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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS

Meet the Startup Showcase Finalists for Smart Kitchen Summit 2020

While much of the food world has been impacted by the pandemic, there’s been no shortage of investors, inventors and innovators looking to reinvent the food system.

To me, this excitement about food tech is especially evident from the flood of interest in our sixth annual Startup Showcase, which takes place at this year’s (virtual) Smart Kitchen Summit. We were overwhelmed with applications from companies wanting to participate at our annual event that showcases the most interesting new startups building innovative new products for the future of food and cooking.

And so we’re excited today to announce the 10 finalists that will be showcasing at the Smart Kitchen Summit Oct. 13th-15th. These startups are innovating in everything from cultured meat to food waste to restaurant robotics to taste-altering utensils.

If you’d like to watch the founders of these companies pitch and go into a virtual session where they will show off their products and answer questions, get your ticket for the Smart Kitchen Summit today!

Minnow Technologies

Minnow Technologies is making an Amazon Locker for fresh takeout food. The connected food pickup pod can house takeout meals in an antimicrobial environment. Pods can be placed virtually anywhere and restaurants, food halls and other food businesses can leverage them to provide their customers and delivery providers with a safe and way to grab and go.

Cultured Decadence

Cultured Decadence is a cell-based tech startup creating a system that can produce seafood like crabs and lobsters sustainably. It does this using cell culture and tissue engineering techniques for the high-value portions of crabs and lobsters, producing no shells or wasteful organ pieces. It can also potentially eliminate the need for wild harvesting altogether and help create a more sustainable ocean ecosystem.

Satis.ai

Satis.ai is a full-stack operating system for restaurant kitchens. The system uses live camera feeds in kitchens to analyze cooking processes and provide actionable feedback to back-of-house staff in real time as well as give owners/managers business intelligence to help increase efficiency, inventory ordering and customer order accuracy.

Zymmo LLC

Zymmo’s platform is a meal marketplace and foodie social network that gives chefs a place to connect with local food lovers and potential customers. Zymmo allows chefs to publish their menus, promote their events and facilitate ordering and payments all in one app.

Bonbowl

Bonbowl is a small appliance startup making an induction-based heating cooktop along with patent-pending cookware that can be used to cook with and eat from safely. Their induction technology enables power efficient cooking that uses half the power of electric stoves of similar size. The Bonbowl pot doubles as a bowl that consumers can eat right out of, eliminating a longer cleanup process and additional hardware.

Nymble Labs

Nymble Labs makes Julia, a domestic cooking robot that helps consumers cook healthy meals for their families. The cooking robot only requires users to select a recipe, chop up or gather the ingredients for said recipe and insert them into the device. Users press a button and Julia does the rest: heating at the right temps, adding ingredients at the right time, stirring and simmering until the meal is done and ready to be served.

Taste Boosters

Taste Boosters is the startup behind SpoonTEK, the world’s first taste-altering utensil. Using taste buds, the human body’s sensors and their patent-pending ionic technology, SpoonTEK can alter and enhance taste and flavor of any food dish.

Vobil

Vobil is a startup that’s developed a voice-based e-commerce technology platform that links food ordering to connected car interfaces, allowing for entirely voice-based ordering, checkout and navigation to the store in real-time.

Kitche

Kitche is a free app for iOS and Android phones that helps users reduce food waste at home by helping change personal habits with what they buy and consume. The app uses a connection with an OCR (optical character recognition) engine and a food ontology database to help users know what they already have at home, even when they’re on the go. The app helps users understand how much money they waste every time they throw food out at home.

Piestro

Piestro is an automated pizzeria startup that has created a standalone, fully-integrated cooking system for artisanal pizzas. From start to finish, it takes three minutes to make a pizza. Piestro will be able to press pizza dough, spread sauce and shredded cheese, add up to six desired toppings, and calculate the perfect cooking time based on the ingredients and humidity. Orders can be placed either in person at a public location (e.g., shopping malls, college campuses, movie theaters, hospitals or airports) and cooked in front of the customer. Customers can also opt to get the pizza even closer to their door by ordering through an app for delivery.

Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 Is Going Virtual. Your Ticket Is Spoon Plus

When we announced Spoon Plus earlier this month, we buried the lede a bit when it comes to our flagship event, the Smart Kitchen Summit.

So here it is: Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 is going virtual.

It goes without saying that a certain pandemic has something to do with our decision not to try and gather 800 or so people together in Seattle in October. But that doesn’t mean we’re not really excited about the possibilities of a fully virtual SKS. We’ve had thousands join us for our virtual event series over the past few weeks and I am more convinced than ever that we can make SKS even better as we explore new formats and ways to bring people together.

SKS 2020 will be the week of October 12th. We’re busy recruiting speakers and talking to sponsors, so if you are interested in speaking or sponsoring, let us know. We’ll also have a Startup Showcase at SKS Virtual, so if you are a food tech startup, check back soon at Smart Kitchen Summit website.

And if you’d like to attend? Just buy a Spoon Plus annual plan and you’re in! Want your whole team to attend? Get a team plan and each subscriber gets a ticket.

We’ve also extended our launch pricing through tomorrow (Wednesday), so if you want to get access, just sign up using the code LAUNCH to get 40% off Spoon Plus.

SKS is what started it all for us half a decade ago. Since then, we’ve launched events in Japan and Europe and offshoot events around personalization and robotics. Now we’re excited to be bringing SKS online to reach audience around the globe. Join us!

Meet Spoon Plus, Our New Deep Dive Insights & Virtual Events Membership Program

When we launched the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2015, an event all about the rethinking of cooking and our kitchens, we soon realized innovation was happening everywhere across the food system: at the farm, in our favorite restaurants, at the corner grocery store and, yes, in our kitchens.

It felt necessary, almost urgent, to tell these stories. After all, I’d spent a good chunk of the decade prior working for one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech blogs, where I discovered how crucial it is to nascent markets to find those betting big on turning their world-changing ideas into a changed world. Back then it was technologies like cloud computing and IoT upending established industries like digital media and communication, but it didn’t take me long to realize the reinvention of the food system would be an even bigger deal.

After all, everyone eats, right?

So we started The Spoon in 2016 because we had this idea that we would tell the stories of a new generation of innovators working to reinvent the food system. Now, almost four thousand stories later, we are more convinced than ever about the impact of innovation on food.

Which is why we created Spoon Plus.

What’s Spoon Plus? In short, it’s our paid membership community where we’ll be bringing you deep dive insights in the form of research reports, long-form conversations with innovators, and exclusive online events to help you better understand the world of food tech and food innovation.

We’ll have new content every week, and to start we’ve got a great report from our own Catherine Lamb analyzing the emerging market for air protein. We also have a new report by me analyzing the survey results of food-industry executives about the impact of COVID-19 and their go-forward plans for the rest of 2020.

That’s not all. Early next week, I’ll publish my first weekly intelligence brief looking at COVID-19 disruption on new product launches in the kitchen and housewares space. After that, our editor-in-chief Chris Albrecht will soon have a report on the emerging market for next-generation food vending machines, and our restaurant tech expert, Jenn Marston, will have a strategy guide for cloud kitchens in the post-COVID world.

As part of Spoon Plus, we’ll also have deep dive conversations and interviews with industry executives like this one with Chris Young, the coauthor of Modernist Cuisine and founder of ChefSteps, who opened up to me recently about what happened with the company he founded and where he thinks the next big opportunities are in the world of food.

As part of our launch of Spoon Plus, we’re also announcing that Smart Kitchen Summit 2020 is going virtual, and that every Spoon Plus annual membership will include a ticket to SKS 2020. Our belief is that our events and online content have a symbiotic relationship, where our community engages with the same innovators we are writing about and where we often find the next big story at The Spoon. As we go deeper with Spoon Plus, we want our SKS community to be a part of that.

Of course, part of the reason for going virtual with our flagship event is we now live in a world where in-person events that thrive on a global mix of interesting people are going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the next 1-2 years. That said, we’re really excited about the SKS reaching even more people. We’ve been working hard at building our virtual event capabilities (we had a virtual COVID-19 food summit last month with over 1500 attendees), and are becoming more excited by the day about the possibilities of SKS 2020 and other exclusive virtual events through Spoon Plus.

