Restaurant Technology

Amp up your cocktail with pico de gallo

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 17:16:21 +0000

Sure, AI Might End Humanity, But First It Could Help Keep Your Food Fresher

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:59:09 +0000

If you ask Steve Statler, our current supply chains are essentially the equivalent of an old-school combustion engine (at best), and at worst something akin to a horse-drawn carriage.

“We’re running our supply chains with 19th-century visibility,” said Statler, the CEO and cofounder of AmbAI and host of the Mr Beacon Podcast. “The future is automating it completely, so we see everything everywhere all at once. We improve safety, we reduce waste, we increase shelf life.”

And while things may be largely stuck in the past, where we track food from farm to fork relying on things like barcodes, manual scans, and occasional checkpoints – the end result of which is blind spots that lead to waste, quality loss, and safety risks – Statler believes we are the precipice of dramatic change.

Statler believes much of the change will come as result of broad deployment of tiny, battery-free Bluetooth “stickers” and AI systems capable of reading, analyzing, and acting on their data in real time. “Basically, the cost of infrastructure to read these tags automatically is going down, down, down,” he said. “Over the next one to three years, these tags can harvest energy from the mobile devices, surrounding us. And that’s the unlock.”

The size of a postage stamp, these ambient IoT tags continuously transmit information on temperature and location without human intervention. We will “improve safety, we reduce waste, we increase shelf life,” Statler said, describing a not-too-distant future where every pallet, package, or even piece of produce is monitored end-to-end.

According to Statler, these types of tags could change the way we track food inventory in our fridge, with “dynamic expiry dates” that respond to actual conditions rather than rough estimates. “You talk to Alexa and you say, ‘when is this milk or this salmon or this shrimp going to expire?’ and it will know,” said Statler. “We will have looked at the temperature over time that the product has been exposed to, and we can come up with a 21st-century model of how long the product will last.”

Statler pointed out that Alexa and other home assistants are capable of this today with a small software upgrade. I pointed out that allowing Alexa to track freshness by accessing Bluetooth data emitted from various devices and smart tags in your fridge would require consumer opt-in, especially given growing consumer concerns about privacy and access to their data.

“I think Amazon is very sensitive to that, and when they do this, and this is just me speculating, then they’ll do it with privacy in mind,” said Statler. ” I believe that privacy, when done badly, can kill products.”

I also asked Statler if these types of small beacons are connecting with other IoT systems, like Strella or others that sense changing food chemistry to better predict and manage freshness, and he said they’re starting to, but it’s in the early stages. Statler says the primary focus right now of these beacon system is on temperature and identity. The tags are also part of a larger trend toward serialization, where every individual product has its digital passport for authenticity, traceability, and freshness management.

Feeding this data into AI could shift the industry from traditional supply chains to responsive ‘demand chains.’

“We can do a better job of making better products that people use,” Statler said. “And we can start to go from supply chains to ‘demand chains’ that are informing the production and distribution to be much more efficient.”

It was an interesting conversation, one in which Statler was clearly excited about the potential for AI in our supply chains and in our lives, but also saw a potential danger lurking.

“I’m a little pessimistic about where AI is going. I sort of have this dual view of artificial intelligence, which is it’s amazing, and this is why I got into computing years and years ago. But at the same time, there’s a real chance it’s going to kill us all or enslave us. And I think we have to kind of live with that duality in our heads and do our best to try and make sure that this technology evolves in a positive direction.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Steve by clicking play below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“A superb dish,” says Daniel Boulud

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 15:02:45 +0000

A daiquiri with absinthe, yes please!

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 16:01:48 +0000

A blast from the past with a Penichillin cocktail

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:34:14 +0000

A Software Update Bricked Some Anova Precision Ovens. Anova’s Solution Involves Tin Foil and Tape

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:28:28 +0000

On July 28, some owners of the Anova Precision Oven woke up to bricked appliances. According to posts on Reddit and a Facebook group for the company’s high-tech combi-oven, customers reported “black screens of death” and non-responsive ovens after an overnight firmware update.

After a flood of inbound requests for support, the company acknowledged the problem in emails to affected customers: “We discovered an issue with a firmware update that may have affected your oven. On Monday, July 28th, we released a firmware update that caused roughly 145 ovens to fail – displaying only a black screen after startup. We caught this quickly and pulled the update but your oven may have been affected.”

Initially, the company said it would look for a fix, and offered customers a refund if they preferred not to wait.

One encouraging sign for Anova and its users was that the bricked ovens were still connecting to Wi-Fi, which meant there was a chance a new update could be pushed to fix the issue. However, finding a solution was complicated by the fact that the ovens went to sleep about 20 minutes after being powered on, while the firmware download and update process took roughly three hours. To make matters worse, that update window occurred in the middle of the night.

Anova’s customer support recognized that was problematic and not workable for pretty much anyone: “To recover your oven, we need to keep it awake for the full three hour overnight update window, between 1–4 AM in the local timezone where the oven is connected,” wrote the company in an update on their support site. “If staying up all night tapping the oven screen every 15 minutes sounds like nightmare fuel, we have devised an alternative method to keep your oven awake.”

That alternative? MacGyver-ing a fix with tin foil and tape. The company’s proposed solution provided step-by-step instructions showing the size of the tin foil “finger” and how to attach it to the screen to trick it into staying awake during the update process.

“In the morning, remove the foil, and tap the screen. If the oven UI does not display and the screen remains dark, unplug the oven and plug it in again. If the oven has updated overnight, you will see the standard boot sequence, and your oven UI will appear. Otherwise, try the process again.”

If the device still won’t update, Anova says it will work with customers to resolve the issue and, presumably, replace any ovens that remain bricked.

On one hand, 150 or so bricked ovens might not sound like a big deal. On the other hand, it kind of is, since no customer wants their product to have any kind of “screen of death.” To its credit, Anova appears to have acted quickly, containing the damage by recognizing the problem early and rolling out a fixed firmware update to unaffected units.

In the end, customers generally welcome updates that add extra functionality to their ovens. Waking up to discover your appliance can now, say, air fry or perform another new trick is great, just as long as the oven still works afterward (and the company doesn’t abruptly end support for the product).

Jonas Brothers Share Favorite Restaurants, New Album, and Opening a Bagel Truck— Let's Do Lunch

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:05:36 +0000

The Sea Urchin Sashimi is the Star at One of LA’s Best Restaurants – Icons

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 11:50:36 +0000

Which Jonas Brother is the pickiest eater?

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 06:58:33 +0000

Drone Delivery is About to Get a Big Upgrade. Here’s Why Part 108 Will Change Food Delivery Forever

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:41:39 +0000

For those of you who are skeptical about whether drone delivery will ever become a common way to deliver your pizza or groceries, I’m there with you. Several key factors need to be in place to ensure drones can deliver items quickly, at low cost, and, perhaps most of all, safely.

One of the key hurdles to ensuring all of those things become a reality happened last week with the release of Draft Part 108 for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) by the FAA. Part 107, introduced in 2016, set the baseline rules for small commercial drone operations, allowing flights within visual line of sight under a certified remote pilot but leaving BVLOS missions dependent on case-by-case FAA waivers.

The new proposed rule brings with it a framework for BVLOS operations that replaces ad hoc approvals with standardized pathways. For industries like food delivery, the new rules could be the regulatory green light that turns pilot projects into citywide services.

Individuals to Organizations: One of the biggest changes from Part 107, which put the burden on individual pilots (requiring each to be certified and limiting most flights to visual line of sight), is that Part 108 shifts accountability to the operating company rather than every drone pilot. This change acknowledges that modern drone delivery (especially BVLOS), relies on automated systems, centralized oversight, and coordinated fleets, not one pilot per aircraft.

Permits vs Certificates: Operators will choose between two regulatory paths designed to match the scale and complexity of their operations. Permits will work for lower-risk, smaller-scale flights in less densely populated areas and come with a cap on the number of drones (such as a limit of 100 for delivery services). Certificates are geared for high-density, high-volume operations in urban environments, and will remove fleet caps in exchange for stricter oversight, safety requirements, and operational protocols.

Operations will be governed by five population density tiers, from rural (Category 1) to major metro cores (Category 5). Permits only allow access to Categories 1–3; Certificates are required for Categories 4–5. For food delivery, that means suburban and exurban rollouts first, with dense city markets requiring the more stringent certificate process.

A New Player: ADSPs. One of Part 108’s biggest changes is the creation of Automated Data Service Providers which are companies responsible for real-time airspace data. This data includes:

Drone traffic and location tracking.
Weather integration.
“Strategic deconfliction” to prevent midair conflicts.
“Conformance monitoring” to ensure drones follow approved routes.

Operators must connect to an ADSP, but they can also become their own ADSP if they meet the technical requirements.

There are a bunch of other changes – I recommend you check out this great writeup by Matt Sloane. For drone food delivrey, it will bring big changes, helping to take drone delvery from what is essentially a novelty service today to a scalable service.

The primary bottleneck has been regulatory: BVLOS flights, essential for covering enough ground to make delivery viable, were locked behind an unpredictable and time-consuming waiver process under Part 107. Part 108 changes all that. By creating clear, scalable pathways (permits for smaller suburban rollouts, certificates for full-scale urban operations), the FAA is giving food delivery companies a roadmap to expand without reapplying for exemptions every time they add new routes or drones. The introduction of Automated Data Service Providers means operators will have access to the real-time airspace management needed to safely run dozens or even hundreds of flights at once.

Add in the push toward autonomy, standardization of safety measures, and population tiering, and Part 108 looks less like the regulatory green light that could take drone food delivery from novelty to serious delivery option.

Chef to Chef to Chef, a train of compliments

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:50:26 +0000

A perfect summer cocktail with tequila, tomato, and pineapple

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 03:06:28 +0000

This popular NYC restaurant serves only 7 rib-eyes a night

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:19:37 +0000

The inventor of the Cronut has a new Asian and French inspired bakery

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 05:29:38 +0000

As Robot Delivery Grows, Buildings May Have “USB Ports” to Enable Seamless Delivery Handoff

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:38:14 +0000

With this week’s news that Little Caesars pizza is partnering with Serve to deliver pizza, it’s clear that robotic delivery, whether on sidewalks, underground, or in the air, is fast becoming more mainstream.

Despite many of these startups working on technology for close to a decade, the robot food delivery process still has a cumbersome part: picking up the food at the restaurant or handing over to the customer in their home or apartment.

