Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Twitter

Now That Square is Block, Will Jack Dorsey’s Company Make it Easier to Buy Dinner With Bitcoin?

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.

So what are Block’s business units?:

Square – the company’s original product (which will retain the Square brand) covers the digital payment portion of the equation. The company sells retail point-of-sale systems and has created restaurant-specific platforms and services.

Cash App – Started as Square Cash in 2015, Cash App is a personal banking, money transfer, and investment app for consumers. The app added crypto trading in 2018.

TBD – Announced earlier this year, TBD (long name TBD54566975) is a decentralized financial services unit. The launch of TBD followed other crypto-centric moves by the company such as creating a Bitcoin hardware wallet.

And perhaps most importantly, Dorsey and Block have the passion and conviction that cryptocurrency is the future and will eventually become our everyday currency. The company so much as said so when it began to buy and hold Bitcoin last year. “We believe that bitcoin has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future,” said Square’s Chief Financial Officer, Amrita Ahuja, at the time.

They also have the know-how. “We believe there needs to be a global native currency for the internet,” Dorsey said as his company launched the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) last year. Since that time, the company announced it would build a decentralized Bitcoin exchange in early 2021 and just last month TBD published a white paper detailing a protocol for such an exchange.

This is the type of hard, in-the-trenches work needed to create a more friction-free cryptocurrency financial system and, from all the looks of it, Block and Dorsey are intent on leading the way.

Once that happens, I imagine diners may someday more easily be able to buy dinner using cryptocurrency than was experienced by the folks behind Dinner Dao during their first-ever meal for the NFT dinner club. While the group really wanted to pay for dinner with the Ethereum they pooled together for their club, they had to resort to using a Coinbase credit card that converted the crypto to US dollars.

With the launch of Block, there’s a good chance that in five years (or maybe sooner), Dorsey and company will have put all the necessary tech, systems, and financial guide rails in place so when we buy a Big Mac, we can do so with crypto. At that point, Dorsey will have completed yet another society-shifting technological feat and, who knows, can finally get to work on that teleportation network we all want.

Emoji Menus

Could Emojis Really Change the Way We Order Our Food?

Fine-dining restaurant Dallas Fish Market recently held a $65-per-person dinner event, but it wasn’t the watermelon lobster or sesame-seed ice creams that were the main hit. It was a menu written entirely in emojis.

The upscale seafood joint got its inspiration when Nafees Alam, CEO of DRG Concepts, who owns the restaurant, came across an ice cream shop in Singapore with an emoji menu. Clearly it was a good idea to take the concept Stateside, as Dallas Fish Market sold out of its first “emoji dinner” event and has a second one coming up in about a week. The event menus have no text or photos, just emojis of the available food items. Guests are encouraged to correctly match the dish they’re eating to the corresponding emoji. There are bound to be surprises, since we don’t yet have icons for ingredients like saffron or truffle oil.

It sounds like an entertaining evening packed with laughs, but actually, there are some practical business reasons for incorporating emoji menus into a restaurant strategy.

For one, it’s a new way of using technology to interact with diners and create extra buzz. London restaurant The Little Yellow Door has regular emoji menu dinners, calling the concept “a cool way to engage with our audience.” Diners have to guess what’s on the menu before choosing a dish and ordering it via WhatsApp. Dallas Fish Market, meanwhile, noted an uptick in attention on social media thanks to all the photos and mentions guests posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And over in Bankok, Thailand, Gaggan has only emojis on its 20-plus-course menu. It’s also been voted “Asia’s Best Restaurant” for three straight years. Presumably, Gaggan’s creative take on Indian food has a lot to do with that award, but pairing unusual dishes with an unusual menu is a great example of how a simple technology like emojis can be used to further enhance the restaurant experience.

And you don’t have to serve a 22-course meal to do that. Domino’s Pizza is using emoji-based menus to streamline the order process, with its Domino’s AnyWare program. Save your basic info and preferences, text the pizza slice emoji to Domino’s, and wait for your pie to be delivered. Pizza Hut has tested something similar. Fooji, meanwhile, takes this idea step further: tweet the company a food emoji, and, using algorithms, they’ll pick a meal from a top-rated restaurant and have it delivered to you.

Of course this all sounds like a blast when you’re just talking about it, but emoji menus, for all their practical uses, also have some practical hurdles to jump in order to get more popular. How difficult a concept will this be for the local deli or noodle bar to implement? What happens if you order a salad and it comes unexpectedly doused in truffle oil? As Foodji founder Gregg Morton told Eater last year, “It really is food roulette.” And not everyone wants to play food roulette for lunch.

There’s also the matter of dietary restrictions. At present, anyone with health- or religious-based food restrictions would be hard-pressed to find something to eat via emoji menus. But that alone could create a whole new world of business, for restaurants, researchers, and app makers alike. I’m not yet convinced emoji-based menus will go mainstream anytime soon, but we’re likely to see them incorporated into some very creative food concepts in the near future.

Twitter Invites Chefs To Serve Up Meals In 140 Characters Or Less

The rise of shareable recipes and food videos has every social platform and publication looking at how to capitalize on the trend. Buzzfeed’s Tasty videos garner over one billion views a month, YouTube’s founder is launching a foodie cooking channel called Nom – and now Twitter will have its very own Food Council. The Twitter Food Council will be comprised of 17 famous chefs who will use Twitter as well as video sharing platforms Periscope and Vine to share original food content.

According to Twitter, “Anyone who wants to join the conversation and interact with Council members can simply Tweet with the official hashtag, #FoodFlock.” Participating council members include celebrity chef and council head Alex Guarnaschelli, CEO of Food52 Amanda Hesser and celebrity chef Michael Mina.

Our take: It’s not surprising that Twitter is looking for ways to get in on the food content game. With the rise of apps like SnapChat and Pokemon Go, Twitter’s stock prices have fallen almost 50% in the last year with a static monthly user base of around 310 million. They have attempted to hone their strategy, recategorizing themselves as a “News” app instead of “Social Media” on app stores and focusing on live event coverage and key partnerships. The Tasty videos have become some of the most shared content on Facebook, so it makes sense for Twitter to look at food to help reinvigorate its brand.

Read more on Twitter’s blog.