers in the world looking to create a more efficient (and profitable) buying experience for customers. But for the time being, Amazon is definitely the pioneer. Its first-mover status gives it plenty of data and real-world experience to iterate faster than its competition.

In addition to the two Seattle locations open now, Amazon is opening up new Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago. And, lest we forget, Amazon owns Whole Foods, giving the company access to a network of full-sized retail locations in which to experiment and scale.

For those in Seattle who want to shop at the new Go store, you can find new the Seattle Central Library at 920 Fifth Ave.

How Will AR and VR Change the Way We Eat? Jenny Dorsey Has Some Thoughts

Part chef, part entrepreneur, all innovator, Jenny Dorsey has become to go-to expert in the intersection of augmented and virtual reality. When Smart Kitchen Summit founder Michael Wolf spoke with her on our podcast last year, he called her “foremost authority on the nexus point between AR/VR and food.”

So of course we invited Dorsey to speak about it on stage at SKS. To whet your palate, we asked her a few questions to discover more about what exactly we have to look forward to in culinary future — virtual and otherwise.

Want to learn more? Make sure to get your tickets to SKS on October 8-9th to see Jenny Dorsey talk about how augmented and virtual reality will change the way we eat.

This interview has been edited for clarity and content.

Q: What drew you to explore AR and VR through food, something seemingly very separate and disconnected?
A: It is the strangest story. I went to acupuncture in the spring of 2017 totally confused about what I wanted to do with my life and art. I had this random idea pop into my head at acupuncture that I should focus on AR and VR…which I literally knew nothing about. I went home to my husband and he just said, “Okay, I support you…but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Fast forward a year, and I’ve been experimenting with different ways to merge these various things together. I’ve learned a lot about what doesn’t work (eating with headsets on) and what makes people prone to distraction (AR apps), but I also found some pretty awesome ways to communicate and strengthen my food through AR/VR. For instance, I hosted a tasting event in Nicaragua where we profiled three different types of Nicaraguan agricultural staples using 360° video, then served guests both headsets and the final tasting menu after they watched — and learned — the seed-to-harvest process of these ingredients. It was really educational, fun (for many, it was their first time in VR!) and the process added some extra meaning to the food and drink we prepared.

Our next big thing is a series called “Asian in America”, which explores the Asian American identity through a symbolic meal, paired with a stroke-by-stroke Tilt Brush recreation of each dish for viewers to watch, while listening to the symbolic explanations, before eating. (You can see more about both of those events over at Studio ATAO.)

Q: Tell us about your experimental pop-up series, Wednesdays.
A: Wednesdays started in January 2014 as a personal creative outlet while I was working in a restaurant and feeling pretty burned out. At the time, my then-boyfriend, now-husband was still in business school (where we met) and I remember us commiserating on how hard it was to get to really know people around us. He was interested in making cocktails, and we thought: why don’t we host a dinner party? We wanted to create an environment where people would be comfortable enough to be themselves and be vulnerable around others.

We hosted a beta-series of dinners with friends for the first month, then we started getting strangers coming to the table to eat, which prompted us to say “Hey, maybe we are onto something”. Fast forward 4 ½ years and we’ve hosted hundreds of dinners for thousands of guests across New York City and San Francisco, been written up in many major food media outlets, and usually sell out in 30 minutes or less!

We aren’t your average dinner party — we do ask a lot from our guests. There’s mandatory questions to answer before you even purchase your ticket (everything from “What’s your biggest failure and how has it motivated you?” to “Are you in the job you want? If not, how are you getting there?”), lots of bizarre things to eat and drink when you arrive (like bugs!) and direct, in-your-face realness from me, my husband and our team. There’s no small talk. It’s not for everyone, but for the people who follow us I think it’s really what they are looking for.

Q: What’s the coolest/craziest way you’ve seen technology changing the food system? Blow our mind!
A: I’m currently very interested in how blockchain could help the food system. Seeds & Chips just put out a call for blockchain influencing the egg supply chain, so I’m really excited to see what different companies come up with. I also spent some time at a winery last year and was amazed to see they have drones which tell them literally when and which plot of vineyards to pick for a certain Brix (sugar) count in that specific grape. That sort of detailed information would’ve taken constant field-walks to ascertain years ago.