The main reason is that most restaurants and homes were not built for robotic delivery. Sidewalk delivery robots and drones can’t open doors or use elevators, requiring customers to visit designated pickup spots or follow instructions to collect food at the curb.

This might change in the future, according to Garrett McCurrach, CEO of Pipedream Labs. McCurrach believes that in the future, buildings will adapt to robotic delivery. “A lot of buildings in the future are going to have what is essentially like a USB port for accepting and handing off to different modalities,” said McCurrach at SKS 2025.

According to McCurrach, the goal on the restaurant and ghost kitchen side is to solve the coordination challenges of last-yard logistics, especially in environments where speed and efficiency matter most. “Being able to get things out quickly into the right modality, whatever the modality is, is going to be super important,” he said.

While drone landing pads and delivery hubs have already been deployed in the early stages of the drone delivery market, some are exploring how drones could deliver vertically within a building itself. A group of researchers at the University of Tokyo looked at potential scenarios of drone delivery in high-rises, essentially through what is a “USB port” at the top of the building.

Looking further into the delivery future, another potential big challenge is enabling multi-model (or multi-robot) delivery. Sure, delivering via a drone might make sense to some places, but a more realistic option might be drone to sidewalk robot or, eventually, a humanoid.

For McCurrach and Pipedream, he’s had to think about handoffs to other automated forms of delivery since the beginning, in large part because his delivery system – which consists of an underground delivery with specialized delivery robots – almost by definition will not reach the end-users home or work since the company’s network only delivers to drop-off points in building lobbies or other specialized locations.

“We build the underground networks to move things quickly to get to that end node. And then portals that hand off to a self-driven car, a Coco robot, a Zipline drone, whatever the right modality is to get it to its end destination,” said McCurrach.

But, if early USB technology is any example, over time, universal connections via coordination across ecosystems become more prevalent, as both physical infrastructure and robot-to-robot coordination increase, I expect the arrival of multi-modal robot delivery to be set to arrive at our doorstep sometime in the next decade.

This ain’t your average seafood boil.

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:19:28 +0000

From AI as Health Advisor to Leaving Shark Tank, Here Are 5 Takeaways From My Conversation With Mark Cuban

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 16:57:53 +0000

Last week, I sat down with Mark Cuban at the Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about how he sees AI changing innovation and medicine, his motivation for starting Cost Plus Drugs, and why he decided to step away from Shark Tank after this upcoming season.’

Below are five takeaways from my interview with Cuban.

Cuban’s Frustration With the Healthcare System Led Him to Start CostPlusDrugs.com

Cuban’s motivation for starting Cost Plus Drugs was rooted in frustration with a complex and often predatory prescription drug system. “First off, at Cost Plus Drugs, we sell more than just generics,” he said. “We do have brands. We just don’t have all of them yet.”

But Cuban made it clear that the economics of generics where the company has made the most significant impact. “We’ve cut prices down for chemotherapy drugs like Imatinib from $2,000 or more to $21 to $40,” Cuban said. “And so those guys, those big guys, they don’t like us.”

By “those guys,” he means pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), who are powerful intermediaries he says are actively limiting access to drugs. “PBMS basically control the entire pharmaceutical industry. And they see us as competition.” Cuban said the company’s pricing model is completely transparent: “We only mark it up 15%. If you prefer mail order, the cost is $5 for the pharmacist and $5 for shipping. Or we have local pharmacies, and you can do a pickup there.”

Cuban says his target customer is anyone stuck in the cracks of the healthcare system. “If you have a high deductible plan, you don’t have insurance, there’s a good chance that we carry your medication, and there’s an even better chance that you can pay cash through us and it’ll be cheaper than your deductible and out of pocket.”

Cuban Sees GLP-1 Pricing Becoming More Accessible

I asked Cuban about where he sees pricing going for GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. He recognizes the importance (and consumer demand) and feels they will become more accessible – including via his site – over time.

“As it applies to GLP-1 drugs, there’s a drug that costs, that we carry that costs $50. It’s a brand drug. And it costs $50 a month instead of $400 or $1,300 a month,” he said. “I think those will come down in price because of the competition, and I think you’ll see new forms of GLP-1s and pills come out as well, which will also put the pricing down. And we’ll carry everything we can.”

He Sees AI as an Increasingly Important Healthcare Tool

Throughout our conversation, Cuban repeatedly came back to the disruptive potential of AI, suggesting it’s the biggest potential harbinger of change in tech and more broadly than anything in his career. This includes in healthcare.

Cuban belief in AI’s potential in health support tool isn’t theoretical – he already uses it himself.

“I do it all the time, right?” he said. “I have to take this thing called Synthroid for hypothyroidism, and I also need more iron after I got my blood tested. I had no idea that taking them both at the same time didn’t work. My doctor didn’t even realize that.” Cuban said he turned to ChatGPT, asking if he could take them both at the same time? “It said, ‘hell no, do not take them at the same time’. It said you have to have three hours between them. And so now my TSH went down to right where it’d be perfect numbers. And my iron levels are going up as well.”

Cuban also said he’s still skeptical of ChatGPT’s responses, so he’ll check responses against a site designed for doctors called Open Evidence. “It’s my way of checking ChatGPT’s work.”

Shark Tank Will Remain The World’s “Best Commercial” Even After Cuban Leaves

After 15 seasons and hundreds of deals, Cuban announced he’s stepping away from Shark Tank. It wasn’t because he’s starting a new business or running for president. He just wanted to spend more time with his family.

“I did it just because of family time,” he said. “Because right about now, I might be shooting Shark Tank, right? And this is the time to spend with my family.”

Cuban still believes in the show’s power to help entrepreneurs: “On Shark Tank, you can have somebody from Idaho, from New York, from wherever, somebody who’s 18 years old, somebody who’s 80 years old, standing on that carpet, telling millions of people about their product.”

It’s the “world’s greatest commercial,” said Cuban.

The Importance of Becoming AI Literate

For Cuban, becoming AI literate is essential. “Learn everything you can about AI because it changes everything,” he said. He said that regardless of whether it’s starting a business, working a trade, or building a career in any field, understanding how to use AI will be required. “There’s going to be two types of companies,” he said, “those who are great at AI and everybody else.”

“There is no job that won’t be touched by artificial intelligence,” he said. “Whether it’s an optimization, in some cases replacement, some cases creating new jobs because you know how to use AI—it goes in all directions.”

Cuban may have stepped away from Shark Tank and sold the controlling interest in the Mavericks, but he definitely hasn’t slowed down. After 30 years in tech, helping to build the world of streaming and becoming one of the world’s most famous tech entrepreneurs, he’s excited about learning and adapting to the future.

You can watch our full interview below, on YouTube, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wait for the "Ratatouille" moment

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 09:07:28 +0000

What does the dining world look like in the next 20 years?

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 02:50:32 +0000

Eater is officially 20 years old!

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 03:40:12 +0000

NotCo’s Next AI-Powered Innovation? Replicating Human Scent to Make My Dog Happy

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:05:20 +0000

As far as my family’s small Pomeranian, Zeus, is concerned, I’m a very distant second banana when it comes to the humans in his life. Sure, he’ll let me feed him and pay the cheese tax, but the reality is he’s only got eyes (and a nose) for one person in his life, which happens to be my wife.

Like many loyal dogs, when my wife is out of the house, Zeus finds comfort in lying on blankets, sweaters, or anything that may have a whiff of his favorite person’s scent. Where things get rough for the little guy is when we have to travel, but someday soon we’ll be able to bring a bottle of “mom” fragrance to provide a little canine aromatherapy when we drop him off at the dog sitter.

That’s at least according to NotCo CEO Matias Muchnick, with whom I sat down this week at the Smart Kitchen Summit to talk about what his company and the journey of being a pioneer in leveraging AI to develop new food (and now pet) products.

“We’re partnering with one of the biggest pet companies in the world to generate human scent,” said Muchnick. “Literally, it’s like a 23andMe for your smell.” The idea according to Muchnick is to use an AI model to do scent profiling to create a mist that replicates your scent, helping ease separation anxiety for pets when their humans leave home.

There’s no doubt that this new direction is leveraging some of the work that NotCo has done in building out a “Generative Aroma Translator”, which the company unveiled at the Spoon’s Food AI Summit last fall. “The system intakes your prompt, such as ‘an ocean scent on a breezy summer day on a tropical island’ to create a novel chemical formulation of that scent in one-shot,” said the company’s former chief product officer, Aadit Patel.

Only add in an extra layer of personalization, which includes your odor and all the notes you pick up as you travel through the world.

“We will get you a report of your top notes of your own body whenever you get back home,” said Muchnick. “If you work in an office, it’s going to be an office, depending on the office that you work in. If you’re a mechanic, you’re going to have a lot of other odors.”

Muchnick kept quiet on who the partner is or what the actual product would look like, but did indicate this project is one of hundreds of new projects since the company doubled-down on being an AI-powered innovation engine for CPG brands.

“Our first investor decks in 2016 were all about AI,” Muchnick said. “But no one believed in it
back then, so we had to prove the model ourselves.” NotCo’s path to validation came by launching its own consumer products, such as mayo, ice cream, burgers, and capturing market share in Latin America and North America, after which big players couldn’t help but take notice.

Today, NotCo is firmly in phase two of its journey. Through partnerships with companies like Kraft Heinz, Starbucks, and PepsiCo, the company is showing how Giuseppe can help brands rapidly create new product formulations and adapt to regulatory or consumer-driven upheaval, such as the recent push to remove synthetic dyes or respond to GLP-1-driven shifts in eating habits. He said the company has over 50 active color replacement projects.

The different between now and just a couple years ago is drastic when it comes to big food’s receptivity to working with AI. Curiosity and hesitation has melted away and turned to eagerness and a sense of urgency.

Who he’s talking to has also changed. What used to be R&D director conversations are now CEO-level discussions. “AI is no longer optional,” said Muchnick. “If they don’t adapt, they’ll face the blockbuster effect. They’ll become obsolete.”

You can watch the replay of the full interview at The Spoon next week.

Is Posha the Robotic Heir to the Thermomix? The Founders Sure Hope So

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 14:46:19 +0000

For the past five or so years, the emails have landed in my inbox on a steady basis, nearly every month. They’ve included updates on a small startup building a countertop cooking robot named Posha.

The emails, almost always written by the company’s CEO and co-founder, Raghav Gupta, detail progress, both big and small, ranging from software tweaks and field trial insights to news of an $8 million Series A funding round.

