Some 30,000 years ago, our ancestors adorned the walls of Chauvet Cave in France with images of the beasts of their world- some familiar today, others impossibly exotic. These portraits of horses and cattle, of panthers and bears and hyenas were preserved by a cave-in and were left for millennia until by chance they were rediscovered, and later filmed by Werner Herzog in an extraordinary documentary.

This secret bestiary of the ancient world contained a curious anomaly that has puzzled scientists for almost 2 decades- in all the dozens of portraits on the walls of the cave, there was not a single depiction of any canine- no dogs, no wolves, nothing at all to suggest that man and his best friend had met. Yet the muddy ground of the cave told a different story- preserved for millennia, the tracks of a young boy of 10 or so years and the paws of a dog ran side by side the length of the cave.

We’re not sure when we first domesticated dogs, but the muddy evidence of this cave floor (coupled with the facts the tracks do not cross, and the lack of bones and slow gait do not imply the child was prey) suggest an idea I will use to frame the history of domestication- we did not paint the portraits of dogs in this cave because even then, this species was considered part of the human realm and not the wild one.

The animals on this cave wall can be roughly divided into two camps- those herbivores we domesticated, and the carnivores we hunted to irrelevance or extinction. The animals that are today clearly part of the human family- dogs, horses, cows, bison, represent some of the most populous species on our planet today- cave sloths? not so lucky.

The last 30,000 years of human history have slowly removed more and more animals from the walls of this cave and into the human family- and in all the time we have been domesticating animals, the family has only grown. Even animals who’s first role in the human family is no longer necessary (most of us don’t keep cats to prevent grain contamination by rodents, for instance, or horses for ploughing fields) have found a role as companions, and moved even deeper into the core human family. Today, a healthy chunk of the planet are lucky enough to have companion animals; an even bigger chunk of humanity enjoy meat, eggs and dairy produced by mutualistic relationships with other animals that sustain our species.

The portraits on the walls of this cave depict very different versions of the animals in the human family- somewhat like an old family photo, we have trouble identifying certain relatives who have grown in strange directions. The cattle of the cave have horns and ferocious glares- the horses look nervous and flighty. These animals have been changed by their departure from the cave wall- I’m keen to explore how.

Anyone who tells you that genetic engineering is a new pastime for humanity must be reminded of the history of herd animals. The cow, the chicken, and even the humble dog have passed through an incredible millennia of gradual manipulation to yield a species that conforms to our needs as humans. Our species optimized each one of these genetic codes with the patience of generations to perform the function we most desired of them- this is the reason why there are “egg chickens” and “meat chickens”, why there are “guard dogs” and “hunting dogs”, why horses can either run like the wind of haul several tons of cargo.

Sometime in the middle of the 20th century, we started to run into the limits of genetic manipulation by breeding, and began to look for even more clever ways to render the animals in the human family more efficient in what we desire of them. Antibiotics in meat animals is a perfect example of our thirst for optimization- when we first grasped the relationship between low-level antibiotic use and growth rates of meat animals, we were so enamoured with the new pharmacological manipulation that it quickly spread through the whole of north american meat production, heralded as a triumph.

Even these new ‘farmaceuticals’ were not enough to keep up with the insatiable demand for meat that arose during the 50’s and 60’s, and so we took a step further into industrialization. The modern meat production system further abstracted the animals role in the production of the meat we wanted- we removed the idea of their central role in the process and began to see the role of these animals not as a mutualized, give-and-take with our species, but as simply a catalyst- input grain, antibiotics and time, output meat, eggs, and dairy. The journey from the cave wall into the human family benefitted enormously the animals who made the journey, and until the latter half of the last century, we as a species maintained a mutualistic relationship with those species included in our family.

Anyone who has ever toured a modern CAFO will tell you that the degree by which our relationship with these animals benefits them is now called into question.

I will not dwell on the horrors of industrial meat- the subject has been covered extensively, and frankly, it depresses me. The important consideration is not the sin, but the evolution of the relationship- down from the cave wall, into our family, into our industrial system, into our medicine cabinet, and now, into new systems of control and manipulation.

In 2016, there exist today methods of creating meat that do not involve animals. This evolution is inevitable- the logical conclusion of our relationship with these animals we domesticated so long ago is to let go of the parts of the animals we do not need, and embrace a perfect industrial method of obtaining the outputs we desire.

Breeding was not enough. Pharmacological manipulation was not enough. Industrialization was not enough. Our desire for meat, eggs, dairy, and all the delicious and ritualized foods of our various cultures that developed alongside these animals for millennia will lead us to a oh-so-logical conclusion- a block of animal protein, a perfect cube of manipulated tissue, fed by saline solution and exercised by electric shock.

The feeling of discomfort and dread that seizes me when I consider The Flesh Cube is the thing that most interests me in the future of food.

