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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS Japan

Newsletter: Back-to-School Delivery Apps and High-Tech Sushi Burritos

While my colleagues are across the Pacific this week at the SKS Japan show, I’ve been thinking about college. Specifically, how college and university campuses are a lucrative frontier for food delivery.

Unless you’re in an urban campus like NYU, where delivery, takeout, and street food options already abound, the average college campus has everything a food-delivery service could want in terms of customers: lots of bodies packed tightly together, pulling late hours in locations where food isn’t always a given (e.g., the library).

Third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub already provide a presence on campuses, along with a much-needed alternative to soggy spaghetti and stale Cheerios. But for bigger corporations who’ve long been a part of the university foodservice world, third-party delivery is a competitive threat to their very relevance on campus.

Not surprising, then, that some of these legacy foodservice companies are starting to respond with their own contributions to delivery. This week food services provider Aramark, who works with more than 400 universities in the U.S., announced it had acquired meal delivery company Good Uncle.

Via Good Uncle’s app, students can order chef-made meals and snacks that are typically cheaper than the average restaurant and don’t have delivery fees. While Good Uncle’s reach is relatively small right now, serving just eight campuses, its business model makes a lot of sense for an older company like Aramark trying to stay relevant to students in the food delivery era.

Exactly how Aramark will leverage this new acquisition remains to be seen, but it’s a smart move to get into the delivery space now. Grubhub has already been working its way onto campuses via its 2018 acquisition of Tapingo, and a growing number of delivery bots on campus brings both new ways to do food delivery for students and more competition for existing players. That includes Aramark rival Sodexo North America, who this year partnered with Starship Robotics to unleash fleets of wheeled bots onto college campuses.

An Eatsa-style Empire in Japan

But back to Japan.

My colleague Chris Albrecht got to experience not one but two awesome food-centric things this week: sushi burritos and high-tech restaurants.

Chris headed over to Beeat Sushi Burrito, a Tokyo restaurant that serves sushiritos and is powered by an end-to-end system that automates most of the order, pay, and pickup process for customers.

As Chris noted, though, UBO, the company behind the restaurant, is more focused on tech than food:

“Instead of selling sushiritos, UBO has developed the entire system from the software platform to the cameras installed in the cubbies that read the special QR codes that identify each order. UBO wants to license its tech stack to other restaurant chains, who can then integrate the automat style of eating into their own locations.”

It’s not unlike the Brighloom (nee Eatsa) system here in the U.S., which is an end-to-end restaurant tech stack that automates much of the customer’s restaurant experience and will do so even more now that it’s licensed some of Starbucks’ technology.

So while a sushirito empire isn’t the end goal for UBO, Beeat Sushi Burrito is another example of how the restaurant experience is getting automated and suggests we’ll see many more iterations of this in future, on either side of the Pacific. And, most likely, in colleges and universities, too.

Until next time,

Jenn

SKS 2018: A Growing Community Accomplishing Big Things

Every year after Smart Kitchen Summit, I do a couple things:

  1. Catch up on sleep.
  2. Process and distill all the insights, conversations and connections made during the past few days.

And this year, with over 600 attendees, 80 speakers and 30 sponsors at our flagship food tech event, there were a whole lot of interesting ideas to digest.

So now that I’ve caught up on sleep, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned during these action-packed two days.  While I will no doubt continue to connect the dots from the lessons learned last week — and gain additional insights as I watch the videos of the sessions I missed (stay tuned for those!) — here are some early observations about the trends on display at SKS 2018:

Products are shipping

Onlookers check out the second generation June oven

At the first SKS in 2015, many of the early conversations were about next-gen cooking devices that had yet to ship. Compare that to today where companies like June are on their second generation product, and big appliance brands have deep integrations with software platforms from the likes of Innit and SideChef, and we are seeing a market that is less about theory and more about what happens when you put these products in the hands of actual consumers.

Innovation across the food system is interconnected

While some conversations about the future of the kitchen may start with looking at connected appliances, SKS showed us the future of food and cooking spans new delivery formats, AI & robotics, food retail, home design and much more.

We heard from startups making AI platforms to create highly personalized new flavors for CPG companies. Executives from restaurants, big food, appliance, and software companies talked about how their companies are taking part in a rapidly changing meal journey. We heard from home designers working with technology providers to create new kitchens that incorporate intelligence within the fabric of the home.

The big takeaway here is that all of these stops along the journey to the plate are not isolated, but part of a bigger interdependent whole.