The progress has been slow but steady. And over the past year, the company has reached a milestone that most cooking robot startups (especially those targeting the home) haven’t come close to: they’re now building robots using scaled manufacturing, and those robots are arriving in customer homes.

Given that I’ve followed dozens of companies attempting this goal over the past decade, I figured I’d take Raghav up on his invite to see the robot in action and talk with him about what’s next.

So this past Sunday, I headed to an Airbnb Raghav had rented north of Seattle to demo the Posha robot for media and investors. Raghav asked if I wanted to cook a meal with Posha, and within minutes of arriving, the robot was preparing spaghetti Alfredo.

The machine stirred, heated, and timed each step with minimal interaction from me. Posha includes four ingredient containers, multiple spatulas, a spice carousel, and an induction cooktop. A camera watches over the food, analyzing “color, texture, consistency,” and, according to Raghav, provides “human chef-like intelligence.” Users load chopped ingredients, select a recipe, and let the device do the rest. “You just tell Posha you need that, and you walk away,” Raghav explained.

Posha, originally named Nymble (both the robot and the company), has changed significantly from its early days as a college project. “We were two people taking out of our parents’ garage trying to make a cooking robot.”

The first version was a robotic arm, but Raghav said customer feedback led them to pivot. “We had this choice of either repurposing our robotic arm for commercial kitchen use cases or changing our technology altogether to make something that consumers wanted. We chose the latter route because we were in love with the problem we were trying to solve.”

That problem: helping people figure out what to eat on a daily basis. “People like you and me want to eat freshly cooked meals and feed our families freshly cooked meals. But it’s hard to find the time to cook these meals every single day.” He believes this tradeoff, between eating well and having enough time, is what led to a national health crisis. “We are in the middle of a health catastrophe,” he said. “And I think with Posha, it will help America become one of the healthiest countries in the world, at the same time being one of the most productive countries in the world.”

Those are lofty goals, ones I’m pretty skeptical about given the high price tag of the Posha and the nearly non-existent adoption of cooking robots so far. But according to Raghav, he sees his product as a natural evolution of a device that has been quite successful, especially in Europe: the Thermomix.

“I think we have a strong precedent in terms of Thermomix. They sell like a million units every single year, and what Posha is, is actually Thermomix++.”

If there’s a model to aim for, the Thermomix is a good one, and I have to say, the ease with which I was able to make spaghetti Alfredo was reminiscent of the first time I used a Thermomix. In fact, it was essentially what Raghav described, the Thermomix++, in that it required me to do even less once I picked the recipe and hit go. From there, over the next 30 minutes, the Posha added ingredients and cooked the meal to completion.

It’s perhaps this ease of use and the similarity to Raghav’s professed North Star in the Thermomix that helped the company recently raise over $8 million in Series A funding. You’d have to be living under a rock, covered with more rocks, and then some dirt not to realize how hard it is for consumer hardware startups to raise money (let alone a robot cooking startup). The fact that Posha secured funding led by Accel is a sign they may be doing something others in this space haven’t.

So far, Posha has shipped 200 units, with 600 more expected by the end of September. “We’re trying to grow 3X every six months or so,” Raghav said. The product retails for $1,750, with pre-orders at $1,500.

If you’d like to see Posha in action, check out my cooking video below. Raghav will also be speaking about his journey at the Smart Kitchen Summit this week, so if you want to hear more and ask him questions, make sure to grab your ticket..

From Aspiring Pro Surfer to Delivery Robot CEO with Coco’s Zach Rash

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:28:04 +0000

Zach Rash wanted to be a professional surfer. So much so, that in high school, there was more surfing than academics.

That all changed when Rash reached UCLA and met Brad Squicciarini. It wasn’t long before the two spent every waking hour together in a small room building robots.

“We spent like our entire life in this like box at UCLA with no windows, and we’re just building robots from scratch, and it was the best job ever.”

Eventually, the real world came knocking as Rash and Squicciarini graduated and had to find jobs. After applying for many of the same positions, they eventually decided they should just start their own robot company.

“We just had a lot of really strong opinions about what it would take to get these things into the world and make them useful. So… decided to do it ourselves.”

Coco launched in early 2020. “We started building them in our living room and we couldn’t get more wheels… so it was a bit of a sketchy robot.” Still, their first merchant deployment went smoothly. “The first day of the business, I mean, we gave it to a merchant and Brad and I just took turns driving it and fixing it.”

They faced steep financing challenges: “We didn’t have any money… Even if you’re only building a few, you know, it’s still going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars.” They pitched more than 200 investors before raising a modest $50,000 to start. “We thought that was a lot of money and we built a few robots with that and kind of proved out that we could run a service, not just build the robot.”

Their persistence paid off. In June 2025, Coco raised $80 million, led by angel investors Sam Altman and his brother Max, alongside Pelion Venture Partners, Offline Ventures, and others.

This brought Coco’s total funding to over $110 million, which Rash says the company plans to use to scale its operations and technology.

“Coco Robotics will use the new funds to improve the technology and to scale up its fleet,” Rash told Techcrunch. “The company expects to go from low‑thousands to 10,000 robots by the end of next year.”

According to the company, Coco bots have delivered over 500,000 items to date, working with retailers like Subway, Wingstop, Jack in the Box, Uber Eats and DoorDash.

It’s only been a few short years since Rash was largely concerned about surfing, but now, armed with funding and lots of interest from retail partners, he’s ready to ride to the wave of growth of his robot delivery company.

“We’re building as many as we can as fast as we can.”

Zach will be speaking at SKS 2025 tomorrow, so make sure to get your tickets. You can listen to our conversatoin on the latest episode of The Spoon podcast below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mark Cuban to Speak at SKS 2025

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:04:08 +0000

Smart Kitchen Summit 2025 officially kicks off today! Over the next two weeks, we’re bringing together some of the brightest minds at the intersection of food, cooking, and technology for a virtual global summit exploring what’s next for the kitchen.

This year’s event explores how AI, robotics, new appliances, and sustainability are transforming the way we cook, eat, and connect with food. With two hours a day of sessions running daily through July 31, SKS 2025 features interviews, panels, and product showcases from innovators around the world, all accessible online, wherever you are.

We’re excited to welcome entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban as one of our featured speakers. Cuban is an astute obverver of technology, politics and the forces shaping the world we live in, so I’m super excited to sit down and talk with him about where he sees the broader innovation landscape going.

If you’re curious about the future of food, cooking and the innovation landscape, you won’t want to miss SKS 2025.

Join us! The full schedule and registration are at smartkitchensummit.com.

This Culinary Tech Inventor Thought He Could Build Some Parts For His Latest Gadget in the US. Then He Called Around.

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 16:20:42 +0000

When kitchen tech inventor Scott Heimendinger started prototyping his latest hardware product, he knew that much of it would need to be built overseas. Still, he was curious whether he could rely on local Seattle-based shops to produce some of the parts.

“I contacted local shops here in Seattle. There are a couple of machine and metalworking shops, and I thought, well, I would like to be a good customer, right? Like I’d love to spend money locally, especially on shops that are doing this kind of stuff.”

But when he called around, Scott quickly discovered that not only were the local shops going to be an order of magnitude more expensive, but they’d also take longer to deliver.

“I said, ‘look, I know this is going to be more expensive than what I’m doing in China, obviously, but maybe we can make this up on the time front.’ Before we even got into real pricing, we were already above 10X. So I said, ‘What about turnaround time?’ [They] said, well, it depends how busy we are, but like, you know, one to six weeks.’”

We’d started talking about the cost and complexity of building in the U.S. because we’d both recently listened to an episode of PJ Vogt’s Search Engine, in which Vogt interviewed YouTuber and engineer Destin Sandlin. Sandlin discussed his years-long effort to manufacture a product in America, and I wanted to get Scott’s take, especially since he’s been navigating the uncertainty caused by new tariffs. As it turned out, he had a lot to say.

One area he pointed to as a critical missing link was the shortage of tooling designers, the specialists who create the molds used to shape plastic parts.

“Tooling fabrication in principle is something that you could just do on a beefy CNC machine… In practice, no. It’s specialized techniques and tools. That knowledge has dried up in the U.S.”

We talked about why capabilities like tooling fabrication and injection molding have largely disappeared from the U.S., and one reason we both agreed on was the lack of trade education, starting as early as high school.

“Some of my favorite classes in high school were sculpture class, learning to use a bandsaw and a drill press,” he said. “I wish more folks in the United States prioritized the hands-on making of stuff.”

I pointed out the strange dichotomy of the past couple of decades, in which Silicon Valley was busy valorizing the maker movement, while at the same time the U.S.’s ability to manufacture at scale was simultaneously being hollowed out. It’s as if we celebrated prototyping, while the infrastructure to mass-produce those ideas was quietly de-emphasized and disinvested in.

“A weird thing that happened, where we talked about, ‘hey, let’s start making stuff and teach our kids to make stuff,'” I said. “But at the same time, America’s ability to make stuff at scale just kind of went up in smoke.”

Scott, for his part, chose to see the upside. Despite the loss of critical manufacturing knowledge and infrastructure, he said it’s still a great time to be an inventor, thanks to how accessible prototyping tools have become.

“I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, like I love physically making stuff. I wish more folks in the United States prioritized the hands-on making of stuff, and I wish that we hadn’t eroded away these capabilities. On the other hand, it is almost point and click to have these things prototyped, if not mass-produced. And that’s an incredible boon to being a scrappy solopreneur.”.

You can listen to our latest episode by clicking play below, or you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to ask Scott a question about his project, the challenges of manufacturing a product or the future of cooking, he’ll be at Smart Kitchen Summit next week. You can get your ticket here.

If video is your preferred podcast consumption format, you can also watch our conversation below:

Thermomix Has Long Been a Leader in Cooking Automation, But Now They’re Going Full Robot

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:26:26 +0000

For years, I’ve said that the Thermomix is quite possibly the most successful automated cooking appliance in the world. Sure, it’s not a humanoid robot or what we’ve come to expect from cooking robots in recent years, but the TM6 and TM7 are software-powered cooking appliances that automate and sequence functions in a way that feels surprisingly intelligent, especially compared to typical countertop or built-in kitchen appliances.

But now, if recent moves by Thermomix’s corporate parent, Vorwerk, are any indication, Thermomix may be going full robot. At last month’s Automatica conference in Munich, Thermomix and red-hot German robotics startup Neura Robotics announced a partnership in which Neura’s humanoid robot used Vorwerk’s Thermomix and Kobold vacuum cleaners to perform everyday household tasks.

