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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

smoothies

2050 Company Kickstarts Powdered Smoothies Made from Upcycled Produce

Ugly fruits and veggies can be pretty appealing (and delicious) when you grind them into dust. That’s the basic pitch for the 2050 Company, which launched its line of instant smoothies made from upcycled produce via Kickstarter today.

Sourced from farms and distributors across the West Coast, 2050 takes cosmetically imperfect fruits and vegetables and runs them through a proprietary drying process that removes the water but retains the nutrients in the items. The resulting dried produce is then ground into dust, which is packaged up and can be mixed with ice to make a smoothie.

2050 will start with three flavors: Rainier Berry, Seattle Summer, and Evergreen. A minimum pledge of $35 gets you 10-pack bag of smoothies with the first 350 backers getting Rainier Berry flavored smoothies in September and the rest being fulfilled in November.

Ugly produce has actually become quite the belle of the ball in recent years. In addition to it being turned into soups, sauces and ice creams, a number of startups are selling it outright. The aptly named Imperfect Foods (née Imperfect Produce) started off by selling surplus and ugly produce direct to consumers. Same goes for Misfits Market. And FoodMaven sells the ugly stuff to restaurants.

While we haven’t yet had a chance to try the 2050 smoothie, reducing ugly produce down to a powder is an intriguing idea. It’s lightweight, so it’s easy to ship, and will last on a shelf for up to one year.

Another company doing something similar is BlendJet, which sells a portable blender and packs of freeze-dried fruits for smoothies ($3.95 each).

2050 got its name because of its mission to improve the way we treat the planet before the environmental disasters (ice caps melting, rain forests gone, etc.) predicted to happen by the year 2050 arrive. We’ll see if that kind of foresight extends to its first year of business in 2020.

SMOODI Joining Forces with UGo Smoothies to Bring Keurig-Style Smoothies to Offices

When Pascal Kriesche, Co-founder & CEO of SMOODI, told me how he and his co-founder joined forces last fall after discovering each one was working on a self-contained smoothie making machine for offices, I initially wrote it off as a rather banal origin story.

But I was wrong. In a lesson for journalists and entrepreneurs alike, I should have asked a follow up question, and Kriesche should have been more specific with his storytelling.

Turns out the other co-founder is Morgan Abraham, and the product Abraham was working on was UGo Smoothies, which I wrote about a little over a year ago. Turns out that UGo is gone and has now hooked up with SMOODI.

Honestly, I should have realized something was up when Kriesche laid out SMOODI’s product and business plan, which is essentially exactly what I wrote about UGo last year:

UGo makes a self-cleaning countertop smoothie machine targeting offices, gyms and universities. UGo is taking a Keurig-type approach by providing both the blender and cups full of pre-assembled fruit that go into the machine. It can even provide the freezer to keep those fruit cups frosty before you blend them.

Just swap out the name UGo for SMOODI.

There have been some changes since UGo was subsumed into SMOODI. First is a new emphasis on customization. SMOODI machines now allow users to choose their preferred smoothie thickness (this actually just adjusts the amount of water used, the system doesn’t incorporate dairy or other thicker milk liquids), and now offers boosts like oats, chia, protein powder or coconut.

The price has also gone up. UGo’s initial pricing was a monthly lease of the machine for $500 plus $3 per cup. SMOODI is now $500 a month for the machine and a variable per cup fee, depending on volume, with higher volumes costing $3.50 and lower volumes costing more.

Kriesche said the company is also working a model that would allow companies to charge end users directly per cup. This would be for settings like co-working spaces or for smaller business that can’t afford to subsidize all of the smoothies for employees. But this is still a ways off for SMOODI, as its machine can’t do transactions at this point.

SMOODI is currently in one beta test at the Boston Consulting Group office in Boston, where SMOODI is based. Through this trial, the company is examining pricing and working on its second generation machine. SMOODI hopes to go out more commercially next year.

SMOODI will be joining a crowded field of startups making all-in-one devices built to feed offices. Genie, which launched in the US earlier this year, provides small appliances that heat up pre-assembled food pods. Byte Technologies helps small retailers outfit offices with smart fridges that sell snacks and drinks.

And then of course, there is Replenish, which makes… a self-cleaning smoothie machine with Keurig-like fruit pods for offices.

Perhaps SMOODI will be joining forces with them.

UGo Smoothies Wants to Blend Into Offices and Gyms

Sure, your office has a ping-pong table, a kegerator and a wall of snacks… but does it have its own smoothie machine? If not, UGo smoothies would like to sell you one.

UGo makes a self-cleaning countertop smoothie machine targeting offices, gyms and universities. UGo is taking a Keurig-type approach by providing both the blender and cups full of pre-assembled fruit that go into the machine. It can even provide the freezer to keep those fruit cups frosty before you blend them.

