Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sustainability

Avant Meats Has First Public Taste Test of Cultured Fish Maw in Hong Kong

For many Western consumers, “fish maw” is an unfamiliar foodstuff. However, in China and other surrounding regions, the ingredient, which is technically the dried swim bladders of large fish like sturgeon, is considered a delicacy. For that reason, it’s both extremely expensive and leading to extreme overfishing. There’s even a black market for the stuff.

In Hong Kong, startup Avant Meats is finding a more sustainable way to feed hunger for fish maw by growing it outside the animal. The company got one step closer to that goal last month, when they did the first public taste test of their cultured fish maw at the Future Food Summit at Asia Society Hong Kong.

The fish maw, grown from cells from a croaker fish, was embedded in a potato ball which was then deep-fried. Obviously we didn’t get to taste it ourselves (sadly), but in a video sent to The Spoon taste testers noted the ball’s chewy, gelatinous texture, a hallmark of fish maw. Texture is one of the biggest hurdles for cell-based meat, so if Avant Meats has indeed nailed it that could serve them well as they head to market.

When I spoke with Avant Meats co-founder and CEO Carrie Chan back in March, she explained that they had decided to focus on fish maw as their first product because of it’s simple composition, which allows them to speed up R&D, scale quickly, and come to market at a lower price point. Another reason they chose to focus on fish maw is because of its popularity with consumers in China and Hong Kong, their initial target demographic. However, according to a press release sent to The Spoon, their next product will be a fish filet that is intended for both Eastern and Western menus.

This year has been a busy one for cultured meat companies in Asia. Back in March Shiok Meat debuted its cell-based shrimp in the startup’s home country of Singapore, and Japan-based Integriculture recently did a taste test of cultured foie gras.

American companies like Memphis Meats, JUST, and Wild Type have also done several tastings of their own cell-based products, some on significantly larger scales. However, since cell-based (cultivated?) meat will likely debut in Asia, it’s exciting to see the increase in cultured meat and seafood activity in the area — especially for products developed specifically to appeal to Asian palates.

Avant Meats has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round and has a team of five in its Hong Kong HQ. They’re hoping to reach pilot production by late 2022/early 2023.

What the Sustainable Restaurant Will Look Like in 2030

There’s little doubt the restaurant of the future will be a more sustainable operation for both quick-service stores and full-service Michelin star joints. As the idea of implementing sustainability into those operations becomes more of a priority for restaurants, the question is, What will that look like in the future? More plant-based meat options? Reusable to-go containers? Kitchens that waste less food inventory?

All of the above and more, as it turns out. In its just-released “Restaurant Industry 2030” report, the National Restaurant Association zeros in on how it expects environmentally friendly practices “have been increasing over the last decade” and will increase “even faster in the next one as innovative restaurants lead the way in more sustainable operations.”

The report makes two major claims around sustainability. First, that “sustainability isn’t just a buzzword.” It’s a daily practice rather than a marketing phrase to slap on a press release. And as the Association notes in the report, it’s a way for restaurants to cut down costs and also attract eco-conscious guests through initiatives like better packaging and sourcing ingredients responsibly.

The other claim the report makes is that sustainability “will be integrated into every aspect of restaurant operations in 2030.” That includes using equipment in more energy efficient ways and incorporating things like store designs that use alternative sources of energy, implementing more recycling programs, and nixing single-use plastics.

We already see some of these elements in various forms in today’s restaurants. Most notably, the state of California recently signed AB 827 into law, which requires restaurants to provide customers with food-waste and recycling bins, as well as signage that explains what type of waste goes where. California also recently passed a law that makes it easier for restaurants to accept reusable containers from consumers in which to place leftovers from meals.

And with delivery, to-go, drive-thru, and who knows what other types of off-premises ordering here to stay, we’ll also see a distinct lack of single-use packaging at restaurants in future. “With a surge in delivery, packaging considerations will become more important,” according to the report.

The key will be finding ways to implement more sustainability practices cost-effectively. Already, some restaurants are experimenting with ways to do that. For example, a restaurant in NYC called Mettā is the city’s first zero-waste restaurant. It’s carbon-neutral, completely trash-free, and even uses a dishwashing method that eliminates the need for soap. Silo, in the UK, is another notable example.

