FoodTech Startups News: April #2
Stay up to date with what’s cooking in the food startups world!
Welcome to ShakeUp Factory’s News Digest!
Here are the latest impacts startups had on the food world:
Pygmalion’s Kitchen 🥣
Nathan Myhrvold Has A Patent For a Personalized Food Manufacturing System
Nathan Myhrvold is the definition of modern Renaissance man.
Equal parts mad scientist, gastronomy pioneer and patent troll, the former Microsoft CTO and driving force behind the seminal Modernist Cuisine books is an indisputable polymath that is nothing if not prolific when it comes to exploring new ideas around how to make food.
So, when I happened upon a patent recently issued to Myhrvold called “Quantified-self machines, circuits and interfaces reflexively related to food,” I knew I’d stumbled upon something worth investigating.
The Plant-Based Impossible Burger Is Now Available As A White Castle Slider
When the Impossible Burger–a plant-based burger designed to sizzle, smell, taste, and bleed like beef–launched in July 2016, it was available first in Manhattan at Momofuku Nishi, a restaurant that also sells $39 strip steak and $62 lobster fra diavolo. Momofuku’s upscale version of the burger is $18. Now, after quickly scaling up, the burger is taking the next step into the mainstream: The fast-food chain White Castle will begin selling Impossible Sliders for $1.99.
“Even before we launched our first proof of concept for the Impossible Burger, we have always intended to be available everywhere, and to be affordable,” says David Lee, the chief operating officer at Impossible Foods. Now, he says, “We’re producing at a level of scale out of our Oakland facility where we can afford to provide this product at a fraction of what we were probably known for a short year and a half ago.”
Is This Tomato Engineered? Inside the Coming Battle Over Gene-Edited Food
Zachary Lippman, a plant biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, stood among 2 acres of his experimental crops, including some altered with a gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9, one of the most ambitious efforts yet to improve on what nature created.
He plucked a tomato, held it up and asked: “Will people eat it?”
That question is rippling through the food industry, where a battle for public opinion is under way even before the new gene-edited foods hit the market.
Plant-Based Seafood Company Good Catch Foods Nets $5.5M
Tuna melts are great and all, but they can lose some of their appeal when you hear about mercury in the fish, or how dolphins sometimes get killed by being caught in tuna fishing nets.
Pennsylvania-based company Good Catch Foods is developing vegetarian shredded tuna, crab cakes, and fish patties made of lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, and other legumes. Founded in 2017, the startup is trying to change the way we look at tuna by, according to their website, “disrupting the seafood category, not the ocean’s resources.” Last week they got a little closer to their goal when they raised $5.5 million in Series A funding from Stray Dog Capital.
Citius, Altius, Fortius 🎟️
Campbell’s names new COO and launches accelerator programme
Campbell’s has named Luca Mignini as the new chief operating officer of its core businesses, and has launched an accelerator programme to accelerate the growth of the packaged fresh foods category.
The appointment of Mignini follows the reorganisation of the company’s core businesses into a single entity, which includes its soup, ready meals and snacks portfolios.
This means Mignini will lead the company’s Global Biscuits and Snacks portfolio, the newly created Campbell’s snacks division, Campbell’s Meals and Beverages, the company’s US sales organisation and the company’s global product development group.
Heavy Lies the Crown 👑
SenseFly announces the appointment of new CEO, Gilles Labossière
Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland, April 12, 2018: senseFly, the industry’s leading provider of professional mapping drones and a commercial drone subsidiary of Parrot Group, today confirmed the appointment of its new CEO, Gilles Labossière.
Labossière is the Executive Vice President and COO of Parrot Group, a position he will continue to hold as he focuses on boosting senseFly’s growth in the professional drone space.
Rod of Asclepius 💊
Personalized Nutrition Analytics Platform Nutrino Raises $8M
Yesterday Nutrino, the Israeli personalized nutrition company, announced the completion of its $8 million Series A funding round. Nielsen Ventures, Pereg Ventures, and Gandyr Group joined existing investors, including the New York Angels group, who led the company’s seed round. This latest raise brings their total capital to $10 million.
Founded in 2011, Nutrino synthesizes information from scientific reports, menus, and food nutrition breakdowns and matches that to data points on your health and eating habits, which it gets from wearables, health apps, or information you input directly into their Nutrino app. It feeds all this information into FoodPrint, their analytics platform, which then uses machine learning and AI to create an individualized nutrition profile and personalized dietary recommendations.
Dining with Lucullus 🍽️
Zume looks to life beyond pizza
Launch a fleet of robotic pizza vans and you’re going to get painted as the robotic pizza company. It’s a hard label to shake off — but as far as labels go, it’s a pretty cool one. Even so, Zume Pizza has long made it clear that it has broader plans to move beyond pizza delivery, in order to serve the broader food industry as a whole.
The first step toward that more ambitious approach is today’s news that the company is forming Zume Inc., a larger umbrella under which the Zume Pizza brand will continue to exist and focus on that titular foodstuff. The broader company, on the other hand, will provide its technological know-how to any restaurants that want to get into the food truck game.
Cornucopia 🍱
Soylent has arrived at Walmart
Soylent may have been a polarizing powdered drink when it first went on sale four years ago, but it’s clearly developed a following outside of the startup world as a drink that’s said to be a substitute for a meal. And it may have truly hit the mainstream market now that it’s available at Walmart.