Business models are crystalizing

The Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Malachy Moynihan

One of the biggest challenges in new markets is figuring out how companies will make money. Because of this, at this year’s SKS we dug deep into how business models are changing with a bunch of amazing talks and conversations from those forging a new path. We heard from the President of BSH Appliances about transitioning one of the world’s largest appliance makers to a services-oriented company, from ChefSteps on the path to becoming a food delivery company, and about lessons learned by the former head of product behind both the original Amazon Echo and the Juicero.

After hearing from these leaders on stage and discussing their business models in the hallways and backstage, I’m am convinced those pioneering the future of food are figuring out new and unique approaches that are informed by the past — but break conventions when and where necessary.

Existing markets morph slowly (with occasional ‘big bang’ jolts of innovation)

One thing I try to keep in mind is markets don’t change overnight. Existing product categories  — whether they are packaged food, appliances, restaurants or retailers — evolve as new alchemies of technology, business model innovation, societal changes, and company cultures bring about long-term change to a given market.

Pablos Holman talks about the future of 3D printed food

Occasionally, however innovation evolution is catalyzed by those that help us see into the future, and this year at SKS we heard about a few of these big-bang jolts of innovation. Whether it starts with a maker who hacked together a home sous vide circulator in 2012, a serial inventor working in a well-funded research lab where he convinces Nathan Myhrvold of potential of our 3D printed food future or Amazon’s reimagining the future of the grocery store, we were shown the potential of accelerating innovation through singular visions.

Innovation is happening globally

Hirotaka Tanaka talks about Japan’s food tech market

We took our event international last year with Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, and this year we went fully global by taking the event to Europe. This global nature was on display in Seattle this week with startups from all over the globe showcasing their ideas and products, appliance and food goliaths sponsoring our event, and speakers from all over the world discussing their ideas on stage

We are exploring stories at SKS and The Spoon

One of the realizations I’ve had since starting the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015 is that our job is to help food innovators share their stories. We do that throughout the year by telling stories at The Spoon of creators doing exciting work. We also engage in conversations with them on our podcasts where we can learn more about their work.

We also like to have the stories we discover shared from the SKS stage. Stories resonate most when shared by the person who lived it, and it’s through thoughtful conversation, questions, and connections that new chapters are added.

Thanks to all those who made SKS 2018 possible and a special thanks for those who came to SKS and shared your story. For the rest of you, we can’t wait to hear your story, share it with our community, and maybe even have you on stage for SKS 2019!

Got a good food tech story to tell? Let us know.  And if you want to participate in our FoodTech Live at CES, drop us a line. 

Japan’s CoCooking Raises Seed Round To Help Restaurants Sell Excess Food

Startups aiming to reduce food waste are suddenly hot.

After a summer which saw startups in the US and Europe pull in funding for new takes on reducing food waste, it was Japan’s turn to get into the act. Tokyo startup CoCooking recently raised a seed round that it characterized as “several dozen million yen”.  According to the company’s website, the total capital invested in the startup is now roughly $380 thousand.

Investors participating in CoCooking’s seed round include Social Entrepreneur2 Investment Limited Partnership, ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation, General Foundation SFC Fund, NOW Inc., Optima Ventures and 222 Partnership.

The idea behind CoCooking’s food sharing service TABETE is a marketplace that lets restaurants and other food retail establishments sell excess food they would otherwise throw away. Customers pay for the reduced-price food through TABETE and show up at an agreed upon time to pick it up. The store gets 65% of the proceeds, CoCooking gets 30%, and the rest is donated to charities that support feeding in-need Japanese children.

The Tabete food sharing app concept

I had a chance to meet company cofounder Taichi Isaku last month in Japan while I was there for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, and Isaku told me that the reason he and his cofounder Kazuma Kawagoe started TABETE was that they saw food waste as an important issue that resonated with them as a result of experience.

“Food waste was always an important issue for us, ” said Isaku. “We’ve seen so much perfectly good food thrown into the trash can, especially for Kazuma who worked in the industrial kitchen for several years before starting the space.”

The space Isaku is referring to was the first project the two worked on together after college. The two had met in college while playing in a wind orchestra (“we were both trumpeters”), and after school, they spent lots of time making food together with their fellow musicians.  Because of this experience, they came up with the idea of starting a small restaurant at the base of Mt. Fuji in the small town of Fujiyosida.

“The place eventually became the center of the local community where various people, both from in and out of Fujiyoshida, met and enjoyed food together,” said Isaku.

Eventually, the two decided to move onto bigger ideas, and the idea of reducing food waste seemed a natural fit.