Mettā and Silo are both fairly high-end restaurant experiences, so while the Wendy’s and Chipotle’s of the future certainly won’t look exactly like them, they nonetheless provide the start of a blueprint for others to follow in future. In other words, they show us what the practice of sustainability looks like so other restaurants follow suit and help make sustainability way more than just a buzzword.

Blue Apron Founder Bets Chickens can Help Beat Climate Change

What with droughts, slash-and-burn agriculture, overfishing and factory farming, sometimes it can seem like our food system is careening towards disaster.

That’s why Matthew Wadiak, co-founder and ex-COO of meal kit company Blue Apron, decided to found Cooks Venture. Launched yesterday, the company will attempt to pull the food system back from the brink through regenerative agricultural initiatives, starting with… chickens.

But not just any chickens. Cooks Venture’s birds are heirloom and pasture-raised and have markedly better livelihoods than factory-farmed chickens, who are sometimes raised in cramped, unsanitary conditions and/or injected with steroids. Heirloom chickens, like heirloom tomatoes, also have more pronounced, unique flavor profiles than your average supermarket bird.

Poultry preorders opened today. The chickens cost anywhere from $15 to $20 each, depending on how many you buy. Orders will ship in July of this year, and a press release from the company states that it also plans to sell the birds via grocery store and restaurants by summer 2019.

Chickens are just the first step for Cooks Venture, whose end goal is to show how regenerative agriculture can slow — or even stop — climate change by sequestering carbon in soil. Next up, they’ll start raising and selling cattle, pigs, and vegetables, all sustained on the same plot of land as the chickens. The company operates out of an 800-acre farm in Arkansas and has two processing facilities in Oklahoma.

Cooks Venture plans to create a holistic system of ruminant animals (cows, pigs), “monogastric” animals (chickens), feed crops, and a variety of vegetables. The feed crops will sustain the chickens and cows, whose manure will fertilize the ground for vegetables, all of which will help trap carbon in the soil and take CO2 out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gases.

Cooks Venture is far from the only one doing regenerative agriculture. Small farms around the country promote this system as sustainable both for the environment at large and the farm itself, since this kind of closed-loop system keeps the soil healthy.

It seems like Cooks Venture’s role, then, is not really to prove that regenerative agriculture is good for the planet (it is), but to give it a higher profile. With Wadiak behind the project, it’ll likely be seen and heard about much more than the farm that drives an hour to sell free-range poultry at your local farmers market.

The big question — both with Cooks Venture and regenerative farms everywhere — is if this sort of uber-sustainable venture is economically sustainable. From a per-pound perspective, Cooks Venture’s birds are on-par with organic whole chickens from most grocery stores ($3.99/pound). However, at 20 bucks a pop, not everyone will be able to afford one of their chickens, just like most people can’t afford to buy 100 percent of their groceries from a farmers market. There’s also the question of whether farmers, especially ones dedicated to a single crop or animal, could afford to shift towards regenerative agriculture practices.

As climate change leads to higher temperatures and more droughts, regenerative agriculture might become less of a radical choice and more of the only choice. If so, we’ll be glad we have templates like Cooks Venture and others to lead the way.

Video: James Ehrlich Talks Food, Epiphanies, & the (Eco)Village of the Future

Take a second, right now, and picture the community of the future. Are there green roofs, lazily-turning windmills, and streetlights powered by solar energy? Maybe even a lawn-mowing robot or two?

James Ehrlich, CEO of ReGen Villages, has a pretty innovative vision for how neighborhoods of the future should look and function. After a career as a tech entrepreneur and television producer for The Hippy Gourmet, with a few epiphanies along the way, he came to the sobering realization that “the planet is, in fact, falling apart.”

In response, Ehrlich began sketching out plans for modern ecovillages with food “not as a sidebar or a flourish, but as the actual mechanism for how a neighborhood infrastructure is built.” ReGen Villages is currently in the midst of construction their first pilot community in Almere, Netherlands, with plans to expand.

After he wowed us with his optimistic vision for the future of homes, neighborhoods, and communities at the Smart Kitchen Summit last year, Ehrlich sat down with Allen Weiner of The Spoon chat with about epiphanies (and breakdowns), the concept behind ReGen Villages, and what’s on the horizon (hint: their ecovillages might be coming to a state near you!).

