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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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SKS 2018: Meet the Winners of the SKS Startup Showcase

With so much of the innovation and breakthroughs in food and technology coming from the startups, we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the amazing work these companies are doing in the space. Throughout the last day and a half, various startups took the Smart Kitchen Summit stage to present their products. And while it’s never an easy task, our panel of judges managed to whittle the contenders down to a few winners, which we’ve summarized for you here:

Excellence in Design: MoJoe Brewing
ChefSteps co-founder Chris Young awarded the Excellence in Design award to MoJoe Brewing. MoJoe makes a portable coffee brewer and travel mug combo that lets users brew hot coffee or tea on the go, using any temperature water (even cold!). The device can be powered by a wall socket, car charger, or a rechargeable battery, and is slim enough to fit in a standard cupholder.

Best in Innovation: Garbi
Presented by Zorlu Ventures, the Best in Innovation award went to a company called Garbi. The startup makes a smart trash can that recognizes items you throw away and reorders them for you from local e-commerce retailers. The founder, Brandon Bourn, told the audience Garbi is also working on a recycling feature that would let Garbi’s garbage cans “sort” items into trash, recycling, or compost.

Overall Winner: Soggy Food Sucks
Michael Wolf stated that the overall winner solved a big consumer problem with a simple solution. The award went to the wonderfully named Soggy Food Sucks, which makes a patented peel-and-stick patch that absorbs condensation and to keep your food fresh — and never soggy — during transit.

We chatted with founder Bill Birgen (a former aerospace engineer!) a few weeks ago about his company and their mission to do one thing: keep restaurant leftovers and food delivery at its best.

Check back for more posts throughout the day, and follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

SKS18: Innit Updates Shopwell App, GE Partners with SideChef and Hestan

At the Smart Kitchen Summit today, guided-cooking platform Innit announced an upgrade to its Shopwell app, which helps users discover personalized food recommendations.

Michael Wolf wrote about Shopwell on the Spoon shortly after it launched in 2017:

“The app, which has been downloaded over 2.5 million times, scans packaged foods at retail and provides a score based on the user’s profile. The app’s patented algorithm helps to analyze packaged food and give real-time matching scores against a user’s personalized nutritional profile which factors in a user’s gender, age, allergies and dietary goals.

The deal extends Innit, which has developed a platform for appliance makers to create connected products for the kitchen, further into the nutritional and shopping portions of the food experience. ShopWell’s database of over 400 thousand packaged food items and consumer facing app allows Innit to touch the consumer’s food experience from the point of purchase to consumption.”

The new Shopwell app will double coverage to encompass over 800,000 items, and also adds more social sharing capability so users can make personalized shopping lists which they can share on social media. If the food doesn’t get a high score, Shopwell can recommend “trade-up” foods to better meet your nutrition goals.

GE cooktop with integrated Hestan smart cooking technology.

Across the Smart Kitchen Summit lobby, GE Appliances had an announcement of their own. Two, actually.

First off, the appliance giant announced they are partnering with mobile cooking platform SideChef. GE’s 2019 appliances will feature 5,000 recipes from chefs and bloggers, and will also have meal planning and guided cooking capabilities.

GE also announced it’s working with smart-cooking system Hestan Cue to create induction cooktops and ranges for their Café appliance line. Using Hestan technology, the cooktops can automatically adjust cooking temperature as users go through video-guided recipes.

Café is the first to offer induction ranges with built-in Hestan technology. Owners can download the Hestan Cue app, which will walk them through step-by-step recipe preparation and simultaneously control the temperature. There are also options that can heat pans to the ideal temperature for common dishes, such as seared scallops or scrambled eggs.

Keep checking in for more news from the Smart Kitchen Summit: new products, platforms, updates, and more! Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Silo Comes Out of Stealth at the Smart Kitchen Summit

Today at the Smart Kitchen Summit, a new kitchen hardware company emerged from stealth mode. Silo makes a countertop vacuum-sealer system they claim will keep food fresh up to five times longer than your average plastic container.

The system consists of a vacuum base and a set of plastic containers, and integrates with Alexa. Founder Tal Lapidot first got the idea for Silo when he was looking for a better way to keep food fresh at home. Applying his engineering background to vacuum storage, he decided to try the technology on containers instead of plastic bags, which are single-use and less environmentally friendly.

