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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

web3

As Bored & Hungry Shuts Its Doors, It’s Worth Looking at State of Web3 and Food


In March 2022, NFT and crypto investor Andy Nguyen purchased Bored Ape #6184 along with three Mutant Apes and soon decided to establish a Bored Ape-themed restaurant named Bored & Hungry. The restaurant opened its doors on April 9, and by the end of its first day, it had served 1,500 burgers and had lines stretching around the block.

Two years later, Bored & Hungry has closed.

Last week, Nguyen announced on Instagram that the restaurant’s original location in Long Beach, California, was closing. He shared that they had sold the concept to a franchising company from Asia known as HUNGRY Dao.

From his post:

“Happy 2 year anniversary @JustBorednHungry!Today we say goodbye to the original Bored & Hungry location in Long Beach, CA. We also want to congratulate our partner’s from Asia, Hungry Dao – a branding and franchising company who has acquired the brand from us. It’s been an insane 2 years, that was originally supposed to just be a 3 month pop up experiment.”

While Bored & Hungry was perhaps the most high-profile effort to bring the world of Web3 to food, it was far from alone. Since the NFT trend burst into public consciousness in 2021, numerous early-adopting restaurant operators, crypto-curious chefs, and FOMO-driven corporations have launched initiatives to connect their food businesses with Web3 elements. Nowadays, most of these ventures—like Bored & Hungry’s U.S. location—have either shut down or scaled back.

A few examples:

Starbucks recently announced that it’s shutting down its Web3 loyalty program, Odyssey. According to an FAQ about the program’s transition, Starbucks said the community would close the Odyssey beta on March 31, 2024, and users had until March 25, 2024, to complete any remaining Journeys. The lead for Odyssey, Steve Kaczynski, was let go as part of the move.

In March 2022, celebrity chefs Tom Colicchio and Spike Mendelsohn launched the CHFTY Pizza NFT project, promising holders access to virtual and in-person events, classes, kitchen accessories, and more. Today, the CHFTY website is inactive, and the project’s Discord channel has been quiet for the past year.

Even some housewares brands dipped their toes into this trend, though their efforts were minor and did not gain traction. Old-school home appliance brand Crockpot released an NFT commemorating its 50th anniversary. The NFT, still available on Opensea, has not received any offers.

Web3 initiatives like Dinner Dao and Burger Dao have largely been abandoned. At the same time, FriesDAO, a group that raised $5 million via an NFT offering, suffered a lethal blow when hackers made away with most of the group’s cash.

Yet, not all Web3 food ventures have failed. The coffee subscription site Bored Breakfast Club continues to operate. Flyfish, a high-profile NFT membership dining club, is set to open this summer, albeit offering a traditional non-NFT membership option. Additionally, Blackbird, the NFT loyalty program started by Eater and Resy founder Ben Leventhal, recently launched a breakfast club and sold out within hours.

So, with the dust of the first Web3 wave now settled, where does that leave us? Was the enthusiasm for food & Web3 more hype than substance? Or is the persistence of a hearty few continuing to march forward a sign of long-term viability for this space?

At this point, it’s too early to tell. Those who realized early on that Web3 and blockchain were a means to an end to enhance consumer-side benefits may have staying power. The same goes for those who realized they can’t require significant behavior change on the part of consumers regarding onboarding. Blackbird is a good example of both here. Others, like Flyfish, have demonstrated that they can make the necessary pivots to survive.

But big brands like Starbucks? They may take a while to come back. The Seattle-based coffee company arguably still has the leading loyalty program in the food business, and the fact company management decided they didn’t need to push any further into Web3 is a pretty good indication of whether they believe it’s required to unlock significant consumer value. Clearly, at this point, they don’t.

Some, however, like Wow Bao, realize this is a long-term waiting game. As company CEO Geoff Alexander told me this week, describing his company’s entry into the Metaverse, “Anything that you do new and technology takes time for adoption.”

He’s right that things take time. And if he’s right about the Metaverse, companies like his that stick it out for the long haul might benefit most.

At this point, though, nothing is a sure thing when it comes to Web3 and food.

Wow Bao Launches Hot Bun Vending Machine In The Metaverse

You can now visit a hot bun vending machine in the metaverse.

No, this isn’t a plotline from the sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine, but the next chapter in the continuing push by digital-forward restaurant chain Wow Bao to expand into the Metaverse and web3. The company, which launched its NFT program a year ago, announced last week that Wow Bao has launched on Roblox, a hugely popular virtual gaming platform with over 200 million monthly global users. According to Wow Bao, their launch on Roblox marks the first time that a fast-casual restaurant has launched in the Metaverse with a loyalty program that gives away in-real-life perks.