“We knew that diversity, creativity, communities were the three core values of our company that we weren’t going to change, and we found the issue of food waste to go surprisingly well with those themes.”

They settled on the idea of reducing restaurant, and retail food waste and TABETE was born.

One reason the company cofounders thought a food sharing service focused on reducing food waste made sense for Japan is the country sees roughly 6.2 million tons of edible food thrown out every year. While that isn’t nearly as wasteful as the US, it’s still a lot of food thrown out for a country with only a 40% calorie self-sufficiency rate (meaning the country produces only 40% of the calories it consumes).

For Isaku and his cofounder, the idea of importing food just to throw it out just didn’t make sense.

“We found out about food-sharing services that were on the rise in European countries, and decided to localize the business model for our country,” said Isaku. “From there grew our team with members who were all equally concerned with food waste to do business as a startup.

After launching in April of this year, today Tabete is available in about 200 food retail establishments in Tokyo, and the company plans to expand to other cities in Japan. CoCooking employs seven other employees in addition to the two company cofounders.

As for himself, Isaku still finds time to cook with friends despite living the busy life of a startup founder. In fact, he even found time to write a book about the topic published in May called Creative CoCooking Patterns: 40 Ideas to Make the Kitchen Into a Creative and Collaborative Workshop this year.

SKS Japan: Excitement, Growth & a Rapidly Maturing Food Tech Ecosystem

Last week I was in Tokyo for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan. It was the second edition of our Japanese event, and while it’s only been twelve short months since that first gathering, the amount of progress I witnessed in the Japan food tech scene over the course of the two days in Tokyo was amazing.

Here are some of the trends, products and innovators that stood out to me last week:

In Japan, Much of the Innovation Comes From Big Companies

For those familiar with Japan, you’ll know it’s not surprising that much of the innovation comes from within established companies. These “intreprenuers” often work in R&D or as part of new business units specifically to innovate new product concepts.

One of these innovation units is Panasonic’s GameChanger Catapult. We’ve written about Catapult as they’ve been showing off innovative product concepts like a food softener for the elderly or home fermentation system.  As it turns out, the innovation unit from Panasonic is still working on those ideas as well as a few new ones.

One of Catapult’s product concepts is Tottemeal, which first showed up at SXSW in Austin in March 2017 as a product concept called Bento@YourOffice. It was comprised of an IoT-powered smart fridge and app system, which is similar in concept to Byte Fridge in that both offer fresh food for sale. Since SXSW last year the company has approached partners and refined the concept to work with any fridge.  The company is now testing out the service in Panasonic’s event/innovation hub, Kura-Think, in Tokyo.

Another large company that’s been busy working on future-forward food tech concepts since last year’s SKS Japan is CookPad. The digital cooking site, which boasts 100 million users worldwide, introduced a smart kitchen platform a couple months ago called OiCy that connects their recipes with appliances to create a guided cooking platform. At SKS Japan, the company outlined the future vision for OiCy in the form of a six-level roadmap for the smart kitchen platform. They also announced an updated partner list which includes hardware manufacturers such as Sharp and Hitachi.

Japan’s Startup Ecosystem Is Gaining Momentum

While much of Japan’s innovation comes from within large organizations, there are also signs of a rapidly maturing food tech startup ecosystem.  Part of the growth is being driven by Japan’s bigger companies like Kirin (who launched their own accelerator). However, there were also a number of young and innovative entrepreneurs that spoke at SKS Japan such as Integriculture’s Yuki Hanyu and Open Meals’ Ryosuke Sakaki.

We’ve written about both companies before in the Spoon. Chris Albrecht was the first to write about Integriculture’s impending $2.7 million funding round when he covered Shojinmeat, the open source project from Hanyu. As Northeast Asia’s only lab-grown meat startup, CEO Hanyu has big plans to jumpstart alternative meat production in the Asia market, and discussed his plans for doing just that.

Open Meals made a big splash this March at SXSW with their sushi teleportation demo. While true food teleportation may be a ways off, the Open Meals vision of creating a food digitization and printing framework is pretty fascinating. Company CEO Sasaki presented an ambitious 100-year look into the future for the idea around food digitization that spanned from digitized food restaurants in Tokyo in just two years and eventually sees space colonies where we’re sharing food experiences in real time with people on earth.