“I wanted something fast and easy,” he told me. “Take a container of food, place it on something, and get it vacuum sealed with one touch.”

Since the product he wanted didn’t exist yet, he decided to invent it. Lapidot filed a patent for his technology, and in 2016 he quit his job to pursue Silo full-time.

From the beginning, he knew he needed to make his product smart. “Many of us don’t remember what food we put in the fridge one week ago,” said Lapidot. “The device can give you a stamp of approval that that food is still good… It’s the missing piece.”

Originally, Silo used an app to track food freshness. But users didn’t always have their phones when cooking, and there’s also the whole “sticky fingers in the kitchen” issue. To solve that, the company decided to turn to voice.

Users tell Alexa what food they’re storing with their Silo and the technology will track how long that food lasts. If you ask Alexa what you have on hand for dinner, it will list off what items in your fridge are ready for cooking. You can also ask it about the state of specific foods.

According to Lapidot, Silo is the first company to make a device that has Alexa built in, which means that there’s a fully enabled Alexa Dot in the base of the device. Not only can Silo vacuum seal your food, it can also read you the news, dictate a recipe, or play some tunes.

The company will launch its Kickstarter campaign on October 16. Lapidot said he couldn’t yet disclose prices, but told us that backers could purchase the Silo vacuum seal device plus bundles of containers.

Silo turned to Kickstarter to source funds because the product attracts early adapters. “We want to make waves,” said Lapidot. They’re planning to ship by Q3 of 2019.

As we know all too well at The Spoon, crowdfunded kitchen appliances can have a tricky time making the leap from concept to shipment. Lapidot, however, is confident that won’t be an issue for his company. “Many times, hardware companies work very hard developing a prototype, but they don’t always understand the realities of manufacturability,” he said.

Silo already has two manufacturing partners, one of which is the largest manufacturer of food-grade plastics in China. Many on their team also hail from the manufacturing sector, so they understand potential pitfalls and can avoid them.

Keep checking in for more news from the Smart Kitchen Summit: new products, platforms, updates, and more!

Dizzconcept Makes Folding Kitchens for Cramped Spaces

In our urbanized world of tiny spaces, finding room for a kitchen can be tricky. That’s the problem that Dizzconcept, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is trying to solve. They create super compact pop-up kitchens that fold, so they can fit into small apartments, cramped offices, and more.

Read our Q&A with CEO Darko Špiljarić to learn a little more about how Dizzconcept hopes to bring kitchens to all sorts of spaces, no matter how tiny. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

This interview has been translated by Karlo Krnić and edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Dizzconcept: PIA kitchens are dedicated to solving a number of issues that mainly impact young people in urban areas. PIA kitchens save valuable space and have low rental cost, energy requirements and impact on the environment. We have a fully functional kitchen that only takes up 1 to 1.6 square meters (depending on the model) and each comes with a support for a 40″ TV.

What inspired you to start Dizzconcept?
I was inspired by a personal need to find work that was creative. I was especially drawn to create innovative products which improve people’s lives.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
The most challenging part of our kitchen startup is introducing our idea to the architects, interior designers and developers. It can be tricky to make them open to a new way of designing small spaces.

How will Dizzconcept change the day-to-day life of its users?
The buyers of our products enjoy using them. When designing a product such as PIA, users get numerous other benefits in addition to good design: better organization space, lower rental cost, lower heating and cooling costs, lower energy and material cost. Besides, they feel good because they’re contributing to protecting the environment.

What’s next for Dizzconcept?
Currently we are perfecting our outdoor kitchen set (Nota) that will introduce significant innovations and improvements over the typical outdoor kitchen. We are also developing a new space-saving program called MOVI.

Thanks, Darko!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Pizzametry Delivers Made-to-Order Pies from a Vending Machine

Have you ever perused the selection in a vending machine and wished for… more? You might be glad to hear about Pizzametry, the vending machine which bakes up hot, fresh personal pizzas on demand. We were certainly intrigued, which is why we chose Pizzametry as one of the 13 finalists to pitch at the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase on October 8-9th.

Check out our Q&A with Jim Benjamin, President of Pizzametry maker APM Partners, to learn more about the piping hot world of pizza tech — and the inspiration behind their pizza vending machine. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Q&A has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Pizzametry: Pizzametry is a first of its kind, on demand 24/7 automated pizza-service for consumers.

–  A top quality pizza prepared from fresh ingredients = GREAT TASTING PIZZA!!

