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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Starbucks

Scoop: Starbucks Trialing Amazon’s Palm Payment System in the Seattle Market

Starbucks is trialing Amazon’s biometric payment system, Amazon One, in the Seattle market. The system, which allows customers to pay in-store with the scan of a palm, was spotted in a Starbucks north of the company’s Seattle headquarters in Edmonds, Washington.

To sign up to use the system, users can pre-enroll at the Amazon One website or inside Starbucks at the Amazon One kiosk. Since I didn’t already have an Amazon One account, I decided to sign up in the coffee shop. The kiosk prompted me to scan the barcode within the Starbucks app on my phone to identify my Starbucks account and recognize my form of payment. From there, it asked me to hover both my left and right palms above the scanner, one after the other. Once each palm was scanned, I was ready to go. It had taken all of about two minutes to sign up.

Since I was already there, I figured I’d try it out. I got in line and asked the barista for an iced tea. When asked for payment, I hovered my palm above the scanner until it recognized it, and that was that.

Paying for a coffee with my palm at Starbucks

While Starbucks has trialed Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in the past with Starbucks/Just Walk Out combination concept stores in the New York City market, we were told this is the first time Amazon One has been trialed in an existing Starbucks location.

When I asked a barista if many folks had signed up to use the technology, he shook his head.

“Not yet. Some people were kinda creeped out by it.”

And that’s before they even read the small print. When I checked out the terms of service (which you can find on the Amazon One website during signup), the small print told me the system would store my palm signature, including on servers that may be outside of my country:

 The Service streams data to the cloud when you interact with an Amazon One device and stores your palm signature to authenticate you and provide, personalize, and improve the Service. This information may be stored on servers outside the country in which you live.

While using biometric data doesn’t both me that much, I know some do not like the idea. The small print tells Amazon One users they can delete their account whenever they want by deleting their Amazon One ID, which can be done within the app or through this website. The small print also says the system will automatically delete a user’s palm signature if they have not interacted with an Amazon One device in two years.

It won’t be a surprise if this is a sign that there will soon be an Amazon One palm-pay system at other Starbucks. Both Starbucks and Amazon often trial new technologies in the Seattle market, so there’s a good chance they are seeing how this goes before rolling it out to more stores nationwide.

Yep, It Looks Like Brightloom is Powering Starbucks’ NFT Initiative

Back when we first heard that Starbucks was heading into the NFT business, I suspected a company helping them get there was a startup called Brightloom.

The reasons were pretty straightforward: Not only is Brightloom effectively a carveout of Starbucks former digital business AND Brightloom’s CEO Adam Brotman is the former of head Starbucks digital, but there’s also the fact that Howard Schultz namechecked Brotman at the employee town hall where the subject first came up.

But if there’s any remaining doubt, I think it was put to rest this week when Starbucks published a memo co-authored by Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Brady Brewer and Adam Brotman (who, on the piece, is titled a “consultant”) about NFTs last week in which the company detailed its plans. Titled We’re creating the digital Third Place, the memo describes how Starbucks sees NFTs as ushering in a “shared ownership model” for loyalty and sees them as digital “access passes” for experiences and rewards.

In some ways, Brotman and Weber’s memo echoes many of the same ideas we’ve heard Brotman speak about when asked about his thoughts on Web3. When I interviewed him in March, Brotman talked about how NFTs can be tickets to unique experiences for a restaurant’s most loyal customers.

Restaurants “know who their best customers are, either by name or some loyalty program,’” Brotman said. “And they give them an NFT. Say, ‘here’s a code to claim your free NFT. And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the NFT.”

And at last week’s SimulATE Food Web3 summit, Brotman talked about why he became fascinated with Web3. “Why I’m so turned on by the Web3 space is the idea that there’s this concept of owning a digital collectible that also doubles as an access pass.”

Brotman also discussed how the Web3-powered ownership could be a gamechanger for loyalty programs. “If you don’t understand NFTs or you don’t understand crypto, you don’t need to,” Brotman said. “If any of you ever either invested in a company, or had your own company, or had a stamp collection or a card collection, what they all have in common is that you have some skin in the game and you feel like you’re a co-owner.”

All of this may seem a bit inside baseball. Still, I think it’s newsworthy since there is a small but growing cohort of digital restaurant platformers like Brightloom, NextBite, and Lunchbox jockeying to position themselves as the restaurant onramp to Web3. And so, if Brightloom has indeed locked up the bluest of blue-chip customers (and it looks like they have), they will have established themselves as the early leader in Web3 platform horserace.

If you’d like to watch Adam Brotman talk Web3 (along with Chef Spike Mendelsohn and LA Eats’ Perrin Davidson), you can watch their session on Web3 and restaurants below.

SimulATE Spring: Web3 and Restaurants

Food NFT + Metaverse (in a) Minute: NFTs for Purpose Driven Restaurants, Cereal DAO

It’s still early days at the intersection of food and Web3 and that means there’s almost always something new happening and more to learn. Stay up to date with our coverage and these 3 things in this week’s Food Metaverse Minute:

NFTs for Purpose-Driven Restaurant

Chefs using NFTs to fund their next restaurant is becoming a regular thing — but even more inspiring is chefs using NFTs to give back to the workers who are the backbone of the restaurant industry. That’s what St. Paul-based chef Brian Ingram and his group Purpose Restaurants are doing with their next project.

