FoodTech Startups News: February #4
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 🥣
Tea-Brewing Hasn’t Changed In 100 Years. These Tea Crystals Could Change That
They say that 90% of our bodies are made of water. In my case, I’m pretty sure that I’m mostly made of tea.
I’m half Chinese and half Indian, so my childhood was spent guzzling oolong, Assam, or masala chai every day. In both cultures, tea-making is a ritual, one that involves steeping tea leaves in hot water until the flavors have been properly infused. The last significant innovation in the world of tea was the ingenious idea of putting leaves into a little bag–and that happened a century ago. But regardless of whether you use loose leaf or bagged tea, the process, if done correctly, can take a lot of time, which is lovely if you’re in a pensive mood.
Castle Kitchen releases new plant-based protein pancake mix
US-based convenience food manufacturer Castle Kitchen has released a new plant-based protein pancake mix for the North American market.
Suitable for vegans, the new Protein Packed Plain Jane Vanilla mix has been created to respond to the growing demand for high-protein convenience foods.
The new mix expands Caste Kitchen’s product portfolio, which includes other protein pancake and hot chocolate mixes.
Clemson researchers developing smart packaging to detect food spoilage earlier
Smart packaging that can detect time, temperature, moisture and oxygen has been around for a while and is often used to track medicine, seafood, dairy products and other perishable goods in transit or storage. Typically items are monitored via computers in refrigerated trucks and through handheld devices to help identify and correct potential problems.
According to the Institute of Food Technologists, color-changing tags or labels are being augmented by degradation sensors that measure the decay of an item and will change the color of the entire package in response to chemical changes — or, in other applications, a bar code will fade so the food item can’t be scanned and bought.
Karyogamy 🤱
Hungry for growth: Food companies keep M&A on the menu in 2018
Big Food manufacturers, struggling with slowing demand and rapidly changing consumer tastes, will make acquisitions a major part of their business plans in 2018 as they jump-start growth and give their companies a bigger stake in popular trends.
Many executives attending the annual Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Florida this week said they’re noncommittal as to the size of a deal, so long as they don’t overpay and whatever they buy generates enough cost savings and revenue growth to justify the purchase price.
Heavy Lies the Crown 👑
Sansaire Announces It Is Shutting Down
Today Sansaire, one of the first consumer sous vide hardware startups, announced it is shutting down.
Acting company CEO Lukas Svec shared the bad news in an update on the company’s Kickstarter campaign page for the new generation product, the Delta:
“We regret to share that Sansaire will be ceasing development of the Delta and the company will ultimately be closing its doors. In short, our relationship with the new production facility broke down and has exhausted available funding and manufacturing routes. As we wind down over the next 12 months, Sansaire will be supporting warranties and customer service issues. Kickstarter Backers will be contacted individually regarding next steps.“
Citius, Altius, Fortius 🎟️
AgFunder Invests in ImpactVision, Solinftec, The Yield
The top-line numbers suggest that the agrifood tech industry is flooded with capital, but the reality is that there are still very few investors dedicated to agrifood tech, especially at the early stages of Seed to Series B. While AgFunder continues to do its part to stimulate and grow the agrifood tech ecosystem through media and research, we felt that we needed to be active in the market as an investor to have greater impact, and would no longer sit on the sidelines as a passive investment platform. You may have noticed that we have quietly started investing, but today we’re making it official.
Rod of Asclepius 💊
Magical microbes — how to feed your gut
Kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut, miso and kefir — all fermented foods and drinks — have been around for centuries, but suddenly they are all the rage. The reason? They are supposedly packed full of gut-healthy microorganisms, and we are finally waking up to just how much the trillions of microorganisms that live in our guts (AKA the gut microbiome) contribute to our mental and physical health.
Cornucopia 🍱
Amazon Go reportedly plotting 6 more stores
After a number of technical delays, Amazon Go finally pulled back the curtain on its much-touted cashier-less store at the end of January. Now a month in, consumers and members of the media alike are singing praises, calling the store “flawless,” “not beta” and “absolutely fascinating.” And that positive energy may help fuel an early expansion.