Those physical, non-digital perks come in the form of a free box of Wow Bao products, which a player qualifies for once they enter the Wow Bao game (called Dim Sum Palace) on Roblox, complete a couple of achievements, and connect their Wow Bao loyalty program (called the Hot Buns Club). Those without a Hot Buns loyalty club membership are instructed how to join, a process that involves leaving the game, getting the loyalty website URL from from a pinned post on Wow Bao’s Twitter profile, and signing up.

With a free box of Wow Bao on offer, I decided to join Roblox and check out Dim Sum Palace. I found the mini-game slick, but after I finished my achievements—earning a bao-themed headdress and a coupon for a free box of Wow Bao—I didn’t have much to do. The most time-consuming part was signing up for and connecting to my Wow Bao loyalty account (which, to be fair, went quickly after I jumped off to Twitter and found the URL).

Stepping back, it’s worth asking why the fast-casual Asian food chain is spending all of this time and resources to create a Metaverse game that likely won’t result in any significant customer revenue in the near future. According to Wow Bao CEO Geoff Alexander, the push into the Metaverse is a long-term play that they believe will pay off as more and more gamers look to garner IRL rewards for their Metaverse exploration.

“One of the things Wow Bao has always wanted to do is be wherever the consumer is,” Alexander told The Spoon. “There are a large number of people who game, and nobody’s talking to them.”

How is Wow Bao going to attract Roblox players to its Minigame? Alexander said they plan to raise awareness through paid advertising in Roblox, discovery on the home screen, and the giveaway of 10,000 UGC.

The company worked with production studio Sawhorse Productions, which developed the mini-game, and loyalty tech companies Flaunt and Paytronix to integrate their rewards program into Roblox. The company also continued to work with Devour for their Web3 ordering.

The risk for Wow Bao is that they invest in building a Metaverse presence, and, as we’ve seen with many brand efforts over the past few years, engagement remains low and overly complex for the average user, and eventually, they exit. According to Alexander, the company thinks being patient will ultimately pay off.

“Anything that you do new and technology takes time for adoption,” Alexander said. “We’re betting that the adoption will come. Today, it might be small. Tomorrow might be a little bit bigger. It might fall, and then it might come back. We’re in for the long game.”

Ben Leventhal Discusses Raising $24M for Web3 Restaurant Loyalty Platform, Blackbird

This week, Blackbird, a startup building a Web3-powered restaurant loyalty platform, announced it had raised a $24 million Series A funding round led by a16z’s crypto team with participation from Amex Ventures and Bolt by QED, among others.

With the news, the company lifted the curtain around its platform and how it works. When customers arrive at a restaurant, they initiate membership by tapping their smartphone on Blackbird’s NFC reader. From there, Blackbird issues an NFT, which acts as an identity card that keeps track of the customer’s relationship with the restaurant. When a customer returns and taps with the NFC reader, it acts as a digital handshake that sends info associated with a customer’s membership to the restaurant, such as first and last name, address, and dining history.

In short, the platform is designed to work without burdening the customer or the restaurant with technical know-how. The Web3 technology works in the background, creating a wallet for customers to hold their NFTs and the $FLY tokens earned over time.

It’s clear from the announcement that the company is not leaning too heavily in branding itself as a Web3 company but instead emphasizing what founder Ben Leventhal sees as a friction-free, next-generation loyalty platform that helps smaller operators who may not have a significant technical staff or internal resources.

“Blackbird works very well if you couldn’t possibly care less about the blockchain,” Leventhal told The Spoon. “That’s crucial because the adoption of blockchain and the passion around the blockchain is rather specific and limited right now. And we need to create magic for all guests, regardless of how they think about tech, or if they think about tech at all.”

Still, while Leventhal and Blackbird aren’t emphasizing the platform’s Web3 underpinnings, there’s no doubt that much of the buzz around the company and the reason it was able to raise money from blue chips like Andreessen Horowitz in a challenging environment is precisely because it’s a web3 company; there’s a sense among investors and early partners that the company’s technology could, in some way, upend the traditional restaurant loyalty technology market.

I asked Leventhal how he thinks his company’s Web3 tech differentiates itself from what’s out there today. He pointed to a campaign his early trial partners ran this summer in partnership with Coinbase called the Summer Sweet Pass as part of Coinbase’s OnChain Summer.

