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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sodexo

SavorEat’s 3D Printing Robot Coming to Colleges Courtesy of Sodexo

Foodservice giant Sodexo North America and Israeli food tech company SavorEat announced today that they have partnered on a program that will test out a new type of robotic plant-based cooking appliance to colleges and universities next year.

SavorEat makes a 3D printing robot that simultaneously extrudes and cooks plant-based proteins. The company’s appliance can produce a range of products including plant-based burgers, and in the near future kebabs, steaks and more. Additionally, the settings can be tweaked to create more customized plant-based meat such as a burger with higher fat content. The SavorEat can make three dishes at once, every five minutes.

According to the press announcement sent to The Spoon:

Sodexo will examine the robot chef system and the first product developed by SavorEat, a plant-based protein burger, within higher education institutions across the U.S. In parallel, both parties are working on reaching an agreement for the distribution of SavorEat products.

For its part, Sodexo has certainly become a forward-thinking, tech-friendly company. In this year alone, Sodexo has expanded its partnership with Kiwibot to bring delivery robots to more college campuses, and it has partnered with controlled environment agriculture (CEA) grower Vertical Harvest to source local greens for colleges and hospitals.

That Sodexo is piloting a high-tech program to delivery plant-based meats should come as no surprise then. Sales of plant-based meat grew 45 percent over 2020 and the category is now worth $1.4 billion. Adding this partnership with SavorEat allows Sodexo to reach more vegetarians and flexitarians on college campuses.

This is the second big pilot program for SavorEat, which will be conducting a test of its robot at the BBB hamburger chain in Israel.

Maine Colleges and Hospitals Will Get CEA-Grown Greens Thanks to Sodexo and Vertical Harvest

Foodservice and facilities management company Sodexo announced this week it will partner with controlled environment agriculture (CEA) grower Vertical Harvest to source greens from the latter’s forthcoming vertical farm in Maine. Sodexo said it will source about 80 percent of its lettuce products distributed in its Maine facilities from that farm, rather than importing food from other states.

Vertical Harvest is scheduled to break ground on the Westbrook, Maine farm in August 2021. When completed, the farm will be a four-story, 70,000-square-foot facility that produces about 1 million pounds of lettuce annually. The company already operates one farm, in Jackson, Wyoming, where it grows different types of leafy greens and distributes those to grocery stores and restaurants.

Because of its climate, Maine imports a good deal of its produce from other regions. Vertical Harvest says that once its Westbrook farm is operational, it will “displace” much of this out-of-state produce. Growers will also be able to produce year-round, which normally wouldn’t be possible in a state as far north as Maine.

Sodexo, meanwhile, is one of the largest employers in Maine, and says it serves about 13,000 meals per day at colleges and hospitals across the state. By partnering with Vertical Harvest, the company will be able to serve fresher, more local greens at all 14 of its partner locations in the state.

This isn’t Sodexo’s first time to partner with a CEA company, either. In 2020, the foodservice giant announced a partnership with Freight Farms to bring container grow systems to school cafeterias and university dining halls around the U.S. Elsewhere in the world of food innovation, Sodexo has also launched an Impossible Burger menu and sent Kiwi’s delivery robots across college campuses with food deliveries. 

Freight Farms and Sodexo Are Bringing Vertical Farming to U.S. Schools

Freight Farms, a major player in the world of containerized vertical farms, announced today a partnership with foodservice and facilities management company Sodexo. Together, the two aim to bring Freight Farms’ hydroponic vertical farms into school campuses across the U.S., according to a press release sent by Freight Farms.

In North America alone, Sodexo serves over 13,000 client sites, many of them school cafeterias and university dining halls. The new partnership means Boston-based Freight Farms will be able to implement its Greenery container farms in more locations. At the moment, the company has 35 of these farms set up at educational and corporate campuses. The Sodexo partnership will expand that number “rapidly,” according to the press release, as the two companies implement more farms at both K-12 schools and university campuses that are Sodexo customers. 

The 320-sq-foot Greenery farm uses hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs inside climate-controlled shipping containers. Users control watering and nutrient schedules and access data on their plants via the company’s proprietary Farmhand software, which can be accessed via the user’s smartphone. The idea is to equip growers with a turnkey offering they can flip on from anywhere in the world and use to grow food with relatively little hassle.