Partnering with Chicago artist Joey Africa, the NFT collection will feature 71 original digital and physical pieces, each token serving as a membership to Ingram’s newest restaurant. The Apostle Supper Club, opening this summer across from the Xcel Energy Center, will hold VIP events like private chef dinners and menu tastings. Ten percent of the NFT raise will go back into the community; Ingram’s restaurant group regularly contributes to Give Hope, his charity created to give funds directly to people in their community, particularly restaurant workers dealing with housing insecurity or addiction.

We’ll be keeping an eye on hose this project performs. The NFTs went on sale last week on Opeaseas but so far there’s been little activity. While there’s been lots of inspiration from the success of the membership of Flyfish Club, no one – not surprisingly – has been able to replicate the success of the Gary Vee-affiliated group.

The DAO-Driven Cereal Company

NFT-branded cereal makes a debut from the “first decentralized CPG company” last week at Bitcoin Miami. The new CPG DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) — named gmgn supply co — launched with its first product, gm cereal and introduced its governance structure. The goal of DAOs is to spread collective decision-making rights along with ownership benefits to all of the involved members.

To drive hype for their launch, gmgn used Web3 marketing with BoredBecky, a curated personality with famous NFT social influencer group Bored Ape Club. The new group hopes to “revolutionize the CPG industry and drive the next generation of beloved brands,” and will be the first consumer packaged goods company to embrace NFTs as a way to fund and the DAO structure to run and grow the organization.

“If you look at the current CPG landscape, the majority of brands we eat every day are owned by 11 giant CPG conglomerates. gmgn supply co is changing this and our members will have a say in what they eat, what products are going to be made and help lead the CPG industry in a new direction that’s been elevated by Web3. We are excited to be leading this change and kicking it off with the launch of our first brand, gm Cereal, slated to drop in the Fall of this year,” said Phillipe LeBlanc, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Funday.” Funday is one of the founding companies that started gmgn.

SimulATE is Back

SimulATE is coming back! We’re bringing back the first virtual event dedicated to the emerging food, NFT, metaverse + crypto space and we’re going to be announcing our speaker lineup and agenda soon. Preview some of that here and if you use THIS LINK, you’ll get 50% off ticket prices through the end of this week (FRIDAY, 4/15 at 11:59 pm PST).

The Spoon Weekly: Tobacco Plant Bioreactors, Roboburgers & Starbucks NFTs

Welcome to the Spoon Weekly. The Spoon Weekly features some of our favorite food tech stories from the past week. Make sure to subscribe to get it delivered directly to your inbox.

BioBetter is Turning Tobacco Plants into Bioreactors to Drive Down the Cost of Cultivated Meat Growth Media

Food tech startup BioBetter has developed a novel way to create growth factors for cell-cultivated meat utilizing tobacco plants.

Based in Kiryat Shemona, Israel, the company announced that it has developed a method to create growth factors via molecular farming techniques by essentially turning the tobacco plant into a bioreactor. BioBetter’s technology employs plant cells to produce growth factors instead of more traditional techniques which utilize yeast, bacteria, or CHO in a bioreactor to produce growth factors.

The company’s technology involves identifying the gene of the target protein, cloning it, and transferring it into the tobacco plant. They then select the highest-yielding plants, breed them to develop higher yields, and then ultimately grow and harvest the plants.

As the tobacco plants mature, their cells express the growth factors and store them until harvest. The company then uses a proprietary protein extraction and purification technology that enables it to exploit nearly the entire plant, producing a high purity product at lower overall costs.

To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.

As Meat Prices Rise, Could Plant-Based Meat Become a Value Option for Consumers?

Have you seen the price of meat lately?

It’s not pretty. The average price of a pound of ground beef in the United States has jumped over 20% in the past year and seems to just keep going up.

Meanwhile, the cost of a 12-ounce package of Impossible ground has continued to drop and is showing up at under $6 at some retail establishments, about the same price of a pound of extra lean ground beef.

Not quite price parity…yet. But as Impossible and other plant-based meat providers continue to ramp up volume, it’s worth asking: when meat alternatives reach price parity and, eventually, sell at a discount to animal meat, could customers start reaching for plant-based meat to save a buck?

You can read the full post at The Spoon.

Here Are Four Ways Starbucks Could Get Into The NFT Business

Starbucks is getting into the NFT business.

That’s according to company CEO Howard Schultz, who recently held a company town hall to discuss what the company’s plans are for the coming year. Schultz, who retook the reigns of the coffee giant this week, said the company would be in the NFT business before the end of the calendar year.

“If you look at the companies, the brands, the celebrities, the influencers that are trying to create a digital NFT platform and business, I can’t find one of them that has the treasure trove of assets that Starbucks has, from collectibles to the entire heritage of the company,” Schultz said.

While it can often be cringe-inducing when CEOs talk about new digital formats – something Schultz acknowledged by admitting he’s not a digital native – he’s right that the company has many assets that could be tokenized and create new ways to engage with its customers.

You can read the full post here. 

The Spoon is Hiring!

Do you love food tech? Are you a dynamic sales leader who can close? We want to talk! The Spoon is looking for a sales lead to help generate new sales, expand existing relationships and help build our business! Check this and other positions out at the Spoon Job Board!