“If you’re somebody who likes dessert, you have a sweet tooth, and you’re in New York in August, we curated eight restaurant desserts for you that you could, by virtue of having this pass in your Blackbird wallet, enjoy. I think that there are potentially several layers of community and connectivity that we can power for restaurants.”

It became clear during our conversation that Leventhal thinks his company can appeal to the passionate – but relatively small – community that wants to leverage blockchain and Web3 today to tap into experiences in the physical world while also helping restaurants build loyalty platforms that have more headroom to grow in the future while not putting any significant technical burden on their small staffs or the customer.

According to Leventhal, a low technical burden is especially crucial for smaller independent operators, the type of customer that Blackbird is targeting.

“We’re trying to focus on independent restaurants to help them level the playing field against some of these, you know, very, very serious competitors,” said Leventhal. “The average independent coffee shop is competing with Starbucks for their customers. The average independent restaurant competes with Sweetgreen and PF Chang’s for their customers. So they’re going to need some tools to do that effectively.”

This is Leventhal’s third restaurant industry startup. He founded the food media company Eater nearly two decades ago before selling it to Vox and started reservation tech company Resy in 2013 before selling it to American Express in 2019.

I asked Leventhal how things compare today to those previous eras.

“Twenty years ago, and the average restaurant is making ten to twelve percent margin,” said Leventhal. “Today, it’s three to four. So, we need to continue to think about what the future for restaurants looks like. And to me, a big part of the problem is not around the kind of reservations technology – that is now a pretty mature and robust area of technology – I think it’s about core connectivity to restaurants and guests and giving restaurants to make the most of their most loyal customers.”

The Spoon Weekly: The Edible Barcode

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For the last few years, there’s been lots of excitement about blockchain’s potential to finally bring end-to-end transparency to the food system. After all, once we have an incorruptible record of where food comes from, we’ll be able to track it from the time it leaves the farm until it arrives on our plate, right?

As it turns out, realizing the dream of registering our food on a decentralized ledger and getting everyone across the food system to use it is a lot harder than it sounds. Add to that the doubts that have surfaced over the past year-plus about blockchain and the broader crypto world, and web3 hasn’t really delivered on becoming the food transparency magic bullet.

But even before web3 stumbled, did it ever really have a chance to truly track our food throughout the food system? Except for maybe a cow here and there with a driver’s license, food commodities don’t usually come with digital ID cards that allow you to automatically identify its point of origin. In fact, over its lifetime, a grain of wheat may travel thousands of miles across a number of factories and kitchens until it lands on your plate. 

But what if you could insert the identification into the food itself, where the food has a unique identifier baked (or sprayed, or mixed) inside or onto that can be identified no matter where it goes along the food value chain? That’s the idea behind a form of digital tag from a company called Index Biosystems, which has developed what they call a form of invisible barcode in the form of baker’s yeast. 

The way it works is the company creates what they call a BioTag by mixing baker’s yeast in extremely trace with water, then spraying or misting it onto a product such as wheat. BioTags are incredibly sticky once applied and remain attached to the surface of the grains, withstanding the milling process while remaining detectable in flour. From here, the BioTab becomes, in a sense, an invisible bar code that the company or one of its customers can read using molecular detection techniques such as PCR and DNA sequencing.

Index Biosystems isn’t the only company working on the idea of the invisible, integrated, and edible bar code. In 2020, a group of Harvard researchers wrote about their idea for an edible “bar code,” which they described as a scalable microbial spore system that identifies object provenance in under 1 hour at meter-scale resolution. According to the researchers, the spores would be identifiable for up to three months and multiple stops down the supply chain. The year before, SafeTraces announced they’d patented a system that took DNA strands drawn from seaweed that would turn into DNA bar codes readable throughout the food supply chain. 

DNA-powered identification systems are a compelling idea for a food world in which pathogens and food-borne illnesses have become a big problem. Companies early to this space (like SafeTraces) may have been a bit early, but now, as DNA identification systems have become commonplace and tools have become accessible by almost everyone, I have to wonder if the day has arrived for the embedded edible bar code. 

Researchers at Cal Poly Are Studying The Social Impact of AI & Robotics on the World of Food

Last fall, a group of researchers at Cal Poly was awarded a $700 thousand grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the social and ethical impacts of AI and cooking automation.

The study will last four years and explore the benefits and risks to individuals and the impact on family and communal relationships, creativity and culture, economics and society, health and well-being, and environment and safety.

