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suggestic

February 7, 2020

In 5 Years We’ll Each Have a GPS to Guide All Our Food Choices, says Suggestic CEO

Ten years ago if you were driving somewhere you’d have to either memorize directions or print out a paper map. Cut to now, and it’s almost unheard of to drive anywhere new without a GPS guiding you, turn by turn.

That’s exactly what Victor Chapela, CEO of personalized nutrition company Suggestic, thinks will happen to our diets. He believes that in five years, AI-driven technology will “drive” our food decisions just like a GPS drives our directions now. The result? Very high personalization, and comprehensive food discoverability.

If you want to know more about how we actually get to this future, you’ll want to come see Chapela speak at Customize, our food personalization event, on February 27th in NYC. (Use code SPOON15 to snag 15% off your tickets!)

But first, check out this Q&A below to learn a bit more about Suggestic and why Chapela envisions a future where you can get personalized recommendations in your kitchen, grocery stores, and even on restaurants menus.

Tell us a little bit about Suggestic and how it capitalizes on personalization.
Suggestic is a personalized nutrition platform, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that uses advanced technology to create and deliver customized eating plans that are individually tailored to each person. Suggestic helps users plus healthcare professionals and businesses to not only select a dietary plan that is right for their health goals but it then proactively suggests what to eat, even at restaurants, through Suggestic’s patented Augmented Reality (AR) technology.

Suggestic’s programs make it easy for its users, clients, and members to stick to their tailored dietary program and see results. Suggestic’s science-based approach to nutrition is designed to help all users find success in their programs. 

What are some of the biggest challenges in bringing personalized diets and nutrition to consumers?
The biggest challenge is that people have diverse body chemistries that react differently to foods so something that would usually be deemed as “healthy” may not always be from one person to the next. Also, people have trouble staying with an eating plan so we need to accurately determine how best to customize plans that consumers will follow. With AI, we can create personalized nutrition plans that best fit a person so that they can stick with their plan and ultimately be successful in their quest for a healthier and happier life. We have so much knowledge of food and we can take it to another level with the use of AI — it takes something very complex and makes it very simple and actionable.

We can work with each individual person to filter out foods specific to their diet, whether because of allergies, health concerns or personal preferences, so that people can easily see the options right for them. This type of tailored plan not only makes it easier for people to follow, but it also allows people to actually eat the foods they like as AI learns with a person, leading to greater success in sticking with a plan.

Why do you think that there has been a rise in interest around personalized nutrition over the past few years?
There is no one-size-fits-all diet that works equally well for everyone. Even though browsing social media you would think otherwise, based on all the “magic bullet” dieting programs now promoted. People are frustrated. They are only now discovering that they need to find out the nutrition needs of their unique biologies.

What do you think personalized food or drink will look like 5 years down the road?
Today we are seeing signs of several huge industries colliding. Technology is connecting the healthcare and wellness industries to food and nutrition options. 

In the next five years, we will see an ecosystem emerge that will allow for two different things to happen simultaneously: very high personalization and comprehensive food discoverability. 

First, we will be able to seamlessly stack all types of personalization, goals, preferences, and requirements. This will allow my food options to consider everything I care about and everything my body needs. It will connect all the information about myself, from my blood chemistry, genes and microbiome to my activity, sleep and food intake.

Second, we will be able to filter and sort out all the food options around us with this personalized profile. We will have all the restaurants, grocery products, recipes, and food delivery automatically being selected to match what we like best out of what is best for us.

In five years we will use technology to find food in the same way we use our GPS today to drive back home. It is not that we do not know the way home. It is that we will outsource the decision making process to an AI we trust and get step by step suggestions of which foods we can select. We will be living in a “one-click” send food world. 

September 24, 2018

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.

July 6, 2018

The Weekly Spoon: Nomiku’s Food Delivery Biz, Anova Nano Review, Amazon Go Is Growing (And So Are We!)

People love our newsletters, so we thought we’d start also making them available as posts. If you want to get the Weekly Spoon in your inbox, just subscribe here. On to this week’s newsletter…

As the worlds of technology and food continue to collide, one trend gaining traction is the pairing of kitchen appliances with food subscriptions.

The idea makes sense. Hardware-only business models are nearly impossible to pull off nowadays, as the combination of ever-faster commoditization cycles, fickle consumers and Amazonification of online commerce make for rough sailing for those startups setting sail into consumer technology. Unless your product becomes a viral sensation – which does happen periodically – you’ll need to develop a sustainable long-tail revenue model (or have a plan for one), especially if you plan to raise funding for your new business.

Consumer sous vide pioneer Lisa Fetterman knows full well the difficulty of building a consumer hardware business. The author and mother of two started Nomiku back in 2012 and has been evangelizing her sous vide circulators ever since, but at a sub-$300 price point, it was hard to pencil out the P&L for a product made in the lofty-rent space of San Francisco.

Fetterman and Nomiku also had to convince consumers to use a product which, while delivering amazing results, also requires a significant behavior change on their part.  For a generation raised on frozen food, having them bag, submerge and sear to get dinner on the table is a big ask.

