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UCLA

February 7, 2025

Jack Bobo: Don’t Let Your Ideology Muddle The Message About Your Food Product

In the second episode of Food Truths on our newly announced Spoon Podcast Network, Eric Schulze sits down with Jack Bobo, Executive Director of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies at UCLA, to dive into the complexities of food production, consumer psychology, and the evolving alternative protein market. But my biggest takeaway? The food industry needs to do a much better job of communicating with consumers—and that means factoring in consumer psychology from the very beginning, not as an afterthought.

As Bobo said on LinkedIn about the episode: “How we communicate innovation can mean the difference between acceptance or rejection, progress or pushback.”

A Career Rooted in Food and Policy

The conversation starts with a look back at Jack’s career trajectory, which started on a self-sustaining farm in Indiana. He initially pursued environmental science and law in school, but his career trajectory eventually landed him at the U.S. State Department, where he discovered that agriculture was at the root of significant environmental challenges like deforestation and water consumption. This realization that sustainable food production could be a solution rather than a problem set him on a path to influence global food policy.

After a decade at the State Department working on agricultural biotechnology, sustainability, and food security, Bobo moved into the private sector, focusing on innovative food technologies. Now, as the head of UCLA’s Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies, he’s not just analyzing market forces—he’s navigating the competing narratives in food and ag tech, working to bridge divides through science and psychology to reshape how food, innovation, and sustainability are discussed.

Consumer Psychology and Food Communication

One of Bobo’s biggest takeaways from his time at the State Department was how psychology shapes public perceptions of food. He found that leading conversations with science and technology would often alienate consumers instead of persuading them. Instead, he turned to behavioral science, cognitive psychology, and marketing strategies to better understand how people make food choices.

“Science at the beginning of the conversation just polarizes the audience,” Bobo said. “Those who agree with you, agree more. But those who don’t actually push further against you. The key is to frame messages in ways that connect emotionally and align with people’s existing values.”

Bobo argues that many alternative protein companies fail because they focus too much on their mission and not enough on the sensory experience of their products. Consumers buy food for taste, convenience, and price—not for environmental impact or technological novelty. The key to winning them over is to offer indulgent, satisfying products and market them in a way that aligns with existing consumer food preferences rather than trying to convert them through ideology.

While the alternative protein industry has made strides, Bobo believes many companies have miscalculated their approach.

“Most people won’t buy your product because they believe what you believe,” he said. “They will buy it in spite of it. You need to get your personal beliefs out of the way and let them enjoy your product without feeling like they have to adopt a new ideology.”

He also discussed unnecessary conflicts with the traditional meat and dairy industries. The biggest competitor to dairy, Bobo argues, isn’t plant-based milk—it’s bottled water. Similarly, alternative proteins should focus less on replacing meat and more on coexisting within a diverse food system.

At UCLA, Bobo aims to tackle the growing tensions in food debates by applying behavioral science to communication strategies. He hopes to foster collaboration across the food industry and reduce the polarization that often slows progress. By better understanding consumer psychology, he believes companies can introduce sustainable and nutritious food innovations more effectively—without alienating the very consumers they’re trying to reach.

You can listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch the full conversation below. If you like this, make sure to subscribe to Eric’s new podcast and leave a review!

Can We Actually Feed the World?

July 29, 2019

Woowa Brothers Partners with UCLA to Develop Cooking Robots

Woowa Brothers Corp., the company behind South Korea’s popular food delivery app Baedal Minjok, is partnering with UCLA to research and develop cooking robots, according to a story today in The Korea Times.

The Times writes, “Under the project name ‘Yori,’ Woowa Brothers will develop cooking robots that can perform various tasks, from placing orders and preparing meals, to bring an innovation to the dining culture.” As the article points out, the move with UCLA helps expand Woowa Brothers beyond food delivery.

But robots have been on the brain for Woowa Brothers for a while. In April of 2018, the company invested $2 million in Bear Robotics, which makes “Penny,” the robot that shuttles food and empty plates about on restaurant floors. And in December of last year, Woowa received $320 million in funding, some of which was going towards developing its autonomous delivery robot program.

Adding cooking robots to its arsenal would give Woowa Brothers a more full-stack solution and is in line with the broader, 360 degree view the company has about robots. In an interview last July, Kim Bong-jin, CEO and Founder of Woowa Brothers, talked about how food delivery robots could be more useful with less idle time. One idea Bong-jin floated was in addition to dropping off food, having a delivery robot take away a customer’s recycling.

Woowa Brothers is just the latest company to partner with a university for robotics research. Last year, Sony teamed up with Carnegie Mellon to develop food robots, and Nividia has a robotic kitchen lab set up with researchers from the University of Washington.

Food is a great application for robotics for a number of reasons. First, everyone eats, so there will always be a market for developing systems that help prepare, cook or deliver food faster. Second, food is oddly shaped, with varying sizes and degrees of fragility, making it difficult to work with. Overcoming the idiosyncrasies of food can make working with more uniform materials easier.

October 24, 2018

Kiwi Delivery Robots Expand into Los Angeles

If you live in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, you can see sunshine, the occasional movie star, and now delivery robots shuttling food to hungry local denizens.

According to the Daily Bruin, Kiwi Campus started rolling out its delivery robots at the beginning of this month. Westwood is home to UCLA, so this particular expansion makes sense given that Kiwi already operates at and around UC Berkeley.

A spokesperson for Kiwi told the Daily Bruin that the company picked UCLA because of the compact nature of the campus. It probably doesn’t hurt that LA typically has great weather throughout the year, thereby reducing at least one bit of complexity for the autonomous, cooler-sized robots to navigate around.

Kiwi is working with 15 Westwood businesses including Subway, Jamba Juice and Veggie Grill. For now, however, robot deliveries are only being made off campus as Kiwi doesn’t have the necessary permits for them to scurry around campus. Until those are sorted out Kiwi will offer a human delivery person for on-campus deliveries.

Campuses in general are becoming a popular option for robot delivery companies. Earlier this year Kiwi rival Starship announced that it would be deploying 1,000 delivery robots by the end of this year and that campuses (both academic and corporate) would be a major avenue of growth for them.

Starting with campuses is a smart idea for robot delivery. They are like starter cities. First, you have a sizeable audience of students and workers who spend most of their time there. Working on campuses (at least private ones) can also help sidestep some of the municipal legal issues that come with running robots on city streets. Campuses are also typically well maintained, so roads and walkways won’t have as many hazards to navigate.

You might think students would be excited to have futuristic, self-driving robots running around their campus. But the reactions reported by the Daily Bruin were much more negative. Rather than a marvel of technology, students quoted saw them as easy targets for theft, causes of increased congestion and basically just something that won’t catch on.

Of course, if I had movie stars in my backyard, I may feel the same way (but maybe with this expansion Uber will give Kiwi a closer look).

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