Smart Kitchen

Holy Smokes: FirstBuild’s Arden Indoor Smoker Hits Crowdfunding Target in Two Minutes

FirstBuild, GE Appliances’ innovation arm, has launched its latest crowdfunding campaign, and this one looks like a potential home run.

The same group that brought you the Opal ice machine and the Paragon induction cooktop are now bringing an indoor pellet smoker called Arden to market via a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The Arden can smoke up to two racks of ribs at a time or a small brisket, all inside your home without setting your fire alarms off.

The Arden uses a smoke-elimination technology that requires no additional filters to clean or replace. According to FirstBuild, the technology was first developed for GE’s smart hearth oven and has now been incorporated into the Arden.

The unit uses the same pellets used with other smokers. Once the smoke is pulled out of the chamber and into the smoke eliminator, it eliminates all smoke and just CO2 and water are exhausted into the kitchen. This allows users to sit the Arden on a countertop and smoke a slab of meat without any special venting.

To read the full story, head here.

Lomi, Unboxed: A First Look at The Lomi Smart Food Waste Composter

I find food tech fascinating – especially the products and solutions that have a shot at fixing a real problem in our food system. Tackling issues like food waste, food insecurity, nutrition, and accessibility, technology can give us the tools to change habits and systems.

But, I admit I haven’t always adopted tech in my own home that has made a huge change in our own food habits outside of our beloved sous vide, and nothing that stuck when it came to food waste. With growing kids, our grocery bills keep increasing, but I throw out more food on busy weeks than I’d ever like to admit.

Composting at home has never been an easy or…neat endeavor; we’ve tried several times, using smaller receptacles to collect food scraps to bring out to a larger pile. But no matter what, we abandoned our efforts for lack of time and patience. One year, we even subscribed to a service that would drop off nutrient-dense compost soil for us to use in our vegetable garden. We paid someone for THEIR broken-down food scraps — and it turns out, nutrient-rich, locally harvested, hand-delivered compost is not cheap.

To read the full story, head here.

Smart Kitchen Platform Company Drop Changes Name to Fresco

Drop dropped Drop.

The startup that started with a connected scale eight years ago announced it has a new brand identity. The company is now called Fresco, a name which “(reflects) the company’s priority to connect dots in the kitchen between appliances, home cooks and recipes to make cooking effortless,” said the announcement.

Fresco CEO Ben Harris said that the company needed a new brand given its evolution beyond its hardware roots.

“Drop was a great name for a physical product, but we pivoted to become a smart kitchen platform, providing end-to-end solutions to make appliances connected, from firmware development to IoT expertise and an app that pulls all the appliances together,” Harris said. “As a result, we needed a brand that better represented this.”

Drop is part of a cohort of smart kitchen startups that offer software and connectivity solutions to power kitchen appliances and help consumers cook and plan meals. While some of its peers have increasingly focused on shoppable recipes and looked to help power online grocery integrations, Drop has doubled down on expanding its solutions and increasing its partner roster in the connected kitchen and guided cooking space.

To read the full story, head here.

Future Food

Plant-Based Eggs Starting to Crack Open The European Market
 

Here in the US, a version of a plant-based egg from Eat Just, Inc. has been on the market since 2013, starting with an earlier version from when the company was Hampton Creek. The company’s current product, which uses its flagship mung bean formulation, began selling in the US market in 2019.

But if you wanted to try JUST Egg in Europe, you were out of luck.

That’s about to change. That’s because the company just got approval for its mung bean protein from the European Commission. The approval, which follows an earlier greenlight last fall by the European Food Safety Authority, paves the way for the introduction of JUST Egg to the European market by the fourth quarter of 2022.

That’s not the only good news if you are looking for an egg alternative in Europe. Berlin-based Perfeggt has been working on an egg alternative that derives its protein punch from fava beans, and is starting to ship in Germany.

Read the full post here.

Israel’s Vanilla Vida Wants to Expand and Improve the World’s Favorite Flavor

Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that vanilla is the world’s most popular flavor? In addition, how about the idea that 95% of all vanilla sold is synthetic, generally made from an oil or lab-developed chemical compound. Sounds like a supply and demand issue for a real deal vanilla pod.

Vanilla Vida has done its homework and sees an opportunity to tickle the universal taste buds by using technology and data to produce large quantities of top-quality vanilla anywhere in the world. Madagascar and Indonesia are the top crop producers but face issues with uncertain weather, quality control issues, and a long drying process. With proof of concept completed, Vanilla Vida CEO Oren Zilberman is ready to expand beyond Israel and launch climate-controlled farms worldwide.

Zilberman’s experience as a VC is instrumental in the success of his new company. “When you are building a startup, you are always looking about what is the chance it can do a major impact and some change in the world and at the same time, have a really good business,” the company’s CEO said in a recent interview with The Spoon. He also explained that his experience led him not to want to develop something new or go into an unproven segment. By expanding the opportunity for a wildly popular product, such as vanilla, Vanilla Vida can hit the ground running instead of requiring a great deal of marketing to drive customer awareness.

Read the full post here

Food Robots

Chili’s is Trialing a Sidewalk Delivery Robot From Serve Robotics

Hankering for some Chili’s but don’t want to jump in your car? It might not be long before that grilled chicken and bowl of chili arrive at your front door via sidewalk robot.