Which is why Fetterman decided to incorporate the entire meal journey – meal planning, food, and cooking – into the Nomiku experience.  The company introduced their Nomiku Meals last year, a food delivery service that allows consumers to mix and match sides and entrees in prepackaged portions and prepare them in 30 minutes. After starting with a 300 person pilot last May, today Nomiku Meals is available in eight states and makes up the majority of the company’s revenue.

It’s too soon to tell whether Nomiku will ultimately succeed in the face of competition from meal kits companies and Amazon, but from the looks of it, things are off to a good start.

You can read my full piece about how Fetterman is transforming Nomiku into a sous vide powered food delivery company here.

Nomiku isn’t the only company making news in the world of sous vide. Anova started selling their latest-generation circulator to the general public the past week on Amazon, and after picking up a Nano last week at the Anova Kitchen, i put together an appropriately-sized review of the diminutive device. And finally, the Spoon’s Jenn Marston visited a new food hall that uses sous vide to cook everything on the menu.

With the July 4th holiday, it was a light work week for many in the States. To celebrate America’s independence in proper Spoon fashion, Chris Albrecht put together some ideas for a food tech Fourth. Catherine catches us up on efforts by Suggestic to incorporate AR into your diet planning.

If you’re on the east coast, be forewarned: The Spoon in headed your way. We’ll be hosting our first Spoon Food Tech meetup on the future of sustainable seafood in beautiful Providence, RI.  Ashley tells me the summers in Rhode Island are the best in the whole US, and while this Pacific Northwest resident is skeptical, I’m eager to eat some lobster and meet some of you at Providence Pilotworks on the 17th.

As you may have noticed, we’ve been growing here at The Spoon. We’ve added both Chris and Catherine as full-time writers this year, and have my old Gigaom friend Jenn Marston giving us lots of great insights every week.  It’s a great crew, and I’m very thankful to be working with them every day, and I hope you are enjoying their writing and insights into the fast-changing world of food tech.

With so much content, we’ve decided to start publishing the Spoon newsletter twice a week. I know it may not seem like that big of news, but for me, it’s yet another small sign of the exciting growth we’ve been experiencing.

It’s also been extremely gratifying to see what started out as a small idea to bring together the leaders across food, appliances, and tech to map the future of food at an event in 2015 grow into a company. It’s hard to believe that in the short time since we launched SKS in 2015, it now takes place on three continents; we just finished the inaugural SKS Europe, and I’m headed back to Tokyo for our second SKS Japan in August. And of course, we’re busy ramping up for the big show in Seattle in October.

I’m thankful to the sponsors who support us, and all the speakers who share insights about their businesses and where this exciting market is going. And of course, we’re thankful to all those who come to our events and participate in our growing community. We couldn’t do it without you.

Mike

P.S. Looking to get smart on food tech and meet industry insiders? Join our food tech Slack already

In the 07/06/2018 edition of the Weekly Spoon:

Suggestic Experiments with Augmented Reality to Help You Stick to Your Diet Plan

By Catherine Lamb on Jul 06, 2018 09:38 am
What if you could wave your phone over a restaurant menu and see “through” the descriptions, instantly assessing which dishes are best (and worst) for you to eat? That’s exactly what Bay Area startup Suggestic is working on. When users first open the free app, they set up their goals (lose weight, have more energy) and dietary […]
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Lisa Fetterman Is Reinventing Nomiku As a Sous Vide Powered Food Delivery Business

By Michael Wolf on Jul 05, 2018 02:00 pm
When Lisa Fetterman started Nomiku, all she wanted to do was get the word out about sous vide cooking. “When I first saw these machines in Michelin-starred restaurants,” said the CEO, book author, and mother of two, “I was like ‘Woah, this is it.’” By ‘it,’ Fetterman is referring to the technique employed by the […]
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Video: For Big Food, ‘We’re Past Innovation and Onto Disruption’

By Catherine Lamb on Jul 05, 2018 12:30 pm
Tyson Foods produces a massive one out of five pounds of protein consumed in the United States. Barilla isn’t any slouch either, with its 30% dry pasta market share in the US and 10% worldwide. That’s a whole lotta chicken and pasta, so when execs for the investment arms of these two food giants took the […]
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The Spoon Meetup in Providence: Blue Tech + Sustainable Seafood

By Catherine Lamb on Jul 05, 2018 08:17 am
This month we’re taking our food tech meetups on the road — to Providence, RI! We’re teaming up with SeaAhead and the City of Providence for this event, all about blue tech and sustainable seafood. Through panels and a town hall meeting, we’ll explore how innovation and technology can improve sustainability while still meeting the rising global […]
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Second Seattle Amazon Go Store is Bigger, How Long Until Cashierless Whole Foods?