– Prepared food in a vending machine format.

– Just bring power and location.

– Internet connected (wired, wireless or cellular) and monitored.

– Easy to stock (with ingredients 150 pizzas) and to maintain.

– Designed for health and safety.

What inspired you to create Pizzametry?
Many years ago, Pizzametry inventor Puzant Khatchadourian was inspired when he was hungry with a stranded stomach in Manhattan, NY in the wee hours of the morning; everywhere was closed for a hot meal! Puzant and a group of investors did extensive consumer research, including traditional focus group format highlighted the need to create an efficient delivery system for a hot, fresh pizza in minutes to a significantly underserved market.

Then, a group of highly talented industry engineers went to work to develop a machine to automatically MAKE a fresh pizza. With over $14 million invested in the design — and rigorous testing of the machine in the development cycle — the company went through many iterations of the machine to create one with process perfection!

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?Finding the right market placements for Pizzametry product and service, as well as alignment with the food technology and food automation markets.

How will Pizzametry change the day-to-day life of its users?
Consumers will never again be left stranded with an empty stomach; they’ll be able to get a hot, fresh pizza meal anytime and anywhere!

What is next for Pizzametry?
Next up is investment and funding for Phase 2.0 go-to-market. We also plan to build and deploy 30 productions machines into the food tech marketplace.

Thanks, Jim!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Suggestic Brings Personalized Nutrition to Your Fingertips

As we all know, it’s easy to decide to eat healthier — but sticking to your diet plan can be very tricky indeed. That’s where, Suggestic, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, comes in. The young company is leveraging technology to help users outline individualized meal plans, then connects them with recipes, grocery stores, and restaurants to help them stick to it.

Read our Q&A with co-founder Shai Rozen to learn a little more about how Suggestic hopes to make the world healthier through personalization, augmented reality, and some serious focus. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Rozen: Our goal at Suggestic is to guide consumers through personalized nutrition journeys towards their individual health goals.

With our unique service, users can forget about reading, counting and memorizing to figure out what is best to eat. They don’t need to sort through the huge amount of misinformation about what foods are “healthy” for them. We provide each person with the ease of mind that they are doing the right thing at all times, delivered conveniently at their fingertips.

Our App is backed by powerful and proprietary AI, which delivers precise recommendations of what to order at a restaurant, what to buy at a grocery store and what to cook at home, and then tracks user progress to adjust each suggestion.

Users can select a free dietary filter, or subscribe to one of our premium programs curated by renowned health and nutrition experts.

What inspired you to start Suggestic?
My co-founder and I have both seen firsthand the devastating effects improper nutrition can have, but we’ve also seen the power of food as a means of health. We both saw our fathers pass away from type 2 diabetes-related complications and we both managed to revert our own pre-diabetes through nutrition.

Our mission is to help shift healthcare from treatment of symptoms to primordial prevention through “precision eating.”

And we don’t just want people to be “healthy”. We want each individual’s health optimized rather than just reduced to an asymptomatic average.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
The possibilities! There’s so much that can and needs to be done in the world of food tech that honestly the hardest part is deciding where to invest our efforts, and how to keep focused on what matters most.

Also, when you have a mission that’s also social and positive in nature, it’s pretty amazing how many people just want to help. It’s truly inspiring. But it can easily be a distraction as well, so focus is key.

How will Suggestic change the day-to-day life of its users?
We already do, everyday. By helping our users make the best possible food choices at any moment in time we have a direct impact on their health and wellbeing.

Q: What’s next for Suggestic?
The future looks great. We have scheduled over a dozen new premium program launches with our partner authors and experts for 2019, and also have new integrations coming up with lab tests that will allow our users to further optimize their individual health journeys. And we are also working on an Android version, as well as possible a stand-alone app for our Suggestic Lens (augmented reality) experience.

Thanks, Shai! Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Kabaq Wants to Create the World’s First Virtual Reality Food Court

There’s no denying that we live in an age of curated images, where every Instagram photo is cropped, edited, and put through a filter before it’s sent into the stratosphere.

Kabaq, one of the 13 companies pitching at the Startup Showcase for the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) this October, is leveraging virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) to create a more immersive food experience for our image-obsessed society. Thus far, the company has worked with Magnolia Bakery to help engaged couples see their wedding cake before the big day, and also led an AR campaign to let Snapchat users play with 3D-visualized pizzas.