According to Neura CEO David Reger, optimizing his robots to work with Vorwerk’s cooking and cleaning appliances is a step toward building an aging-in-place platform powered by humanoids.

“Together with Vorwerk, we are redefining household robotics – with intelligent assistants that provide concrete relief for people in their everyday lives: from cooking to independent living in old age,” said Reger.

Even more interestingly, Vorwerk also announced a partnership with AI and chip giant NVIDIA last month. According to the announcement, “Vorwerk is post-training NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1, an open robot foundation model, to support families around the home, whether seniors looking to maintain their independence, or busy families in need of an extra pair of hands. To post-train the model, Vorwerk is leveraging the Isaac GR00T-Mimic data pipeline to generate large, diverse synthetic motions data to prepare robots for common household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and more.

“Together with NVIDIA Robotics we are now taking a significant step towards the connected and automated home,” wrote Vorwerk CEO Thomas Rodemann on Linkedin. “Our goal: creating integrated digital/physical ecosystems that support our community in their everyday lives and make the home more convenient for everyone – whether it’s providing busy families with an extra pair of hands or giving seniors more independence.”

When Jensen Huang showed up at CES in January and said that the ChatGPT moment for robotics is right around the corner, I’m not sure if he was thinking about cooking food with the Thermomix, but maybe he was. Vorwerk would be a logical candidate to build true home robot assistants, since progressing rightward on the simple tool to fully-capable robot continuum already and they’ve been the most successful at integrating software with home cooking automation

You can watch the video of the NVIDIA-powered robot making food with the Thermomix in the video below.

Is IFT’s Launch of an AI Tool For Food Scientists an Indicator of Where Trade Associations Are Going in Age of AI?

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:08:04 +0000

Interesting news out of IFT First this week, the food scientist expo in Chicago, where the longtime trade association announced its own AI tool called CoDeveloper.

According to the announcement, CoDeveloper is a platform built for food scientists by food scientists, offering a suite of AI-powered tools to help them formulate new products, reverse-engineer existing ones, and tap into decades of peer-reviewed food science research. Branded as a “co-scientist” named Sous, the platform is designed to live alongside R&D teams and support early-stage development work.

It’s an interesting move for the group, and as far as I can tell, the first time a trade association in the food space (or possibly any industry) has launched its own AI tool to help practitioners do their jobs. It also raises a larger question: could this be a sign of where trade associations are headed as AI becomes more integral to how we work?

It would make sense. Trade associations have historically provided value through education, convening, standards development, and general promotion. In a future where most industries are driven in large part by AI, why wouldn’t these associations, especially science-focused ones like IFT, want to get in on the action?

Of course, there has been no shortage of efforts across the food industry to develop food AI models, whether that’s startups looking to sell their AI as a SaaS platform or big food brands creating AI tools to differentiate themselves. Whether an available-to-everyone AI food product development tool is something hyper-competitive CPG companies would be interested in is yet to be seen, but I am sure that it will be something most members of the IFT community will want to take for a spin around the block.

From Red Bull to Zevia, Amy Taylor Shares Lessons Learned From a Career Built Around Buzzy Beverages

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 20:16:52 +0000

In the early 90s, Amy Taylor had dreams of Olympic gold as an elite track and field athlete.

Back then, she never could have predicted she’d spend the bulk of her career in the beverage business. But after moving to Atlanta (where the Olympics were to take place in 1996) and working for a short time for the Atlanta Hawks, it wasn’t long before she started to work for Red Bull, just as the now-famous brand was beginning to define the energy drink business in the early 2000s.

“My stepdad warned me not to take the job because he had never heard of the company,” she recalled. “And I said, I think there’s something special here. I took my Gen X assignment of creating this Red Bull brand with an American lens on it for the American audience.”

Taylor would spent over 20 years at Red Bull, eventually serving as president and chief marketing officer, where her time there shaped her philosophy on building iconic brands.

“What I learned there was about creating a hot brand and sort of becoming a part of or creating communication within and around the zeitgeist,” she said. “Instead of trying to go fast and hard and drive distribution and awareness at all costs… the brand was building relationships.”

Now, as CEO of Zevia, Taylor is applying those lessons to a different kind of beverage mission. “We are going to materially reduce sugar consumption among the population that we serve,” she said. “If a family switches from carbonated soft drinks to Zevia, they can cut their sugar consumption in half with one move.”

Known for its zero-sugar sodas made with stevia, Taylor says Zevia aims to provide an affordable, clean-label alternative for families. She’s also focused on evolving the brand’s taste and product innovation. “There are 20 molecules in the stevia leaf that can sweeten a product,” she said. “Our job is to go extract the ones that perform best within the beverage. For the part of the population that have had a negative experience with stevia, they’re going to need to come back and try Zevia. And I think they’re going to be blown away.”

Like most food brands nowadays, Zevia is embracing AI. Taylor says they are doing it with a “hacker’s approach,” which means encouraging every department to experiment with new use cases.

“Each department head challenges their entire team, not just their senior leadership, to come up with new use cases for AI,” Taylor said. From creating digital consumer prototypes to enhancing operations and finance workflows, Taylor said the company is exploring numerous applications. “We use AI to challenge our thinking and our assumptions. We want to grow faster because of our ability to leverage AI with the people that we have in the building today.”

Part of Taylor and Zevia’s push to leverage innovations like AI is because the company operates lean (fewer than 100 employees), and new technologies can help them punch above their weight.

“We are small and focused,” she said. “And we are scrappy as hell.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Taylor below and can connect with her (and ask her questions) at the Smart Kitchen Summit later this month.

Study: AI-Powered Drones Fuel Advances in Precision Ag for Early Detection of Crop Stress

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 19:15:20 +0000

Early stress detection via precision agriculture just got a serious upgrade, according to new research out of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Led by Dr. Ittai Herrmann, the team developed a drone-based platform that blends hyperspectral, thermal, and RGB imaging with powerful deep learning technology to precisely identify nitrogen and water deficiencies in sesame crops.

Sesame, known for its resilience to climate variations, is rapidly growing in global importance. However, accurately identifying early-stage crop stress has historically posed a significant challenge, limiting the ability of farmers to respond quickly to potential catastrophic challenges. To tackle this, the researchers combined three advanced imaging technologies into a single drone system, creating a robust solution capable of decoding complex plant stress signals.

Hyperspectral imaging provides detailed spectral insights into plant chemistry, including nitrogen and chlorophyll levels, which are critical markers for plant nutrition. Thermal imaging spots subtle temperature changes in leaves that indicate water stress, while high-resolution RGB images provide clear visual context of overall plant health and structure.

What made this study cutting-edge was its use of multimodal convolutional neural networks (CNNs), an advanced AI approach that can unravel intricate data patterns and add context, which significantly enhances diagnostic precision. These advanced techniques unlocked the researchers’ ability to distinguish overlapping signals of plant stress, such as differentiating between nutrient and water deficiency, something that conventional methods often struggle to achieve. According to the researchers, by accurately pinpointing the exact stressor, farmers can now apply resources such as fertilizer and irrigation more strategically, reducing waste and environmental impact while increasing crop yields.

While other researchers have studied using advanced AI techniques with drones to aid in combatting stress in walnut and specialty crops, the use of deep multimodal CNN appears to be a leap forward in precision ag. It remains to be seen how quickly this technology reaches the farmer level, but given the challenges of climate change, its easy to envision that these types of advances in precision agriculture will be invaluable tools for farmers in the future to protect against climate-related crop stress.

Could Lasers Made From Olive Oil Be The Next-Gen Freshness Detector or Use-By Label?

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:02:13 +0000

Imagine scanning a tuna steak in your fridge and suddenly a tiny laser pulse beams an expiration date or, surprise, tells you it’s not really wild-caught.

That’s no longer a sci‑fi: new research from a group of academic researchers from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece published in Advanced Optical Materials discusses how they were able to create edible microlasers crafted entirely from food-grade ingredients, essentially turning food in a tupperware container or on your dinner plate into a data-rich interface with the potential to relay information about freshness, provenance, even safety.

So, how does it work? Researchers created tiny edible lasers by using food-grade materials like olive oil, coconut oil, and sugar-based droplets combined with natural colorants such as chlorophyll or curcumin. The droplets act as tiny optical cavities that trap and amplify light using a principle called ‘whispering gallery mode resonance‘. When excited by an external light source, they emit a laser-like signal. Because the lasing behavior is sensitive to environmental factors like temperature, pH, and chemical composition, these microlasers can be used as sensors that can be embedded directly in food to help detect spoilage, confirm authenticity, or monitor freshness. And, according to the team, this happens without adding anything inedible to the product.

The paper explores different applications, such as edible barcodes, applied onto the food itself and not on packaging. Another idea is food with built-in freshness sensors, salad kits that glow a warning when the pH level shifts, or olive oil bottles that hold internal glow-signatures to confirm authenticity.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of technology for freshness, authenticity or changing chemistry built directly into the food itself. A couple of years ago, a company called Index Biosystems developed a form of invisible barcode called a BioTag, which is created by mixing baker’s yeast in extremely small amounts with water, then spraying or misting it onto products such as wheat. BioTags can later be reach using molecular detection techniques such as PCR and DNA sequencing.

The BioTag is a cool concept, but this new breakthrough from the Mediterranean scientists seems like something that – if it ultimately is commercialized – could be much more approachable for the end-user, who doesn’t have access to tools for things like DNA sequence detection (that’s if you can lasers shooting from your food as ‘approachable’).

With the debate about use-by date labels raging after after California became the first state to create a new approach in years (causing numerous other states to consider following suit), new technology like this shows us that someday our food might actually be able to tell us, via lasers, itself whether it is still good to eat.

With the debate over use-by date labels heating up – especially after California became the first state in years to introduce a new approach, prompting several other states to consider following suit – this kind of technology is a sign that someday our food might be able to tell us directly whether it’s still good to eat.

Leanpath CEO: The Fight Against Food Waste Enters Its ‘Second Act’

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 20:45:32 +0000

At this year’s ReFED Summit in Seattle, Andrew Shakman was in a reflective mood. When asked about the state of the food waste reduction movement, the Leanpath CEO, who has spent more than two decades fighting food waste, compared the moment we’re in to the second act of a three-act play.

“If we go back to Aristotle’s Poetics, the beginning is always gripping. The middle is hard, and I think we’re in act two, where it’s no longer the beginning, but we are not at the end.”

