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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SKS

Weekly Spoon: The Intelligent Edge for Food, Specialty Coffee Expo Takeaways, Beyond Moves Beyond Tyson

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. If you’d like to get the Weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here. 

In a previous life, I wrote a lot about consumer broadband technology. As with any industry, the world of Internet and broadband has a lot of inside baseball conversation, and one of the evergreen themes the industry wrestles with is whether or not the intelligence in the network should reside centrally or at the edge.

In the 90s, the industry talked about network computing. At the beginning of this century, it was about fat vs. thin clients. Later we started talking about distributed and edge computing. While the terms change and technology evolves, this a conversation the world of tech has been having – and continues to have – ever since the network became the lynchpin to everything that we do.

Why am I talking about this in a food tech newsletter?

Because for the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking about how the power of technology – digitization, software, robotics – is reversing what has been a longstanding megatrend towards centralization of nearly everything in food. All along the food value chain – from big ag to food manufacturing to food retail – the primary focus of innovation up until the past decade has been towards a concentration of the means of production, distribution, culinary expertise and pretty much everything else to gain massive efficiencies of scale. If we’re going to feed a rapidly growing population, why not apply what we learned from Henry Ford and other titans of the industrial age to food?

But now, through the power of tech, we’re seeing a reversal of this century-long trend, where digitization, software, IoT, AI, and robotics are unleashing a massive reinvention of food systems and unleashing pockets of innovation and the power of creation everywhere you look.

What this means is we are seeing the great decentralization of food intelligence. In food retail, IT, robotics and digital powered micromanufacturing start to make its way to the different storefronts. In the restaurant space, we’re beginning to see automation and robotics to create hamburgers at the quality a Michelin star chef would make them, only without the chef. And at home, we’re witnessing the emergence of digital technologies used to grow food and prepare food and beverages beyond the capability of the home cook.

No matter what we want to call it – digitization of food, the intelligent edge for food (distributed fooding?) – I see it everywhere I look, including in this week’s news…

Photo: Garrett Oden.

One example of the intelligent edge of food is in coffee.  Our coffee tech expert Garrett Oden was at the Specialty Coffee Expo this past week and wrote about how Bellwether is moving coffee roasting from the roastery into the coffee shop with their tech-powered coffee roasters. Others like Bonaverde are creating multifunction coffee machines that give the home coffee user new capabilities through technology.

Distributed, digital powered intelligence.

And last week, we talked about robots bringing micromanufacturing to the grocery store aisles, fresh-tossed salads to vending machines and making amazing burgers in restaurants.  Sure, automation has been a big deal for in food for some time, but mostly in centralized environments. What’s different now is the advancement in software, sensors, and robotics to mimic essentially some of the things only a person had been able to do more recently.

Venture investor Avidan Ross, who spoke on our investor panel last week at ArticulATE, talked about just this topic and how while we’ve been automating food production for decades, it’s only in the last few years where we’ve seen robotics advance to the point where new capabilities in the creation of food using these technologies have been possible:

“I think what’s interesting now is that we’ve been able to move into chaotic unstructured environments at the endpoint,” said Ross.

This, by the way, is the same point made by Google’s robotic chief, Vincent Vanhoucke, at the same event. From this morning’s post by Chris Albrecht:

Vanhoucke’s team is working on taking the things robots do well — moving around — and marrying that with advancements in computer vision and deep learning to make robots more useful in the messy and complicated real world. And it turns out that food in particular, with its different textures and properties, is quite messy and complicated.

In short, technology is enabling us to do things with food at the edge in a way that was not possible before. Whether it’s the peace dividends from advancements software, autonomous cars, AI or what-have-you, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the world of food is seeing the emergence of distributed intelligence that is creating a new wave of innovation that will continue to disrupt the food systems for decades to come.

There was lots of interesting news this week outside of coffee, robotics and the intelligence edge for food, including continued activity in the world of alternative protein. Catherine wrote this morning about the recent exit of protein giant Tyson from its investment in Beyond Meat on the eve of the plant-based meat startup’s IPO. She also covered a new startup trying to create animal-free cheese using a process they describe as “recombinant protein technology.”