There’s also technology that will calculate exactly how much food waste your restaurant generates in a week/month/year, AND a system that will turn that waste into compost. While technology has done a lot in terms of streamlining of our food system, I’m still waiting for it to solve some of the biggest issues we face today: a living wage, worker rights, consistency and training, preventing food waste, educating consumers, etc. — pieces that require more politics and facetime. Overall, we still have lots of work to do!

Q: How do you see AR/VR — and technology in general — shaping the future of food?
A: I still stand by the major points in my TechCrunch article from late last year. I think the biggest areas of impact will be food products (CPG) and how they are marketed — both experientially (through VR), but also packaging (through AR).

In terms of restaurants, I just wrote a piece about VR training, which I do think will be a fantastic and hugely influential piece of the technology — but it really needs to come down in price point first.

Overall, I think artists and creators are still getting acclimated to how this technology works and what they can do it with. I hope to see AR/VR become almost an expected point of interaction or engagement between food business (product, service or restaurant) and the customer as we continue finding artistry in it.

Q: What’s your desert island food or dish?
A: I feel I should say something cold, because I would be hot, but most likely I would be craving pho. LOL!

Food Tech News Roundup: Goodbye Seattle Straws, Corporate Catering Raises, Deliveroo Expands Editions to France

What a strange/wonderful/fireworks-filled week. With a holiday smack-dab in the middle of the Monday through Friday grind (did you read our piece on how to have a Food Tech Fourth?), we’ve been feeling the summertime hazies a little stronger than usual. How about you?

But food tech news stops for no holiday! So we’ve rounded up a few of the buzziest stories that caught our eye around the web this week. Best read while eating a popsicle.

Bye, plastic straws!

In Seattle, no more plastic straws or utensils
On July 1st Seattle’s ban on plastic straws and utensils went into effect, making it the first major U.S. city to ban the single-use plastics in foodservice in an effort to reduce their negative environmental impact. Any restaurant or coffee shop still serving up plastic utensils will be subject to a fine of up to $250. Around the world, cities and countries are working to ban plastic straws, bags, and utensils. Seattle will be our first major test case to see if these types of restrictions can hold water in the U.S.

 

Corporate catering startup HungerBox nets $4.5 million
This week Bangalore-based startup HungerBox raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by NeoPlux and Sabre Partners. Founded in 2016, the B2B company coordinates food catering for large corporations. They plan to use their new capital to expand throughout India and further into the Southeast Asian market. Just last week two U.S. startups focused on corporate catering also raised some capital, with ezCater snagging $100 million and Hungry raising $1.5 million.

 

An Editions site in London.

Deliveroo launches Edition kitchen in Paris
On Tuesday food delivery company Deliveroo opened up their first Editions food hub in Saint-Ouen, just outside of Paris. If you didn’t know, Editions projects are essentially curated clusters of cloud (delivery only) kitchens. This is Deliveroo’s first Editions location in France and houses 12 restaurants. The Editions model has proved successful in London, where Deliveroo is based, as well as its other locations in Singapore and Australia — and it shows no signs of slowing down. (If you missed my conversation with Deliveroo’s Dan Warne at SKS Europe, you can see it here).

 

Food robots are hot

Otto changes name to Vivid Robotics, picks up $4.9 million from Vulcan

It’s always easier to change your name when you do it before you come out of stealth, and that’s exactly what Otto Vivid Robotics just did. The Seattle based robotics startup is changing its name at the same time it picks up an additional $4.9 million in funding. The new round had a total of 19 investors, with Paul Allen’s investment arm, Vulcan, acting as lead. Vivid CEO Garett Ochs explained the name change to Geekwire, “We’re going to be creating products for food, and we’re also going to be creating other things. We wanted to do rebranding so we are set up for a more streamlined approach to a divergent future.”

Just a reminder: we’ll be in Providence, Rhode Island on July 17th talking about the future of seafood at Providence Pilotworks. Join us if you are looking to get your foodtech fill and have a conversation about the future of seafood.  

Highlights from Our Food Waste Solutions Meetup

We hosted our third food tech meetup this past week, focused on food waste solutions. We were lucky enough to have it at Artefact, a beautiful design firm focused on sustainability and innovation. Attendees snacked on food from Evergreens Salads and Imperfect Produce before sitting down to a discussion with our panel. Here are a few points that stood out from our speakers:

-Mark Freeman, Senior Manager of Global Dining Services at Microsoft, talked about how he and his team are using data analytics to optimize food ordering for their cafeterias and catering. He also said that they’re in the early days of implementing blockchain to help source and trace food from the suppliers, since there’s a large demand for transparency from employees — especially millennials. Also: black fly larva. They feed them with food scraps and then repurpose the insects to sell to farmers for use as livestock or fish feed.