The study is led by Andy Lin, a philosophy professor and director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly.

“Robot or AI kitchens would automate a special place and communal activity in the home, so that immediately warrants critical attention,” Lin said in the announcement. “Outside of the home, restaurants are one of the most essential and oldest businesses, given the primacy of food. They are the bedrock for an economy, the soul of a community, and the ambassador for a culture. But the pandemic is causing a seismic shift in the restaurant industry, and robot kitchens could be a tipping point that forces many restaurants to evolve or die in the coming years.”

Check out the news (and how your’s truly is involved) over on The Spoon.

We’ve Added New Speakers for our Food AI Summit!

As you may have heard, this October we’re hosting the Food AI Summit, a new event focused on how AI will transform our food system. 

The conference, which will take place on October 25th in Alameda, California, will convene scientists, investors, entrepreneurs, and others who are building the future of food using AI together for a day of keynote talks, interactive sessions, product demonstrations, and networking. 

We’re continuing to build a great list of speakers, and this week we’ve added longtime food AI innovator Riana Lynn of Journey Foods. Lynn joins others like Jasmin Hume of Shiru, David Lee of Inevitable Tech, and Kevin Yu of SideChef. We’ve got more great speakers on the way, including maybe you! If you think you have an interesting insight or are building something that will change the world, feel free to fill out the speaker inquiry form and let us know!

Also, if you’d like to sponsor the event, we’d also like to hear from you as well! Just fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch.

And, of course, we’d love to see you in Alameda in October! Our Spoon community is the engine that makes our events and website go, and we are excited to connect with you IRL and talk about this exciting space! If you’d like to attend, we have a special discount just for newsletter subscribers. Just enter NEWSLETTER in the coupon code when buying a ticket for $100 off an early bird ticket. 

Check out The Food AI Summit Website. You can read the full announcement on The Spoon. 

The Consumer Kitchen

SEERGRILLS Unveils the Perfecta, an ‘AI-Powered’ Grill That Cooks the ‘Perfect Steak’ in Two Minutes

AI is seemingly everywhere nowadays, so it was only a matter of time before it would show up at the backyard BBQ to help us cook the perfect steak.

That’s the vision of a UK startup named SEERGRILLS, which debuted the Perfecta this week, which the company describes as the world’s first AI-powered grill. The grill combines high-temperature infrared cooking with its AI system called NeuralFire, which automates the cooking process.

According to SEERGRILLS CEO Suraj Sudera, the AI works through a combination of sensor data, cook preferences inputted by the user, and intelligence built into the software around different food types.

“The device will capture the starting temperature of, say, chicken breast and adjust the cooking in line with the preferences you’ve inputted in the device,” said Sudera. “Whether it’s a three-inch or five-inch chicken breast, it doesn’t matter. It will be whatever adjustments it needs, just like your cruise control on your car will adjust to keep you at the preferred speed.”

When a cook is done, users can rate the quality of the cook, which informs and optimizes the NeuralFire algorithm for the next cook. Suraj says that SEERGRILLS is also constantly updating its food database, so if, say, a new type of steak from Japan becomes popular, the AI engine will be updated to optimize the cook for that meat type. The company says its AI will also optimize to reach each type of meat’s sear and doneness, as well as help to perfect the Maillard reaction.

Read the full story on The Spoon. 

ARE YOU A SALES PRO WHO LOVES FOOD TECHNOLOGY?

If you have experience selling sponsorships for events and building multifaceted ad and brand campaigns for some of the world’s biggest food companies, we’d love to hear from you! A great opportunity to be involved in the world of food tech! Just drop us a line with a resume or link to your Linkedin, and we’ll be in touch!

Cultivated Meat

José Andrés Serves Up Cultivated Chicken in Honor of Willem van Eelen, The ‘Godfather of Cultivated Meat’
 

A couple of days after the first sale of cultivated meat this weekend in San Francisco, news of José Andrés serving up GOOD Meat on the opposite coast landed in my inbox.

According to the release, Andrés served charcoal-grilled cultivated chicken last night to a hand-picked group of diners. The dinner included cultivated chicken marinated with anticucho sauce, native potatoes, and ají Amarillo chimichurri, and precedes China Chilcano’s menu debut of the dish, which will be served weekly in limited quantities and by reservation only later this summer.