Dinner time in space

Japan’s Smart Kitchen Community Embraces Ideas From US & Europe

The Japan smart kitchen/food tech community is also really interested in innovation happening from the West. One of the speakers at SKS Japan this year was Jon Jenkins, the head of product for the guided cooking group within Meyer, Hestan Cue. Jenkins, who goes by JJ, gave a talk about the role of technology and software in the kitchen and later gave a hands-on demo of the product to a capacity crowd:

It wasn’t just cooking demos. A highly engaged audience packed the room to hear conversations with innovators from the US and Europe such as Jason Cohen of Analytical Flavor Systems talk about the impact on AI on food personalization and flavor. They also heard from Suvie’s Robin Liss as she discuss her company’s four-chamber cooking robot and how today’s appliance companies need to start innovating around food services. The Future Food Institute’s Sara Roversi talked about taking her food innovation platform, which she started in Europe, across the globe. They also listened to Amar Krishna of Chefling and Kevin Yu of SideChef discuss the differences between the smart kitchen platform market in the US with CookPad’s Tad Yoshioka.

Collaboration, Innovation & Community

The biggest takeaway for me from this year’s SKS Japan was there a growing sense of collaboration, innovation, and community in Japan’s food tech market.  Part of it was the hard work of our partners for SKS Japan, SigmaXYZ, who have done a great job over the past year fostering the SKS community. But, just as with the US and Europe, it’s clear now that the Japanese market was ready for an event to catalyze innovation and to bring it together, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that event is SKS.

I’m excited to see how our event in Japan has just done that and has become the go-to food tech event in the Japan market and for much of Asia and I can’t wait to go back next year. I hope I’ll see you there.

If you’re interested in being a part of our global community, don’t miss SKS in Seattle in less than two months!  Robin Liss, Jon Jenkins, Jason Cohen and many more will be there, so you will not want to miss out. You can check it out here and don’t forget to use discount code SPOON for 25% off tickets!

Smart Kitchen Summit Heads to Japan This August

In 2014, I noticed that the technologies I had been writing about for over a decade in digital media, networking, big data, automation, and mobility were beginning to touch how people make, discover, buy, cook and consume food.

In short, I realized the world of food and cooking were in the early days of a large-scale shift, one that would result in significant innovation over the next few decades in product design, food science and, perhaps most importantly, business models.

And so with the biggest changes still ahead, I created the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015 with the hope of bringing the people from the worlds of food, appliances, retail, and tech together to have a conversation about the future. In just two short years, my little event has become the leading global summit on the future of food, cooking, and the kitchen. Last year’s event grew by 60%, and this year SKS is expanding to two full days with the most impressive lineup of speakers yet.

As we have grown SKS, I also realized early on that each region’s story is different, impacted by a unique mix of culture, business dynamics, and consumer tastes. Because of this, we decided would take SKS on the road, not only because I wanted to bring our community to other parts of the world, but also because I thought it important to incorporate these stories into our community as we look to help map the future of the kitchen.

And so with that, I am thrilled to announce our first non-US event, the Smart Kitchen Summit Japan.

To put together this exciting event which will occur in Tokyo on August 25th, I worked with a wonderful partner in SigmaXYZ, one of the leading strategy consultancies in Japan. My first contact with SigmaXYZ was with Hirotaka Tanaka, who had attended SKS2016 in Seattle.  A few months later I connected with Hiro and his associate Akiko Okada at CES in Las Vegas, where we realized we had a similar excitement and interest in how innovation will impact the food, cooking and kitchen ecosystems. It didn’t take long for us to start discussing SKS Japan, and now I couldn’t be more excited to be working with Hiro, Akiko and the team at SigmaXYZ to bring together our first international SKS.

We’ve created a day packed with engaging sessions with visionaries from Japanese companies such as Cookpad and Oisix, US innovators such as PicoBrew, SideChef and Hestan Cue, as well as thought leaders from the Europe such as Johnny Grey to discuss the future of food and cooking technology, design and business models.

In addition to a jam-packed day full of sessions, but we are going to highlight startup innovation with a Startup Showcase. The Showcase, sponsored by Oisix, the largest meal kit delivery company in Japan, will feature both Japanese and US innovators pitching their technology.

In short, we have put together a summit in which we will explore how technology, culture and business model innovation will impact the Japanese and Asian kitchens, as well as explore how innovation originating in Japan could change the face of food and cooking across the globe.

If you would like to attend SKS Japan, I’d love to have you join us in Tokyo. You can buy tickets here, but I would suggest your hurry, as tickets are limited.

If you’re interested in participating as a sponsor, feel free to drop us a line and we’ll get back to you.

I look forward to seeing you in Tokyo in August.

Image credit: Flickr user Mirai Takahashi under creative commons license.