That’s because Chili’s parent company Brinker has been secretly piloting a trial with sidewalk delivery startup Serve Robotics and is evaluating the possibility of a wider rollout.

The first hint of the Brinker-Serve pilot came via a small mention last week in an article in a Dallas publication about the company’s drone delivery trials with Flytrex. Both Brinker and Serve have since confirmed to The Spoon that they are running an early stage sidewalk delivery pilot but were not ready to discuss further details of a wider rollout.

“We can confirm Serve is working with Brinker International to roll out robotic delivery for Chili’s customers,” a Serve spokesperson told the Spoon. “We will have more to share once service is launched.”

To read the full story, click here!

Watch This Video of RoboBurger, a Robot Burger Vending Machine, Cooking Up Burgers

Over the past couple of years, there’s been no shortage of robotic vending machines cooking up everything from salads to bowl food to ramen to pizza. But, what we haven’t seen – until earlier this week – is a machine that makes the cornerstone meal of the American fast food marketplace, the hamburger.

The RoboBurger, a robotic burger vending machine, arrived at its first location in a New Jersey shopping mall. The machine, a fully autonomous machine that makes a complete burger in minutes, showed up at the Newport Centre mall in Jersey City, New Jersey. The box measures 12 square feet, plugs into a 220-volt wall socket, has a built-in refrigerator and an automated griddle and cleaning system. The self-contained machine holds up to 50 frozen burger patties and cooks each burger one at a time.

You can read full post here.

Here Are Four Ways Starbucks Could Get Into The NFT Business

Starbucks is getting into the NFT business.

That’s according to company CEO Howard Schultz, who recently held a company town hall to discuss what the company’s plans are for the coming year. Schultz, who retook the reigns of the coffee giant this week, said the company would be in the NFT business before the end of the calendar year.

“If you look at the companies, the brands, the celebrities, the influencers that are trying to create a digital NFT platform and business, I can’t find one of them that has the treasure trove of assets that Starbucks has, from collectibles to the entire heritage of the company,” Schultz said.

While it can often be cringe-inducing when CEOs talk about new digital formats – something Schultz acknowledged by admitting he’s not a digital native – he’s right that the company has many assets that could be tokenized and create new ways to engage with its customers.

So what exactly could Starbucks’ entry into the NFT business look like? Here are a four ideas about how Starbucks could leverage NFTs:

Create a Loyalty Program That Gives Special Rewards for Starbucks’ Most High-Value Customers

Back when Adam Brotman, who used to run Starbucks digital and now is CEO of Starbucks-invested Brightloom came on The Spoon podcast, he suggested that restaurants could reward their most loyal customers by issuing them an NFT.

They could say “here’s a code to claim your free NFT,” Brotman said. “And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the Portofino’s NFT.”

Brotman – who Schultz called out in the video above as a ‘digital native’ – highlighted different benefits restaurants could give such as special events, exclusive offers and more. In Starbucks’ case, I can imagine benefits like first access to special drinks or coffee roasts, a monthly free menu item, or digital assets like special coffee recipes.

A Membership Coffee Club

Another potential avenue for a Starbucks NFT could be a subscription coffee club. A club could be something like the Bored Breakfast Club, an NFT-powered subscription service that sends NFT holders special coffee roasts by mail. It could also include some Flyfish-club like benefits like special access to Starbucks’ unique venues like their roasteries.

Access to Unique Digital Experiences

A Starbucks NFT could also be a ticket to unique online experiences such as a tour of coffee locations or virtual online event with coffee experts. When asked about where he sees the metaverse going, Adam Brotman even suggested this as an idea.

“If I’m a Starbucks in the metaverse, I’m not just serving coffee. I’m growing coffee. I’m giving people tours of my farm in Costa Rica. What are the things that I wish I could transport people to experiences that I can’t scale in real life because of distance or cost or physics?”

NFTs Could Be Deep Insights Into Starbucks’ Coffee

One thing that makes NFTs and the blockchain interesting is their ability to provide proof of provenance for food and beverage products. Starbucks has long made noise about its use of fairtrade coffee, so it’s easy to envision how NFTs could be proof of where the coffee was sourced and provide deep insights to the coffee purchaser about the coffee chain of custody and provenance.

While all of this is speculation, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of my guesses is close to the direction Starbucks heads with their NFT effort. The company is a leader in digitization of the customer experience and is recognized for having one of the industry’s best loyalty programs.

Finally, given Adam Brotman’s presence at the Starbucks town hall and that the company he now leads, Brightloom, was essentially the result of Starbucks’ attempt to spin out its digital program assets into a standalone company, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brightloom plays a part in whatever NFT efforts emerge out of Starbucks this fall.

Spoon Weekly: Starbucks Animal-Free Milk Review, Bitcoin Restaurants, Alt-Meat Sales Drop

It may be almost holiday time, but the food tech news keeps on coming. Plant-based meat slowdown, Starbucks animal-free milk trials, Bitcoin restaurants. Read all about it.

If you haven’t already subscribed to our newsletter, do so here to get the Spoon Weekly delivered to your inbox.

Will Jack Dorsey’s Block Usher In The Bitcoin Restaurant Era?