In the consumer kitchen, Innit partnered up with contract manufacturer Flex and Google to create a suite of ingredient solutions to fast-track the development of smart kitchen appliances. On the delivery front, Google got approval from the FAA to do drone delivery, while Postmates beefed up its delivery location roster in advance of its IPO.

Finally, there are just a few days left to get the best price of the year for Smart Kitchen Summit tickets with Super Early Bird pricing.  Use the discount code NEWSLETTER for an additional 15% off (use this link to have the promotion automatically applied).

That’s it for now. Have a great week everyone!
Mike

P.S. We’re launching a Future Food newsletter covering alternative proteins, cell-based meat, bioreactors and more! Interested? Subscribe here.

Video: Bellwether Cuts Out the Coffee Roasting Middleman

“A lot of people don’t realize just how big coffee is,” said Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Bellwether Coffee at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. Seriously, though: according to him, coffee is the most consumed beverage in the U.S., with people drinking more cups of joe than bottles of water, wine, and beer combined.

Not only are people drinking a lot of coffee, they’re also drinking better coffee. Consumers — especially millennials — are looking for fresher, higher-quality beans that are roasted locally. And they’re willing to pay for it.

But getting that freshly-roasted product into the hands of consumers isn’t easily done. The majority of coffee today is roasted at a highly centralized place and then shipped all over the world. This “hub and spoke roasting model,” as Gilliland calls it, is expensive and not condusive to freshness.

Enter Bellwether. The company makes internet-connected coffee roasters that can be installed in cafes, grocery stores, or small local coffee shops, and also has a marketplace for green (unroasted) coffee beans. By roasting in-store, Gilliland explains that the shop can provide more sustainable, fresher coffee and save money by cutting out the roasting middleman. “It’s like a roaster meets an iPhone,” he said.

Watch the video below to get the lowdown on the future of sustainable coffee consumption — and how data and IoT can help us get there.

From Soil To Sip: Disruptions In The Coffee Value Chain

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

The Future of Cannabis Edibles is Wellness, Not Recreation (Podcast)

“The [cannabis edibles] consumer is probably not who you think it is,” said Linda Gilbert, formerly Managing Editor, Consumer Insights cannabis data company BDS Analytics. “The average age of a cannabis consumer is 42. This is not an 18 year old living in his parent’s basement.”

As marijuana legalization expands, so does its consumer base. More and more users of all ages and backgrounds are looking to experiment with this trendy new ingredient — but they’re not necessarily coming to it in order to “get stoned.” Many turn to cannabis as a natural way to take the edge off of anxiety, manage their pain, or just relax. “They’re doing it for more health and wellness reasons than recreational purposes,” emphasized Gilbert.

But unless they’re a historic marijuana user, they don’t necessarily want to smoke something. Instead they’ll turn to edibles. “[There’s a] cultural shift of acceptance,” said Merril Gilbert, founder of cannabis dosage labeling company TraceTrust. And more and more companies — even Big Food companies — are starting to notice.

Scott Riefler, VP of Science for cannabinoid company Tarukino, pointed out that cannabis is rapidly becoming a food ingredient in its own right. “It’s something that can be added to the culinary experience,” he said. In fact, cannabis can be a functional ingredient in everything from wine to chocolates. And as it becomes more widely legalized, its applications (and user base) will spread.

In this conversation from Smart Kitchen Summit 2018, I talk with these three panelists about the burgeoning cannabis edibles market — and where we can expect it to grow from here.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, download here or find it on Apple Podcasts.

Video: For Investors, the Food Space is “The Next Big Thing”

“As investors, we always look for the next big thing… and the food industry is the next big thing to get involved in.”

That’s how Brian Frank, founder of FTW Ventures, kicked off the food tech investment panel at the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. He was joined onstage by Carmen Palafox, partner at Make in L.A.; Tom Mastrobuoni, CFO of Tyson Ventures; and the Spoon’s Ashley Daigneault.

Indeed, it seems like the time is ripe for investment up and down the food supply chain. Like, for example, the shift towards meat alternatives; a growing consumer demand with which protein giant Tyson Foods is very familiar. But instead of simply staking out their territory, Tyson, which produces 35 million chickens per week, decided to capitalize on this trend and invest in its disruptors: from plant-based Beyond Meat to cell-based Memphis Meats.

