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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS Japan

This Japanese Snack Company is Selling Personalized Granola Based a Person’s Microbiome

Last month in Tokyo at the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, we learned about a new personalized cereal offering from Japanese snack and breakfast food company Calbee. Called Body Granola, the product provides a personalized mix of prebiotics and cereal tailored to a customer’s microbiome, as determined by an at-home test.

Here’s how it works: Once customers sign up, they receive an internal flora (microbiome) stool sample test kit. They take the test and send it to Calbee’s testing partner, Metagin, for analysis. About six weeks later, customers can access their results via the Body Granola website. From there, they can order their personalized granola by selecting prebiotic ingredients that best align with the primary bacteria in their microbiome.

As shown in the video interview, these prebiotics come in the form of letter- and color-coded toppings that are mixed with Calbee’s base granola. While the granola itself isn’t mixed specifically for each customer, customers are guided to a limited number of options tailored to support certain types of microbiome microflora. They then mix the prescribed final cereal at home.

Several startups in the U.S. have rolled out personalized nutrition offerings based on microbiome DNA testing, resulting in customized meal plans or supplement subscriptions. However, none of the major CPG brands have ventured into microbiome testing or other personalized testing—let alone offered a subscription service for customized consumables like this.

Currently, the product is only available in Japan, but the company says it plans to expand to the U.S. and other locations in the future.

Calbee Body Granola - Personalized Granola

A First Look at Roku Shoku, Sony’s Culinary Recording System to Capture and Replicate Chefs’ Recipes

This past week in Japan, Sony unveiled a project they’ve been developing in secret called Roku Shoku, a culinary recording system designed to capture exactly how a chef prepares a meal. The system also serves as a guidance tool, helping casual or inexperienced cooks create dishes with the precision of an expert with years of training.

Sony has been working on this project, which stands for “Record” (Roku) and “Cooking” (Shoku), for the past five years. Last week, the entertainment and consumer electronics giant held the first-ever press demonstration of the recording studio for The Spoon team.

“We have a recording studio here in Tokyo,” said Tomoko Nomoto, Project Leader for Roku Shoku. “We invite Michelin-starred chefs, or even grandmothers, to the studio and ask them to cook with our system. We then record their culinary data, including temperature, steam levels, and the entire cooking process.”

The project is led by a Sony R&D team out of Tokyo and is separate from research in the area of gastronomy that has taken place at Sony’s AI Research division Sony AI (the formal Gastronomy program announced in 2020 has been sunsetted, but Sony continues to work on gastronomy-related projects). Since launching the Tokyo recording studio in 2021, the team has captured thousands of recipes across a range of cuisines, including Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, and Thai.

The Roku Shoku system features induction cooktops with temperature sensors, scales to monitor and weigh ingredients, cameras to capture a chef’s movements, and an off-the-shelf game controller made by Steam to control the setup.

Nomoto shared that users can replicate meals precisely as chefs cook them, a claim I tested myself. You can watch me trying it in the video below.

First Ever Look at Sony's Roku Shoku Culinary Recording System

According to Nomoto, the goal is to use Roku Shoku both to document recipes for restaurants and food service locations and to preserve culinary creations for future use.

“The first step will be to work with restaurants that want to share a consistent experience worldwide or recreate dishes that are no longer available, like when a chef passes away or retires,” said Nomoto.

Spoon readers might recall Cloudchef, another system that records chef creations. Nomoto explained a key difference: Sony plans for Roku Shoku to enable only human chefs to recreate these meals, while Cloudchef eventually aims to use robots for meal replication. Currently, both systems are focused solely on human use (see Spoon’s Tiffany McClurg using the Cloudchef system here).

The company has launched a website where you can find out more and request a demo.

Three Days of Food Innovation & Discovery in Tokyo: Scenes From SKS Japan 2024

In January of 2017, little did I know that a chance meeting in the Venetian in Las Vegas would eventually lead to the creation of Japan’s most influential and well-attended food tech event.