But Kabaq founder Alper Guler has much grander ambitions for his company. Read our Q&A with Guler to get a better picture (pun intended) of their vision for a future in which our food choices are guided by VR and AR.

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Kabaq: As Kabaq, we create the most lifelike 3D models of food in the world through AR/VR. Our main goal is to help customers to decide what to eat, while at the same time helping restaurants to push premium items and tell stories about their food.

What inspired you to start Kabaq?
The era of Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat has changed what and how we eat at restaurants. Today food isn’t just about taste; it’s also about the visual experience. Now social platforms and smartphone manufacturers have created this shift in food, investing and pushing heavily in immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality. These two emerging trends inspired us to bring Kabaq into life.

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?
Food and technology are connected to dining experiences more than ever. Technology is improving our experience of how we grow, source, discover and order food. But adaptation of new technology has been slow, and we are experiencing a relatively slow response from the market.

How will Kabaq change the day-to-day life of its users?
In the future I believe smart glasses will replace smartphones. Everybody will use these smart glasses to engage with digital experiences around them. Imagine you are in this restaurant, using your augmented reality glasses: you can see the whole menu on your table virtually, and even order through your glasses. Don’t worry about the check — it is already paid through your glasses.

VR can also change how we order delivery. Think about how we used to connect to the internet through dial-up modems. We needed to disconnect from the internet to call and order food for pick-up. Then, companies like Seamless created platforms to order food online. With mobile phones and location-based services like UberEats, the experience became even more smooth.

In the near future I believe when you are connected to VR, you will also order your food in VR. We will create the world’s first virtual food court for people to visit through VR and order directly through the same system.

What’s next for Kabaq?
We are creating beneficial use-cases for using AR in-restaurants, delivery apps, marketing, catering and cookbooks. We’re working to bring AR to all aspects of food — and soon.

—

Thanks, Alper! Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase and get a taste of how Kabaq applies VR to food.

Ripe.io Racks up $2.4 Million for its “Blockchain for Food”

Today Ripe Technology INC (better known as Ripe.io) announced the completion of a $2.4 million funding seed round, led by Maersk Growth.

Founded in 2017, Ripe.io is working to create what they call “The Blockchain of Food.” When Michael Wolf had Ripe.io’s co-founder and CEO Raja Ramachandran on the Smart Kitchen Show last year, he said:

If a farmer wants to say I harvest strawberries these two days, well, they can say that, but do they say that to everyone? … That’s the beauty of blockchain. It manages the decentralized nature of the food business, so people can post data, they can protect it, they can share it, they can create records with it… In the end for the consumer, they basically get a longer record.

That means that when people go to a restaurant or a grocery store, they can know exactly where their food comes from, whether or not it’s organic or GMO, and how fresh it is. Ripe.io hopes that blockchain technology can help digitize supply chains end-to-end and ensure maximum food transparency for the end consumer. Which, as Ramachandran explained on the podcast, is a $30-40 billion dollar market.

Other companies are also turning to blockchain to bolster their food businesses. Goodr is a startup which harnesses blockchain to reduce large-scale corporate food waste, and FoodLogiQ recently piloted a blockchain pilot to see how this emerging tech could increase supply chain transparency. But Ramachandran doesn’t see the blockchain of food as a zero sum game. “It’s not going to be one blockchain, it’s going to be many,” he said. “And we all have to connect.”

We’ve reached out to Ramachandran for comment on how his company plans to use their new funds, and will update this article if we hear back. 

Ramachandran will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle on October 8-9th, discussing blockchain and food with executives from Goodr and Walmart. Join us — use discount code THESPOON to get 25% off your tickets. 

Meet the Finalists for the Smart Kitchen Summit 2018 Startup Showcase

Year after year, one of the most popular — and exciting — parts of the Smart Kitchen Summit (SKS) is the Startup Showcase. Not only do you get to watch as startup founders with an idea for the next great kitchen appliance, AI-driven personalization app or food robot get on stage at Benaroya Hall and tell us how they will change the way we cook and eat forever, but you get to follow that up by seeing, touching and tasting all the products at our Showcase happy hour.

This year we had an amazing pool of applicants, but have finally whittled the list down to 13 startups which we think show some serious potential. Learn about the diverse set of finalists, then snag your tickets to SKS to see live demos of their technology on the show floor.