Here’s what we know: On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced he’s stepping down immediately from the top job at Twitter. On Wednesday, his payments company Square said it would change its name to Block and would, among other things, double down on cryptocurrency, blockchain, and building a decentralized payment system. I haven’t checked the news today, but I’m guessing he may have announced he’s creating a robot society or has plans for a teleportation system.

What does it all mean (besides the robots and teleportation)? For one, Jack Dorsey has had a busy week. But it also means the same guy who helped usher in real-time social media and democratize digital payments for small businesses may now be the one who helps make it easier for average Joe to buy everyday things with cryptocurrency.

Because right now, it isn’t easy. Crypto isn’t nearly as liquid as other conventional payment methods such as cash or credit. Sure, you can trade crypto without any problem – anyone with a Coinbase or Robinhood account knows that – but good luck paying for a bottle of mouthwash or buying a Big Mac with that wad of Dogecoin burning a hole in your crypto wallet.

So what can Dorsey do about it? Simple: with Square Block, he has all the different parts to make a payment value chain for crypto that will take it from what is mainly a highly volatile investment vehicle today to a street-spendable retail currency of tomorrow.

Click here to read the full post about Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin bets.

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show

Did you know food tech will be a featured theme for the first time ever at the world’s biggest tech show in January and The Spoon is CES’s exclusive partner to help make it happen? 

There’s still time to grab a booth! If you want to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Starbucks is Trialing Animal-Free Milk. I Decided to Try it Out to See If It Tastes & Foams Like Regular Milk

In case you haven’t heard, Starbucks is trialing animal-free milk in the Seattle market. No, we’re not talking Oatly or another plant-based milk, but a milk with cow milk-identical proteins made in a lab.

The alt-milk is from Perfect Day, a company that uses precision fermentation to create its proprietary β-lactoglobulin animal-identical milk protein. The company’s protein, which received GRAS approval from the FDA last year, has primarily been sold to consumers in the form of ice cream (and soon cream cheese), but not in the form of a milk product. However, this move could signify that one could be on the way.

The company created a special 2% “barista-blend” version of its alt-milk especially for the Starbucks trial. Starbucks is currently trialing the milk at two locations in the Seattle market, Bellevue (a city east of Seattle) and Renton (south of Seattle).

Since I live in Seattle, I decided to head on over to Bellevue and see how precision-fermented milk tasted in a cup of Starbucks coffee.

Click here to see how Perfect Day’s animal-free milk foamed and tasted.

Zippin Checks In at JFK With Autonomous Checkout Technology

In a hurry but still hoping to grab a snack before you jump on your flight? If you’re at JFK in New York City, you might be in luck, at least if you’re passing Gate B 42. Because that’s where the airport just teamed up with Zippin, a maker of AI-powered cashierless checkout technology, and SSP America, an airport foodservice operator, to launch a new grab-and-go convenience concept called Camden Food Express.

According to the release sent to The Spoon, here’s how it works: Customers enter the store through a turnstile tapping their credit card as they enter and begin shopping by picking items off shelves. As they do, Zippin’s AI system automatically identifies the items and builds the customer’s virtual cart with the corresponding monetary value. When the customer leaves the store, the total amount spent is automatically charged to the card the customer used to check-in at the store entrance.

For Zippin, its partnership with JFK and SSP is a nice feather in the cap for a company with a portfolio of deployments, including hotels, stadiums, and grocery stores. Zippin’s move into airports follows other cashierless tech platforms like Amazon’s Just Walk Out, which showed up in Dallas airport earlier this year.

Click here to read the full story about Zippin’s deployment at JFK.

What The Heck is Causing The Plant-Based Meat Slowdown?

No two ways about it: Plant-based meat has hit a sales slump.

According to recent data from market watcher SPINS, sales in the overall plant-based meat market dropped 1.8% year over year for the four-week period ending October 3rd. This follows an even bigger drop in the category earlier in 2021 starting around April, when the plant-based category dropped over 15% year over year.

The drop in overall plant-based meat sales jibes with what some industry bellwethers are seeing. According to Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, his plant-based meat sales dropped in every channel the company sells into in the third quarter of this year. McCain was perplexed as to the reason and said the company is reevaluating their “investment thesis”.

Maple Leaf wasn’t the only one. Beyond, where company CEO Ethan Brown came out and said the plant-based meat company had seen its sales drop 13.9% year over year and forecast a potentially bumpy road ahead.

So what’s going on here? Fast-growing nascent markets are supposed to go up, not down and down some more.

While there’s no way to know for certain without more data. it’s worth taking a stab at potential causes for the drop in plant-based meat. 

You can read why plant-based meat sales are suddenly sluggish here.

The Media Was Fascinated with a TikTok Video of a Robot at Denny’s. Here’s What it Means.

Maybe it was a slow news week. Perhaps it was the sight of pancakes hitching a ride on a robot at America’s late-night diner. Whatever the reason, it seemed like every news organization wrote the same story about a TikTok video of server-robot showing up to dish out breakfast at a Denny’s.

They all had a variant of the same headline: “Viral Video of Robot at Denny’s Sparks Debate.” From there, the authors sifted through comments made by TikTok viewers, some cheering the idea of faster service and lower tips, others angry about a robot stealing a job.

While the sudden interest in a social media post about a server robot may say as much about the modern media landscape as it does about the use of robotics at restaurants, the reality is Denny’s deploying robots is kind of a big deal. After all, as America’s most famous 24-hour diner, Denny’s holds a special place in our collective consciousness, a place where almost anyone can get a cheap meal as well as apply for – and often get – a job.