Each machine takes up 1.5 sq. feet of counter space and is two feet high. It can be plumbed directly into a water line to provide the water for smoothies and to remove the wastewater after the machine cleans itself.

UGo has partnered with food distributors and commercial kitchens to do fruit cup prep and fulfillment. Morgan Abraham, Co-Founder of UGo told me that while the company has limited its trials to Boston and Montreal, it has the distribution networks in place to scale nationally as it goes to market.

The UGo blending machine can be leased for $250 a month and each 16 oz. smoothie cup costs $3.00. Though the company offers six different fruit cup recipes, typically, customers only carry three, Abraham said.

The company, which is co-based in both Boston and Montreal, was founded in 2015 and has run a number of pilot programs already with the University of Montreal, Frank and Oak and Lulu Lemon stores in Montreal. UGo is bootstrapped and has won some grants from the Canadian government. Abraham is its only employee with four other contractors working on the technology.

If the idea of a “Keurig for smoothies” sounds familiar, it should. Bay Area-based Replenish has been providing fruit cups and self-cleaning blending machines for offices since 2016. That company raised $6.9 million since its founding in 2013 and counts Uber, Amazon and Microsoft as clients. Though it looks as though Replenish has been quiet as of late with no new corporate blog or Twitter posts for two years, and just a handful of product photos posted to Facebook this year.

Smoothies are a hot category for automation, however. Over in Belgium, Alberts has launched its automated smoothie blending vending machine. And here in the U.S., 6D Bytes has the Blendid robot smoothie maker. (Though that robotic arm probably doesn’t play ping-pong.)

6d Bytes Debuts New Smoothie Making Robot

Stealthy startup 6d bytes came out of hiding yesterday to debut Blendid, a fully autonomous, smoothie-making robot station. Using a combination of machine learning, machine vision and robotics, Blendid promises to deliver customizable and consistently tasting smoothies to consumers whenever they want.

Blendid is an all-in-one robotic installation that can be set up on-site in food service operations. Inside the kiosk, the robot system blends, pours and serves up smoothies. No humans are needed, except for the site operator to manage inventory and address any issues that my arise.

Customers can use a mobile app or Blendid tablets to order from a menu of drinks including Blueberry Cacao, Mango Mint and Green Warrior, with smoothies costing between $4 and $5 for a 12-ounce drink. The robot whips it together and slides it over in under two minutes.

While the wow factor for patrons might be watching the robot arm swing back and forth with precision (see video below), there is actually a lot of impressive artificial intelligence going on in the background to orchestrate the whole operation.

Blendid Station Working

Through extensive use of machine learning, Blendid tracks the amount of each ingredient in each drink. So, for example, one drink might include only 40 grams of bananas instead of 45. The user can provide feedback on their purchase, and if they happen to like the one with slightly less banana, Blendid will remember this and adjust the drink accordingly next time.

Blendid also aggregates all the data from all of its users to help make recommendations. When someone goes to order a drink the system will say “Welcome back, Would you like the usual? Or, given your taste, you might like this other drink.”

There is also a lot of machine vision going on. Every item is coded, but should someone accidentally put spinach in the blueberry bin, Blendid will “see” the difference, know that blueberries are not spinach, and adjust accordingly, understanding the new location of the spinach.

Blendid also has the capacity to self configure and self-calibrate. Basically, every component that goes into Blendid is a standalone smart IoT (internet of things) device. If an ingredient runs out, it will take that item off the menu; if a part fails, Blendid identifies what went wrong and alerts the operator. Operators can also get a live, steady stream of analytics from the machine, detailing what ingredients are being used, if any ingredients are low, how many drinks is it serving, etc.

Sadly, for smoothie connoisseurs such as myself, Blendid won’t be serving me up strawberry banana protein blasts from the comfort of my home. Each machine costs around $70,000 and is meant for large food service operations like school and corporate cafeterias, supermarkets and stadiums. Once set up, Blendid can work all day without breaks, and 6d bytes co-founder and CEO, Vipin Jain, says operators can earn their money back after just nine months.

6d bytes has been developing Blendid discreetly for the past three years. The company is based in Sunnyvale, CA, has 15 employees, and Jain says it has raised “a little less than” $4 million in venture funding. The first Blendid is now operational at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale California. (if you’re down there, do a taste test and let us know about it!)

Smoothies are just the start for 6d bytes. According Jain, the company’s robotic platform can be adapted to serve up hot and cold solid food. Jain is a big believer that food service and fast casual need to change and has big plans for his company

“The whole on-the-go food space has to go through a transition for better consumer experience and operator economics,” said Jain. “There are 80,000 food service locations where Blendid can go. It’s a big addressable market. Our intent is to go after these locations.”

Perhaps as it goes after them, Blendid can hook up with Cafe X and Flippy to deliver a full-on robot army to get customers through breakfast, mid-morning coffee and lunch.