My two questions are this-

1. Why would I be scared of this process when the morality of The Flesh Cube is so obviously superior to the industrialized misery that is the lives of a good portion of the animals we once painted on the walls of caves?
2. Do we as a species owe anything to these animals?

When I weigh the pros and cons of The Flesh Cube, I think about the negative externalities of the modern meat production system. I’ve written extensively about the coming explosion of demand for meat across the globe, so I will not re-tread that ground- suffice to say that we’ll need to evolve the relationship between humans and the animals that sustain us in order to avoid cataclysmic problems in climate, human nutrition, and animal welfare. The optimization to date will not be enough- The Flesh Cube is coming, and if 30,000 years of human history speak to anything, it is the inevitability of this next step.

Many folks I speak to who consider themselves enlightened foodies recoil at the thought of The Flesh Cube. The question we must ask ourselves is this- if we allowed our modern relationship with animals we eat devolve to the state that it is today, how can we stand on any moral high ground and hate on The Flesh Cube? It has no brain! No feelings! It does not yearn for grassy pasture, it does not seek companionship, it doesn’t run around and frolic in the spring time, it does not care for its young. The Flesh Cube is blissfully unaware of the industrial system it belongs to.

We took those animals off the cave wall, and into our family. Incrementally, year by year, we betrayed that mutualization by forgetting that those animals even existed in our thirst for delicious calories. We deserve The Flesh Cube, and so do the animals we have domesticated.

I want to propose a radical outcome to the coming age of artificial meat- we may have the opportunity to care for the animals we moved into the human family in a redefined role. We took the time, somewhere in the middle of the 17th century, to breed dogs to give and receive love and affection. We bred cats to belong in our hearts and homes. We bred horses to give us sport, friendship, even therapy. We have no concrete use for chickens other than meat and eggs- no Bison will end up as house pets, no off-leash cow parks will form in our cities. It is our moral imperative, eventually, to start to think up new places for these animals to thrive in the human context, when we no longer require their bodies as a catalyst for protein.

We need to start thinking about breeding pigs who eat invasive species. We may need cows who can revitalize degraded landscapes by creating uphill nutrient cycling. We need to start thinking about chickens as vehicles for teaching our kids about the natural world. We need goats who sequester carbon. In other words, the incredible efficiency we have found in these animals when we needed them for protein is not the end of the story- we must keep considering the role of these animals in solving human problems, so that the bonds of mutualization are not forgotten.

Our human family is going to need each and every species we domesticate to move our mutual future forward. We are arriving at the limits of industrialization, and will soon separate the animal and the output. This gives us an opportunity to see the animal anew, to redefine the mutual contract, and to transfer the animals we once needed for food into new roles that are truly mutualized.

We must not fear whatever final step protein production will take this generation; we must instead decide to create new bonds of trust with the animals in the human family by repurposing them, just like dogs and cats, into securing a better future.

Far in the future, archeologists will dig up the ruins of a modern industrial feedlot, or a modern industrial pig farm, and marvel at how far away from the cave wall we took things. By fulfilling the potential of these animals to help assist humans in solving new problems, we can honour the journey these species took with us while gently separating them from the inevitabilities inherent in 6 billion humans eating their body weight of animal protein per year. My final point- don’t fear The Flesh Cube, and embrace a new era of symbiosis with the cave wall.

When we discuss how something is created we find objectionable, we use the term “how the sausage is made.”

That expression is one that we hear all the time in reference to various unsavoury processes of our modern world- in the last month, I’ve heard it used to talk about the security apparatus of nations, fantasy sports betting leagues, the presidential race.

50 years from now, I am sure that I’ll have something largely positive to say about the way that we protect our society from terror, from the way we help our poorest avoid gambling addiction, and the way we elect presidents.

I have absolutely none of that confidence when it comes to actual sausage production. I’m terrified by the prospect of explaining 2016 meat production to my grandkids. I am convinced that this issue, more than almost any I can think of today, is going to be the defining shame of the millennial generation- how we became aware of just how deeply wrong our modern meat diet is for our planet, our bodies, and our culture’s moral compass.

As a North American, I consume about 80kg of meat annually- that’s more than my body weight. That production takes 75% of the agricultural land that exists globally, and the FAO expects we’ll double the meat produced globally by 2050. Global demand growth from 1960-present for meat looks like this-

This is the same data, but removing the North American market- 1960-present- (thanks to National Geographic here)

Thats 1.4M metric tons of meat, tripling of global consumption in 50 years, a +2300% growth in developing markets.

So how is all that sausage made? It all comes down to two things- making protein people don’t want to eat into protein we do want to eat, and the feed to weight ratios of the animals we raise. Lets dive in.

The search for juicy and boneless

We as a species go to incredible lengths to find food that satisfies two criteria- juicy, boneless. To illustrate just how crazy this process can get, we’ll look at the production of salmon fillets, something that certainly qualifies as juicy and boneless meat.