And it’s these two things that Denny’s represents – a place with affordable food and an employer of everyday Americans – that seemed to be in tension with one another when looking at both the comments on the video on TikTok as well as the framing by the media.

To read the full story about Denny’s server robot, click here.

Hazel Technologies Announces New California Hub To Expand Produce Conserving Technology

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, the advent of new fertilizer production technologies allowed the world to grow crops at a new scale. While that so-called Green Revolution helped producers to feed more people than ever, it also created a focus on crop production rather than systems efficiency. And that imbalanced focus has led to a worldwide agricultural system that wastes about a third of the food it produces, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

During a stint as a chemistry fellow at the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Dr. Aidan Mouat wondered what could happen if we used chemistry to create a new revolution — one that targeted the food supply chain. That idea led to the 2015 launch of Hazel Technologies, a Chicago-based company that manufactures high-tech produce packaging and storage solutions to extend shelf life.

Read the full story about Hazel’s new hub, head over to The Spoon.  

Starbucks is Trialing Animal-Free Milk. I Decided to Try it Out to See If It Tastes & Foams Like Regular Milk

In case you haven’t heard, Starbucks is trialing animal-free milk in the Seattle market. No, we’re not talking Oatly or another plant-based milk, but a milk with cow milk-identical proteins made in a lab.

The alt-milk is from Perfect Day, a company that uses precision fermentation to create its proprietary β-lactoglobulin animal-identical milk protein. The company’s protein, which received GRAS approval from the FDA last year, has primarily been sold to consumers in the form of ice cream (and soon cream cheese), but not in the form of a milk product. However, this move could signify that one could be on the way.

The company created a special 2% “barista-blend” version of its alt-milk especially for the Starbucks trial. Starbucks is currently trialing the milk at two locations in the Seattle market, Bellevue (a city east of Seattle) and Renton (south of Seattle).

Since I live in Seattle, I decided to head on over to Bellevue and see how precision-fermented milk tasted in a cup of Starbucks coffee.

When I walked into the coffee shop, one of the first things I saw at the counter was a sign that said: “Try Your Favorite Beverage With Animal-Free Milk.” The sign said this animal-free milk is lactose-free (but does contain milk allergens). The sign also had a QR code which, when scanned, brought up a survey page on my phone titled “Perfect Day Milk Customer Questionnaire.” The page gave a brief description of this new milk and asked questions like “What questions do you have about “animal-free” milk? and “Should Starbucks offer animal-free milk at all of our stores?”.

Interestingly, the questionnaire didn’t ask how the milk tasted compared to cow or plant-based milk. To figure that out, I ordered two drinks: a tall caramel macchiato with animal-free milk and a tall caramel macchiato with regular 2% milk.

When the drinks arrived, they were essentially identical, except that the Perfect Day milk drink had a “DF” on the label (which, the barista explained, stood for “Dairy-Free”).

The reason I ordered a macchiato was, outside of it being a pretty tasty beverage, I wanted to see how precision fermented milk foamed when steamed compared to cow milk. When I took the lid off the drinks, it was clear it foamed up just fine, as you can see from the picture below (DF milk drink is on the left, cow milk drink on the right):

The real test, however, would be how it tasted. And after tasting both drinks side by side, I can say that this version of precision fermented milk tasted exactly like cow’s milk. The foam was just as, well, foamy, and the actual milk taste in the dairy-free version was not discernably different than that of cow’s milk. In fact, from a taste and experience perspective, the two drinks were identical.

Which, of course, is the goal.

If Starbucks and Perfect Day are using this trial to determine if they should make this milk more widely available, I expect a wider rollout may soon be on its way. Outside of the environmental benefits of precision fermented milk, it’s easy to see how offering a milk without lactose and absent potential other health concerns of factory-farmed dairy could be a big winner.

That said, I imagine the biggest challenge for Perfect Day and Starbucks will be figuring out a way to message it to customers. When I asked the cashier what “animal-free milk” is, she did a decent job describing it: “It’s supposed to mimic 2%, but it’s made in a lab, so it’s like very eco-friendly,” she told me. “But it still has milk protein in it, which makes it not dairy-free, but lactose-free.”

Again, decent, but my feeling is that some consumers might bristle at the term “made in a lab.” I know Perfect Day has been working on messaging their product, and while they’ve made progress, I would suggest dropping “lab-grown” as a descriptor. Maybe something like “brewed” or other terms borrowed from beer or other fermentation-driven beverages since, after all, companies like AB InBev are already putting their brewing skills to work in making animal-identical proteins.

If you live in the Seattle market, I would suggest you head on over to Bellevue or Renton and order an animal-free coffee drink yourself and let us know what you think.

Starbucks and Amazon Combine Forces to Create a Cashierless Coffee Shop

Wonder Twin powers, activate: Form of a cashierless coffee shop.

That’s right, today two Seattle-based giants, Starbucks and Amazon, announced they’ve combined their formidable superpowers to create a cashierless coffee shop. The new shop, called Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go, debuts today in New York City.

The new Pickup store uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, a system that features a variety of cutting-edge tech like computer vision and IoT sensors, as well as Amazon’s bio-authentication hand-scanning technology, Amazon One.