For schools in particular, that means outfitting students and teachers with not just freshly harvested food for the cafeteria but also potential new curriculum around technology, agriculture, and business, if students are allowed to work directly with the farms. Co-founder and CEO of Freight Farms Brad McNamara told me last year that the Greenery “allows us the opportunity to not only feed a demographic and teach them how to farm.”

Still, vertical farming has yet to prove itself in terms of scale and economics. Part of determining the success of the Freight Farms-Sodexo partnership will lie in getting more data on how well the vertical farms function in an institutional environment. Many vertical farms geared towards institutional levels of food production promise simple “plug in and grow” solutions. Not all of them deliver as promised.

And beyond basic functionality of the farms, we also need more information about whether or not its truly cost-effective to bring these farms into schools and cafeterias in place of greens transported across the country. Will the reduction in water usage and food waste translate into money saved for these institutions? Freight Farms noted in the press release that in some parts of the country, those using the Greenery can actually make their operations water positive. We don’t, however, have any numbers on how beneficial being water positive is to these organizations’ overall margins, and if it offsets, say, the electricity required to run the farms.  

This isn’t the first food-tech-focused initiative Sodexo has embarked on in the recent past. In 2019, the company partnered with Starship to bring wheeled food delivery robots to college campuses in the U.S. The company also launched an Impossible Burger menu at 1,500 of its U.S. locations.

Sodexo’s sheer reach (it’s a multi-national corporation with services all over the world) gives it a certain amount of influence over the educational sector’s meals many others wouldn’t have. If the partnership with Freight Farms can showcase both the health and economical benefits from hyper-local, hyper-traceable, longer-lasting greens onsite, it could open the door to more schools and institutions considering some form of indoor farming onsite.


Future Food: Pigging Out on Omnipork in Hong Kong

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I just got home from a stopover in Hong Kong after the whirlwind of SKS Japan, and boy it was anything but boring.

In between sampling bubble waffles and copious amounts of dim sum, I got to meet with David Yeung, founder of the Green Monday enterprise. Green Monday is an umbrella organization which includes a non-profit educating consumers on the benefits of meat alternatives, a vegan grocery and wholesale operation, a venture arm, and a branded plant-based pork product called Omnipork.

Yeah. David Yeung is busy.

During my visit I also got to put Omnipork to a taste test. I sampled it tucked in a fried gyoza, crumbled on top of a bowl of ramen, and stuffed inside sweet puff pastry dim sum.

Overall, I thought Omnipork worked pretty well as a pork substitute. It doesn’t have the same unctuous fattiness of actual pork, at least partially because it’s lower in saturated fat, but it’s still tasty and the texture hits close to the mark.

Omnipork is essentially flavorless — which is both a good and bad thing. Yeung told me this was very intentional; he wanted to make a product that was endlessly versatile so it could be incorporated into a wide variety of Asian dishes. However, it can also make for a pretty bland bite if not properly seasoned or combined with tasty sauces.

The versatility bit is key. Yeung’s overarching goal is to make a comprehensive platform to cut down on Asia’s consumption of animal products, starting with the continent’s most popular meat: pork. Yeung said that Asian consumers might have a burger every month or so, but they incorporate ground pork into multiple meals daily. He figured that if he wanted to create a plant-based protein that could have a shot at taking a bite out of growing meat consumption in Asia, he had to make a product specifically tailored for that audience.

Crazily enough, he’s the first to do so. When people think about the new wave of fake meat products, their thoughts automatically turn to Silicon Valley. While there’s certainly plenty of innovation there, Asia is actually the area that seems in most need of tasty, cheap plant-based protein: meat consumption there is projected to rise by 78 percent by 2050, and recent outbreaks have made meat prices skyrocket and also triggered consumer demand for a safer alternative.

I left Hong Kong feeling both inspired by Yeung’s progress and daunted by how far he has to go. If he wants to take a bite out of Asian pork consumption, he’ll need to get Omnipork on a lot more plates. Making it into tasty gyozas is certainly a good start.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat skips Japan

Like any alternative-protein nerd, I kept my eyes peeled during my time in Tokyo to see if I came across any plant-based meat, eggs, etc.