Most of the Ocean Tastes Terrible

We’ve caught and tasted every kind of fish imaginable, and arrived at a few that we really love. Salmon are a crazy weird fish- they’re like nothing else that swims in the ocean, and we can’t get enough of them.

Salmon are the perfect fish for the modern North American diet- fatty, sweet, and even more delicious when we add salt and smoke. Salmon is the most consumed fresh fish by far, second only to Tuna (which is almost all eaten canned) as the quintessential American Fish. Incredibly, we feed wild fish to chickens in the form of fish oil, (that, along with Flax Seed, produces those Omega-3 eggs we all see in grocery stores), and then feed pelletized food to farmed salmon that contains “feather meal” made from the same chickens who we raised on those wild fish we think are gross.

Our love affair with Salmon exists because most fish we catch are terrible to eat, and hard to cook. There are a couple solutions to this problem-

1. we can campaign for 20 years to make consumers love weird fish, build custom processing facilities with abundant and variable machinery to cut and process everything that swims, crawls and squiggles around the ocean.
2. We can fish and eat the ones we think are tasty, and grind up the other ones to feed to other things we think are tasty.

Option 2. has been a winner by popular vote- why?

We ate 400,000 tons of fish last year, globally. We caught 55,000,000 tons of fish commercially by very conservative estimate.

That’s by far the most wasteful protein source in the world, and it is the key ingredient in the “sausage” of modern meat production.

We can shape those fish we don’t like into fish we do like, and we never really need to worry about being efficient- the value of the fish we don’t like to eat is effectively nothing. We use that raw material to create other, juicy, boneless proteins we love. The degree of industrial control over this process is terrifying, yet deeply compelling.

If we could feed cows, pigs and chickens JUST fish we hate to eat, we would be in a pretty good spot.

But we can’t. More than about 10% fish in the diet of a land animal makes them taste, well, fishy. We feed them instead grain, grass and other marginal proteins to produce meat we think is juicy and boneless.

How much grain? So much that about 25% of the earth’s land grows food for livestock, and a shocking amount of that is on land that was once, even as recently as last year, forest. We’re cutting down the planet’s trees to plant grains to feed to livestock, and in doing so, create all the negative externalities that have been talked about millions of times over.

Feed to Weight Ratios

The key to understanding how we’ll keep producing meat at the rate we do relies on a simple ratio- how much feed must an animal consume before we eat them?

Cows need about 6:1, but up to 20:1

Sheep need about 5:1

Pigs need about 3:1

Chickens need about 2:1

Crickets need about 1.4:1

Salmon need about 1.3:1

Innovating around Feed to Weight Ratios

The newest wave of innovation in protein comes in three flavours- synthesizing proteins from plants to replace the animal proteins we use in transformed substances, lab-grown meat, and altering the genetic makeup of a species for a better feed to weight ratio.

Synthesizing Proteins

Most of what makes an egg so special is protein. We grow billions of eggs a year to feed our global demand, and a huge portion of those eggs go into transformed products like mayonnaise in order to produce something that we think is delicious.

We have at our disposal now the ability to cut out the cumbersome ratios of chickens and produce the proteins we need directly, without having to go “through” a bird. A chicken is a very efficient vehicle for transforming grain into proteins that we use everyday; when you contemplate the sheer efficiency of a chicken eating grain and producing eggs, it is staggering.

However, the age-old question of science VS nature (not that there is anything particularly natural about egg production) is now called into question around eggs- how can passing grain through a bird be more efficient than transforming that same protein in a lab? Can we improve this process and eliminate the birds entirely?

Dairy cows have a similar trajectory- creating milk from grain and grasses, each one a tiny machine producing the things we like to eat. Dairy is tasty because of both fat and protein, but the protein (lactose!) that we love is the reason why we have so many dairy farms in the US.

If innovation on these industries continue, we will be able to produce these proteins without passing through the animal, which will in turn create efficiencies. There are companies working on this right now, and big progress has been made.

Lab Grown Meat

Cows eat a shocking amount of feed to get to a juicy, boneless state. We spend more resources on cattle than nearly any other animal on earth- they occupy a central place in the North American diet and are increasingly important all around the world.

Peer-reviewed studies on lab grown meat show a 85% reduction in greenhouse gasses, 99% reduction in land use, and 80% lower water use compared to cattle production.

None of this matters unless the price is also lower, and the juicy, boneless, deliciousness is there. No lab grown meat will ever truly change our diet until we arrive at a place where the feed to weight ratio is below cattle and the process is industrialized to a point where the whole thing just works.

Genetic Modification

The innovations of aquaculture over the last 40 years have been enormous- we have arrived at a moment in the evolution of this industry where the fish we grow and harvest are incredibly efficient. There are few frontiers left in the breeding of fish or chickens- we have only the direct alteration of their genetic makeup as the next step.