While some may look at the store concept as a novelty, Amazon rarely opens anything to the public unless it knows it has a home run, Christopher Walton, an independent consultant and former vice president of Target Store of the Future, wrote in an op-ed for Retail Dive.
Alibaba, Not Amazon, Shows Us Grocery’s True Future
It’s been less than two months since Amazon debuted its Amazon Go cashierless store concept to the public, following 10 months of tweaking the location’s “just walk out” system, which uses driverless car technology to detect and charge a person for a product when it’s removed from the shelf and the store. What some retailers might not know, however, is that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos isn’t the first retail visionary to execute such a concept.
Sons of Ivaldi 🛠️
CommonSense Robotics raises $20M for robotics tech for online grocery fulfilment
CommonSense Robotics, an Israel-based startup developing AI and robotics tech to help online grocery retailers speed up fulfilment and delivery, has raised $20 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Playground Global, with participation from previous investors Aleph VC and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. It brings the company’s total funding to $26 million.
Pitching a wearable to make cattle farming more sustainable, Vence raises $2.7 million
A new startup called Vence from sunny San Diego is aiming to make cattle farming more sustainable with a wearable device to create virtual fences for livestock.
The company has raised $2.7 million in new funding to bring its product to market and develop new services for farmers in a round led by Eniac Ventures with participation from the venture capital arm of the Dutch investment bank, Rabobank.
Forging Gleipnir 🔗
Researchers tattoo data into food’s outer layer
The food industry has seen a spike of interest and applications in tracking food on labels, but this appears to be the first major advancement in putting information directly onto the food product.
While this technology holds incredible potential to improve traceability and make food safer, it may seem a bit too much like Gattaca coming to real life for consumers. It’s one thing to scan a sticker on an apple. It’s another to eat the label.
Return of Persephone 🌱
Big Data Suggests Big Potential for Urban Farming
Gotham Greens’ boxed lettuces have been popping up on the shelves of high-end grocers in New York and the Upper Midwest since 2009, and with names like “Windy City Crunch,” “Queens Crisp,” and “Blooming Brooklyn Iceberg,” it’s clear the company is selling a story as much as it is selling salad.
Nine Dairy Farm Tech Startups Seeking to Bolster a Troubled Industry
Whether it be single-cow farms in India or massive commercial dairies in the US, the dairy industry is under pressure in light of changing market forces and consumer preferences.
In 2014, India’s dairy industry grew to be larger than that of the rest of the world combined and the country has been the world’s largest dairy producer since 1997. Much of this production is made up of smallholder farmers, a recent ban on selling cows for slaughter, since the Hindi majority of the country gives the animals sacred status, means that dairy farmers are less likely to expand their herds since there is no market for cows that can no longer produce milk. Further, as the aggregators of the country’s small-holder output modernize, they are looking for higher levels of quality, transparency, and consistency in their supply chains.
Remote Sensing Platform Mavrx is Testing the Power of “Free”
Remote-sensing-based farm management software platform Mavrx announced today that it would be making the fundamentals of its platform free of charge to all users.
Mavrx provides a visual intelligence platform that uses field imagery and machine learning to analyze crop growth patterns. The platform uses publicly available satellite imagery and in some cases, ultra-high-resolution imagery from planes to helps farmers assess potential problem areas and significantly reduce manual field scouting.
Soon you’ll be able to ask an agrirobot: How do you like them apples?
Food production could be fully robotic in as little as 10 years. “There’s major technologies coming,” says Abundant Robotics CEO Dan Steere, that will “make each part of farming more efficient, more productive, and hopefully healthier and less expensive.”
One of those technological advancements is his. For the last five years, Abundant has been developing the world’s first robotic apple picker, with launch slated later this year. To a non-engineer, five years sounds like a long time: We live in an age where technology adapts minute by minute. But apple picking — a relatively simple task for humans — has never been easy for machines. According to Steere, “People have wanted to automate this type of agriculture for decades. It’s just never been possible.”
That’s all for today, thanks for reading!
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