“We look at technology from two angles; how applicable is this to our supply chain, or how disruptive is this to our supply chain going forward?” said Mastrobuoni. “We all diversify.”

Palafox agreed that timing is a key aspect of investment. “A lot has to do with cultural shifts and the way that people are thinking about food safety,” she added. For example, her firm, which focuses on hardware, recently invested in Pathspot, a device which scans restaurant employees’ hands to test for pathogens. “They’re trying to change culture from within food chains.”

Of course, not all food innovations work seamlessly (cough, meal kits). During the panel, Frank admitted that he had accidentally stolen a shopping bag from the Amazon Go store. “Amazon spends millions and millions of dollars to develop a system to track you in their store, yet they don’t track the bags,” he said. “And this is where I think that technology as a service for these things is still evolving.”

There are a lot of other really rich observations and smart takeaways in this panel, plus some smart insight into food system investment. Check out the video below to hear what this diverse group of investors is most excited (and worried) about in the food tech space, and how they think we’ll all be sourcing, cooking, and eating food in the future.

Defining Strategies For Investing In Food Tech

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

Video: Soggy Food Sucks Uses Thermodynamics to Keep your Fries Crisp During Delivery

“When we talk about the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS), it’s not just about being smart or connected,” said Michael Wolf before he announced the winner of the SKS 2018 Startup Showcase. “It’s about finding an interesting product that hasn’t been there before that solves for a real consumer need. And this winner really showed me that.”

Indeed, Soggy Food Sucks, who took home the title of Overall Winner at the Startup Showcase, makes a product that seems almost deceptively simple. Their frozen patch sticks to the inside of a food containers and wicks condensation to keep takeaway eats crispy, crunchy, and decidedly non-soggy. No artificial intelligence, virtual reality, or robots in sight.

Despite its lack of bells and whistles, Soggy Food Sucks captured the judges’ attention because it solves a real, relatable problem in the food delivery space: how to keep food crisp during its journey from the restaurant to your home.

“We’ve all experienced the disappointment of food delivery, when our food arrives after being ravaged — ravaged I say — by the horror of condensation,” preached Birgen onstage. So he decided to use his engineering know-how (he used to be an actual rocket scientist) and solve the problem with some basic chemistry.

Watch the full video to see Birgen’s charismatic pitch for a product that we think has the power to massively improve the food delivery business. See ya never, soggy fries.

SKS 2018 Startup Showcase: Soggy Food Sucks

For more videos of panels, fireside chats, and startup pitches from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit head to our YouTube channel!

Video: Can You Sell Things in the Smart Kitchen Without Being Annoying?

Most of us have heard the adage that the kitchen is the heart of the home. But it’s also a space that’s ripe for commerce, especially with all the new appliances, software, and services rolling out as the kitchen gets smarter.

In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Richard Gunther of Digital Media Zone speaks with Iri Zohar of Freshub, Benton Richardson, of Amazon Dash, and Shawn Stover of GE Appliances about the future of in-kitchen commerce models: be that automated grocery replenishment, personalized suggestions, or shoppable recipes.

But how do you sell things to people in their kitchen in a way that, as Gunther put it, “isn’t annoying?”

Watch the full video below to find out.

Kitchen Counter Point of Sale: Analyzing In-Kitchen Commerce Models

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Video: Tyler Florence Advocates for “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” Cooking through Tech

Last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit, chef Tyler Florence made waves when he proclaimed that “the recipe is dead.”

This year he returned to the SKS stage for a fireside chat with Michael Wolf to discuss the evolving role of recipes — and the home cook — in the tech-enabled kitchen.

His new take is that recipes aren’t dead, they’re just like vinyl records or paper maps — nostalgic and practical, but antiquated. Down the road cooking will be all about personalization and “choose-your-own-adventure” food experiences, which will give us, according to Florence, “a higher creativity rate than we’ve ever had.”

Watch the video below to hear this celebrity chef’s vision for the future of cooking.

The Connected Chef

Video: To Succeed in the Smart Kitchen, “You Have to Get Multi-Modal Fast”

Voice is becoming more and more present in consumer electronics. At the same time, appliances are also coming with a whole host of AI-powered, software-driven interfaces and interactions.