GMO salmon, with an incredible feed to weight ratio of 1:1, now exist. Contemplate that for a minute- an animal that eats 1kg of fish meal, and produces 1kg. This is the holy grail of any protein production system- twice as efficient as the most efficient lab grown meat.

The FDA approval of these products happened in 2015, and almost immediately there was a public backlash, culminating in most major chains in the US signing a pledge to not sell this product. Boneless and juicy it may be, but the modern consumer has no desire to eat “frankenfish”.

The Bigger Problems in Meat

1. There will be precisely zero people in the developing world who will move from subsistence agriculture into wealth and success by starting a multi-million dollar lab-grown meat business. Every single day, a desperately impoverished family somewhere on earth start to raise livestock as a route out of poverty. Creating an industry of lab-grown meat at a lower feed to weight ratio than beef is great- but this technology will not be available to the vast majority of people who farm for a living. Lab grown meat will be a winner-take-all kind of innovation, and in creating this industry, a traditional path of entry into wealth creation will be erased.
2. We’re genetically hard-wired to celebrate meat. Distant ancestors returned from the hunt to a feast; the same desire sends us to a steakhouse after concluding a business deal. Wealth and flesh are intertwined. How will the knowledge that the “meat” I eat coming from a petri dish change the psychology of celebration?
3. The meat industry is not going to take this sitting down. The influence of the industry on government, public perception of diet, and the regulations around eating is enormous, and change will be fought tooth and nail. Recently, Unilever sued Hampton Creek (later dropped, thankfully) because “mayonnaise” must contain, according to the FDA, eggs. If we’re suing each other over the definition of mayonnaise, imagine what will happen when “beef” grown in a petri dish is on sale next to a steak from a Texas steer.

The Bigger Ideas in Meat

1. We’ve yet to see the freedom that synthesized protein can bring us. We’re so dedicated to the idea we must reproduce the taste and texture of “meat” as we know it today, we’ve let a golden opportunity slip away. If our whole meat production system is dedicated to creating boneless and juicy and delicious as the criteria, then we should be using the potential of this technology to shoot way beyond chicken and beef.
   I’m not convinced that synthesized meat will ever win the taste war with industrial meat when we’re always comparing one to the other. The companies who will truly innovate in this sector should be breaking down the fundamental experience of meat consumption and designing something that is 10x better than beef, pork or chicken. We should be creating the übermeat, not reproducing what we already have.
2. Democratizing the means of production is going to be important. For the sake of brevity, insects were not brought up as a protein source, however the consumption of insects is one of the only innovative avenues for production of efficient protein that doesn’t require massive upfront investment. If we can create opportunities for smaller players to start producing alternative proteins, then we may very well stop cutting down rainforest for cowspace.
3. Re-making meat into a luxury could very well be an outcome. The bottom of the meat business is depressing- factory farms, disgusting concentrations of animals producing toxic by-products. If the dream of a truly delicious alternative does not arrive quickly enough, then the next step could very well instead be to replace the large-scale, low quality meat we raise with a more efficient process, and work to find delicious, sustainable meat production markets. Grass-fed trends, the work Joel Salatin has done, and the ethical meat movement may end up being the ally in the fight against the industrial systems we revile.

Bringing it all back home

Ultimately, the more we come to understand the meat industry as it exists today (I have deliberately avoided the usual horrifying photos) the more likely we are to run to science for salvation. Beef will be the first to be replaced, and from there the slow march of science will conquer more and more of our proteins.

My grandfather grew up in a world where the sausage was made in a barn; I grew up where the cow and the weiner became an Industrial Process. My kids will believe that meat comes from both a mega-factory and a lab; their kids may need to be reminded that we ever needed animals to make meat.

One of the great wake-up calls on the state of the industrial meat system is the sight of endless styrofoam packages of boneless, juicy meat wrapped in cellophane on a grocery store shelf. Millions of people have felt something akin to dread when looking down at that solemn plastic parade- thousands have rebelled from that sight and have begun searching for a better meat. Someday soon, that section will shrink to accommodate new meat of scientific origin. Those cells will come from neither an industrial dystopia or grassy paradise, but instead from a totally new place conjured from human ingenuity.

This new section might sit between a group who refuse to contemplate how the sausage is made, and a group who refuse to contemplate any meat that was not raised with dignity and who’s price reflects a stewardship that cares about the environment. This product will not be #realfood, but neither will it be soul-crushing to contemplate. It will sit, awaiting sale, in between two worlds.

Our own species will change their feed-to-weight ratio dramatically this generation- more than a billion of us will become routine carnivores. As we push greater and greater efficiencies into our animals to lavish impossibly high ratios on ourselves, we must confront this problem and decide where we want our meat to be raised- the farm, the factory, or the lab?

C

I am collecting opinions on this subject- hit me up at caithrin@caithrin.com if you have ideas.

Caithrin Rintoul, CEO, Provender

First, an uncomfortable truth- the highest aspiration of most modern chefs is to leave the craft of cooking behind. Why?