So if you want to go deeper with us through research and reports, if you want to attend SKS 2020, if you want to support The Spoon as we grow, subscribe to Spoon Plus. As a way to help you get started, we’re offering Spoon Plus annual memberships for 40% off for the next ten days only. This one-time discount includes our company plans (that’s right – you can get Spoon Plus for your entire team). Just use the discount code LAUNCH when you are checking out and Memberful (the technology powering our membership offering) will deduct the amount from the total.

And of course, if you want to try out Spoon Plus for a month, you can subscribe to our monthly plan (monthly plans do not include a ticket to SKS). We also offer substantial discounts for students and for anyone who is in the midst of job transition.

If you’d like to learn more about those, just drop us an line.

For those of you wondering about The Spoon’s free coverage, don’t worry. We’re more committed than ever to bringing you the same daily news and analysis of those changing the food system for free on our main site. Spoon Plus is for those who, like us, also want to go deeper and access content that connects the dots from our daily reporting.

Thanks for your support. We look forward to building Spoon Plus together as we look to better understand and engage in the future of food.

Japanese Startup Base Food to Debut High-Nutrition Bread in U.S.

Bread seems to be the unofficial food of quarantine. No wonder — it’s comforting, it’s affordable, and it’s a soothing home project to tackle, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But much as we love bread, we know that eating it all day, every day is probably not the healthiest decision in the world. A Japanese startup called Base Food is bringing a more nutritionally appealing bread offering to the U.S.

Founded in 2016, Base Food uses nutrient-dense ingredients like whole grain flour, seaweed, and flaxseed to develop healthier versions of staple foods. Starting today, the company’s second product, Base Bread, will be available direct-to-consumer in California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada and Colorado.

It will come in just one big 72-gram roll, which will cost $3.33 each or $2.99 each if you sign up for a monthly subscription. The bread will come frozen, which is why the company is only able to ship within a 2-day radius of their Reno, Nevada manufacturing facility. Frozen food typically equates to high shipping costs, but when I spoke to Base Food’s COO Michael Rosenzweig last week said they have yet to finalize their fees. 

Photo: Base Bread

Base Food already sells two products — Base Noodles and Base Bread — in its native Japan, and the noodles are already available in the same seven U.S. states which can purchase the bread. Down the road, Rosenzweig said that the company is looking to get into foodservice retail channels, specifically through corporate cafeterias.

Another selling point is Base Bread’s shelf life. Rosenzweig told me that the bread will last a year in the freezer. We’ve in the midst of a pandemic that leads to both panic shopping and a fear of the grocery store, so Base Food’s nutritional profile and long life are both timely selling points. Then again, $3.33 is expensive for a single-serve roll of bread when you can buy a hefty loaf of artisan sourdough from your local bakery for $6 or $7 bucks — or just make your own.

I actually got to sample Base Bread at SKS Japan in August 2019. It was soft and squishy with a malty sweetness — sort of like a honey whole wheat bread. We also got to taste Base Noodles at the SKS 2019 Future Food competition in October, and they were tasty with a flavor akin to a nutty soba noodle.

As someone who loves carbs more than anything else in this world, but is trying to hang onto some semblance of healthy eating during quarantine, Base Bread offers an appealing option. At least until I smother it with butter.

Save the Date: Smart Kitchen Summit 2020, the Leading Food Tech Event In North America, Returns on October 15-16

Mark your calendars: the Smart Kitchen Summit, North America’s leading event for food tech executives, is back for a sixth year on October 15th and 16th in Seattle.

As the first event to bring together executives across the food, appliance, technology and retail industries to explore how digital technologies and innovation in science will reinvent the world of food, SKS has grown to become a must-attend global summit where leaders connect and map the future of their businesses.

And SKS 2020 will be no different as we continue to dive deep into the future of the kitchen as well as explore how advances in food science, AI, IoT and other innovation spaces will bring about a fundamental reinvention of every part of the food value chain over the next decade.