According to Shakman, it’s a moment of transition for the food waste movement. The early momentum that defined the last decade, fueled by sustainability pledges, bold 2025 goals, and a wave of startup innovation, is giving way to a more complicated reality. Some organizations are hitting their targets while many are falling short. And now, for many fighting the fight, the question isn’t just what the next goal should be, but how to keep the movement going.

According to Shakman, that means leaning into the business case for food waste reduction, much as he did when the company first started.

“When we started, I’ve been at this 21 years. It was all about money. It was all about saving money, pulling dollars out of the garbage,” he said. “We came to understand that this was a nexus issue that incorporated issues around climate and food security and land conversion and biodiversity and water resources and everything. Today we’re reverting back to a narrower story that’s more focused on business case simplification, making life as business-focused as possible, because of the environment we’re in right now. There’s less political unanimity around climate and ESG.”

Shakman believes this re-focusing on the business case is happening because many enterprises are deemphasizing meeting sustainability goals, in part due to the political moment we are in in 2025. But just because the Leanpath CEO sees a powerful message in emphasizing efficiency and saving money as key motivators to adopt food waste reduction tech, he doesn’t think those in the industry should abandon talking about how important waste reduction is for the environment.

“You can still have the whole conversation,” Shakman said. “But the emphasis is on the business case at the moment. I don’t think we should allow ourselves to walk away from the moral imperative”

When I asked him about AI, he said the technology is most powerful when it drives action in the kitchen and elsewhere.

“Chefs did not get into food because they wanted to sit in front of their computer,” Shakman said. “They want to touch and make touch, make connect and create experience, and they want to know what’s the fastest path to taking the most impactful action, and that’s where I think AI is going to be very exciting.”

Shakman believes AI is most powerful when it adds context to decision making through triangulating different data sets, but believes the industry – and its data – is in many ways structured in a way that makes creating that contextual nuance difficult. The real breakthrough, he believes, will come from breaking down the data silos in foodservice technology.

“There are POS data assets for what you’ve sold,” said Shakman. “There are inventory data assets around what you bought and maybe what’s on your menu. There are now waste data assets that are actually unique contributors to the data landscape. And with those, when you triangulate with what you sold and what you bought, you now have the ability to see things that you could never see before.”

But even as Leanpath builds toward that integrated vision, one that blends frontline kitchen tools with enterprise-level oversight, Shakman remains focused on the people behind the data. “The changemakers on this issue are the people working in kitchens,” he said. “They’re driven by emotion, by the desire to do good. If you can align action with purpose, you unlock something powerful.”

Shakman’s framing of the food waste battle as a three act play isn’t all that surprising since storytelling runs in the family; his brother, Matt Shakman, is a longtime Hollywood director, directing shows like WandaVision and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the upcoming Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Both Shakman brothers are, in their own way, trying to navigate two very different Act Twos and shape what comes next.

You can watch my full conversation with Andrew from the ReFED conference below and find it later this week on The Spoon Podcast.

The Grocery Store is the Food System

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:28:28 +0000

For most of us, the food system isn’t a distant farm or a produce distribution center. It’s the grocery store. We push carts through brightly lit aisles where abstract forces—supply chains, agricultural policy, consumer trends—become tangible reality. The supermarket is where the nation’s entire food apparatus converges in a single, accessible arena. The grocery store isn’t just a participant in the food system; it is the food system in miniature.

This is where supply meets demand in its most direct form. Every product on the shelf represents a long chain of decisions: a farmer’s crop choice, a manufacturer’s formulation, a regulator’s approval. And every purchase we make sends a ripple back up that chain. For consumers who are generations removed from farming, the grocery store is our most immediate encounter with agriculture itself. To understand the state of our food system, look no further than your local grocer.

What we find there reveals both the system’s greatest achievements and its deepest contradictions. The grocery store offers us unprecedented abundance while masking troubling uniformity. It promises choice while concentrating power. It connects us to global supply chains while disconnecting us from the sources of our food. Understanding these contradictions is the key to understanding how our food system really works—and how we might change it.

The Paradox of Abundance

Walk down any aisle in an American supermarket and you’ll confront what appears to be infinite variety. Hundreds of cereals crowd the breakfast section. Dozens of yogurt brands compete for refrigerator space. An entire wall of nutrition bars promises everything from weight loss to spiritual enlightenment.

Yet behind this kaleidoscope of branding lies striking uniformity. Those hundred different nutrition bars? Most are built from the same handful of commodity crops—corn, soy, and wheat. The cereal aisle’s rainbow of boxes contains variations on the same basic theme. We’ve created the illusion of choice through brand variety while consolidating actual agricultural diversity into a narrow selection of crops.

This isn’t accidental. It’s the logical outcome of an agricultural system optimized for scale and efficiency above all else. Corn, soy, and wheat dominate not because they’re the most nutritious or delicious, but because they can be grown at massive scale and processed into countless products. The grocery store, in all its apparent abundance, reveals the hidden monotony of American agriculture.

The same consolidation extends beyond ingredients to the stores themselves. While shoppers see thousands of brands, most grocery retail is controlled by a handful of chains. These companies decide which products get premium shelf space, which suppliers get contracts, and ultimately which farmers stay in business. The grocery store that feels like a marketplace is actually a carefully orchestrated system where a few powerful players control most of the outcomes.

Shelf Space Storytelling

In this landscape of managed abundance, brands face a brutal challenge: capturing a shopper’s attention in roughly two seconds with a few square inches of package real estate. The front of a package becomes prime territory where complex stories must be reduced to their simplest essence.

This is where nuance dies. A product made with heritage grains grown by a cooperative of small farmers using regenerative practices might simply become “ancient grains” on the front of the pack. The food system’s infinite complexity gets flattened into marketing slogans that prioritize emotional appeal over substantive information.

The grocery store environment itself works against deeper understanding. Hurried shoppers navigating fluorescent-lit aisles while juggling shopping lists and crying children aren’t in the mood for agricultural education. Those well-intentioned photos of smiling farmers become invisible wallpaper. The little signs explaining sustainable practices can’t compete with the thousands of other messages bombarding consumers.

This dynamic warps the entire system. Brands that master simple, powerful messaging thrive regardless of their actual practices. Those that try to communicate complicated truths often struggle to compete. Over time, the market rewards not the best food, but the best marketing. And consumers, hungry for real information but overwhelmed by choice, grab whatever package speaks most clearly to their immediate concerns.

The Geography of Access

The grocery store’s role as the food system’s public face becomes starkest when we map stores across different communities. In affluent areas, shoppers debate the merits of grass-fed versus grain-fed beef while sipping kombucha from the in-store café. Twenty miles away, families navigate Dollar Generals where the “fresh” section consists of a few bruised bananas by the register, if that.

This geographic apartheid in food access follows predictable patterns that mirror broader inequalities. Wealthy communities get full-service supermarkets with extensive produce sections, in-house nutritionists, and specialty departments. Poor communities get convenience stores and small grocers with limited selection and higher prices. The cruel irony is that those who could most benefit from affordable, nutritious food have the least access to it.

These disparities reveal how our food system distributes power. When some communities get full-service grocery stores while others are left with food deserts, we’re seeing the system’s priorities made visible. Profit drives location decisions, not nutrition or community need.

Yet alternatives are emerging that point toward different possibilities. Some retailers use profits from wealthy stores to subsidize locations in underserved areas. Mobile markets bring fresh produce directly to food deserts. Community-owned cooperatives keep food dollars circulating locally while ensuring democratic control over food access. These experiments reveal what’s possible when we design food distribution around community needs rather than just market logic.

The Collective Action Paradox

Every grocery shopper faces the same psychological trap: “I’m just one person. My choices don’t matter.” This thinking, perfectly rational at the individual level, becomes problematic when multiplied across millions of shoppers. It’s the same psychology that suppresses civic engagement more broadly—one voice rarely changes everything, but when everyone thinks this way, we get the outcomes we deserve by default.

History proves this pessimism wrong. The organic movement started with a handful of “health nuts” shopping at food cooperatives and farmers markets. Today, organic agriculture has transformed farming practices across millions of acres. Fair trade certification, once a niche concern, now influences supply chains for everything from coffee to cotton. These changes didn’t happen because any single shopper mattered, but because enough people decided their choices mattered collectively.

The grocery store makes this collective power visible in ways that other civic engagement doesn’t. When demand for organic produce increases, stores expand their organic sections within months. When shoppers ask for local products, buyers seek out regional suppliers. When customers demand better working conditions, retailers eventually respond. The feedback loops are faster and more direct than in traditional politics.

This responsiveness is both the grocery store’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness as a democratic institution. It can quickly amplify consumer preferences, but it also amplifies inequality. The preferences of wealthy shoppers get heard loudly and clearly, while the needs of poor communities go unmet. Recognizing the grocery store as both mirror and maker of our food system means grappling with this tension.

Practicing Food Citizenship

Grasping the grocery store as the food system’s most visible expression changes how we might approach our shopping. Instead of seeing ourselves as individual consumers optimizing for personal benefit, we can think of ourselves as food citizens participating in a collective system.

This starts with diversifying our food sources. Join a CSA for vegetables. Buy meat directly from local farmers. Purchase grains from cooperatives. Keep shopping at your grocery store for everything else. You’re not abandoning the mainstream system—you’re creating alternatives that keep the entire system more honest and resilient.

Within grocery stores, practice strategic engagement. Ask questions and make requests. Store managers notice when customers inquire about sourcing, suggest new products, or ask why certain items aren’t available. Be the person who asks for a bulk section, requests local suppliers, or suggests worker-owned brands. Individual requests might get dismissed, but patterns of customer interest drive purchasing decisions.

Brian Canlis on Leaving an Iconic Restaurant Behind to Start Over in Nashville With Will Guidara

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 17:04:22 +0000

Brian Canlis didn’t expect to be in the restaurant business his whole life.

But as with so many family businesses – especially hugely successful ones like Canlis, which single-handedly put Pacific Northwest cuisine on the map – life and careers happen before we know it.

And there’s no doubt that the brothers Canlis, Brian and his brother Mark, have done a masterful job since taking the reins from their parents (who themselves inherited it from Peter Canlis, who started the restaurant back in 1950). Today, Canlis is as relevant and forward-thinking as ever, a rare achievement in an industry where even the most legendary restaurants often have a shelf life.

So after nearly two decades at the helm, it would have been easy (and expected) for Brian to continue leading the restaurant, enjoying the perks of running a world-famous dining institution perched above Seattle’s Lake Union. Instead, he decided it was time to blow it all up.