We’d just come off our second North America Smart Kitchen Summit a couple of months prior, and two first-time attendees who had made the trip to Seattle, Hirotaka Tanaka and Akiko Okada, asked if we could meet during CES.

I said yes, and the rest is history. Half a year later, we got together in Tokyo for the first-ever SKS Japan, and I was wonderfully surprised at the excitement and innovation around the food system taking place in this beautiful country. And now, seven years later, we just had the seventh SKS Japan, and it’s incredible how this show has matured into one of the most important food tech events on the calendar.

This year’s event spanned three days and brought in over one hundred speakers from across the globe and the food system. Below are some snapshots from the show.

Above: Myself and Hiro Tanaka giving the opening keynote to kick of SKS Japan 2024 (and announce SKS 2025 dates).

Above: Robin Liss (Suvie), Kevin Yu (SideChef) and Assaf Pashut (Chefee) join me for a conversation about how the consumer kitchen has evolved over the past decade and where it will go over the next ten years.

Above: Jasmin Hume (Shiru) joins me on stage and Adam Yee (Sobo Foods) and Tarini Naravane (Grainge AI) dial in to talk about the impact of AI on developing new food inputs and products.

Above: Lee Kindell, the founder of MOTO Pizza, comes to Japan from Seattle to talk about his fast-growing restaurant and how he leverages technology such as robotics to help “scale craft”.

Above: Author and Wired’s kitchen tech reviewer Joe Ray sits for a fireside chat on his thoughts about food tech journalism and first impressions of Japan’s food and restaurant scene.

Above: A talk about new approaches using upcycling and food life extension technologies with Moody Soliman (Ryp Labs), Daichi Takada (AlgaleX Co.), and Lina Sakai (Fermenstation).

Above: Akiko Okada (UnlocX), Hirotaka Tanaka (UnlocX), Michiaki Matsushima (WIRED JAPAN), Hiroki Nakajima (University of Tokyo) during a session entitled Tokyo Regenerative Food Lab in Action

Above: The SKS Japan exhibition space. Bottom right is demo table for AlgaleX’s upcycled algae protein product line, Umamo.

Above: Exhibitors head out to the streets of Tokyo for a street fair on the final day of SKS Japan to share their innovations with a wider audience.

Why Big Idea Ventures’ Andrew Ive is Excited About the Japan Food Tech Ecosystem

Just over a week ago, we caught up with Big Idea Ventures’ managing partner Andrew Ive in Tokyo to talk food tech investing. Ive was in Japan for SKS Japan, The Spoon’s event that we started in 2017 in partnership with Sigmaxyz, which has grown to become Japan’s preeminent food tech summit.

While we were surprised to see Andrew in Japan, he told us it’s natural since his company has been focused on Asia since day one.

“Part of the reason why I’m in Tokyo is that we are a global firm,” Ive said. “We opened our Singapore office on the same day as our New York office because Asia was always going to be an incredibly important part of our business. And obviously, not just the business part, but the food communities.

Andrew told us he’s excited about Japan because he’s seen a real increase in activity over the past couple of years.

“I think the corporates here, they’re starting to think about how can they work with external partners, entrepreneurs, like SKS and so on, to sort of really increase the vibrancy of the Japanese food system.”

Ive also talked about Big Idea Ventures’ initiative to harness the intellectual property of universities in the US by launching companies. The fund, called Generation Food Rural Partners, announced last week that it had launched its first portfolio company, TerraSafe Materials, a material science company developing new products, coatings, and applications for sustainable packaging.

“These universities have got an enormous array of IP,” Ive said. “Traditionally, they only ever really commercialized about 1% of all of the work, which means there’s a huge treasure trove of solutions and things that can really fix a lot of the problems in the food sustainability space that they haven’t really figured out how to commercialize yet.”

You can listen to our full conversation below.

Andrew Ive of Big Idea Ventures Talks With The Spoon

Adam Yee Makes Us Dumplings and Talks About Building His Startup at SKS Japan

Ever since longtime food entrepreneur and podcaster Adam Yee announced his new better-for-you dumpling brand Sobo Foods, I’d been hoping to head to California to try the tasty-looking Asian comfort food.