A sample of some of the topics we plan to explore at SKS 2020 include:

  • Personalization across food retail, restaurants, nutrition and the home kitchen
  • AI, robotics and automation’s impact on food in the home, restaurant and food retail
  • Future food innovation (Plant-based, lab-grown, from the air, molecular, etc)
  • Smart kitchen evolution towards a reinvention of core cooking, interfaces and kitchen business models
  • How innovation could help reduce food waste and build more sustainable food systems
  • Ghost kitchens and the changing restaurant and food delivery market

In addition to dozens of sessions exploring the areas critical to today’s food tech exec, SKS 2020 will also add new opportunities for attendees to discover innovations and connect with one another. This year’s event will feature expanded workshops and how-tos from makers to help you better understand and catalyze creation in your business. We will also include a bigger and better SKS Connect meeting platform where we will no doubt top the 1000 plus one-on-one meetings that took place last year.

Personally, I am more excited than ever for SKS. When we started the event back in 2015, I’d just spent much of the previous decade watching large-scale forces completely change the world of entertainment through digital technologies. We suspected disruptive tech was about to have a much bigger impact on the world of food and – as we can plainly see now – we were right. Everywhere along today’s food value chain — on the farm, in the factory, at food retail, in the restaurant and the consumer kitchen — we’re witnessing a radical reinvention of how business is done and how we prepare, sell and consume food.

And yet so much opportunity lies ahead of us. While we’ve seen food tech join other areas as a key focus area for many forward thinkers, the reinvention of the world of food is still in the very early stages. We have yet to find our Spotify or Netflix for food, and I really believe that it’s just a fairly short matter of time before companies emerge that will become huge platforms upon which the future of food is built.

Chances are these companies will be at SKS, so I’d love to invite you to join us in Seattle on October 15-16th as we figure out the future. Please check out our website to get access to early winter sale tickets, let us know if you want to speak or sponsor, or just sign up for more information.

See you in Seattle!

SKS 2019: Disrupting Large Food Corporations from the Outside In

When you envision a company that’s “disruptive,” you probably picture young startups tinkering away in a garage. But major food corporations also want to earn that title and keep a pulse on the newest consumer trends.

So how do large organizations that have been around for decades and span continents stay fresh and new? That’s exactly the question that Larry Portaro, Director of GE’s FirstBuild and Victoria Spadaro Grant, CTO of Barilla and President of Blu1877 tackled during a recent panel at SKS 2019. 

If you’re part of a large company trying to emulate the agility and creativity of a startup, you should watch the whole panel video below. Here are a few insights into how large corporations successfully disrupt from within:

Independence is key
Firstbuild is a rapid-production hardware company that also happens to be a subsidiary of GE. While they may be part of a giant appliance company, Portaro emphasized on the SKS that having some level separation — their offices are actually 8 miles away from GE’s HQ in Louisville, KY — is key to building an innovative culture within their company. By establishing themselves as a separate entity, Firstbuild can have the freedom to experiment and really “mix up the DNA” of their parent company, as Portaro put it onstage.

Leverage resources for good
Just because these innovation arms operate independently from their parent companies doesn’t mean they can’t take advantage of their parent company’s resources. Blu1877, the venture arm of Barilla which fosters and invests in early-stage sustainable startups, was founded to “reach out for innovation that would not be in the mainstream,” according to Spadaro-Grant. While it’s a separate entity from Barilla, she made it clear that that doesn’t mean that one can’t help the other. In fact, Blu1877 depends on the “bigger machinery” of its parent company to help grow smaller startups within their incubator.

Add value to the parent company — and challenge them
“Our purpose is to… do the things that are a little crazy,” Portaro said at SKS. That’s how Firstbuild adds value to GE; by thinking outside the box, developing products outside GE’s typical scope and keeping the large company tapped into new hardware trends.

Sparado-Grant went one step further. She noted that innovation arms like Blu1877 don’t only exist to add value to their parent companies, but also to “challenge” them to reexamine their values and paradigms. That means not only sourcing new ideas from within, but also using their resources to foster young startup talent and help grow a new generation of sustainable food companies.