The meal was served in honor of the late Willem van Eelen, known as the “godfather of cultivated meat,” on what would have been his 100th birthday yesterday, July 4, 2023. After hearing a lecture on preserving meat, van Eelen, a WW2 prisoner of war, came up with the idea of creating meat outside of the body of an animal. Over the following decades, van Eelen would start businesses to save money to pursue this idea while working on it and filing for patents. He would pass away in 2015 at the age of 91, just two years after Dutch startup Mosa Meat would be the first to realize his idea with their cultured meat hamburger.

Read the full story on The Spoon. 

Big Week For Cultivated Meat: Dutch Government Approves Tastings, UPSIDE’s Chicken Debuts at Crenn

It’s been an eventful few days for cultivated meat.

After getting the final regulatory green light from the USDA to serve cultivated meat to U.S. consumers, UPSIDE Food’s cultivated chicken showed up on menus for the first time this weekend at Bar Crenn. The event, hosted on Saturday, July 1st, marked the first time cultivated meat has gone on sale in the U.S.

Here’s how the special menu, prepared by famed French chef Dominique Crenn, was described by the press release sent to The Spoon: Diners at this historic meal were served UPSIDE Foods’ cultivated chicken, fried in a Recado Negro-infused tempura batter and accompanied by a burnt chili aioli. Served in a handmade black ceramic vessel adorned with Mexican motifs and Crenn’s logo, the dish was beautifully garnished with edible flowers and greens sourced from Bleu Belle Farm. It reflects the global benefit that Chef Crenn sees in cultivated meat – with UPSIDE Chicken from the Bay Area in California, tempura from Japanese traditions, and an infusion of Recado Negro from Mexico’s Yucatan.

Read the full story on The Spoon.

Coffee Tech

Ansā’s New Roaster Uses Radio Waves To Roast Coffee on The Countertop

While we know fresh-roasted coffee tastes better, by the time store-bought beans make it into our coffee machines, chances are they were roasted months ago. But what if we could roast the beans right before they enter the brewer?

If a new company called Ansā has its way, coffee roasting will come to our office breakroom with its new e23 microroaster. The e23 takes green beans sent from the company and roasts them on the countertop without any smoke or ambient heat associated with traditional gas-fired roasting systems.

So how does the company’s roaster work? According to Ansā, the company uses dielectric heating, which usually refers to microwave heating-based systems. According to the company, the system’s computer vision (provided via a built-in camera) coordinates roasting with precision application of the radio waves to transmit the energy to individual beans, creating a highly precise and homogeneously applied roast.

Read about Ansā’s tech on The Spoon.

The Meataverse

Yes, I’ve Entered the Meataverse

Last year, when news got out that Slim Jim had gone and registered the term meataverse, we all had a good laugh.

Over a year later and a few notches down the Gartner Hype Cycle, the salty meat stick company has finally launched its web3 world effort to get people to go online and collect digital art of cartoon meat sticks. The company, which, in a sarcastic nod to Facebook’s new corporate name, has periodically rebranded itself as MEATA on Twitter and described the effort in its trademark finding as something providing “services featuring virtual goods, virtual food products, and non-fungible tokens,” along with “providing a metaverse for people to browse, accumulate, buy, sell and trade virtual food products.”

But now, they’ve gone and done it by Jim, and I’m going along for the ride. Sure, it sounds ridiculous and something an adult who doesn’t eat Slim Jims would probably avoid wasting his time on, but here I am, the proud owner of GigaJim #1070.

Read about Mike’s adventure in the Meataverse over at The Spoon. 

Yes, I’ve Entered the Meataverse

Last year, when news got out that Slim Jim had gone and registered the term meataverse, we all had a good laugh.

Over a year later and a few notches down the Gartner Hype Cycle, the salty meat stick company has finally launched its web3 world effort to get people to go online and collect digital art of cartoon meat sticks. The company, which, in a sarcastic nod to Facebook’s new corporate name, has periodically rebranded itself as MEATA on Twitter and described the effort in its trademark finding as something providing “services featuring virtual goods, virtual food products, and non-fungible tokens,” along with “providing a metaverse for people to browse, accumulate, buy, sell and trade virtual food products.”

But now, they’ve gone and done it by Jim, and I’m going along for the ride. Sure, it sounds ridiculous and something an adult who doesn’t eat Slim Jims would probably avoid wasting his time on, but here I am, the proud owner of GigaJim #1070.

The site, which allows you to join for free and to mint one of ten thousand NFTs free of charge (they even pick up the gas fees), is user-friendly and targeted at the average meathead who doesn’t own a crypto wallet. I have a Metamask wallet lying around somewhere, but I just let Slim Jim’s Meataverse create a wallet for me, and within 5 minutes, I had minted my GigaJim.

