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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sustainable packaging

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.

NadaMoo! Was Set to Announce New Recyclable Packaging, But Then Learned it Wasn’t so Simple

Almost all ice cream containers, although made mostly of paper, are bound for the landfill in a lot of places because they can’t be recycled. The plastic coating inside the container is the reason why.

As the average American reportedly eats more than 23 pounds of ice cream per year, that waste adds up. But even companies that switch to more sustainable packaging are learning the harsh realities of recycling. Plant-based brand NadaMoo! over the next few months will roll out containers with a coating made from sugarcane-based polyethylene and paperboard sourced from “responsibly managed forest trees.”

But although Evergreen Packaging, the creator of the Sentinel Fully Renewable Ice Cream Board (the official name of the new packaging, which is also used by Oatly and Coconut Bliss. ), said it is the first of its kind and is fully renewable. Though that “fully” comes with some big caveats, as NadaMoo! CEO Daniel Nicholson learned right before the company was set to incorrectly announce that its new packaging could be recycled by customers, a message that would have also appeared on its label.

The materials can only be recycled by the carton supplier, Stanpac, through a recycling partner that breaks down and separates the components. This means that in many places, consumers will still not be able to send these containers to local recycling facilities.

“Our new knowledge of this complexity further reinforces the misconceptions within our society at large in our understanding of how our recycling system works down to the subtle nuances,” Nicholson said in an email statement to The Spoon. “It’s too complex for us to try to oversimplify.” 

Nicholson, however, still celebrates the fact that the packaging is made from more renewable and sustainable components.

“Doing good for our customers and for the overall sustainability of our planet has always been the ethos of who we are as a company,” he said. “By taking these incremental steps to be an even more eco-friendly, sustainable product and company, it is our hope that we will be joined by additional, larger parties in our category to maximize the overall impact of these changes.”

NadaMoo!, in its 14th year of business, creates coconut-based frozen desserts that are sold in thousands of stores across the country, including Target and Walmart locations. It raised capital for the first time in 2017 through a $4 million series A round. Although the company is growing, Nicholson said a lot more needs to be done for the industry to be more sustainable.

“If you combine the sales of Oatly, Coconut bliss and NadaMoo!, if we’re the only ones leading this charge, we have a lot of work to do to push the future of the food business,” Nicholson said. “These problems are massive and the only way to make change is for all of us to invest in change.”

The fact that even more sustainable packaging can’t be recycled in most places illustrates the harsh reality of recycling around the world: many materials aren’t actually recycled. Plastic remains the largest problem, as more than 90 percent of the material ends up as trash. Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs brand offers a different approach, teaming up with delivery company Loop to create a reusable ice cream container. (In the eggs section, Pete and Gerry’s is testing a reusable container.)

As NadaMoo! shows, even food companies have difficulties understanding the intricacies of recycling, which means we all must work harder if we want to cut down on our waste.

Just Salad Outlines Its Goals to Send Zero Waste to Landfills by 2022

Fast-casual chain Just Salad aims to send zero waste to landfills by 2022, according to the company’s first-ever sustainability report, which was released this week. 

The report both recaps some of Just Salad’s efforts around sustainability and outlines the chain’s goals for 2020, many of which are about getting rid of single-use plastics and curbing and/or diverting food waste in its operations. These environmental commitments come under Just Salad’s Green Standard Initiative, which the chain launched last year and is already executing on in its 47 locations, which span five U.S. states as well as Dubai. 

Central to the company’s aim to get rid of single-use plastics is its popular reusable salad bowl, which customers can purchase for $1 (and get a free topping for their salad when they use it). According to the report, Just Salad diverted 75,000 pounds of single-use plastic from landfills in 2019 and plans to up that number to 100,000 pounds by 2022. 

The company says it will also implement a bring-your-own-cup program in 2020 that offers customers a $0.10 discount on beverages when they bring their own containers. As well, Just Salad says it is “evaluating all in-store supplies” and testing more sustainable options, including compostable to-go cutlery and cardboard containers for wraps in place of plastic ones.

Curbing food waste is the other big focus of the report. Last year, the company started a composting program at certain locations that separates food waste from other waste in the back of house. The company will continue that practice, which it says can divert an estimated 22,000 pounds of organic waste from landfills across its NYC stores alone. The program is currently active at Just Salad stores in NYC, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The company will include this food waste separation process in the front of house for certain locations in 2020. 

Many restaurant chains are now outlining major sustainability initiatives to address massive issues in the food industry around waste, whether it’s leftover food or single-use packaging that does not biodegrade. Major chains like McDonald’s and Starbucks have detailed programs in place to introduce reusable packaging, cut carbon emissions through alternative sources of energy, and curb food waste by diverting it from landfills (in some cases even using to to make automobiles).