Here’s how it works: Customers order through the Starbucks app and can check order status on a digital screen. When it’s ready, coffee is picked up directly from the barista. The Pickup store also includes a mini-Go store stocked with snack and lunch items, as well as a lounge area. Access to both the store and the lounge is enabled through a one-time code from the Amazon Go app, a credit card swipe, or checking in via Amazon One’s hand-ID system. Once authenticated, customers can drop items from the store into their cart and will be charged once they leave.

The lounge is slightly different from the usual Starbucks store format in that it features individual work cubbies alongside the standard tables and chairs. Each cubby is equipped with USB ports and power outlets.

According to a company spokesperson, the two companies plan to open two additional Pickups over the next year, with the second one slated to open in the New York Times building. Beyond that, the company isn’t saying, but given Starbucks’ focus on upgrading their formats to enable quicker service and less overall contact post-pandemic, my guess is that if the initial stores work well, the Pickup format will become a go-to for Starbucks moving forward.

You can see the store in the B-roll provided by Starbucks below:

Starbucks Pickup Store, Featuring Amazon Just Walk Out Technology

Starbucks Reinstates Its Reusable Cup Program With a Low-Tech Twist

Starbucks will reinstate its reusable cup program in the U.S. on June 22, more than a year after suspending the program because of COVID-19-related safety concerns. 

The Seattle coffee giant halted its longtime reusable cup program in March of 2020. Since then, the chain has only served up beverages in its own to-go cups. However, as Starbucks pointed out in a letter this week, the company has a goal to reduce single-use cup waste by 50 percent by 2030 as part of a larger, multi-decade goal of becoming a resource positive company. 

The newly reinstated cup program will still offer customers that bring their own cups to Starbucks stores a $.10 discount. The company has also introduced a low-tech but seemingly effective way to get these reusables from the customers hands to the barista’s and back again: keep the cup in a ceramic mug while the barista makes the drink.

For now, the reusable program is only available to in-store customers, though Starbucks said it is “testing safe options” for reusable cups in the drive-thru lane. “For here ware” — ceramic mugs and plates — will once again be available for in-store customers, too.

Elsewhere, Starbucks is in the midst of a pilot test for its “Borrow a Cup” program, where customers can get their beverages in a reusable cup for a $1 deposit. For the program, Starbucks has partnered with Ridwell, a company that collects hard-to-recycle items, to offer a home-pickup service.

Worldwide, we throw out roughly 264 billion paper cups per year. Most of these are difficult to recycle because of their plastic inner linings. When it launched the Borrow a Cup program, Starbucks itself noted that a major hurdle to curbing this problem is convenience. “The challenge is how to make choosing reusables as convenient as you expect from Starbucks – no extra steps – especially with 80% of Starbucks beverages being enjoyed on the go,” the company said.

Other restaurant chains, including McDonald’s, Burger King and Just Salad, will grapple with a similar challenge as they further develop their own reusables programs. In all likelihood, the most effective strategy to cutting down cup waste (and packaging waste in general) will be a combination of bring-your-own-cup programs, partnerships with circular-packaging services, and regulatory requirements.

Starbucks Trialing a ‘Borrow a Cup’ Program in Seattle

Starbucks announced this week that it is currently trialing a reusable cup program at five Seattle, Washington stores for a period of two months. Dubbed the “Borrow a Cup” program, the trial is a continuation of an earlier single-store pilot that took place this past fall and winter in Seattle.

To participate, customers can order a beverage in a reusable cup for both in-person and mobile orders at participating stores. There is a $1 deposit. Once a customer is done with their drink, they can return the cup to participating stores, all of which will have return kiosks where customers can drop the empty cup. Upon returning the cup, customers also scan their Starbucks app to receive 10 bonus points on their Rewards account. (They get their deposit back, too.)

To clean the cups, Starbucks has partnered with a company called GO Box, which collects cups daily for cleaning and sanitizing, then returns them to circulation within 48 hours. 

Starbucks has also partnered with Ridwell, which offers a home pickup service for hard-to-recycle items, in case a customer can’t actually get to a store to return their cup. Users will get a Ridwell bin in which they can place their reusable cups for pickup at the front door. Users must purchase a Ridwell membership to join the pilot. Pricing varies from $10 to $14 depending on the type of subscription.

Starbucks noted today that a major hurdle on the path towards more widespread use of reusables is convenience. “The challenge is how to make choosing reusables as convenient as you expect from Starbucks – no extra steps – especially with 80% of Starbucks beverages being enjoyed on the go,” the company said in a statement today.

It’s all too possible that the extra steps of having to return a cup to the store or set up service with Ridwell may prove too involved for some consumers. Given that, we can assume the “Borrow a Cup” program is just one small step on Starbucks’ journey towards a more earth-friendly coffee business, particularly where cups are concerned. 

Worldwide, we throw out about 264 billion paper cups per year. Because of their plastic lining, these cups are difficult to recycle and therefore wind up in the landfill more often than not. In the U.S., reusable programs aren’t yet widespread, though that is slowly changing. Fellow QSRs Burger King and McDonald’s have both partnered with LOOP, the circular packaging service from TerraCycle, to trial reusable containers, including cups.