Its maker, Rosa Foods, announced Wednesday it has signed a deal to get Soylent in 450 of the big box stores across the US. Soylent CEO Bryan Crowley says the move is, “a significant step in providing more ways for consumers to get access to our brand.” Walmart locations will stock the ready-to-drink bottles in “Cacao,” “Vanilla Latte,” and “Coffiest” flavors.
Carrefour strikes deal to become biggest buyer in French retail
French retailer Carrefour has struck a five-year purchasing alliance with peer Systeme-U, stealing a march over rivals in a deal that will make Carrefour the biggest buyer in its competitive home market.
The companies said on Wednesday they were in talks to jointly negotiate purchases with their main, multi-national food and non-food suppliers, in a partnership that is also intended to favor French agricultural producers.
The deal is the latest alliance within the French supermarket industry, which has seen U.S. internet giant Amazon make inroads over the last year.
Beating Pheidippides 🏃
Postmates and DoorDash have discussed a merger to fend off Uber, GrubHub and Amazon
Postmates and DoorDash have discussed a merger that would unite two of the largest restaurant-delivery startups in the U.S. in a bid to take on better-funded competitors like GrubHub, Uber and Amazon, multiple sources have told Recode.
The CEOs of both companies — DoorDash’s Tony Xu and Postmates’ Bastian Lehmann — have discussed a potential deal at least once in person in the last year, these people said. Lehmann was optimistic enough at some point in the last year that he expressed confidence in a private conversation that a merger would happen, according to one source.
Walmart partners with Postmates on grocery delivery
Walmart is expanding its grocery delivering business with the help from new partner, Postmates, the retailer announced this morning. Postmates will initially begin Walmart Online Grocery Delivery in Charlotte, North Carolina with plans to reach other markets in the months ahead. Postmates joins Walmart’s existing delivery partners Uber and Deliv, who have been helping Walmart test deliveries in select markets, including Dallas, Denver, Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa and San Jose.
The addition of a new delivery partner is not unexpected — the company recently detailed its plans to expand its grocery delivery business across the U.S. in 2018, going from just 6 metros to 100 during that time. That will see Walmart offering delivery in 800 of its stores, and able to service over 40 percent of U.S. households.
Plated and Albertsons go Nationwide as Meal Kits Move from Mailbox to Grocery Aisle
In 2007 a woman in Sweden launched the meal kit concept under the company name Middagsfrid, which roughly translates to “dinnertime bliss.” I don’t know how many working parents would classify any kind of cooking as “bliss” after a long day, but the basic sentiment worked in selling meal kits as a more convenient way to make dinner and even learn some new cooking techniques and recipes.
Trouble is, meal kits — particularly in the U.S. — haven’t exactly lived up to their original promise. As we’ve pointed out before, many have discovered along the way that “[Meal kits] are a huge departure from the way we have been taught to shop for and purchase our food — and while they might be more convenient in some ways, they are inconvenient in others.”
Sons of Ivaldi 🛠️
Futuristic Pod-to-Meal Startup Raises $10 Million
Israeli food tech company Genie Enterprise Ltd. announced on Tuesday a $10 million Series A funding round led by Carl Marks Securities LLC, the broker-dealer affiliate of Carl Marks Advisory Group LLC.
Founded in 2014, Genie develops and markets smart ovens, which the company says can cook restaurant-grade meals in 2–3 minutes from pods containing freeze-dried foodstuff. Genie also markets the meal pods, made from fresh, dried ingredients without preservatives, artificial flavorings, colorings, or additives.
Forging Gleipnir 🔗
Setting the standard right for the food & beverage industry
It is crucial we have a global set of standards across the food and beverage industry to support the rise of the digital era which is all about quality data and accuracy of information. Syed Shah interviewed Maria Palazzolo, executive director and CEO of GS1 Australia, about this goal.
Maria Palazzolo has seen the gradual evolution of business over the last 35 years. Through this period, she has worked with businesses of all sizes and in a range of sectors — always towards a vision of the future. A vision where all companies and their supply chains have full visibility of the products they are trading. Where recalls can be affected in minutes, not weeks. Where everyone can share in the benefits of the greater efficiencies created, including consumers.
Return of Persephone 🌱
A robot for rock-picking: Smartsheet founder’s ‘next big thing’ aims to solve a weighty issue in farming
Smartsheet founder Brent Frei is looking to seed and nurture another tech company, with the hope of someday seeing it grow into another big success. But first, as they say on the farm, he’s got to pick some rocks.
Now Frei is looking to the Idaho farmland where he grew up for the inspiration behind his latest idea. That idea is TerraClear, a machine that Frei said could become the “Roomba for rock picking” in referencing the famed robotic vacuum cleaner and the menial task of removing rocks from land used for growing crops.
Six Startups Using Technology to Improve Soil Health
A rising chorus of investors and stakeholders, along with some farmers, are beginning to spread the message that the health of the soil is just as important as the health of the plants growing in it.
“In comparison to its importance, we have mostly ignored soil for centuries and are only just now starting to understand the biology of it,” said Bill Buckner, president and CEO of the Noble Foundation to AgFunderNews last year.
In honor of Earth Day, here are six startups working to improve the health of soil on farms and off. Soil health is a term with as much grey area as “sustainability” — both are commonly expressed goals without clear, universal definitions. But the Soil Health Institute, created by the Noble Foundation, offers some clarity in describing its mission as safeguarding and enhancing “the vitality and productivity of soil.”
That’s all for today, thanks for reading!
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