Each day in America legions of working-class citizens wake up and aspire to a new job, a better career, to transition from an industry where the physical labor, or the monotony, or the unpleasant aspects of their daily job do not fulfill them. Someone who hauls trash for a living may not want to wake up every day and haul trash until retirement; however they do not tell everyone, vocally and without any hesitancy, that they love their job.

There is only one workplace where that is the case- the professional kitchen.

The life of a cook is one of incredible difficulty and adversity, and one that has precious few exits. Line cooks, even those working in the upper echelons of food service, work incredible hours for an median of $22,600 a year.

There is no retirement package, no pension- just work until the body is no longer able to bear the incredible physical strain of cooking for 12 hours every day. The end game is to change industries, or ‘graduate’ to being an owner of a restaurant. The industry that employs 7.5% of all Americans is one where the summit of success is leaving the job behind.

“My Kitchen”

This is not the case in other times and other cultures- across most of Europe, the role of a chef is designed as a career with a graceful arc from young “stagaire” through to grey-haired culinary sensei. The giants of the past were not looking to own restaurants, but were focused instead on their role of leading a brigade of cooks into service every evening, supported by a class of restaurant owner who were dedicated to supporting excellence in the kitchen. Reading letters and correspondence between Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) and the heads of the various establishments he cooked in, the tone suggests a relationship familiar to anyone from the art world- that of a benefactor.

Escoffier was regarded as a craftsman and artist of the highest caliber, and the owners who supported him treated him as such through his long career.

Escoffier created the modern kitchen organization, and wrote an exceedingly influential text on kitchens; one part recipe book, one part thesis on culinary organization. His ennoblement of cooking from a servant’s labor to a profession created modern foodservice; however in recent years the rise of a new kind of chef has effectively unseated that tradition.

“My Restaurant”

Nouvelle Cuisine ushered in a new wave of chefs across France and the nascent American culinary scene- exemplified by the brothers Troisgros (1928-present), owner operators of a humble restaurant outside Lyons, which was elevated to a 3 star establishment based on a singular vision of clean, simple, refined and fresh food.

Nouvelle Cuisine is talked about mostly in the context of the changes to cuisine itself, but the largest and most lasting influences were in fact driven by the fact that the true pioneers in this movement invariably owned the restaurants that dared to break from Escoffier’s tradition. The creation of a new kind of cuisine was made possible by the fact that chefs in these establishments had more control over what they could do, because the risk was theirs to take. Doing the predictable food in the traditional manner was the safe bet- these entrepreneurs did something different because they were capable of innovation, capable of risk.

The Troisgros brothers were also famous for being in their restaurant, every night, sweating beside their team, making incredible food. The ability to take risks and break from tradition did not exempt them from their devotion to excellence or their desire to cook perfect food every night.

The elevation of a chef to the role of owner marked the beginning of a period of flux for the career trajectory of chefs- suddenly, one did not have to wait in line for the chance to become Chef- one could seize the crown and become one through an entrepreneurial leap.

“My Brand”

Marco Pierre White (1961-present) exemplifies these two different paths to chef-dom. A household name in Britain, MPW is not as known in North America, despite the book “White Heat” having been responsible for creating a whole generation of cooks.

White heat was the first chef biography, and it established an identity for chefs across the industry, virtually overnight. Anthony Bourdain, alongside many others, has written about the effect the book had on his evolution as a young cook-

‘I don’t know if I can adequately convey to you the impact that White Heat had on me, on the chefs and cooks around me, on subsequent generations.

Suddenly, there was life pre­Marco, and post­Marco. This book, around which we’d gathered in a prep area, opening it carefully on a cutting board and examining it, changed everything.’

Marco Pierre White had seen through Escoffier’s vision of orderly brigades of professionals and underneath, he’d seen and called out the misery and bleakness of the industry. He says-

‘Any chef who says he does it for love is a liar. At the end of the day it’s all about money. I never thought I would ever think like that but I do now. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy having to kill myself six days a week to pay the bank…If you’ve got no money you can’t do anything; you’re a prisoner of society. At the end of the day it’s just another job. It’s all sweat and toil and dirt: it’s misery.’

MPW saw things for what they really are, even as he rocketed to the top of the culinary world by the time he was 30. The photos of him in White Heat, a 3 star chef, top of his profession, preceded by mere moments his decision to hang up his apron and quit.

MPW made the modern chef image, and then departed to be something other than a chef- a brand, a name, a business. He created an empire (successful or not) that spanned television, endorsements, restaurants, pubs and ventures across the globe. He made himself into something more than a chef, and did not look back.

Marco Pierre White was the first among many to aspire not to the top of the profession, but beyond it.

“My Empire”

Culinary school students have changed.

Marco Pierre White himself has some opinions on the matter; he says

“What White Heat did was bring the middle and upper classes and the aristocrats into the kitchen… Before it was a blue-collar trade. Today, across London, how many kids who went to a nice public school work in kitchens?”

