This is the Spoon Weekly, a collection of some of the most interesting stories from the past week. Make sure to subscribe to get the top food tech news delivered straight to your inbox.
‘It’s Like a Driver’s License for Cows’: Why One Wyoming Company is Creating NFTs for Cattle
Back when Rob Jennings helped found the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition back in 2017, he knew he needed to find a use case that resonated with residents of the Cowboy State. It didn’t take him long before he settled on beef.
“Back then, there was a lot of conversation around about how grass-fed, grain-finished Wyoming fat cattle beef was being mixed into commodity feed yards with lesser animals, let’s say,” Jennings said on a Zoom call with The Spoon. “And so we developed this idea about how you could use blockchain to verify the animal’s provenance.”
Back then, Jennings worked with the University of Wyoming to develop the technology for his first blockchain startup called Beefchain. And while he and other early blockchain enthusiasts found the idea of putting the information about a steer on the blockchain exciting, Jennings found the response more muted when explaining the technology to ranchers, mainly because many of them still couldn’t see the immediate value of such a tech-forward solution.
That’s when Jennings started to think about ways to utilize NFTs. With the early implementations of storing cattle data on the blockchain, Jennings said they would hash an entire excel spreadsheet and put it on the bitcoin blockchain.
“Yes, you’re putting the information there, but it wasn’t functional,” said Jennings.
You can read the full story here.
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Alt Protein
Impossible’s New CEO Will Need to Navigate a Fast-Changing Plant-Based Meat Marketplace
This week Impossible Foods announced that founding CEO Pat Brown is stepping down from his current role and assuming the new role of Chief Visionary Officer. The company’s new CEO will be longtime Chobani exec Peter McGuinness, who recently served as the yogurt pioneer’s president and COO.
Explaining the move in a company blog post, Brown said that as Impossible has grown in size and scale, he’s had less time to devote to strategic initiatives, communicating the company’s mission to the public and policymakers, and guiding R&D for new products. Brown said the demands on the role of CEO at Impossible Foods will only continue to grow, which means now is the time to appoint a proven executive to lead the execution of the company’s day-to-day business.
From the post:
Peter and I will work together to lead Impossible and its long-term strategy, combining our complementary strengths and experience. Peter will be our CEO and a director, and will report to the board. I will continue in my role as Founder and director, and take on the role of Chief Visionary Officer reporting to the board, leading research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and, most importantly, our mission.
McGuinness comes aboard at a time of uncertainty for the plant-based meat industry. Starting last fall, we began to see signs of a potential slowdown in sales across the segment. This year, companies like Kellogg’s are warning of continued soft sales and predicting a possible shakeout.
You can read the full post here.
The Netherlands House of Representatives Passes Motion to Legalize Samples of Cell-Cultured Meat
Last week, the Netherlands’ House of Representatives passed a motion to make the sampling of cell-cultured meat legal. The passing of the motion, proposed by the D66 and VVD parties, is being hailed by Dutch cell-cultured meat companies as an important step towards legalizing the sale of cell-cultured meat at retail.
Maastricht, Netherlands-based Mosa Meat is famously co-founded by Mark Post, who kickstarted the lab-grown meat industry when he created the world’s first cell-cultured hamburger back in 2013. The company applauded the move by its home country’s government as a first step towards legalizing the consumption of the product.
The move “speaks volumes about the momentum that is building for innovation in sustainable meat production,” the company told Dutch TV organization RTL.
Dutch politicians are understandably proud that their country is seen as the birthplace for cell-cultured meat innovation and see this move as one that will help them continue to stay relevant as startups around the world race to bring their products to market.
To read the full story, click here.
Kitchen Tech
Mia and Zoey Knobler had a love-hate relationship with the French press. The two sisters from British Columbia loved the richer flavored coffee that resulted from the steep and plunge appliance, but hated the messy clean-up and the over-brewed coffee resulting from continued exposure to the grounds.
So they set to making a French press that had all the upside of that full-bodied first pour but not the downside of over-brewed coffee and sludgy cleanup. The result was the Capra Press, which debuted this week on Indiegogo and has raised over $32 thousand as of this writing.
The sisters teamed up with product designer Jeff Polster to create a French press with two interesting differentiators. The first is a mesh filter that seals after pressing, preventing bitter coffee from over-extraction. The filter utilizes silicon umbrella valves that seal the grounds into the bottom after plunging.
The second feature is a removable bottom that enables easier cleanup. Called the “grounds-keeper,” the twist-off bottom allows the user to dispose of the grounds into the trash or compost.
Read the full post here.
Food Robots
Chipotle Trialing a Tortilla-Making Robot Named Chippy, Eyeing Wider Rollout Later This Year
Today Chipotle announced they have launched Chippy, a tortilla-making robot.
The company is working with Miso Robotics, the company behind the Flippy fast-food robotic arm robot. As you can see below, Chippy is a slightly modified variation of Miso’s Flippy bot, only instead of flipping burgers or frying potatoes, the bot is optimized to make Chipotle’s tortilla chips.
Apparently, the customization for Chippy included producing tortilla chips with varying degrees of seasoning to mimic the imperfect work product of more carbon-based life forms. “Everyone loves finding a chip with a little more salt or an extra hint of lime,” said Nevielle Panthaky, Chipotle’s Vice President of Culinary, in the release. “To ensure we didn’t lose the humanity behind our culinary experience, we trained Chippy extensively to ensure the output mirrored our current product, delivering some subtle variations in flavor that our guests expect.”
According to the release, Chipotle is currently testing Chippy at their innovation hub in Irvine, Calif., with plans to integrate Chippy into a Chipotle restaurant in Southern California later this year.
“The company is leveraging its stage-gate process to listen, test and learn from crew and guest feedback before deciding on a national implementation strategy,” the release said.
In other words, Chipotle is trialing Chippy to evaluate (and possibly prepare for) a potentially wider rollout of the robot to essentially automate the chip-making process.
To read the full story, click here!
Growmark, One of North America’s Largest Ag Coops, Tests a Farming Robot from Solinftec
Growmark, one of North America’s largest agriculture supply cooperatives, has partnered with agtech solution provider Solinftec to trial a new scanning and field monitoring robot.
According to the announcement sent to The Spoon, the new robot is powered by a neuro-network that features a detection algorithm to scan for crop health and nutrition, insects, and weeds, as well as monitor the entire field and provide real-time insights back to the farmer.
Growmark will trial the new robot for the bulk of the 2022 farming season and work with Solinftec to optimize the technology for planting to harvesting. This trial is the first evaluation of a farming robot under Growmark’s AgValidity testing program, the coop’s program to evaluate new ag technology products.
Growmark’s partnership with Solinftec is a sign of growing interest in automation on the farm. Coops serve as an important channel for new technologies to make their way into everyday use on the farm. With a network of regional FS coops that spans 40 states and into Canada, Growmark holds significant sway in technology used by farmers.
You can read full post here.
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