The site comes complete with an origin story for the Meataverse world, detailing how how a brilliant young scientist named “Slender” Jim (what else?) is recruited by Slim Jim Industries to head up its secretive M.E.A.T. (mechanics engineering and technology) lab and, within a few years, Dr. Jim has proposed a theory of alternate meat dimensions (aka the ‘meataverse’), virtual worlds that are “meatier, spicier and home to powerful energies.”

When I started looking for ways to increase my GigaJim’s value, it (surprise, surprise) required buying Slim Jims and scanning the bar code. Once you show you’re consuming meat sticks in the physical meat world, you’re given more base sauce to add to the sauce extractor, and once you have three base sauces, you can create a super sauce and level up your Jim.

As I said, it’s all ridiculous, but I have to say, as corporate brand web3 metaverse efforts go, it has me (somewhat ashamedly) thinking about running to the local store and picking up some Slim Jims (which is, of course, the point).

See you in the Meataverse!

Wow Bao Launches the ‘Hot Buns Club’, a $99-a-Year Web3 Loyalty Program

Wow Bao, the digitally nimble Asian food startup that’s expanded nationwide in recent years through an asset-light virtual restaurant model, announced the launch of its NFT program last week. The new NFTs, called Digital CollectaBaos, will be proof of membership in a new super-fan tier called the Hot Buns Club within the company’s Bao Bucks loyalty program.

Wow Bao laid out a web3 vision last November that will eventually include such far-out concepts as metaverse vending machines, but before they take their steamed buns fully into the virtual realm, it’ll start onboarding dedicated customers through its NFT-powered subscription program for $99 bucks a year.

The initial benefits for Wow Bao NFT holders include 10% off delivery orders, double Bao Bucks points on purchases, 10% off merch orders, and contest giveaways.

The Wow Bao NFT program is built on the Polygon network, a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm blockchain that proponents say is more environmentally friendly than many other Ethereum-based digital currencies. Despite the blockchain underpinnings of its new loyalty supertier, Wow Bao is – at least for the time being – downplaying the crypto angle given all the bad press the technology has gotten over the past year, positioning it instead as a digital collectible with associated member benefits.

“We’re staying away from the NFT title,” Wow Bao CEO Geoff Alexander told Restaurant Dive. “The crypto space and NFTs have taken a negative connotation in the last 12 months. We like focusing on making a collectible, we want it to be something that you own.”

The company chose Devour, a Web3 restaurant platform startup, as its partner to power the new program’s web3 ordering. Devour’s DevourGO will enable the delivery of automated promotions for holders of the Wow Bao collectibles when ordering from Wow Bao restaurants in the DevourGO marketplace.

Wow Bao’s entry into web3 is on brand for a company that has seemingly embraced nearly every new technology to enter the restaurant space in recent years. The company was the first chain to sign on to use Eatsa’s automated kiosks (before Eatsa dropped the technology and pivoted to loyalty programs) and has been one of the most aggressive (and successful) companies leveraging expansion through virtual restaurants, opening up close to 700 locations across the US in recent years. The company has also embraced automated vending (of the non-metaverse variety) to dispense bao and dumplings.

Podcast: How the DeSci Movement Will Change The World of Food

Do you know what DeSci is?

Don’t feel bad if you don’t, especially if, like me, food is your primary focus.

A16Z’s publication Future describes DeSci as a movement in which “a growing number of scientists and entrepreneurs are leveraging blockchain tools, including smart contracts and tokens, in an attempt to improve modern science. Collectively, their work has become known as the decentralized science movement, or DeSci.”

Dr. Jocelynn Pearl

If you haven’t heard of DeSci by now, the reason is that while the trend’s caught the attention of the biotech and research funding worlds, it hasn’t entirely made its way into the future food conversation just yet. 

But it’s only a matter of time, so I figure there’s no better time to learn than now. To help us do that, I invited Dr. Jocelynn Pearl, a biotech scientist, entrepreneur, podcaster, and DeSci expert, onto the podcast. 

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Pearl and I discuss the following:

  • What is DeSci?
  • How DeSci is changing the insular and outdated world of research publishing
  • The benefits of using Web3 tools like DAOs, blockchain, and NFTs in science research
  • Why DeSci hasn’t yet reached the future food industry just yet and why that may soon change
  • What the future of science research may look like with these types of tools

If you’d like to hear more from Jocelynn, you can find her podcast, the Lady Scientist Podcast, and read some of her writing on her website.