But as it turns out, I won’t have to make that trip to the Bay area to sample his curry potato and the plant-based pork and chive dumplings since I had a chance to taste some cooked up by Yee himself in Tokyo. Yee was in town for SKS Japan, the global food tech summit hosted by The Spoon and SigmaXYZ, to speak on a session and hand out dumplings to curious event attendees.

Above: Yee at SKS Japan

It was Yee’s first time at the event after trying to get in last year and (as you’ll hear in the interview) getting COVID in Cambodia. I’m glad he made it because, well, dumplings, and also, he’s got some great insights into the broader food tech scene. We discuss why Yee and his cofounder started Sobo, the company’s go-to-market strategy, and more. Click play below to listen to Adam and my conversation and below and stay tuned for more interviews from SKS Japan this week and next.

A Conversation with Adam Yee about his new Sobo Foods, a better-for-you Asian comfort food brand.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in Japan Will Soon Use a Fry-Cooking Robot

TechMagic, a Tokyo-based restaurant robotics startup, has signed a development deal with Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan to build a robot to automate the entire process of cooking french fries.

According to company CEO Yuji Shiraki, preliminary testing of the TechMagic fry robots is complete and is the company is moving into the development phase, where they will focus on productization and in-store installation. The fry-bot will manage fry-feeding, frying, bagging, storing, and arranging the french fries. The company is also working to reduce the size of the frybot so as to enable deployment into space-contrained spaces of existing Kentucky Fried Chicken locations.

Shiraki says they are aiming to introduce the robot in some Japanese locations by this fall.

Spoon readers may recall that TechMagic has already been working with restaurant operators to deploy its back-of-house food robots in restaurants in Japan. I had a chance to visit one, the P-Robo, last September when I was in Tokyo for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. The robot is a multi-function robot that automates nearly the entire process of creating pasta. It preps the sauces and toppings, heats the noodles (which are pre-cooked and frozen, standard for noodle and pasta restaurants), combines it all in a spinner, and then delivers the meal down along a conveyor belt to the plating station. From there, the meal is plated and a human does the final prep for delivery to the customer. Afterward, the robot washes and cleansthe prep bowls. The entire process takes less than two minutes.

You can see the P-Robo in action below:

TechMagic Pasta Robot: Noodle cook, saucing, plating all in one minute.

The Tokyo restaurant where P-Robo slings pasta is owned by the Pronto Corporation, a subsidiary of Japan food and beverage conglomerate Suntory. When I interviewed Shiraki last summer, he indicated that they were also working with a large well-known Japanese food brand (presumably KFC Japan) and noodle giant Nissin.

For those wondering if this move means we’ll see KFC deploy robots stateside, I wouldn’t hold your breath, mainly because KFC Japan is operated by Mitsubishi, whereas the U.S. fried chicken chain is operated by the holding company Yum Brands.

A Robot-Powered Pasta Restaurant in Tokyo is Just the Beginning for Startup TechMagic

Back in 2017, I was in Tokyo for the first SKS Japan and thought I’d look around to see if I could find any robot-powered restaurants. I didn’t have much luck. In fact, about the only one that showed up during my search was a tourist attraction in Shinjuku, which wasn’t so much a robot restaurant as it was a dinner theater show that could only be described as Care Bears meets Mad Max Fury Road

Five years later, things have sure changed. Not only have automated mini-restaurants like Yo-Kai popped up around town, but there’s also a robot pasta restaurant slinging plates of noodles right across from Tokyo Station. That new restaurant, called E Vino Spaghetti, pumps out plates of pasta at a rate of over one per minute with its 3-axis robot.

Called P-Robo, the robot was designed by a Tokyo-based startup called TechMagic. The company spent three and a half years developing the robot, says company CEO and founder Yuji Shiraki.

TechMagic CEO Yuji Shiraki

The restaurant is owned by the Pronto Corporation, a subsidiary of Suntory. Pronto has over 300 restaurants around Japan, and TechMagic is working to deploy robots at 50 or so over the next three years. And that’s just one project; according to Shiraki, the company has deals to build robots for several large corporations, ranging from a large and well-known Korean company to Cup Noodle giant Nissin.