By Chris Albrecht on Jul 04, 2018 06:00 am
In addition to expanding the number of locations of its Go stores, Amazon is also working on making them bigger. According to a story in Geekwire, Amazon is prepping a second Amazon Go location in Seattle opening in the Fall of this year, and this one will be 3,000 square feet, compared with the 1,800 […]
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A Nano Review Of The Anova Nano

By Michael Wolf on Jul 03, 2018 05:00 pm
When Anova named their newest product the Nano, there was no mistaking the message they were trying to get across: that this, the latest in their lineup of sous vide circulators, is their smallest yet. And so in the spirit of the Anova Nano, I present to you what is an appropriately small review of […]
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Celebrate a FoodTech Fourth of July

By Chris Albrecht on Jul 03, 2018 02:00 pm
It’s weird when a major holiday falls on a Wenesday, right? Do you take just the day off? The first half of the week? The last half? The whole week? Regardless of how much time you take off, we can help make your time at the grill a great one with these FoodTech finds. FOOD […]
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Video: Regional Perspectives on the Connected Kitchen Market

By Catherine Lamb on Jul 03, 2018 01:00 pm
At Smart Kitchen Summit Europe last month, a topic on everyone’s mind was the future of the connected kitchen market. In fact, we had a whole panel devoted to analyzing the regional perspectives of the smart kitchen marketplace: Chris Albrecht of The Spoon moderated the conversation between Holger Henke of Cuicinale, Robin Liss of Suvie, […]
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Impossible Burgers Take to the Skies in L.A. – N.Z. Flight

By Catherine Lamb on Jul 03, 2018 12:00 pm
Airplane food gets an (admittedly deserved) bad rap, but airlines are working to change all that with fresh, vertically-grown lettuce, local craft beers, and, now, plant-based burgers. Yesterday, Air New Zealand sent out a tweet announcing that the buzzed-about Impossible Burger will be available to Business Premier passengers on their Los Angeles to Auckland flight […]
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Is NYC’s Sous Vide Kitchen the Future of Food Halls?

By Jennifer Marston on Jul 03, 2018 11:00 am
Last week, Sous Vide Kitchen (SVK) joined NYC’s sprawling food hall scene, where associations with celebrity chefs are the norm and $300 caviar is a thing. Comparatively, SVK’s take on the food hall concept is far more down to earth, focused mostly around technology and how it can streamline and improve the process of ordering […]
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July 6, 2018

Suggestic Experiments with Augmented Reality to Help You Stick to Your Diet Plan

What if you could wave your phone over a restaurant menu and see “through” the descriptions, instantly assessing which dishes are best (and worst) for you to eat?

That’s exactly what Bay Area startup Suggestic is working on. When users first open the free app, they set up their goals (lose weight, have more energy) and dietary preferences or restrictions (vegetarian, no dairy, allergic to peanuts). The app then recommends a series of dietary plans to match those preferences and goals, such as Anti-Inflammation or Low-Carb Mediterranean.

After selecting your plan, the app will create weekly meal plans with 3 to 4 recipes per day. “All recipes are found via machine learning,” Suggestic’s co-founder Shai Rozen told me over the phone. In fact, after they started the company four years ago, they spent the first year and a half applying for patents (which are currently pending) around their recipe-curating analytics. For a $100 annual fee, Premium members get access to food recommendations and recipes from selected health influencers. Users can turn their weekly meal plan into a dynamic grocery list, and Rozen said they’re working on making it shoppable.

Suggestic also provides videos and tasks to keep you on-track with your selected health program, a chatbot to guide you through meal and restaurant selection, plus a place for users to log their sleep quality and water intake. Its restaurant feature uses algorithms to analyze menu items at over 500,000 restaurants in the U.S., and will give each dish a score 1-10, depending on how well it’ll fit into your chosen diet. They’re also working on integrating genetic insight with DNA sequencing service Helix.

But the coolest part isn’t what they already offer — it’s what they’re working on. Suggestic is currently beta testing an augmented reality (AR) feature that allows users to point their phone camera at a menu and see color-coded indications of which dishes are best for their diet. “Then you can interact with the menu as if you were RoboCop or Terminator,” said Rozen. As of now, this service is available in 10% of the restaurants Suggestic covers.

It’s a little further out, but Suggestic is also developing tech to integrate AR into their grocery shopping service. So if you pick up a bag of gluten-free crackers and want to see how well it fits into your diet, all you’d have to do is bring out your smartphone and Terminator it.

The startup currently has a staff of around 20. Rozen told me that they have raised “around $3 million” over two funding rounds. The app launched about two months ago and has roughly 20,000 downloads.

AR is starting to pop up in more and more places throughout the food system. Huxley is combining AR, AI and machine learning to help increase indoor agricultural outputs. Big Food companies like Campbell’s are also exploring AR as a way to engage consumers from the grocery store to guided cooking, as is Williams Sonoma. Chinese startup Coohobo is using AR to make the grocery shopping experience easier and more social. App Waygo translates menus around the world into English, complete with pictures. And down the road, virtual reality (VR) in nutrition, cooking, and grocery shopping will be pretty common, too.

At the end of the day, Suggestic might be trying to do too much — they’ve got the buzzwords down (algorithms, AI, etc.), but combining them into a useful tool that can actually enable longterm healthy lifestyle changes will be a big lift.

That said, dining out can be a minefield for people with specialized diets or food restrictions; if Suggestic can nail the augmented reality aspect of their app and expand it to more restaurants, that could have huge benefits for those trying to watch what they eat.

 

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