“When I became a restaurateur in my 20s, I was single and I tried on the shirt called running this restaurant—and it fit,” Canlis told me on the Reimagining Restaurants podcast. “Twenty years later, I have four small kids and the shirt doesn’t fit in the same way.”

So what does a new shirt that fits his 40-something life a little better look like? As revealed in February in the New York Times, it’s a new chapter in Nashville, where he’s joining forces with his best friend from college, Will Guidara—co-founder of Eleven Madison Park and author of Unreasonable Hospitality—on an open-ended creative partnership.

The two have been close since freshman orientation and even worked together in New York during a brief sabbatical Brian took in 2013. Now, they’re reuniting, potentially for the long-term, but with a little ‘try-it-before-you-buy it’ twist: “We said, ‘Let’s date before we get married’,” Canlis said. “Let’s just work together for a year and see what happens.”

The move reflects more than just professional curiosity—it’s rooted in a desire to be more present as a father and partner, and to explore what work and life can look like when untethered from legacy.

“I started to grow an imagination for what it would look like to have a career where I could be more present to these kiddos every day,” he said. “Where I could exercise a different piece of my brain, and maybe move closer to my wife’s family.”

Leaving wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one supported wholeheartedly by his brother and business partner, Mark.

“He said, ‘You should only be working here as long as you are flourishing as a human,’” Brian said. “‘Our values are only our values if they cost us something.’”

That ethos – prioritizing people over plates – is the red thread throughline of Brian’s journey. Whether it was converting Canlis into a burger drive-thru during the pandemic or hosting wild, pink-painted Barbie-themed fundraisers, the Canlis brothers infused hospitality with heart and a willingness to take creative risks.

Their guiding principle? That a restaurant should be a place where people are inspired to turn toward each other.

“We’re not in the food business,” Brian told me. “We’re in the people business.”

As for what comes next, Brian is embracing the uncertainty. He and Will haven’t put anyting in concrete just yet, just an agreement to explore new ideas and opportunities in hospitality, with Nashville as their testing ground.

It’s a leap. But then again, so was opening the first restaurant in Seattle with a liquor license in 1950. So was putting a fine-dining spot on a cliff above Lake Union. So was painting the walls pink.

Turns out, reinvention runs in the family.

You can watch my full conversation Brian below or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.

Food Waste Gadgets Can’t Get VC Love, But Kickstarter Backers Are All In

Fri, 30 May 2025 16:46:24 +0000

It’s a mystery (kinda). While traditional venture and strategic capital haven’t shown much enthusiasm for backing food waste-fighting technology, the category is thriving on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

Two current campaigns, in particular, are crushing it, blowing past their initial funding targets with weeks still to go.

First up is the Shelfy Lite, the second fridge gadget from Italian startup Vitesy. The campaign has already raised over $300,000, more than ten times its original goal of around $28,000.

The Shelfy Lite works similarly to the original Shelfy (which I wrote about here), using a ceramic filter to purify fridge air and capture bacteria. The company claims that the pollutants are not just mechanically retained, but also destroyed, through a process called photocatalysis. This new version is smaller and more affordable, with a retail price of €100 (currently available at a 30%+ discount during the campaign). While the original Shelfy earned mixed reviews on its Kickstarter page, that hasn’t stopped even more backers from jumping onboard for the latest iteration.

The other gadget that’s tracking towards a successful campaign is the Ion 2, another fridge gadget promising to extend the life of your food. Like the Shelfy, it claims to purify the air, but it does so by filtering water through a silver-coated filter to ionize the air. The creators say this ionized air kills bacteria while remaining safe for humans at low concentrations.

I can’t speak to whether the Ion 2 will work as promised, but it’s clearly resonating with backers: more than 400 people have supported the campaign, which has raised over $68,000—nearly 20 times its original goal of just $3,500..

Meanwhile, the broader home food waste reduction category, from next-gen fridges to reimagined Tupperware, continues to struggle to attract venture investment. Part of the challenge is that most VCs aren’t interested in consumer hardware. But the problem seems deeper than that: few investors appear willing to bet big on fighting food waste.

Take the Tomorrow Fridge. The company shut down in April after failing to raise enough capital. CEO Andrew Kinzer shared the challenges in a candid LinkedIn post:

“When we set out to build a next-generation fridge—one that could extend the life of your fresh produce, reduce waste, and help make healthier eating easier—we knew we were taking on an ambitious challenge,” wrote Kinzer. “Unfortunately, the current climate for consumer hardware—especially for capital-intensive, science-forward products like ours—has made it incredibly difficult to bring something like this to life.”

Tomorrow is just the latest in a line of startups that have struggled to survive, including Silo, Ovie, and even Tupperware, which faced difficulty attracting strategic investment as its financial health declined.

Some might point to Mill as a rare example of traditional investors backing a food waste company. While technically true, I see Mill more as a waste management solution, at least until they launch something that prevents food waste (which I suspect they eventually will). The need for waste management is, in a sense, a validation of the significance of the problem for everyday consumers and the broader food industry.

So does the success of Shelfy and Ion 2 signal a shift? Maybe, but I’m still skeptical. Their success appears to be largely tied to the fact that both creators are veterans of the crowdfunding space, with proven records of launching hardware products in adjacent categories.

Still, you never know. With consumers feeling the pinch of higher grocery bills, the demand for ways to stop throwing money into the compost bin is growing. Perhaps, just perhaps, that rising interest will finally push more investors and founders to take consumer food waste seriously.

Report: Restaurant Tech Funding Drops to $1.3B in 2024, But AI & Automation Provide Glimmer of Hope

Tue, 27 May 2025 21:37:05 +0000

After a multi-year boom fueled by the rise of delivery apps and the broader digital transformation of the restaurant industry, venture capital flowing into restaurant tech has sharply slowed, according to a new report from PitchBook.

The report, titled Q2 2025 Tech Landscape: Restaurant Technology, shows that total VC funding in the space dropped to just $1.3 billion in 2024, down from a peak of $14.5 billion in 2018. Restaurant tech accounted for only 12% of total food tech venture investment in 2024, compared to a commanding 60% in 2018.

Restaurant tech’s shrinking share of food tech investment isn’t entirely surprising, given the maturation of delivery marketplaces, a sector that drew a wave of generalist investors during the 2010s. As once-scrappy startups like DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Grubhub evolved into established players and opportunities in the delivery space dwindled, many of those tourist investors moved on.

Still, PitchBook sees pockets of opportunity in restaurant tech, particularly around AI and automation. The report highlights emerging tools that use AI for personalized marketing, demand forecasting, and operational efficiency. AI-powered, human-language interfaces are also gaining traction, with companies like Hi Auto, ConverseNow, and Slang AI bringing automation to drive-thrus and phone-based ordering. Major chains such as Wendy’s and Yum! Brands are doubling down on these systems, even as McDonald’s recently pulled back from its AI ordering pilot and its experimental beverage-focused brand.

PitchBook is cautiously optimistic about robotics and automation in restaurants, a sector that has seen high-profile flameouts like Zume. According to the report, the market has shifted from startups trying to build full-stack systems to more targeted point solutions being tested and deployed by established players. Companies like Hyphen and Miso Robotics are among those providing modular automation tools now being adopted by operators.

On the consumer-facing side, startups focused on guest management and loyalty platforms have also emerged as bright spots for investors. Blackbird Labs and Dorsia each raised $50 million in early 2025, while SevenRooms announced a notable exit with a $1.2 billion acquisition by DoorDash.

Looking ahead, PitchBook expects deal flow to remain measured. The restaurant industry’s notoriously thin margins—combined with ongoing economic uncertainty—will likely keep tourist VCs on the sidelines. However, startups that leverage AI and automation to drive operational efficiency are expected to continue drawing investor interest.

Don’t Forget to Tip Your Robot: Survey Shows Diners Not Quite Ready for AI to Replace Humans

Tue, 20 May 2025 16:53:37 +0000

If you’ve eaten out much over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve experienced a growing number of dining experiences that use AI and automation. Restaurants across the U.S. and worldwide are adopting artificial intelligence and automation at the drive-thru, in the kitchen, at the register, and other parts of the business.

But how do diners feel about this shift? According to a new survey report from Dynata and restaurant tech startup Par Technology Corp., most consumers aren’t quite ready for a full AI takeover of their dining experience.

The online survey, fielded in March 2025 with 1,000 U.S. respondents, revealed that while a slim majority of diners are comfortable with restaurants using some AI to improve efficiency, most aren’t ready to hand the reins entirely to robots.

Figure 1: Do you believe AI should replace human restaurant workers if the technology provides more efficient service?

Source: Dynata/Par Technology, March 2025

According to the results, 52% of respondents are open to a limited use of AI in restaurants, but only 26% support AI fully replacing human workers. Age plays a significant role in attitudes: just 3% of Baby Boomers and 9% of Gen Xers strongly agree that AI should replace humans. In contrast, Gen Z and Millennials show slightly more openness, with 17% and 16% respectively strongly agreeing with the idea, but only if the technology improves efficiency. Still, half of Gen Z (49%) and Millennials (51%) somewhat or strongly disagree with replacing humans altogether.

Gender differences also stood out in the findings. Men (33%) were nearly twice as likely as women (17%) to support AI replacing restaurant workers.

For restaurants planning to ramp up AI and automation, the survey suggests you might want to tread carefully. One-third of respondents (33%) said they’ve already avoided restaurants that relied too heavily on self-service tech, and another 26% said they haven’t yet, but might in the future if tech use becomes excessive.

Finally, are diners ready to tip their robot server? The majority are not on board. According to the survey, 56% said they would not tip an AI system, while 22% said they might consider it, especially if the service was exceptional or if some portion of the tip went to human staff.

You can see the full results here.

A Week in Rome: Conclaves, Coffee, and Reflections on the Ethics of AI in Our Food System

Tue, 13 May 2025 14:30:50 +0000

Last week, I was in Rome at the Vatican for a workshop on the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence and automation in our food system.

The workshop was part of an ongoing three-year NIH-funded project focused on the ethics of AI in food. It took place at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, the same institution that played a pivotal role in 2020 in getting Microsoft, IBM, and others to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a cross-sector commitment to develop AI that “serves every person and humanity as a whole; that respects the dignity of the human person.”

I was invited to provide an overview of AI in the food system to help set the stage for the day’s conversations, which featured Michelin-starred chefs, Catholic priests, journalists, authors, and professors specializing in ethics, artificial intelligence, and more. I walked through some of the developments I’ve seen across the food system—in agriculture, next-gen food product development, restaurants, and the home. As I wrote recently for The Spoon, today “every major food brand has made significant investments — in people, platforms, products — as part of the AI-powered transformation.”