But it’s not just the multi-national chains doing this work. Blue Bottle Coffee, for example, recently outlined an ambitious plant to make its stores completely zero waste by 2020. Company CEO Bryan Meehan was the first person to point out the initiative was an experiment that “may not work, that may cost us money,” among other things.

He has a point, and it’s one that more companies are starting to acknowledge as the dialogue around sustainable restaurant operations becomes more central, if at the same time more expensive. Just Salad’s founder and CEO Nick Kenner echoed a similar sentiment in the company’s sustainability report when he wrote that achieving sustainability is a challenge that requires logistics, money, and a change in consumer attitudes. “Affordability and sustainability are not at odds with each other,” he said. “While the sustainable path can cost more in the short run, it’s an engine for long-term value creation.” 

Taco Bell Outlines Plans to Make Consumer-facing Packaging Sustainable by 2025

Taco Bell announced this week its goal to make all consumer-facing packaging — cups, wrappers, etc. — recyclable, compostable, or reusable by 2025, according to a press release. 

This pledge applies to all materials that come into contact with consumers when they order food, from taco wrappers to cups to those $5 Cravings boxes. While the press release doesn’t delve too far into what materials might be used to make some of these items more sustainable, it does note that PFAS, Phthalates and BPA — chemicals associated with health problems like cancer and thyroid disease — will be removed from all consumer-facing packaging. 

The chain will also install recycling and composting bins in locations “where infrastructure permits,” meaning any city that supports those waste streams. 

In an interview with Fast Company, Missy Schaaphok, Taco Bell’s global nutrition and sustainability manager, offered some hints as to what future packaging might look like. That includes things like food baskets for dine-in customers and compostable or paper straws “in places that legally require them.”

Taco Bell already has some sustainability initiatives in place. It introduced recyclable cups and lids for cold drinks in in early 2019, and as Schaaphok told Fast Company, “a good portion of [the chain’s] packaging today is already recyclable or compostable.”

That’s all well and good, but a major challenge for QSRs nowadays is convincing customers to dispose of recyclable and compostable materials properly instead of just chucking them in the garbage. In some states, this will be easier. California, for example, passed AB 827 last year, a law that requires limited-service restaurants to make recycling and composting bins available, as well as provide signage to guide customers as to which items go in which bins.

Getting customers to actually recycle and compost their waste is not a Taco Bell-specific issue. As The Spoon contributor Stephen J. Bronner pointed out in a post this week, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway, and others have all pledged sustainability initiatives. Many of them are around packaging. All of them will have to contend with how to best communicate the importance of sustainability to the consumer.

For QSRs, who have always relied heavily on disposable packaging for both in-house and to-go orders, making the “reduce, reuse, recycle” concept easy for customers will become paramount in terms of actually keeping trash out of the landfills. 

Pizza Hut Partners With Zume and MorningStar to Put a Plant-based Pizza in a Round Box

Pizza Hut is following the footsteps of dozens of other major restaurant chains and joining the movement for plant-based meat. The Plano, TX-based company announced today that it has partnered with MorningStar Farms’ Incogmeato label to top one of its pies with plant-based sausage.

Dubbed the Garden Specialty Pizza, said pie will be available starting October 23 for $10 per pizza for a limited time at the 3602 E. Thomas Road Pizza Hut location in Phoenix, AZ, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. “Limited supply” in this context means until supplies last, which, given the current craze for plant-based meat products among consumers, could be mere hours.

For both companies, releasing a pizza topped with plant-based meat is a way to ride the coattails of the alt-meat craze. The partnership allows Pizza Hut to compete with the likes of Little Caesars, who tested a plant-based sausage pizza with Impossible earlier this year. For Kellogg-owned MorningStar, promoting its new plant-based brand via a major restaurant chain could help the company’s ongoing efforts to reinvent itself as an innovative alt-meat company on par with Beyond Meat and Impossible, rather than a decades-old peddler of first-generation meat alternatives.

A pie topped with plant-based meat isn’t the only pizza innovation that particular Phoenix Pizza Hut location will see. The Garden Specialty Pizza will be served up in a round box The Hut has developed with pizza-tech pioneer Zume, which recently acquired a company to manufacture its own line of more sustainable packaging.

For Pizza Hut, Zume designed a box that uses less packaging than its traditional square counterpart, takes up less space in a customer’s fridge, and, most importantly, keep the pizza hotter in transit. It’s also industrially compostable. Pizza Hut says once the limited run in Phoenix is over, it will look at ways to distribute the box more widely in future.

All proceeds from both initiatives will be donated to Arizona Forward, an organization that brings businesses and civic leaders together to develop sustainability goals for the state.