Startup Showcase Finalists

Kabaq 3D Food Technologies

Kabaq partners with restaurants and food brands to create immersive experiences for their customers. Using AR, VR, and mixed reality, the startup creates 3D visualizations of food so people can visualize exactly what their next meal (or wedding cake) will look like.

Suggestic

Suggestic combines AI, AR and personalized nutrition to help people eat better. Users can input health goals and Suggestic’s app will create weekly meal plans, suggest restaurants, and give fitness tips. They’re currently working on an AR feature which will let users “read” restaurant menus to determine which items are on their diet plan — and which aren’t.

Dizzconcept

Croatian startup Dizzconcept designs pop-up kitchens designed to fit into our urbanized world. Their portable kitchens take up 1.6 square meters of space and function as a TV cabinet when closed. However, they open up to reveal a fully operational mini-kitchen, including a sink, fridge, and stove.

Dexai Robotics

Dexai Robotics makes a robotic arm for foodservice. Named ‘Alfred,’ the robot can learn restaurant layouts and recipes and rotate hand attachments for different ingredients. It also integrates with restaurants’ POS systems so that it can start preparing food as soon as an order comes in.

Soggy Food Sucks

Have you ever experienced the crushing disappointment of finding that your delivery fries have gotten soggy in transit? As its name implies, Soggy Food Sucks is out to fix that nagging problem plaguing food delivery. They make a patented peel-and-stick patch which absorbs condensation and can keep your food from getting soggy during transit.

Mimesis

Mimesis is the maker of smartcook, a connected all-in-one kitchen appliance that aims to streamline home cooking. Their smart surface acts as a visual interface with interactive recipes, video cooking lessons, and online grocery ordering, and also functions as a stove, cutting board, and kitchen scale.

Pizzametry

Pizzametry’s concept is pretty darn simple: pizza vending machines. They can make and cook 8-inch pizzas (in cheese or pepperoni) in three and a half minutes.

MyFavorEats

MyFavorEats uses AI to create modular, easily customizable online recipes. The startup translates online recipes into a machine-readable format, so users can easily swap ingredients and personalize meals to their particular diets, preferences, and kitchen appliances.

HotBot Beverages

Hot Bot is a two-part system which combines an in-store induction heating unit with special drink bottles. The result? Grab-and-go hot beverages and soups available in restaurants, grocery stores, office canteens, and more — all in roughly a minute.

MoJoe Brewing Co.

Mojoe is a portable coffee brewer/travel mug that lets users brew coffee on the go. Pop in some ground coffee or tea (you can buy a Mojoe pod or custom-fill your own) into the brewer, add any temperature water, and brew. The device can be powered by wall socket, car charger, or a rechargeable battery, and fits in a standard cupholder.

Klove Chef

Klove Chef is a white label voice technology service for the kitchen. Their technology can guide users through recipe preparation, sync up with smart home devices to monitor cook temperature and time, and can also order groceries.

MockMill

The Mockmill 100 is a tabletop stone mill for home/restaurant/bakery production of bakery-quality flours, also for milling of spices, pulses,and other dry foods.

Garbi

Garbi is a smart trash can that recognizes items you throw away and reorders them for you from local e-commerce retailers. They’re also working on a recycling functionality that would let Garbi’s garbage cans indicate to users whether items should go in the trash, recycling, or compost.

Curious about this diverse group of food tech startups? Join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit on October 8-9th to see them pitch live, ask them about their companies, and learn which will win the $10,000 prize! Make sure to get your tickets today and save 25% today with discount code SPOON. 

Better Meat Co. Says to Make Meat Better, Just Add Plants

Picture a corporate cafeteria. One day, the food director decides to add a vegan sausage option to the menu, just to see how it’ll sell. What percentage of people do you think would opt for the vegan sausages over pork?

That’s the question that Better Meat Co.’s co-founder and COO Joanna Bromley asked onstage at the Good Food Conference yesterday as she pitched her company before an audience of the future meat-curious. According to her research, a safe bet is that five percent of people would go for vegan sausages. Maybe ten.

Better Meat Co. hopes to increase the number of people eating plants over meat — knowingly or unknowingly — by creating a plant-based protein that can be blended seamlessly into processed meats. Their wheat protein product can replace 30% of the meat in processed foods, such as sausages and dumplings, creating an end result that’s healthier and more sustainable — but tastes indistinguishable from the real thing. “The idea is that you can’t see or taste the difference,” Bromley told me in an interview.