The definition of who wants to be a chef has changed dramatically, even as the trajectory of the profession has not. These two forces are on a collision course, right now inside of the restaurant industry.

On one side, you have the grim reality of the kitchen- chefs get old: they wear out: and they aspire to become owners.

On the other side, a generation of cooks between 21 and 41 who have the desire to follow in the footsteps of past chefs and graduate out of the kitchen and into something grander and more influential. Sadly, the chances that these smart capable and influential young cooks of making it to the top of the profession approaches zero. The odds of running an empire across multiple businesses and becoming a household name approaches the success rates of two other notorious sectors- Hollywood, and professional sports.

Almost every chef aspires to something greater, and will not keep their head down and cook when the future is so bleak and uncertain. The next rebellion is at hand.

“My ……”

Enter the New Food Business.

The model of the restaurant, the brigade of cooks united to serve a public yearning for culinary excellence, is being overturned. This very generation of cooks and chefs, emerging from the world that Marco Pierre White created, are starting to rebel against that model and create things that do not conform to this old model. They are, in short, finding new options and new definitions for what it means to be a chef.

Throw away the dining room? Connect people with food that they want on demand, through their phone? Sprig, founded by a chef.

Put the kitchen on wheels? Food trucks have exploded across North America as chefs realize that the upfront costs of that lease and equipment can be left for the less ambitious.

Innovate on the nature of ingredients? Chef Chris Jones left Moto in Chicago to join Hampton Creek, arguably the most important food+tech startup today.

Remake the model of a restaurant? Who knows what René Redzepi is doing right now, but it’s the most exciting thing happening in the highest echelons of restaurants.

Start a revolution? Love him or hate him, Jamie Oliver is a force to be reckoned with. He took a big stand on the lunches of America, until his show was cancelled and replaced with re-runs of Dancing With The Stars. Actually.

Remake the Chef, Remake the Food System

Chefs are leaders in the food world- their influence defines both the culture and palate of food. Food is evolving faster than ever today, but the role of the chef is the largest “unknowable” in the direction and speed of that evolution.

There is a great urgency in tackling this one pivotal problem: how do we create opportunities for a hundred thousand passionate, eager, educated and ambitious cooks and chefs? How can we channel this coming wave of chef rebellions into something that creates opportunity for them and positive change in the food we eat?

How can we change the narrative around culinary success, so that it means something more than just the attainment of a Michelin star, or getting to be a brand advocate for Knox Bullion Cubes? How do we create real, concrete opportunities for the mass of talent making less than 30k a year in restaurant kitchens coast to coast?

Aspirations of a new generation

Escoffier’s revolution gave form to the kitchen, Troisgros gave a path to creative freedom and expression, Marco Pierre White gave a creed and identity to the industry.

Going forward, we must challenge the narrow definition of “chef” and come to understand this profession in a different light; a scope that will now define our relationship with food as it defines our health, our culture, our history and our values. The journey to define #realfood starts with defining what a chef can become.

We must be fed; just as we need carpenters to house us and doctors to cure us, we need cooks to sustain us. The title that concerns me is Chef, and how as we move through this next revolution in cooking we must find new meanings for this old word.

For us to eat better food, and for those millions of aspirant cooks coming up through the ranks to live better lives, we must make this title something to aspire to and not to rush past. Chefs are important, and we have a unique moment today when we all get to decide why.

Caithrin Rintoul, former chef, CEO at Provender, food writer here and at caithrin.com.

The Next Chef Revolution was originally published in Food is the New Internet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, Provender’s team is really proud to offer a new platform to our community of farmers and buyers.

Menuplanting is a platform designed for a new type of purchasing between buyers and sellers, something that we’ve seen over the last 18 months at Provender and have dedicated ourselves to solving with a simple piece of technology.

The Problem

Chefs are by their nature dreamers. The craft of cooking inspires creative reach, but also is rooted in something fundamentally important- that each night, customers come through the door and must be fed. Balancing creative urges and production demands is what makes a great chef.

We see our role at Provender as being about giving cooks a bigger, better, cheaper palate of ingredients to play with. We connect farms and buyers together to make more local food available, but also to avoid problems that chefs tell us prevent them from dealing with farmers- hassle, logistics, invoicing. We’ve shipped hundreds of tonnes of local food from farm to fork, and each time we do so, we feel really grateful that our buyers and sellers trust us to make this process easier.

Sourcing great products has pushed us as a business to address some of the fundamental issues in agriculture- namely, how to help manage risk on behalf of our farm partners, so that they can sell more, waste less, and make a better margin on their products.

That led us, in 2014, to open up advanced ordering on Provender, so that buyers could purchase even before the product was harvested. That led us, in 2015, to allow our buyers to group-purchase whole animals at the moment of slaughter, weeks before aging and butchery made that product available.