As for the P-Robo, I was impressed with how quickly it worked in a fairly small space. The robot preps the sauces and toppings, heats the noodles (which are pre-cooked and frozen, standard for noodle and pasta restaurants), combines it all in a spinner and then delivers the meal down along a conveyor belt to the plating station. From there, the meal is put on a plate, and a human worker does final prep for delivery to the customer. Afterward, the robot washes and cleans the prep bowls.

TechMagic Pasta Robot: Noodle cook, saucing, plating all in one minute.

The idea to build a food robot first came to Shiraki when he visited his grandmother. Over 90 years old, Shiraki saw she could not cook for herself and so started to think about how a home cooking robot might help her. However, he soon realized that Japanese kitchens were too small to build the type of robot he envisioned, and he started thinking about building robots for restaurants. It wasn’t long before he quit his job as a management consultant and founded TechMagic.

That was five years ago. Since then, the company has raised $23 million in funding (including a $15 million Series B last September), received a patent for its pasta-making robot, and plans to create its own chain of robot-powered franchise restaurants.

At the rate Shiraki and his team are going, Tokyo might just be filled with restaurant robots when I come back for SKS Japan 2023. And who knows, someday soon, I may even see a TechMagic robot closer to home.

Autonomous Restaurant Startup Yo-Kai Express Expands in Japan, Announces New Investors

This spring, Yo-Kai Express ramen vending machines showed up at Tokyo Station, Haneda Airport, and Shibaura Parking Area. During its Japanese debut, the company worked with Ippudo to sell bowls of the hugely popular ramen chain’s noodles through its automated mini-restaurants.

And sell noodles they did. According to Yo-Kai CEO Andy Lin, during the first week, the Tokyo station machine sold a hundred bowls of ramen per day. That strong demand apparently impressed Ippudo enough to not only greenlight more Yo-Kai machines distributing their ramen in the near future, but to also invest in the company.

The news of the expanded relationship was shared as part of a press conference and on-stage session at SKS Japan on Friday in Tokyo. In addition to the news of Ippudo’s investment (through its parent company Chikaranomoto Holdings), Yo-Kai also shared that Japan Tobacco (JT) would be participating in the funding round. JT has a significant processed food business, and Yo-Kai will begin selling the company’s TableMark udon noodles through its vending machines. The total capital invested by the two companies via the Series A round was not disclosed.

According to Yo-Kai CEO Andy Lin, both companies see Yo-Kai as a way to connect to new customers in places where they might not otherwise reach.

“We are their extension,” Lin said. “They don’t need to spend the capital. We are their micro-store.”

Yo-Kai’s Japan country manager Keiji Tsuchiya told me that CPG brands like the idea of using Yo-Kai to trial new food concepts. He said while established food companies with well-known brands might be slow to launch a new product through traditional channels, they can trial new products much more quickly and easily with Yo-Kai. Some, said Tsuchiya, even launch a “virtual” brand concept on Yo-Kai to see how consumers respond.

“For a Japanese food company, selling products with their own name brand is a long process,” Tsuchiya said. “They need to get board approval to start something. It takes one to two years. But with a virtual brand, it’s much easier.”

According to Lin, Yo-Kai plans to expand its Japan vending machine footprint from the current total of three to ten in the near future. They also plan to continue to expand in the US and are talking with other large brands in places such as Korea about entering their market.

The Spoon is Back in Tokyo for SKS Japan

The Spoon is back in Japan!

That’s right, we’re back in Tokyo this week for the sixth Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, the first time we’ve been back in person since 2019 (for obvious reasons). The event started in 2017 and has grown to become the country’s biggest conference focused on food and cooking innovation.

Over the next three days, we’ll hear from some of the country’s most innovative startups, researchers, scientists, and academics about how Japan’s food tech scene has evolved over the past few years. We’ll be talking alt protein, cellular agriculture, smart kitchen, restaurant tech, and more.