As mentioned in the episode, we are having an event next week on the state of food robotics, and we’d love for you to join us. So get your free ticket here. 

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below or at the usual podcast spaces such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast: Hospitality in the Era of Web3 with Ben Leventhal

Ben Leventhal has nothing if not good timing. 

In 2004 the New York entrepreneur launched Eater at the dawn of the blogging era, when food media was still mostly legacy publications and message boards. 

After selling Eater to Vox, he launched Resy in 2014 just as restaurants were beginning to bristle at the data practices of legacy online reservation systems such as OpenTable. He’d eventually go on to sell his second company to American Express. 

And now Leventhal is looking to create his third founder success story with the launch of Blackbird, which he describes as “a new loyalty, membership, and payments technology company.” With Blackbird, Leventhal hopes to create consumer-friendly software that harnesses the features enabled by new platforms such as Web3 while pushing the technology into the background.

“Consumer software is consumer software,” Leventhal told me

In this episode, we discuss Ben’s journey from those early days, how the evolution of food media, the changes to reservation and other restaurant tech platforms, and how he envisions Web3 and other new technologies could change the game for small and independent restaurants. 

You can find out more about Ben’s new company at Blackbird.xyz. 

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Forum3 Announces $10M Seed Round On Heels of Launch of Starbucks’ Web3 Loyalty Beta

Today Forum3, a Seattle-based startup that helps companies build Web3-enabled loyalty programs, has announced it has raised a $10 million seed funding round. The company, co-founded by former Starbucks loyalty lead Adam Brotman and Seattle-based VC and ex-Microsoft exec Andy Sack, raised funding from Decasonic and included participation by Bloccelerate, Liberty City Ventures, and Arca, along with strategic investments from Polygon Ventures and Valor Siren Ventures.

The news comes a day after Starbucks launched the beta for Odyssey, the Web3-powered component of the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program. Odyssey allows members to gain benefits through playing games and participating in activities called Journeys. When they complete Journeys, members will earn points and get NFTs (called Journey Stamps) that give them access to exclusive benefits. In addition, members can purchase limited edition NFTs, which will provide them with additional Odyssey points and unique artwork. Some benefits that Odyssey members will have access to include exclusive events and early access to merchandise.

With the Starbucks deal, Forum3 co-CEO Brotman continues his long relationship with his former employer and fully embraces what has become his passion in Web3. Before founding Forum3, the coffee giant’s former Chief Digital Officer was hand-picked to be the CEO of Brightloom, a company that was re-spun as a digital loyalty platform company with a cash infusion from Starbucks. Over the past year plus, however, Brotman had made clear he was all-in on Web3, doing the rounds on podcasts, advising Starbucks on its entry into Web3, and forming a Web3 consultancy at Brightloom before starting his new company.

And to be honest, what Forum3 is now doing sounds a lot like what Brotman had started to build at Brightloom. Earlier this year, Brightloom had begun to put together its entry into the Web3 advisory services business but delayed the announcement until last month. According to Brightloom and Brotman’s Linkedin, he is still part-time chairman at Brightloom, or at least was until this week. My guess is Brotman saw the opportunity to leverage his relationship with Starbucks and make their interest in building a Web3 loyalty program the launch point for a new startup.

Interestingly, this news comes a week after Brightloom launched a new Web3 spinout called Thred, which calls itself a search and discovery platform for NFTs. Thred is led by Ben Straley, former president and chief product officer of Brightloom.

These moves come when NFTs and the broader Web3 space have come down to earth during a general crypto downturn. Despite all of the recent pessimism, it appears that investors still have an appetite for new loyalty and discovery platforms built on top of blockchain technology.

Hack Drains FriesDAO Restaurant Project of $2.3M in What Looks Like Potentially Lethal Blow

Late last month, FriesDAO, the organization that made a splash when it raised over $5 million via a token offering earlier this year, saw its treasury raided and drained by a hacker.

According to a postmortem created by the DAO’s admins, hackers were able to access the DAO’s treasury and take all of the group’s USDC tokens:

On October 27th, 5:58PM UTC, friesDAO contracts were exploited by an attacker taking control of our own deployer address through a profanity attack vector. The hacker was able to drain the treasury of its USDC through the refund contract, drain the FRIES tokens in the staking contract, subsequently selling it all into the Uniswap pool.