-Zachariah Fritsche, who works on food waste outreach for the Seattle Public Utilities, talked about the municipal perspective of food waste reduction. The majority of food is wasted in the home, and that’s where he and his team focus a lot of their work; specifically, through education. He mentioned services that teach people how to meal plan and optimize their grocery shopping to be more efficient, as well as classes that teach people how to make use of Kitchen scraps that would normally be thrown away, like carrot tops (make pesto!) or onion ends (vegetable broth).

-Tim Jenkins of Seattle Food Rescue (part of the Food Rescue Alliance) is tackling food waste hands-on — he and his team of volunteers pick up leftover food from small-to-medium size grocery stores and bicycle them to nearby food banks or shelters. It’s a big operational lift and requires a lot of coordination. Apps like Karma and GoMkt (among others) help retailers sell their surplus food at a discount to consumers, but those people still have to come and pick up their food. Copia helps connect large food producers with organizations that want their surplus food, and even provide drivers — but Seattle Food Rescue focuses on smaller grocery retailers that don’t produce enough waste, or don’t have the capital, to deliver their surplus food to second locations.

All of which goes to show that even with the benefits of technology (specifically with regards to analytics, discovery, and meal planning), when it comes to food waste, there’s still a lot of old-school logistic underpinnings that need sorting out. We need to readjust consumer behavior so that we don’t always expect a fully-stocked barrel of perfectly uniform apples at the grocery store, or an overflowering catering platter at an office meeting. We need to figure out new ways to transfer food from retailers and restaurants to people who need it. And we need to improve post-harvest food losses which, despite a recent boom in agtech investments, still have a long way to go.

Much as we would like it to be so, tech is no magic bullet for food waste. But there are a lot of opportunities for creative solutions. So if you have an idea for how to make blockchain work to reduce surplus food, or an app that will help repurpose leftovers from catering events, make it happen! We’ll be here to write about it.

As always, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps for making this possible. Next month, we’re taking our food tech meetups on the road — to Providence, RI! We’ll be hosting a meetup and town hall focused on sustainable seafood and BlueTech. If you’re in the area, register (for free!) here.

Come Talk Food Waste Solutions at Our Next Meetup!

It’s time for the next event in our monthly food tech meetup series! We’ll be exploring a subject that affects every one of us on a daily basis: food waste. Join us on Wednesday, June 27th at sustainable design firm Artefact for drinks, snacks, and some rousing discussion. (Bonus: it’s free to attend, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps!)

Food Waste Solutions

In the U.S. 40% of our food goes to waste, much of it produce — at the same time, roughly 6 million U.S. households are food-insecure. At this meetup we want to go beyond just discussing the worrisome statistics; we’ll talk with panelists who are helping design smart systems to mitigate food waste throughout the supply chain and explore how emerging tech can improve household, restaurant and workplace food efficiency. Finally, we’ll discuss actionable strategies that consumers (and industries) can implement to affect real change.

The panel will include:

Come ready to discuss creative ways to mitigate food waste with the Seattle food tech community — and bring a few business cards while you’re at it. Register here to reserve your spot!

Come Explore The Future of Meat at our May Food Tech Meetup

It’s time for the next event in our monthly food tech meetup series! We’ll be exploring a subject that’s been making a lot of headlines recently: the future of meat. Join us on Thursday, May 24th at Galvanize Seattle for drinks, snacks, and some rousing discussion. (Bonus: it’s free to attend, thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps!)

The Future of Meat

We’re at a crossroads: meat consumption is on the rise, but demand for meat alternatives has never been higher. And technology is changing the way we create, market, and eat animal products. From plant-based chicken nuggets to lab-grown burgers to transparent distribution channels for high-quality steak and pork, our panelists will discuss how technology is disrupting the meat industry — and what they think meat will look like in 5, 10, and 50 year’s time.

The panel will include:

–Christie Lagally, Seattle Food Tech

–Dr. Isaac Emery, the Good Food Institute

–Ethan Lowry, Crowd Cow

-Catherine Lamb, The Spoon

There will be drinks and snacks, so come hungry and ready to meet the Seattle food tech community — and bring a few business cards while you’re at it. Register here to reserve your spot!