Disrupting a Large Food Company From Within

SKS 2019: The Key to Sustainable Protein Might be Fermentation, not Plants

When you hear the term alternative proteins, your thoughts likely jump to plant-based foods, or maybe even cultured meat.

But there’s actually a third way to create high-protein meat alternatives without plants by leveraging a relatively old technology, and that is fermentation. At SKS 2019, Dr. Lisa Dyson of Air Protein, Perumal Gandhi of Perfect Day, and Morgan Keim of Motif FoodWorks discussed how their companies are using genetically engineered microbes to ferment sustainable, highly customizable proteins.

If you’re intrigued by all the buzz around the alternative protein space, it’s worth watching the whole video below. (You get to learn how Air Protein makes protein from air, c’mon.) Here are a few takeaways from the conversation:

Fermented protein is super sustainable
Plant-based protein is certainly more environmentally friendly than animal protein, but fermented protein has the potential to be even more sustainable. Dr. Dyson noted that their protein is made using only energy (which can come from solar or wind) and elements of the air. Bonus: unlike farming, it can scale vertically, is independent of weather conditions, and makes protein incredibly quickly.

It’s more efficient, too
One of the perks of fermenting protein is you can get really granular about which molecules you want to create, eliminating waste. “If you just want one part of, say, a dairy molecule, why create the whole thing?” asked Keim onstage. “Why not just make the one part you actually need?” Having that sort of control over the protein leads to more efficient R&D processes for all sorts of animal alternative products.

Fermentation isn’t *that* out of this world
Dr. Dyson noted that growing protein from fermentation “may sound like science fiction,’ but it’s actually quite close to our current standard methods of growing many staple foods — including yogurt and beer.

Gandhi echoed this sentiment. Perfect Day, which dubbed their proteins “flora-based” after the microflora used to create them, noted that fermenting protein isn’t anything new. “We’ve been using it for 40 years now,” Gandhi said. “We’re just applying [the technology] in a new way.”

Watch the full video below to learn more about what Keim called “the next generation of what non-animal foods will be.” It’ll make you rethink the protein on your plate.

SKS 2019: Growing Protein: The Emerging Food Tech Ingredient Market

SKS 2019: Here’s What Investors are Looking For in Food Tech

Here at The Spoon we often write about funding news for new food tech companies: how much they’re raising and what they’ll do with the money. But what about the investors who are allocating these funds? How do they decide which ventures are worth investment?

We gathered four VCs to talk about just that at SKS 2019. In the panel, Tom Allison of ZX Ventures, Nate Williams of UNION Labs, and Brian Frank of FTW Ventures spoke with Brita Rosenheim of Better Food Ventures about the dynamics of investing in the food tech space.

If you’re curious about what investors are looking for in this area or are a startup hungry for funding, you should definitely watch the full video below. Here’s a quick overview to whet your appetite:

The food tech space has lots of opportunity
Rosenheim summed things up pretty well when she said, “We’re really at the infancy of the food tech sector in terms of potential.” Frank, who is a longtime SKS attendee, echoed this thought as he reflected on the growth within the conference itself. SKS was originally focused on consumer tech but now has expanded to cover tech from restaurants to supply chains to waste management in addition to the consumer sphere. Nonetheless, “it’s under-invested and under-managed,” he said. In short, there’s plenty of opportunity.

Big Food is getting involved, too
Allison, who’s the Head of Investment Strategy and M&A at ZX Ventures, part of AB InBev, spoke about how Big Food is trying to formulate its investment strategy to mimic the efficiency and agility of smaller independent companies. One takeaway? Look at untapped resources within the company (e.g., spent grain) and figure out how to capitalize on it. (Protein!)

Hardware is, well, hard
Williams, the Entrepreneur in Residence for Union, a new spinout from Kleiner Perkins, dropped some truth bombs about the difficulty of investing in hardware. “[It’s] extremely hard to execute well,” he said. “The be honest, lean startup [mentality] is bulls—t when it comes to hardtech investing.” Especially compared with the relative ease of scaling software.