Today, we’re taking the last step in that journey backwards in time- we’re launching Menuplanting to our community. Today, we’re giving our buyers a seat at the table from the very moment when our farmers are selecting what crops they will grow for the year.

Introducing Menuplanting

Seeds are an amazing thing. Being the technology geeks we are, we talk a lot about seeds being the database of agriculture- where all the potential is stored, patiently waiting for a moment that it can be grown into something delicious.

Seed selection is a difficult process for a farmer- he or she must know not only what the soil of the farm will best support, but also what diseases the seeds must resist, and what the perfect time to plant will be in order to have a crop come to market perfectly.

Menuplanting is a tool that helps farmers in that decision by providing them with information on what buyers want for the coming year. By giving buyers the opportunity for the first time to collaborate on these decisions, we help our farmers make the right decisions on what buyers want most.

For our buyers, we’re offering a platform to help unlock the potential of local farms. We give them access to a rich database of agriculture, so that they may request that a farmer plant them the perfect combination of ingredients for their menu.

Menuplanting is about collaboration for buyers and sellers, so both sides of the Provender community can come together and make the process of growing great local food a little bit easier for both buyer and seller. We’re delighted to be launching this product out of a private beta today, and after hundreds of successful and unsuccessful plantings have proven the value of the platform, we’re ready to share this with the world.

Pop on Menuplanting today, request some seeds, get matched with a great local farmer, and start unlocking the potential of agriculture. We’re proud of this next step for our company and we could not be more proud of the community of farmers ready to make this happen.

best,
Caithrin & The Provender Team.

Where are we coming from in food system innovation, and where are we going?

This is a question that I am asked almost every day by very well meaning entrepreneurs and investors who are attempting to create a mental model for understanding the innovations happening in food.

Food is one of the biggest markets, and also one where innovation happens in very slow cycles. This is true for 3 reasons-

1. the market is so big that change takes time to permeate.
2. farms and farmers have traditionally been hard to reach geographically, which creates latency in information transfer and learning.
3. Food is special to consumers- it transmits culture, so we don’t want it to change, and it transmits sickness, and we don’t want innovation that kills.

Mostly, when we think about food innovation, we think about laboratories and GMOs and the word synthetic.

Some of us think thats cool, some of us think thats totally horrific, but we ignore the fact that the Slow Food movement is as much an innovation in food systems as eggless mayo.

After thinking on the subject for some time, I propose the following 2x2 as a simple, rational way of understanding where ideas and changes fall inside of food systems.

Quick History-

For an absurdly long time, food was slow and diverse because thats how you made sure you didn’t starve. Diversity meant that if climate was particularly brutal in one direction or another, you didn’t lose all of your growing crops, just a subset of the total calories available to you. Slow was a necessity because the industrial revolution was very late to food.

From 1945 or so onwards, two guys really pushed agriculture out of the lower left corner- Norman Borlaug and Earl Butz. Driving science and policy respectively, they drove us towards a modernized, commoditized, mechanized food system.

Starting in about 2000, America started to get suddenly suspicious of the food coming out of that top right hand corner. Highly commoditized, frictionlessly delivered calories started to look like a good way to get sick and die young. We started to panic, and to reassess.

by 2006, we had The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Slow Food USA. Slow Food arose as a reaction against the impossibly quick calorie delivery systems we were eating, and Michael Pollan effectively questioned the role of the big commodities in our food system (corn, specifically). Suddenly, there were two camps- the mainstream food system eating commoditized, frictionless food, and the Pollan camp eating “slow”, diverse foods that were the antithesis of this movement.

If you had the label this axis with actual food, it would look like this-

Filling in around the two camps-

From 2006 onwards, innovation in either of the two camps was becoming more and more difficult- creating “slow food” that was better than what was being served in high-end restaurants seemed impossible, and creating “fast food” that was cheaper than what you could get at McDonald’s seemed impossible.

From 2006 to 2016, our food innovation has mostly been in the two other camps-

1. fast, frictionless services in food that offered more diversity in both ingredients and selection.
2. highly commoditized foods that were connected to the values of “slow”.

Some amazing businesses have been built in the top left corner and bottom right, respectively.

Chipotle proved you could make food values-oriented and “slow” while selling commodities- their menu is still basically corn-based, but better corn. Corn fed to animals outside. Corn rolled into healthier shapes.

Sweetgreen and others have proved that diversity can be bundled and delivered at high-speed and low-friction through innovations around the supply chain and a focus on selection over price.

Today, we’re innovating in all 4 Quadrants-

The decade between the release of the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the present day saw entrepreneurs who pushed the edge of innovation further in every direction, by overturning the idea that “slow” meant expensive and laborious and that “fast food” meant unhealthy and cheap.

There are myriad examples of these innovations across food- Munchery/Spoonrocket/Sprig, for example, took the approach of questioning why physical locations and counter service was an asset in eating a quick meal, and brought values of “slow” to the fast food market.