The document goes pretty deep into crypto-speak to explain what happened, but the bottom line is a hacker was able to access the DAOs treasury via a crypto exploit called the Profanity flaw. There have been a number of Profanity-exploit related crypto hacks over the past couple of months and, unfortunately for FriesDAO, they are one of the latest.

The news looks like a potentially crippling blow to the DAO, which had been deep in negotiation to buy its first restaurant. Those within the DAO are continuing to try and figure out who stole the funds and figure out next steps, but things are not looking good. The overall tenor in the group’s Discord is one of resignation as they try to figure out if they can salvage the acquisition, start anew by raising new funds, or if they should just take their losses and move on.

It’s a huge bummer for an innovative organization that looked like it would be the first to create the world’s first DAO-owned restaurant. More broadly, this type of news will no doubt potentially plant seeds of doubt among decision makers at bigger brands who had been evaluating moves into the world of Web3.

Founder of Eater & Resy Launches Blackbird, a Web3 Loyalty Platform for Hospitality

Ben Leventhal is at it again.

The founder of Eater and Resy’s new startup is called Blackbird, which he describes as “a new loyalty, membership, and payments technology company.”

The company will work on building software products “that establishes and enhances connectivity between individual restaurants and their guests.” The company says they will use “a mix of web2 and web3 inventions to make it all work.”

The move by Leventhal isn’t all that surprising, in part because he’s struck gold twice already with good timing: first by recognizing the opportunity for hyperlocal food media and later through building a mobile-forward, Airbnb-integrated restaurant reservation platform in Resy.

As we wrote in August, the efforts by some to onboard restaurants onto web3 were having mixed results. The most high-profile web3 meets restaurant effort so far has been from that of Leventhal’s former Resy cofounder Gary Vaynerchuk, who generated lots of buzz early this year with its NFT restaurant concept. Vaynerchuk, not surprisingly, is participating in Blackbird’s just announced $11 million seed round.

Leventhal’s hint Blackbird will use both web3 and web2 technologies sounds like he doesn’t have any designs to be hard-core crypto purist (part of the problem for some of the earlier efforts), and instead recognizes the need to provide an approachable onramp to most in the industry. And to be sure, the best near-term bet for restaurants to baby-step into Web3 is through enhanced loyalty programs, particularly programs that reward restaurants’ true fans with utility-driven rewards that encourage even more business.

As we discussed last March with Brightloom’s Adam Brotman, it’s not just chains that could benefit; non-chain restaurants also could use an easy-to-use platform that gives them a modern way to build community and make their best customers feel special. For his part, Brotman and Brightloom are probably Blackbird’s most direct competition as a web3 loyalty platform products company, given Brightloom’s already been working with clients like WowBao to develop their web3 products, have been hiring web3 developers, and Brotman’s fascination with the topic himself.

Web3 & Bubble Tea: FriesDAO Closing In On First Restaurant Acquisition

FriesDAO is closing in on its first restaurant purchase.

The group, which managed to raise over $5 million via an initial token offering in the spring of 2022, has identified a boba tea/frozen yogurt store in New York City that it describes as an “absentee store (no daily owner operation needed).” The group says the location is currently profitable.

To make the deal even more interesting, the FriesDAO team says “a very popular NFT collection” has offered to give the group full support with possible partnership implications if the DAO chooses to brand a store with the NFT. In a post on Snapshot, FriesDAO explains that partnering up with the NFT collection (which they do not name) is attractive because, in part, any commercial revenue restrictions from the NFT license would be removed.

“This would potentially allow us to own the store directly, explore and set our own policies, increase community engagement through creative endeavors, and possibly start our own franchise.”

Over the past six months, the group has been sifting through various proposals with mixed success. In a previous announcement, FriesDAO disclosed they had been in discussions with an operator of a Jersey Mike’s franchise to buy its location, but the deal fell through once the operator backed out.

The DAO now looks like it’s found a purchase target. After getting nearly unanimous consent from backers via an online poll, the DAO is planning to send a Letter of Intent (LOI) today, FriesDAO advisor Bill Lee told The Spoon.

If the deal (which will cost about $165 thousand) goes through, I’ll be curious to learn which NFT collection the group has been in discussions with. The success of Bored & Hungry has shown that branding a restaurant with a popular NFT can add buzz and drive customer visits.

The group’s choice of a boba tea spot makes sense, since spin-up costs for new locations are likely to be much lower than that of a traditional fast food joint. Lower capex costs could help accelerate expansion should the DAO move forward with an NFT-branded franchise model.