How do these components work together in the kitchen? In this video from the 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, Stacey Higginbotham of the IoT Podcast moderates a panel with Shelby Bonnie of Pylon AI, Adnan “Boat” Agboatwalla of Samsung and Jason Clarke of Crank Software about the evolution of smart appliances and interfaces in the heart of the home.

There’s a lot to consider. As Clarke said, “there’s all these interfaces that I want to jump between depending on the task and the environment of the moment.” For example, if his daughter is being loud, he doesn’t want to rely on voice to turn on his oven; if his hands are dirty, vice versa.

In short: the smart kitchen can’t function just with video screens or voice, but both working together. “You have to get to multi-modal fast,” said Bonnie.

But for the ultimate user experience these appliances all have to work together, too. “There should be a platform that connects everything… multi-branded appliances should be able to talk and work together,” said Agboatwalla. Easy? Maybe not. But with conversations like these, we can pave the way to a more connected kitchen and a better cooking experience.

Watch the full video below.

Beyond The Dial: Exploring Voice and AI-Powered Interfaces For The Kitchen

Look out for more videos of the panels, solo talks, and fireside chats from SKS 2018! We’ll be bringing them to you hot and fresh out the (smart) kitchen over the next few weeks.

Scenes from SKS2018: Runner Robots, 3D Printing, Celebrity Chefs, and More

It’s been one week since the fourth annual Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) in North America, and we’re still processing all the incredible discussions we heard, futuristic foods we tasted, and inspiring people we met. This year, we had over 50 panels, solo talks, and fireside chats; 13 talented young companies pitching at our Startup Showcase; and one very photogenic food-running robot.

Here’s a quick look back at some of the highlights from the two-day event. Look out for panel videos coming soon!

Thanks to all who helped make SKS such a huge success! Next up, we’re headed to Vegas: we’ll be putting on the first (and only) foodtech event at CES 2019 — drop us a line if you want to get involved!

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.

Announcing the Smart Kitchen Summit 2018 Program

Hard to believe, but we’re just six weeks away from the Smart Kitchen Summit, our flagship industry event that brings hundreds of executives, innovators, startups and media together in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall for two days to forge the future of food, cooking, and the kitchen.

It’s been three years since we held our first in an old cannery in 2015, and since that time we’ve become the hub across three continents for the world’s biggest brands in appliances, food, and tech to connect and discuss food tech.

And now, after lots of emails, planning meetings and Google sheet rejiggering, we’ve released our agenda for the Smart Kitchen Summit! We’ve got an incredible lineup with panels, TED-style talks and fireside chats featuring some of the most exciting people in the space. Check it out!

A few highlights:

  • The Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman will sit down with the person who ran product on both the Amazon Echo and the Juicero –  Malachy Moynihan – to ask why kitchen products succeed or fail.
  • Dr. Karsten Ottenberg, the CEO of one of the world’s biggest appliance manufacturers, BSH Appliances, will talk about how his company is building its future around services.
  • Executives from Cafe X, Chowbotics and Zimplistic will talk about the future of food robotics
  • Walmart’s VP of Food Safety Frank Yiannas will speak on a panel with Raja Ramachandran of Ripe.io and Jasmine Crowe of Goodr about the potential for blockchain to increase transparency and reduce waste throughout the food system.
  • The CEOs of June, Brava, Tovala, and Suvie will talk about how cooking appliances will change over the next decade.
  • We’ll find out why Eli Holzman, the creator of Project Runway & Project Greenlight, has made the intersection of technology and cooking his next big project.
  • Tom Mastrobuoni of Tyson Ventures, Carmen Palafox of Make in L.A., and Brian Frank of FTW ventures will explore strategies for food tech investment, from hardware to CPG and beyond.

That’s just the start. We have sessions on personalized food, the future of restaurants, AI & food, cooking robots, food & cooking data, blockchain & food, IoT security in the smart kitchen, reinvention of the grocery store and much more.

Peppered throughout the day we’ll also have 12 new startups (companies to be announced soon!) pitching their companies before a panel of investors and executives. Our panel of judges will vote on the winner, who will get a $10,000 cash prize! You can view the new full conference schedule here.

Our last shows have all sold out, so make sure you grab your tickets now, and we’ll see you in October!

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!