Check out the full video below to hear more about what opportunities these investors are looking for — and their current favorite food tech product.

SKS 2019: Investing In Food Tech: Hardware, CPG & Future Food

SKS 2019: Why Big Food is Betting So Heavily on Startup Accelerators

So you’re a new food startup who wants to level up and get some funding and mentorship. Or you’re a big CPG company who wants to uncover the latest food trends and acquire companies already tapping into them.

The answer for both quandaries might be food accelerators or incubators. Key word: might.

At SKS 2019, we dove into the wide world of food accelerators: what are they, which types of food companies should consider them, and why they’re suddenly all the rage. Weighing in on this conversation from the stage were Natalie Shmulik, CEO of The Hatchery; Tessa Price, Program Manager of WeWork Food Labs; and Peter Bodenheimer, Partner & Managing Director of Food-X.

If you’re contemplating applying for an accelerator program or just curious what they actually entail, you should watch the whole video of the panel below. Here are a couple of standout points made by our speakers to spark your interest:

What do food accelerators look for?
All of the panelists agreed that when searching for candidates for their programs, fit is critical. Shmulik emphasized the importance of a good founder presence. Price said that companies have to align with WeWork’s values and offer some technology that can accelerate WeWork’s ecosystem. For Bodenheimer, though, one of the biggest factors is persistence. “When the sh*t gets tough, will they stick with it?” he asked.

Why are food accelerators so hot right now?
You may have noticed that food accelerators seem to be popping up left and right lately. According to Bodenheimer, this is at least partially because of Big Food companies. He explained that large food and beverage companies typically only allocate 1-2 percent of their budget to R&D, so they turn to accelerators as a way to access more innovative products. Sometimes this can be productive, but other times it can be muddy, especially if the Big Food company doesn’t have a clear objective for their program.

So, what are the newest food trends?
Of course I wasn’t going to let these industry experts off the stage without asking them about the innovative new trends they were seeing bubbling up at their respective accelerator/incubator programs. Shmulik noted that more and more companies were looking to make eating an experience, not just a task. Price spoke about personalized nutrition and on-demand ordering, and Bodenheimer said he’d seen a lot of companies tapping into food as medicine, plant-based offerings and CBD.

If you want to hear the rest of the panelist’s up-and-coming dining trends to watch, or learn more about food accelerators in general, watch the full video below.

SKS 2019: Building a Food Accelerator

SKS 2019: The Kitchen Evolution is In a State of “Good Chaos”

What’s next for the smart kitchen? What sort of new appliances will be gracing the countertops of the future, and what sort of technologies will power them? In short: What will it look like to cook at home in the future?

That’s exactly the question one of our panels tackled at SKS 2019. The discussion was led by The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht, who spoke with Lisa McManus of America’s Test Kitchen, Matt Van Horn of June and Steve Svajian of Anova about what’s coming down the pipelines for kitchen tech. The full video is below, but if you want a few quick highlights read on:

The future of the kitchen is software
Svajian argued that the smart kitchen space started out more hardware-driven, but has recently been shifting to focus more on software. Van Horn agreed. He said that in the early days of the company, people used what he called the “primitive” settings of the smart oven: bake, broil, etc. But now they’re using the automatic cook programs more and more. “That said, the hardware [still] has to be great,” added Svajian.

All tech aside, it has to work
McManus drove home the point that high-tech appliance are great, but they have to actually help people cook better — not just look cool. “We look at things that will make [cooking] easier and more accessible to everyone,” she said. “Things that are practical, that are functional.”

The smart kitchen space right now? “Good chaos.”
McManus summed up the evolution of the food tech ecosystem pretty neatly during the panel. “It feels like a really exciting brainstorm,” she said. “It’s good chaos.” Svajian agreed, equating the space to the evolution of the Web in the late 90’s. ‘The law of entropy is real.’

If you want to hear more about where these three insiders see the fast-paced evolution of the kitchen heading, make sure to watch the full video below.