No dice. And now it seems that at least one major alt-protein player won’t be entering the Japanese market at all, at least for a while. Last week Reuters reported that Beyond Meat had dropped plans to start selling in Japan, instead opting to double down on the U.S. market.

This is a change in tune from Beyond CEO’s Ethan Brown statement during the company’s first earnings call a few months ago. Then, he outlined Beyond’s aggressive expansion plan, naming Asia as one of the key areas of focus.

That being said, it makes sense why Beyond has to hit the pause button on outward growth and turned their attention back stateside. The company has announced multiple fast-food partnerships over the past few weeks alone, including large rollouts with Dunkin’ and Subway. A product shortage would be very, very bad right now, as Beyond competes with Impossible Foods in a race to snag the most fast-food partners and steels itself for Impossible to enter retail later this year.

No wonder Beyond has turned its attention back to the U.S.

Photo: Aramark.

Cafeteria special: Meatless meat

As I mentioned above, alternative meat companies have been grabbing headlines lately by partnering with large fast-food chains like Burger King, Subway and Dunkin’. But recently, two new alt-meat partnerships have flown relatively under the media radar — and they shouldn’t.

Last week food service management company Sodexo announced it would launch a new product line featuring the Impossible burger at 1,500 locations in the U.S. A few days later, news broke that food and facilities management giant Aramark would begin using Beyond Meat products to build out its plant-based meat portfolio.

Partnerships like these may not get as much press as fast-food launches, but teaming up with major food and facilities management companies is an important strategic move for companies like Impossible and Beyond.

Most obviously, it’s an opportunity for plant-based meat companies to massively expand their footprint and get their products on even more plates, selling to a captive audience at sports venues, concert halls, and cafeteria. Since both providers also serve a lot of university cafeterias, also a way for them to train younger generations of consumers to expect alternative proteins wherever they dine.

Beyond and Impossible may be just starting to ramp up foodservice expansion, but they’re not the first to do so. Plant-based chicken nugget company Rebellyous has been targeting large clients like cafeterias from the start (they just got into the Microsoft canteen).

If meat alternatives want to give real meat a serious run for its money, they’ll need to capture audience not just in restaurants and grocery stores, but also during their office lunch or ball game dinner. These partnerships are a great start.

Photo: Integriculture

Protein ’round the web

  • An Australian startup is growing kangaroo meat in a lab (via the Wall Street Journal). They currently estimate it would cost about $600 Australian dollars (~$400 USD) to produce one kilogram.
  • Edible insect company Chapul is no longer making protein bars. Instead, they’ll focus on growing bugs to use as fish and poultry feed (h/t Foodnavigator).
  • At SKS Japan we spoke with Integriculture’s founder about his plan to sell cell-based foie gras in restaurants by 2021.

That’s it from me this week. I’m off to grab another coffee to keep my jet lag at bay.

Eat well,
Catherine

Sodexo Is Launching an Impossible Burger Menu at 1,500 U.S. Locations

Food and facilities management giant Sodexo announced today it will launch a new product line featuring the Impossible Burger at over 1,500 locations in the U.S.

According to a press release, the new product line will feature plant-based versions of “a sausage muffin sandwich, sausage gravy and biscuits, steakhouse burger and creole burger” that all use Impossible’s famous “bleeding burger” in place of real meat.

The new items will be available on August 19. While Sodexo didn’t specify where they would be served, the company supplies food and food services to about 13,000 locations in North America, including corporations, colleges and universities, government facilities.

While it’s a big move, it’s also not really surprising, given the seemingly endless stream of announcements coming out of the plant-based meat sector lately. The Sodexo news comes on the same day Impossible is expanding its now-famous Impossible Whopper at Burger King locations nationwide, and just days after the company announced a forthcoming launch at retail stores, which is slated for September.

Meanwhile, Impossible’s chief rival, Beyond, is busy striking deals left and right with QSRs and already has a strong retail presence.

With sales of plant-based meat booming, both Impossible and Beyond are aiming their products not at vegans and vegetarians but at so-called flexitarians, who want the taste and texture of real beef without the ethical and environmental issues that surround animal-based products. A move into settings like corporate cafeterias and university dining halls would provide even more exposure to this audience.