Founded in early 2018, the Sacramento-based startup’s first product is specifically suited to blend with pork, but Bromley said that they’re currently working to develop blending agents for other meats, too.

Others are also pushing the blended burger agenda by adding mushrooms into their ground chuck. Sonic recently launched a blended burger which contains 25% mushrooms, playing up the health and taste angle. High-end chefs like Richard Blais (see him at the Smart Kitchen Summit this October!) have also jumped on the plant-blended burger bandwagon. And the James Beard Foundation recently launched the Blended Burger Project, challenging top chefs to create burgers partially made with mushrooms. According to Bromley, however, the problem is twofold: mushrooms cost more than meat and don’t contain the same amount of protein.

Better Meat Co.’s plant-based alternative, on the other hand, costs roughly the same as meat and has a comparable level of protein, making it a more feasible option for industrial meat processors. With the recent boom of plant-based and clean meat companies, you might wonder why we need to bother with blended meat at all. For one thing: scale. Plant-based meat companies are having difficulty meeting growing demand for their products, and even when you can track them down they can be prohibitively expensive. Clean meat isn’t commercially available yet, and it’ll be a while before it’s cost-competitive with the traditional stuff.

“By all means, clean meat and plant-based meat will continue to evolve over the years to come,” Bromley explained. “But for now, we have blending.”

And we do need something now if we want to cut down on the shockingly high environmental footprint of meat production. Americans are projected to eat more meat in 2018 than ever before, despite a growing demand for plant-based proteins. Blended meat can draft off of both of these trends.

Better Meat Co.’s overall strategy is refreshingly realistic. Besides the current constraints around clean and plant-based meats, there will always be carnivores who think that a meal without meat is no meal at all. For those who don’t want to opt for the vegan sausage, for whatever the reason, blended meat offers a nice — and affordable — compromise. “It’s a bridge between where we are now and where we’ll be ultimately,” said Bromley. “It’s a continuum.”

As of now, Better Meat Co. has raised over $800,000. They’re currently in pre-sales and are planning to launch with several meat processing partners over the next month.

Coworking Space Meets Healthy Supper Club at Hall in Boston

Here’s a riddle for you: What do you get when you cross a community center, a coworking space, and a healthy café?

Answer: Hall, a 2,400 square foot space in Boston’s Back Bay with tables, chairs, and desks which serves as a workspace during the day and transforms into a meeting space and dinner club at night. Albert Nichols founded Hall out of his apartment in 2015. He wanted to create a space where busy professionals could come together, meet new people, and talk about their days over a healthy meal, without having to spend all their money at restaurants. Sort of like roommate dinners, but for adult-y adults (read: no floor sitting or boxed macaroni cheese).

Meals are available Sunday through Thursday from 4:30pm until closing time at 10pm. The rotating menu, developed and prepared by two staff chefs, includes dishes like Vegan Pad Thai and Ginger Miso Salmon. Each night they offer two meal options: a “Light Option” that’s vegan, gluten-free, and nut-free; and a “Hearty Option” which features meat. All meals are vegetable-centric and can be eaten at the Hall or taken home.

A few of Hall’s meal options.

In addition to meals five days a week, Hall offers many of typical coworking spot amenities: coffee, fast Wi-Fi, a variety of cushy seating options, and networking opportunities. It also offers a weekly agenda with events like Fireside Chats featuring community members and Town Hall meetings.

Hall has two membership tiers: $350/month, the “All Access” membership will give you access to Hall during open hours (6am-10pm Mon-Fri, 6am-6pm Sat and Sun), with coffee, meals, and networking events included. The “Home Base” membership includes access to the Hall and networking events, plus the option to pay $9 for a meal and $3 for coffee.

As of late, coworking spaces have been embracing new angles and offering new amenities to attract the growing number of remote workers. In addition to more traditional models like WeWork, companies gearing coworking areas towards women, the tech community, and social justice. A few months ago Jenn Marsten wrote about how posh restaurants are turning their dining rooms into coworking spaces during lunch hours — though most have abbreviated hours.