Both Starbucks and McDonald’s worked with Closed Loop Partners’ NextGen Consortium, which aims to reduce packaging waste, prior to the pandemic. Starbucks also had a “bring your own” reusables program in which customers could bring their own cups to Starbucks cafes and receive a small discount in return. That program was suspended because of COVID-19, and has not yet been reinstated at any Starbucks cafe.

Food Tech News: Vegan Chicken Nugget Vest and Edible Food Packaging

Happy Spring! No matter the weather or season, you can depend on The Spoon for keeping you up to date on news in the food tech space. In this week’s round-up we have news on a chicken nugget vest, edible food packaging, a new food delivery service, and Starbucks ‘ carbon neutral coffee bean goals.

LikeMeat releases “nugget pocket” for keeping vegan chicken nuggets warm

Germany-based LikeMeat makes plant-based meat alternatives like nuggets, patties, bratwurst, and schnitzel made from soy protein, and the company just announced the launch of a very specific clothing accessory – the “nugget pocket”. The piece fits like a vest, and has a large insulated pocket for keeping LikeMeat’s vegan chicken nuggets warm, as well as a pocket for hot sauce bottles and a napkin dispenser. It is made from organic cotton, upcycled delivery bags, and tencel, and can keep nuggets warm for an hour and a half. The vest is not available for purchase at the moment but can be won through a giveaway on LikeMeat’s Instagram. Additionally, LikeMeat launched four of its plant-based chicken products in Sprouts nationwide throughout the US earlier this month.

Photo from Roniz Daluse via Unsplash

Scientists from Russia and India developed edible film for food packaging

A group of scientists from Russia and India announced this week that they have developed an edible transparent film that can be used for food packaging of fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, and baked goods. The film is made from seaweed biopolymer sodium alginate, and can almost fully dissolve in water within a 24 hour period. The scientists cross-linked alginate molecules with a natural antioxidant ferulic acid, which makes the film more rigid and also helps preserve food longer. Although this product is new, it can be produced on an industrial scale with no need for special equipment.

Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash

Chekout, a new food delivery service, launches in New York City area

Chekout is a new delivery service recently launched in the New York City area that charges a flat delivery rate of $2.50 and a maximum 10% service fee to customers. The company aims to benefit restaurants and does not charge them to use the service while also offering free online exposure and marketing. Some food delivery services can cut into a restaurant’s profit with high service fees, which can even cause menu item prices to become inflated, and Chekout prides itself in avoiding this. So far, about 100 restaurants have signed up to use the service in the Manhattan area. The app can now be downloaded from the Apple app store, and Chekout has plans to expand its service throughout the US.

Food Tech News: New Asian e-Grocer, Oatly’s pre-IPO Starbucks Rollout

Umamicart, a new Asian e-commerce grocer, launches in NY metro area

This past week, the new Asian e-grocer Umamicart launched in the NY metro area, and its next-day grocery delivery service is now available in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The platform offers Asian pantry staples, meats, seafood, tofu, fruits, vegetables, snacks, and drinks, with around 500 different grocery items currently listed. Umamicart also sells kits for making different meals like sushi, dumplings, hot-pots, and Mapo tofu. The platform requires a $30 minimum purchase, and orders less than $49.99 will be charged a $6.99 delivery fee.

Photo from Wix Restaurant’s website

Wix Restaurants Acquires SpeedETab to help enhance online restaurant presence

Wix Restaurants (a subsidiary of Wix) is a website builder for restaurants, and this week the company announced its acquisition of SpeedETab, a tool that allows restaurants to integrate online ordering into existing platforms. The addition of SpeedETab will allow restaurants signed up with Wix Restaurants to streamline orders from multiple channels, manage offline and online orders, and integrate various restaurant POS systems.

Photo from Oatly’s website

Oatly rolls out in Starbucks nationwide before IPO

Oatly, producers of oat-based vegan dairy products, announced this week that it had reached a deal with Starbucks to serve its oat milk in all Starbucks throughout the U.S. Starbucks will feature Oatly’s non-dairy oat milk in several new drinks, including the Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso and Honey Oatmilk Latte. Oatly milk will be available on Starbucks ‘ menu year-round, as it is now part of the core menu. Oatly uses a proprietary process to create its oat milk that incorporates certain enzymes to break down finely milled oats, which results in a naturally sweet and creamy non-dairy milk. The company filed for its initial public offering last week, the details of which will be shared with the public in the next few weeks.

Photo from SIMPLIFY The Brewer’s Kickstarter campaign

SIMPLIFY the Brewer launches on Kickstarter

A first glance, the new coffee brewing equipment called SIMPLIFY the Brewer from Bathtub Coffee looks like a transparent pour-over. However, this brewer was meticulously designed by a former professional barista, Ryo John Ito. Other pour-over brewers depend on the coffee “bloom” (splashing a small amount of hot water over grounds to allow the degassing of carbon dioxide) for a good cup of coffee, and the pour-over brewing method often takes three to four minutes to complete. SIMPLIFY the Brewer’s design includes a larger opening for coffee to flow through and minimal contact between the brewer and paper filter. As a result, a strong cup of coffee is brewed in one to two minutes, which is convenient for busy coffee shops. The Kickstarter campaign for the coffee brewer is live, and pledging ¥2,720 (about $26 USD), guarantees a SIMPLIFY the Brewer shipped to you in May 2021.