If you’d like to attend virtually, you can pick up your ticket here. We’ll also be bringing you some interviews on The Spoon, so keep an eye out for that.

Japan is one of the most innovative and exciting places in the world for culinary innovation, and we couldn’t be more excited to spend the next three days talking food tech in Tokyo. Join us!

Spoon Plus Deep Dive : A Conversation With Taichi Isaku on How Japan’s Food Industry is Dealing With COVID-19

This includes Japan. To learn more about what’s going on in that country, I caught up with Taichi Isaku, the CEO of CoCooking.

I’d met Isaku in 2018 when I was in Tokyo for the second Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. Speaking to me in flawless English, Isaku told me about CoCooking’s online marketplace called TABETE which sold excess restaurant food at a discount to customers in Tokyo and other big cities. You can read about the company here in a post I wrote about their seed funding.

During our chat, we talked about how restaurants are dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, including some of the new digital strategies many are employing. We also talked about how restaurants are navigating Japan’s unique legal system and how the government is dealing with the crisis. We also discussed the ways in which consumer behavior is changing in the midst of the pandemic.

This Spoon Plus Deep Dive conversation is available only to Spoon Plus subscribers. Purchase a Spoon Plus membership to get access to this exclusive content and much more.

The Food Tech Show: Big in Japan

Let’s talk about Japan!

We were in Tokyo this month for the third annual Smart Kitchen Summit Japan so, naturally, this podcast is all about the magical wonderland that is the Land of the Rising Sun.

Not only did the Spoon team spend two great days talking food tech with some of the coolest thinkers and entrepreneurs in Japan and broader Asia, we also ran around Tokyo checking out food robots, eating amazing food and delighting in the wonders of the Japanese version of 7-Eleven.

You can read some of the coverage of what we found in Japan here, and if you want to meet many of those who participated in SKS Japan, make sure to come to SKS North America (use discount code PODCAST for 25% off of tickets).

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download this episode directly to your phone or just click play below.

Audio Player

SKS Japan 2019: Moving Into a Food Tech Future

The Spoon team has been in Tokyo this past week for our third SKS Japan conference! This year the theme is Move — that is, how we can leverage technology to move towards a more sustainable, healthy, and collaborative food system, together.

We’ve seen some real growth in our Japan conference. This year there were almost 400 attendees, 180 participating companies, and 60 speakers, over double the numbers from the event’s first year in 2017. These metrics illustrate the exciting potential of the food tech ecosystem in the Japanese market — moving up, indeed.

Here are a few highlights from the conference, including (multiple) cooking robots, augmented dining tech, and lots and lots of delicious food.

The night before SKS Japan was the speaker dinner, where the Suvie kitchen robot made its public debut! Yes, it makes dessert, too.

SKS founder Michael Wolf kicked off the conference with some words on why Japan — and Asia in general — has such an important role to play in forging the future of cooking.

We told you — lots of robots. This year’s SKS Japan featured a (rainbow!) crepe-making robot, an onigiri (Japanese rice ball) robot, the Rotimatic, a roti-making kitchen robot, and more. These food-making ‘bots made for some very exciting breaks!

Other cool tech from the conference were Panasonic’s DishCanvas, a plate that can display moving images, Shojinmeat founder Yuki Hanyu’s VR rendering of a Martian lab-grown meat lab, and Cookpad’s unveiling of Oicy, its device that can dispense hard and soft water to suit specific recipes.

The conversations took a broader focus as well, tackling pressing issues like sustainability, national identity, and more. Here’s a photo from one of the forward-facing discussions from the day, in which Future Food Institute’s Sara Roversi spoke with Ferda Gelegen, the Deputy Head of UNIDO ITPO Japan about how to better grow and consume food in the face of climate change.

The gadgets are certainly cool and the food samples tasty, but the most inspiring part of SKS Japan comes not from the technologies, but the people. It may sound cheesy, but it’s true. We’re headed back to Seattle inspired by the passion, energy, and creativity we saw from the SKS Japan attendees and speakers.

来年まで!