Psst—look out for videos from past Smart Kitchen Summits every Friday on The Spoon. And if you’re in Europe (or just want an excuse to EuroTrip), register for SKS Europe, coming to Dublin in June.

Minneapolis-St.Paul

Techstars Unveils Startup Accelerator for Foodtech Innovators

Agriculture in the U.S. is a $3 trillion industry, but, paradoxically, it’s innovations in technology that have slowed growth in terms of how many people the agriculture industry employs. All that’s to say there are fewer workers on farms nowadays, which means fewer people and less time for innovative ideas.

Entrepreneurship network Techstars wants to change that with its latest startup accelerator. The Farm to Fork Accelerator is Techstars first program that will focus on helping companies in the food and tech side of agriculture develop their ideas and businesses. Early- and late-stage startups from areas like AgTech, manufacturing, food safety, and waste reduction are invited to apply for the three-month program, which will be held in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area this summer. 

Techstars has partnered with the $13 billion water and energy provider Ecolab, as well as food- and agriculture-services provider Cargill. “The Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator is the perfect platform to connect these global giants in food processing, food safety and agriculture with innovators who have ideas and technical knowledge,” Farm to Fork managing director Brett Brohl recently wrote.

The three-month program helps entrepreneurs across several stages: finding mentors, building out products, and learning how to communicate with investors and major stakeholders. The program ends with a demo day where participants show off their progress.

Techstars says its choice of The Twin Cities as a host for a food innovation program is a strategic choice: food and ag tech programs there are worth more than $25 billion, and these companies employ over 100,000 people. “Our history is food and agriculture and with programs like this food and ag tech will play a big part in the region’s future,” Brohl says.

Agriculture technology has a growing number of startups in it these days that cover everything from farm data platforms and online marketplaces for imperfect produce to livestock management and using blockchain to assess sustainability. “Digital agriculture” is a trend to watch out for in this space in continuing search for more sustainable farming methods and using biotech to create food alternatives (e.g., plant-based “meat”). Given those trends, now feels like an exciting and appropriate time to launch a startup accelerator focused on this area.

The Farm to Fork program will run from July 16–October 11, 2018. Applications open on January 8, and close on April 8.

Can Tech Innovation Save Us From Our Food Waste?

Food waste is a major problem across the globe – not only does the U.S. alone throw away close to $200 billion in food each year, but the annual waste also contributes to 13% of food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Many companies in the smart kitchen and food tech space are looking at ways to use food data, cooking techniques and storage mechanisms to reduce food waste. For businesses like restaurants and hotels, throwing away unused food is bad economic sense as well. Food wasted and not sold is profit down the drain, making it an obvious area to explore efficiencies and new technologies.

One U.K. based company has created a solution specifically for the hospitality industry that has the potential to drive smarter ordering and cooking in the commercial kitchen. The Winnow System is a touch interface connected to a smart meter – before anyone dumps food in the trash, they select an icon on the screen to categorize the food being discarded. The system measures the weight of the food waste and marks trends and data over time.

Winnow — an old agricultural term meaning to separate the grain from the chaff, or to separate the good from the bad — is able to use the data from everyday usage to identify and prevent avoidable waste in the kitchen. Chefs and restaurant managers are given insights into where to make improvements and how to dramatically reduce costs. Winnow Solutions has deployed over 100 solutions across the U.K. and reports a 2-6% improvement in gross margins for their customers, saving over £1m. The information that managers receive from the system allows them to purchase smarter as well as find better ways of serving and storing the food they do purchase. One hospitality executive found that eggs at the hotel breakfast buffet were consistently thrown away in massive quantities every morning. The hotel did away with eggs at the buffet and instead set up a custom egg station for customers wanting cooked eggs with breakfast, saving hundreds of pounds of wasted eggs each week.

The Winnow System is not designed for the consumer kitchen – yet. But several professional kitchen technologies have trickled down over time and solutions developed for business often have consumer applications. And there are products hitting the market today that have some tools to manage the food in our kitchens more efficiently. The Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator is connected to Wi-Fi and has interior cameras that allow users to see what’s in their fridge and what state it’s in.

We might have an idea of the food we throw away at the end of the week in our homes, but seeing the hard data, easily analyzed and displayed in front of us as we decide what to buy and cook could be a powerful force to change our behaviors and habits.