Highlights From The Future of Recipes Food Tech Meetup

We had our first food tech meetup last night! And thanks to our sponsor ChefSteps, tech-brewed beer from PicoBrew, and our awesome venue Galvanize, it was a rollicking success. Plus we had a very cool panel: Alicia Cervini from Allrecipes, Cliff Sharples from Fexy Media, and Jess Voelker from Chefsteps had a great conversation with The Spoon’s Michael Wolf.

If you missed it, here are a few topics and points that really stood out to us. Prepare yourself: the future of recipes is very dynamic, very shoppable, and tastes good — every time.

P.S. Mark your calendars for our next meetup on the future of meat on May 24th! Register here to make sure you get a spot.

So what’s the future of recipes then?
All of our panelists agreed that in the future, recipes will be very responsive and dynamic:

Allrecipes’ Alicia Cervini said they are exploring completely customizable meal kits based on their recipes. They have a relationship with Chef’d to work on their vision of “making a dynamically generated meal kit on the fly,” pairing convenience with customization.

Fexy’s Cliff Sharples predicted that as people take a deeper interest in food (he said that 50% of millennials consider themselves “foodies”) recipe customization would become more and more popular. He also had an interesting app idea where users could plug in their dinner guests with all of their eating profiles and plan a menu.

ChefSteps’ Jess Voelker envisions a future where technology can help people become a better cook. She brought up the interesting concept of using AI to troubleshoot their recipes. So if your cake went flat or your food was too salty, ChefSteps could help you figure out where you went wrong. 

Voice interfaces alone are incomplete
All of our panelists agreed that, when it comes to cooking from a recipe, voice alone isn’t all that useful — cooking is just too visual. Sure, if the recipe instructions are short enough, you could cook an entire recipe just with a voice assistant. And, as Voelker pointed out, “it can solve some real problems just in time, like if you have chicken grease on your hand and need to know something.” But without a visual guide, like a connected screen, you often end up having to break down steps into even smaller steps, which takes more time than if you’d just read the recipe. 

So while voice assistants like Alexa may be a helpful tool if your hands are mucked up in the kitchen, as of now they’re most useful for playing news or podcasts while you cook. The panelists did, however, seem optimistic about the combination of video and voice. (Or maybe an all-in-one robot chef assistant?)

Are recipes just data?
During the meetup Sharples likened recipes to code, which is the driving force behind smart appliances, the shoppable recipe journey, and recipe search tools. If you’re a regular Spoon reader this might remind you of Jon Jenkin’s talk at last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, where he made the claim that we are all eating software. 

Mike Wolf made the point that with recipe integration and connected appliances like the Joule, you could essentially have a celebrity chef cook your meal for you in your own kitchen. Sort of.

For example: you could select a steak recipe from kitchen gadget-loving chef Kenji Alt-Lopez on your connected app and your device would precisely follow his cooking instructions, giving you a consistent, high-quality result. It’s almost like having Kenji himself sous vide a steak for you, every time. (Which, for many food nerds, is a dream come true.)

Recipes are becoming more important, in different ways
All of our panelists agreed that the recipe is not the least bit dead. In fact, they argued that the recipe is becoming more important; it’s the core atomic unit of the rapidly evolving meal journey.

The hardest part, which isn’t surprising, is making recipes that tick all the boxes for such a wide variety of needs. But with apps like PlantJammer and Ckbk, plus the convenience of services like 2-hour grocery delivery and meal kits, it doesn’t seem like the recipe is going anywhere anytime soon.

 

You’re Invited! The Spoon Launches Monthly Food Tech Meetups in Seattle

Big news — The Spoon is launching a monthly food tech meetup series in our home city, Seattle!

We hope these meetups will provide a space for people to learn about innovations in the future of cooking, agriculture, and the kitchen, and give our community an opportunity to connect around beer and snacks. The events will be free (thanks to our sponsor, ChefSteps!), and each one will focus on a different topic in the food tech sphere.

Our first meetup will be Wednesday, April 25th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Galvanize Seattle. We’ll be exploring a subject that’s quickly transforming the way we cook: The Future of Recipes. Our panel will include:

– Jessica Voelker, ChefSteps

– Corbin de Rubertis, Allrecipes/Meredith Corporation

– Michael Wolf, The Spoon

There will be beer and pizza, so come hungry. If you live in the Seattle area, or will be in the neighborhood at the end of April, be sure to join us. Register here to reserve your spot! If you’re not in the PNW, keep an eye out — we’re hoping to take these meetups on the road in a few months.