I posed questions like: What happens when AI dictates what we eat? Or if it engineers the “perfect sandwich”—something so addictive it floods demand and strains supply chains, as Mike Lee has imagined? What does it mean when a company builds a proprietary food AI trained on global culinary data? Does that dataset become the intellectual property of one corporation? And if AI can tailor nutrition down to the molecule, who controls those insights?

These are not just technical questions. They’re questions with deep implications for humanity.

One thing was clear throughout the day: everyone in the room recognized both the promise of AI as a tool for addressing complex challenges in the food system, and the risks posed by such a powerful, society-shaping technology. Among the questions raised: How do we balance the cultural and inherently human-centered significance of food—growing it, preparing it, sharing it at the family dinner table—with the use of AI and automation across kitchens, farms, and wellness platforms?

Above: The signed Rome Call for AI Ethics

As some attendees expressed, there’s a growing concern that the “soul” of food—its role in connection, tradition, and creativity—could be lost in a world where AI plays a central role.

For obvious reasons, being at The Vatican and in Rome at this time was a bit surreal, as the two days of the workshop and the Vatican came during the same week that the College of Cardinals gathered to select the next Pope after last month’s passing of Pope Francis.

As we wrapped up our discussions, the Conclave began. And just as I was leaving Rome, white smoke rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, signaling that a new pope had been chosen.

In his first address, Pope Leo XIV made it clear that he is thinking deeply about AI’s role in society, so much so that he chose his name in homage to a previous pope who guided the Church through an earlier technological upheaval.

“… I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”

Also present at the workshop was our friend Sara Roversi, founder of the Future Food Institute. The Spoon and Future Food Institute co-founded the Food AI Co-Lab, a monthly virtual forum where experts across disciplines explore the intersection of food and AI.

Sara, Tiffany McClurg from The Spoon, and I grabbed coffee at a small café in Rome to reflect on the workshop and what it means for our ongoing work. We launched the Food AI Co-Lab in early 2024 as a space to gather our communities and talk through how AI is impacting the food system. So far, much of the conversation has focused on education—helping people understand what AI is and how to thoughtfully implement it in their organizations.

But we all agreed: the world has changed rapidly since we began. Nearly everyone is now seriously considering how to integrate AI into their companies, institutions, or personal lives. And so, the Co-Lab needs to evolve too. Our hour-long sessions, often featuring guest speakers, have been great for tracking innovation, but now it’s time to elevate the conversation. Ethics. Labor. Equity. Sustainability. These aren’t side topics—they’re central to how AI will shape the future of food.

If the world feels more chaotic than ever, one thing is certain: we need to prepare for faster, more unpredictable change. At the first workshop two years ago, most attendees were just learning about AI. There was plenty of fear about a runaway system invading the food chain.

Today, there’s greater recognition that AI is inevitable and that it can be a powerful tool for solving some of the food system’s most complex problems. There was even a bit more optimism this time.

But above all, there’s a clear understanding that we still have a long road ahead to strike the right balance: embracing AI as a tool while preserving what makes food so deeply human, so critical to our culture, communities, and shared existence.

You can learn more about the Food AI Ethics project led by Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo [here]. If you’d like to join us for future Food AI Co-Lab events, you can sign up via our LinkedIn Group or The Spoon Slack. We’ll keep you updated on upcoming events and speakers.

How ReShape is Using AI to Accelerate Biotech Research

Wed, 07 May 2025 05:56:09 +0000

“Biology is so complex, it’s like the most complex piece of technology in the entire world,” said Carl-Emil Grøn. “There’s nothing that’s remotely close. You start from one cell and then you grow into a Michael Wolf who’s now hosting a podcast together with me. That is crazy when you think about it.”

When this former single-cell turned human podcaster caught up with the CEO of ReShape Biotech this past week on The Spoon Podcast, Grøn’s excitement over the miracle of biology and biotech was palpable. But he made it clear that wasn’t always the case. In fact, when he first saw his university friends building a tiny robot for a biotech professor, he told them it was a waste of time.

“I was sure this was not something anybody would need,” Grøn recalled. “But then I started getting a little bit curious about it.”

That curiosity eventually led him to co-found Reshape Biotech, a Copenhagen-based startup that’s automating the slow, manual processes still common in biological research. While new technologies like automation and AI have transformed fields like software and transportation, Grøn saw that many biotech labs were still stuck in the past.

“We have self-driving cars and AI tools that can do crazy things, but biotech workflows look kind of like 1990.”

Reshape’s platform combines robotics, computer vision, and machine learning to help food and biotech companies run hundreds of thousands of lab experiments. The ReShape system uses cameras to monitor petri dish experiments, running AI-powered image analysis on mold growth or bacterial reactions, and helping researchers rapidly test natural preservatives, food dyes, and more. This means research that once took months or years can now be done in days or weeks.

“We have this one company that used to do between like 800 and 1000 experiments per year,” Grøn said. “Whereas with our platform, they’re running more than 450 thousand every single year. So you get this like complete step change difference in how much you can actually do.”

That kind of increase in throughput is becoming more critical as food companies face new pressures, whether that’s from consumers demanding clean labels to a new administration looking to restrict artificial ingredients.

“Nowadays, they (food companies) are going to have to do it right,” he said. “When regulatory pressure comes to push, you have to do it.”

Grøn believes the companies that embrace AI and automation today will have a major advantage tomorrow.

“If we do this well, these companies will be set up to basically take the lead on developing new products in the future,” he said. “They will be the ones who have the data that’s necessary to make AI models that actually work.”

As a startup, Grøn says ReShape is focused on getting their tools into the hands of big players like Unilever and Nestlé, but long-term he has a broader vision, which is to open up the world of biotech data to help make companies big and small more productive.

“My dream, maybe one day, is to open source all of this data and just make it available to the world,” he said. “Because I do think the world needs something like this.”

Grøn was vague on when exactly that would happen, as he said first he has a few constituencies (like his investors) which he needs to serve first. But over the long term, he’s excited about the possibilities.

If you’d like to listen to my full conversation with Grøn, you can click play below, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

How Eva Goulbourne Turned Her ‘Party Trick’ Into a Career Building Sustainable Food Systems

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:38:56 +0000

Eva Goulbourne didn’t study food systems in college – she studied the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and art history – but her lifelong obsession with food would eventually shape a career that’s taken her across the globe and put her at the center of the global food systems transformation conversation.

I recently caught up with Eva for an episode of The Spoon Podcast to talk about her journey and hear more about her vision for her new podcast, Everything But the Carbon Sink.

“I started subscribing to Martha Stewart Living Magazine when I was about seven or eight,” Goulbourne told me. “What can’t you learn about food systems from Martha Stewart?” That early curiosity became a foundation for what she describes as a “very long-term relationship with food,” one that she would eventually channel into a mission-driven career.

After a short stint at the U.S. State Department, Goulbourne took a job focused on financial services for tobacco farmers in Kenya and Malawi. “That was again like a continued access point to agriculture [and] international development,” she said. The project, funded by Nike Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, and Gates Foundation, introduced her to the role of philanthropy in market development — a theme that would shape her later work.

Her next big step came with the World Economic Forum, where she landed a role on the food security and agriculture team. “That was really, like I was saying, I was off to the races in terms of having access and understanding and helping to facilitate entire regional projects with agribusinesses, the largest retailers in the world, seed companies, fertilizer companies, ministers of agriculture and development banks.”

Goulbourne describes this period (the era after the launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals) as a pivotal moment when “purpose and profit could very much actually win.” She witnessed corporate leaders, such as Unilever’s Paul Polman, bring ‘net positive’ thinking to global food policy discussions.

But eventually, she wanted to go deeper. “I was really itching to become an expert… I couldn’t be the Jane of all trades.” That itch led her to ReFED, where she became employee number one and helped turn a landmark food waste report into a full-fledged organization. “We didn’t know if anybody was gonna read this thing,” she recalled. “And boy, we didn’t know… hoping that people would receive it well.”

The report was a hit, and Goulbourne stayed on to help raise over a million dollars in philanthropic funding to grow ReFED. But after a few years, a new motivation emerged: motherhood. “I found out I was pregnant… and immediately had this maternal instinct to do more and do something to now protect the planet, the environment, society… So that’s why Littlefoot is called Littlefoot.”

With her consulting firm, Littlefoot Ventures, Eva has guided food brands, startups, and philanthropists through everything from food loss strategies to regenerative ag and capital deployment. “I sort of call food waste a chameleon issue,” she said. “My party trick is that it doesn’t matter what part of the food supply chain you mention, I can convince you and have some access point back to food waste.”

It’s this broad view is that makes Eva such a great podcast host. Her new podcast, Everything but the Carbon Sink, focuses on the intersection of food, climate, and finance , as well as the tough and thorny challenges that prevent progress.

Eva calls these thorny issues no one wants to talk about the ‘ugly baby’ problems.

“For Everything but the Carbon Sink, I decided to have the podcast be focused on this intersection of food… to climate… and then finance, because to answer your question about the ugly baby, how do we pay for this stuff? Why is it so damn hard?”

One thing I noticed about Eva is she works with pretty much every continsituency in the food system innovation. Through her consulting work and now her podcast, Goulbourne is trying to help stakeholders across sectors, from venture capitalists to philanthropists, understand that substantial systems change requires coordinated investment. “You can’t VC your way out of this problem,” she said. “Our food system runs on harvest seasons and weather, and we’re working against and with the climate crisis.”

If you are interested in food system innovation, reducing food waste, or building a career in mission-based investing and fundraising, you are going to want to listen to this episode and subscribe to Eva’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also watch our conversation below.

Combustion Acquires Recipe App Crouton

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 05:42:56 +0000

Combustion, the smart thermometer startup founded by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young, has acquired popular recipe app Crouton.

Crouton, developed by New Zealand-based software engineer Devin Davies, is a highly rated app that lets users organize all their recipes in one place. After launch, Crouton soon began gaining traction and critical attention (Apple awarded the app its 2024 Design Award for Interaction). Like many independent developers who experience success, Davies soon found himself having to manage the business side of running a startup—something he realized wasn’t aligned with his strengths.