I myself work out of a coworking space in Seattle which, for a comparable monthly fee to the Hall, gives me a floating desk, free coffee, wifi, and access to community events. The place does its job of giving me a workplace that’s not my studio apartment — but now that I know about Hall, I’m really wishing I also got healthy dinners. For nights when I’m too busy/tired to cook, the option to snag a home-cooked meal on my way out of the office is a lot more tempting than a microwave dinner or the hefty delivery pricetag. Plus, having meals would incentivize me to stay longer and get some work done over supper — or hang with my fellow coworkers — instead of heading home to eat on the couch.

Many coworking spots — my own included — offer occasional free meals or drinks to members for networking events. However, the emphasis on community and co-dining makes Hall unique. At a time where remote work and freelancing is becoming more the norm, the opportunity to work in a space that provides a communal, supportive vibe is a valuable one. And the fact that Pad Thai is included doesn’t hurt.

Buttermilk Co’s Microwaveable Indian Meals Merge Authenticity and Convenience

Founder Mitra Raman got the idea for Buttermilk Co. because of a craving for rasan: a tomato-y South Indian stew and her favorite food. Raman’s mother gave her the ingredients in a bag — all Raman had to do was add water and boil. The results were so good that Raman, who was working as a software engineer at Amazon at the time, decided to launch a company which sold ready-to-eat South Indian meals that tasted good and cooked in a flash.

In March 2017, she did just that. Buttermilk’s vegetarian packaged meals are made with fresh ingredients in a shared kitchen space in Seattle’s International District and shipped nationwide in refrigerated boxes. (As of now, their food is only available online.) Once delivered, the meals can be stored in the fridge for 5-7 days or frozen for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to eat, just add water and microwave for 5 minutes, and you’ve got a piping hot bowl of rasan or chana masala. 

Buttermilk just might have come along at the right time. Buttermilk’s single-serving pouches, which average around $5 each, are perfect for young-ish folks who live alone and spend too much time in the office to worry about grocery shopping or — God forbid — cooking, but who don’t like the idea of ordering delivery every night. It’s also smack-dab in the middle of two large trends in millennial dining: “authentic” ethnic food, and convenience/instant gratification.

Though the dishes are derived from actual South Indian recipes, Rasan said that she works hard to make sure all of Buttermilk’s dishes are approachable to all consumers — not just those who grew up eating them.

To increase their appeal to an audience who might just be dipping their toe into South Indian cuisine, Buttermilk has a few themed starter packs as easy entry points. For example, the 5-pack “I Can’t Do Spicy” combo ($23.50) is meant to dispel the myths that all Indian food is searingly hot. There are also packs geared towards travelers constantly greeted with an empty fridge, and those who want to expand their Indian food experience beyond curry.

On the other side, there’s also the homesickness angle: which is what prompted Raman to start Buttermilk in the first place. Indian food is pretty complex to prepare, requiring a good bit of time and a well-stocked spice drawer. Not everyone has the time/desire/know-how to make a giant pot of sambar, even with the guidance of a meal kit. And for South Indians who have grown up eating homemade khichdi and daal, the offerings from the local Indian joint might not sate their cravings for food like their mom used to make.

Buttermilk solves all of these issues with a speedy cook time and low price point, making them faster and cheaper than ordering delivery (until UberEats comes out with those drones, at least). All of the meals are also vegetarian, which capitalizes off of the recent boom in demand for plant-based foods.

I had a chance to sample some of Buttermilk’s upma (a wheat-based porridge) at a Seattle Made’s Food and Beverage event this June and thought it was delicious: lightly spiced, fluffy, and different than anything I’d ever tasted. I did not grow up eating South Indian food, but I found myself passing by their sample table another time to snag one more taste. It was delicious and something I would never make myself, but I found myself thinking about the dish for days afterwards. I could totally see myself stocking my office fridge with a few packets for lunch, or keeping them in the freezer to replace my typical emergency meal of a frozen burrito.

As of now, Raman is Buttermilk’s only full-time employee. She work with recipe curators and has a few part-time employees to help with cooking, packaging, and shipping. Over the next few weeks, they’re looking to hire a food scientist to work on making their dishes healthier (another trend!) while preserving their taste. Her company was also accepted into the Y Combinator Spring 2018 cohort and pitched at Demo Day earlier this week, after which they started fundraising.

“We know this isn’t something you’re eating everyday,” said Raman. Our research shows that, for the most part, millennials are cooking or ordering delivery instead of reheating meals. But the high quality of Buttermilk’s offerings — as well as their reasonable price point and badge of “authenticity” could make them an exception to the rule.