I want to highlight 4 companies in particular who exemplify the innovations in food systems in 2016-

Soylent shattered what we believed to be the upper limits of calorie-delivery systems. There has been much ink spilled over the evils of soylent, but I think its amazing to see this quadrant fully played-out; we have arrived at Peak Fast Food. You don’t call your business Soylent unless you understand the sweet irony of creating the perfect commodity.

Hampton Creek shattered what we believed to be the remix potential of commodities. The ability of Hampton Creek to be “slow” while also creating a product made almost entirely of agricultural commodities is a feat of both technology and marketing. They have expanded what is possible in the commoditized food space, while also proving that moral high ground in food, and an association with the “slow’ is a critical part of making a powerhouse CPG.

Blue Apron shattered what we believed to be the limits on diversity in a convenient form. The food eaten by the Michael Pollans of the world is unquestionably more delicious- it is also much more time, much more money, and much more of a pain in the ass than eating a big mac while driving down the highway.

Meal kit startups (don’t hate me for using Blue Apron here, if you’re a fan of another version) have helped to crack the code in how to bring the values of diverse, sustainable food systems into the bright light of modernity. Strip away the cumbersome food pickup from a well-meaning hippy farmer. Strip away the peeling, washing, soaking, fermenting. Strip away the waste, the traditional recipes that feed a family 5 times larger than the norm, strip away the anxiety of the recipe.

You are left with a frictionless meal that delivers you the satisfaction of the “slow”.

Good Eggs Proved that “slow” is hard, and really, really worth it. The rise and fall of B2C “slow” food delivery companies is a familiar tune in SF and NYC, but GoodEggs really exemplified what is possible in the space. As they continue to grow out of a rocky end-of-year, the dream of “slow” food continues.

10 Predictions for this year in Food

You’re caught up in innovation in food over the last 50 years. So what happens this year?

1. More ways of delivering “slow” values in frictionless ways. We’ve got one heck of a model in meal kits, but the game is not yet played out. Startups with great ideas in this space will rise this year to prominence. As these new ideas start to come forward, the dominance of the meal kit model will start to fade. The winners will be the companies who embrace not just frictionless, but habit-forming.
2. Soylent will be unstoppable. This is one of those classic “first they laugh at you…” stories- Soylent will be worth a billion dollars by December 2016. A major CPG brand will launch a clone of Soylent with a ton more sugar and fat in the recipe.
3. The Great Chipotle Illness Scare of 2015 will drive innovation around how to grow more diverse foods in a commoditized ways. Freight Farms is a great example of a company poised to win like crazy on this theme. Positive public sentiment around “slow” and diverse food will weaken as the spectre of unsafe food starts to assert itself.
4. Supply constraints in “slow” food will get weirder and weirder. This is the year that consumer preferences will start breaking supply models for stable purchasing. In layman’s terms- we’ll hear more stories about shortages of foods that no one grew or cared about in 2012.
5. New Ingredient creation will be a thing. Creating new foods, not just new recipes, will be a big focus of early R&D innovation. Recipe innovation will get more and more quantified in the next 5 years, so the logical next step is pushing up into creating new foodstuffs. New ingredients.
6. McDonald’s will become more like Chez Panisse, and Chez Panisse will become more like McDonald’s. As the year draws to a close, we’ll have seen the launch of initiatives in fast food to become more like the hyper-local, diverse and sustainable restaurants of the world, and we’ll see those values start becoming more and more interested in commoditization and frictionless experience design.
7. The Biggest companies in food will start to question when they’re buying “slow” food rivals. The Annie’s acquisition for General Mills for approaching a billion dollars shows just how hard it is for “fast” food companies to innovate in other quadrants. You can bet they’ll start finding ways to buy into these competitors before they become this expensive.
8. Kitchen hardware companies in food will prove to be too early. Current kitchen gadgetry is not going anywhere, because consumers are questioning the very value proposition of cooking at home. Selling new kitchen hardware to consumers will be a deadly vertical until these companies start to build friction-reducing services around their products.
9. The MIT Open Agriculture initiative will get a for-profit, closed-source copycat in Silicon Valley. If someone does not do this by December, I will, like Werner Herzog, eat my shoe.
10. Venture funds investing in all 4 quadrants of the food system will close this year. They’ll be small (20–100m) and they’ll blend elements of private equity into their composition so they can accelerate CPG brands, but they will close funds this year and they will find great deals. Existing software-based venture funds will slow the pace of funding in the space because the majority of VCs see “food stuff” as one category, not four.

Bringing it all back home

The Sistine Chapel of internet-enabled commerce is going to be food & food systems. Those that have a firm hold on this are going to have a great 2016.

I am collecting opinions on this subject- hit me up at caithrin@caithrin.com if you have ideas on food in 2016.

Caithrin Rintoul, CEO, Provender

Past and Future of Food Systems Innovation was originally published in Food is the New Internet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.