SKS 2019: Kitchen Tech Futures: A Look At What's Next

SKS 2019: IBM and McCormick Use AI to Make the Best Possible Barbecue Chips (and More)

Say you’re developing a new barbecue potato chip. You’re using spices from McCormick, which has not one, not two, but over 100 types of garlic flavoring. How do you decide which garlic(s) to use, and in which combinations, to make the best product for your target demographic?

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) can help. Last year, McCormick, the largest flavor company in the world, went public with its five-plus-year partnership with IBM to build a flavor platform using machine learning. We dove deep into this partnership at SKS 2019, when The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht spoke with McCormick’s Chief Science Officer Hamed Faridi and IBM Principal Researcher Richard Goodwin about how AI can help make better, tastier products in less time and with fewer dead ends.

Check out the video below to watch the entire panel (it’s super nerdy and cool).

Hamed Faridi on the SKS 2019 stage. (Photo: The Spoon)

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick overview of what Faridi and Goodwin discussed in the session.

“The [CPG] iterating process is a very time-consuming, old system,” said Faridi during his onstage presentation. “But that’s the only thing the industry has.” All of that changed when Faridi was driving home and heard an NPR interview with a scientist from IBM’s Chef Watson, a program that develops bepsoke recipes based off of chemical flavor affinities (for example, leeks and chocolate.) Immediately, he was struck: this was the missing piece of the puzzle to develop better products in a smarter way.

Computers can’t taste or smell, so how do they know which flavors taste well together? That’s where data comes in. McCormick has kept all of its data from various flavor development processes and product experiments since the 1980s. IBM’s machine learning algorithms can take those data points and make suggestions about new ingredient combinations without having to go through all the trial, error, and staff training that a human R&D team requires.

The result is a 70 percent reduction in product development time and increased stickiness in the market. Faridi said that the IBM partnership is working so well they expect all of their labs will be using AI by late 2021.

This session was a fascinating look into how a flavor giant and a technology giant have teamed up to make better everyday products. Watch the full video below and get ready for more SKS 2019 content coming your way over the next few weeks!

SKS 2019: Case Study: McCormick & IBM Build an AI-Powered Flavor Platform

SKS 2019: In the Age of Automation and Delivery, What Does the Restaurant of the Future Look Like?

At SKS, we spend a lot of time talking about how technology is transforming the kitchen. But eating obviously goes far beyond the home — specifically into restaurants.

In this panel from SKS 2019 journalist Kristen Hawley spoke with Clayton Wood of Picnic (formerly Vivid Robotics), Derek Pietz of Sweetgreen, and Adam Brotman of Brightloom about how shifting consumer demands and technology is reinventing the restaurant as we know it.

If you work with restaurants, or even just eat out frequently, you should really watch the whole video below. But for all of your impatient folks out there, here are a few high-level takeaways from the conversation:

Restaurants are transforming at light speed
The biggest conclusion from the panel is that restaurants are not only undergoing a dramatic change, but it’s happening quickly. “There’s going to be more change in the restaurant industry in the next five years than there’s been in the past hundred,” said Pietz, pointing to delivery, robotics, digital ordering, and shifting consumer tastes as the main catalysts.

Our concept of ‘the restaurant’ will shift
New technology and menu preferences will not only change the ways that restaurants look (digital kiosks) and function (more delivery), but will also challenge our conception of what a restaurant is.

For example, is a robotic oven a restaurant? Clayton Wood of automated pizza company Picnic would say, absolutely. In fact, robotics can actually help reduce risk for restaurants and help them keep up with changing consumer trends, like the uptick delivery and takeaway.

Customer engagement is more critical than ever
Obviously restaurants have always had to focus on customer loyalty. But recently, with the rise of delivery and automation, restaurants — especially fast-casual ones — have to be more proactive about it than ever before.

Brightloom, which Brotman calls “the AWS or Shopify for restaurant tech,” builds white-label customer engagement platforms. They use data science to help restaurants draw in more diners, facilitate their purchasing experience, and incentivize them to keep coming back for more.

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That’s just scratching the surface of the knowledge these panelists served up onstage. Watch the video below to catch the whole conversation and keep your eyes peeled for more content from SKS 2019 coming soon!

SKS 2019: Reinventing the Restaurant