“One thing I’ve come to realise about myself over the last wee while, is that what I care about most is designing interfaces that make it as easy as possible to get things done. User experience and what not,” wrote Davies in a blog post announcing the acquisition. “I’m not an entrepreneur or keen business leader. Stepping into full time indie and really trying to steer the ship highlighted to me just how much that jazz isn’t me. I actually really enjoy being just a part of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle.”

Davies had discovered Combustion’s open-source developer tools and had integrated the thermometer with Crouton. That work caught the attention of Young and the Combustion team.

“A year or so earlier, I had added support to Crouton to quickly set up the thermometer and also display its information as a Live Activity alongside your recipe. I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate and spent a few weeks working with Combustion to bring Live Activity support to their app like I had with Crouton.”

Before long, Young and Davies realized it made sense to join forces.

For Young, it’s clear that moves he’s made since starting Combustion – including acquiring Crouton – are based on insights he learned the hard way after building ChefSteps. At his previous company, Young spent millions of dollars creating expensive media-rich recipes for the ChefSteps website and the Joule sous vide app, only to eventually realize most consumers preferred finding recipes on the open web. With Crouton now in the fold, Young’s is now letting organic consumer usage behavior guide his product rather than trying to force behavior change on the consumer.

Young also learned his lesson with the ChefSteps Joule, where any software integration required resource-draining custom work. From the get-go with Combustion, he opened up access to the device’s real-time Bluetooth, which allowed developers, like Davies, to build cool software experiences around the Combustion thermometer.

Post-acquisition, Crouton will remain a standalone site, and Davies will lead both the development of Crouton and the Combustion app. For Davies, it seems like the perfect fit.

“So what is changing? Well, kind of nothing. I’m still very dedicated to Crouton and its future just got a lot brighter! I’ll still be the lead developer but now Crouton is backed by a whole team. A team with a deep knowledge of cooking and technology, that will help Crouton do even more! “

Next-Gen Fridge Startup Tomorrow Shuts Down

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 06:45:46 +0000

Fridge startup Tomorrow will not live to see another day.

Last week, founder Andrew Kinzer cited the difficult funding environment for hardware startups and the headwinds around the uncertainty in tariffs in a post on LinkedIn.

I knew this would be a massive challenge. Consumer hardware is notoriously difficult, and solving shelf-life extension would require a scientific leap. I understood then that I could swing and miss, but I always felt that if I did, I could still be proud I gave it a shot.

In the end, though, timing is everything. Right now — maybe more than at any point in the past decade — consumer hardware is a tough sell for investors, and fluctuating tariffs only add more risk to the equation.

The company’s website also features a going-out-of-business message, citing the same reasons Andrew did in his post and thanking those who helped out along the way:

After much consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Tomorrow.

When we set out to build a next-generation fridge—one that could extend the life of your fresh produce, reduce waste, and help make healthier eating easier—we knew we were taking on an ambitious challenge.

Unfortunately, the current climate for consumer hardware—especially for capital-intensive, science-forward products like ours—has made it incredibly difficult to bring something like this to life.

Though we won’t be moving forward, we’re deeply proud of the work we did and grateful for the community that rallied around our vision.

To everyone who signed up, supported us, or offered guidance: thank you.

When I first covered Tomorrow last year, I was admittedly excited to see a new company take a shot at reimagining such a moribund category. How we store food hasn’t seen nearly as much innovation around how we grow, cook, shop and make food, and so any new startup taking a shot was a good thing as far as I was concerned.

It’s hard to say whether Tomorrow would have succeeded if they had been able to raise funding, in part because I’m not sure exactly what the company’s key technology differentiation was. That’s because the company kept their product details close to their vest, pointing to its intention to keep fresh food fresher longer, leveraging AI and other technologies when asked about specifics.

I can also say I’m not surprised by the reasoning behind the shutdown. Hardware is a hard category to build a business in normal times. Throw in tariffs, which would no doubt complicate the supply chain and manufacturing strategy of a refrigerator startup, and significantly raise the final price of the product. Creating an entirely new product in this space almost becomes a fool’s errand, at least in the current environment (which is also probably why raising funding for this company proved extremely difficult).

From Starday to Shiru to Givaudan, AI Is Now Tablestakes Across the Food Value Chain

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:58:03 +0000

Back in the early days of the cloud computing revolution, my former employer, GigaOM, hosted perhaps the biggest and most influential conference on the topic called STRUCTURE.

One of the phrases that has stuck with me from those days is “data is the new oil,” which I heard declared from the STRUCTURE stage more than a handful of times. At the time, big data technologies were leveraging machine-learning-driven analytics tools to create new correlations and insights from disparate datasets faster than ever before. Those who controlled the data — and could mine it effectively — wielded enormous power.

Now, nearly two decades into the cloud era and three years after the AI “big bang” sparked by the launch of ChatGPT, those early days seem almost quaint by comparison. New AI-powered tools and companies are emerging every day. While much of the “data is the new oil” rhetoric back then felt like spin, today we’re seeing real, transformative progress, especially in new product development.

Food is no exception.

Take the news from Shiru this past week. The company, which uses AI to sort through plant-based food building blocks, announced that it had scaled its first AI-discovered products: OleoPro and uPro. These new approaches to identifying proteins — particularly oleogel structurants (structured fat systems) — are designed to support large-scale production.

As Shiru CEO Jasmin Hume put it:

“This moment is a turning point not just for Shiru, but for the food industry. Even though oleogels have been explored for years (there are over 500 publications on them in the last decade), commercially scaled examples have been elusive — until now. Our AI platform helped us identify the right proteins, but that was only part of the story. Our team then engineered a scalable and entirely new process for producing those proteins with the precise performance attributes required to succeed in real-world formulations.”

But it’s not just next-generation ingredient discovery. New CPG brands are also using AI to decipher early consumer signals and connect the dots before anyone else can launch the next big product. One example is Starday, a startup that recently raised $11 million. Starday uses AI to sift through millions of data points from social media feeds, surveys, point-of-sale data, and more to identify emerging opportunities in food that could lead to future hits.

“Imagine if you had 10,000 consumer insights folks that are watching every video on internet, typing up what’s being said, tagging it, and then kind of building these regression models around how these trends are happening,” said Starday CEO Chaz Flexman in a recent interview with The Spoon. “We’re trying to do that on steroids. We take in about 10 million pieces of content every week, which is very significant.”

In the early big data heyday, companies could look at things like trending tweet mentions. Today, companies like Starday are able to dive into video content, extract context much faster, and build predictive intelligence to guide new product development.

Shiru and Starday are just two examples making headlines recently about how AI is reshaping the food industry. Others are innovating across different parts of the food value chain — from manufacturing optimization (Keychain) to intelligent automation (Chef Robotics), all the way back to the farm with companies like Agtonomy.

Even century-old flavor companies are getting into the act. This past week, Givaudan announced Myromi, a handheld digital aroma delivery device that leverages an AI platform called ATOM.

In short, AI is enabling both startups and established players to move much faster.

And they’re going to have to. In the current MAHA moment in the US, companies are urgently reevaluating ingredient lists and being forced to replace ingredients like food dyes and sugars. This new urgency is adding to what many had already been doing as they see climate change slowly but surely impacting how and what they can source for their products.

Back in 2010, there was a lot of talk about using big data to create better products, but no one was seriously using AI to build food products at that point (heck, Watson, after all, hadn’t even become a chef.) Today, every major food brand has made significant investments — in people, platforms, products — as part of the AI-powered transformation.

In other words, if data is the new oil, it’s now clear that AI is the engine of innovation that is accelerating and driving change across every part of the food system.

Andrew Simmons Shares Lessons Learned as He Launches New Pizza Subscription Platform

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:09:23 +0000

A couple of years ago, Andrew Simmons had big plans for his restaurant subscription business.

And why not? After experimenting with a wide range of technologies in a San Diego-area pizza restaurant, Simmons had launched a pizza subscription model that helped him generate $30,000 in a single-day Black Friday sale. Confident in his approach, he figured he could replicate the model in new markets.

But as it turns out, expansion proved more difficult than expected. According to Simmons, the challenge wasn’t the technology or the concept of subscriptions; it was moving too quickly into markets where his restaurants hadn’t yet built relationships with local diners.

“We believed that the pizza subscription program would carry us through,” said Simmons. “But when you move into a brand new market where nobody knows your brand, it doesn’t really matter what you’re offering until people have a chance to try your food and try it for a while.”

The subscription idea was simple: sell a year’s worth of pizza upfront. Customers could purchase a plan, like $197 for 52 pizzas, and redeem one each week. It created recurring revenue and served as a buffer against unpredictable walk-in traffic.

While the concept didn’t translate as well in new locations, Simmons believes it could work for restaurant operators who already have a strong local following. That’s why he’s launched a new venture and website to help established restaurants offer their own subscription plans.

He says the key to a successful subscription business goes beyond the initial funding. Operators need to manage the funds wisely, track redemptions and subscriber communications, and plan inventory accordingly. His new platform is designed to handle all of that.

“This is crowdfunding meets foodservice,” Simmons said. “You raise money upfront, but you also take on the responsibility to deliver that product across 52 weeks. You have to be smart. Or you’ll crash the car.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Andrew to hear about his plans for his subscription business below or on The Spoon Podcast.

Join Us Today as We Discuss How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Culinary Creation

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:08:22 +0000

Admit it: you’ve probably played around with making recipes using AI. At this point, most of us have.

If you’re like me, the early results were… rough. But over time, general-purpose LLMs have become surprisingly good at whipping up recipes. Still, there’s a long way to go before AI becomes a true sous chef in our kitchens, and plenty of questions remain about where this is all going.

To help us explore what’s next in this month’s edition of our Food AI Co-Lab, we’re joined by two people who’ve been working at the intersection of AI and cooking for nearly a decade: James Briscione and Lav Varshney, co-creators of Chef Watson—the world’s first culinary AI. Their latest project, CulinAI, is an AI-powered app designed to create personalized meal plans.

Want to join the conversation, ask questions, and see where AI cooking is headed? Register for today’s Food AI Co-Lab here.

Introducing The Tomorrow Today Show With Mike Lee

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 19:42:43 +0000

Back in 2017, I wrote a story exploring the idea of personalized food profiles. The piece explored whether, someday, we might walk into restaurants, shop at the grocery store, or have dinner at a friend’s house and be able to communicate our food preferences and dietary restrictions in advance, shaping our entire meal journey accordingly.

The inspiration for that article came from Mike Lee, who had just spoken at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle that October. During his talk, he introduced the idea of a “food passport” that could someday help personalize food experiences wherever we go. I had gotten to know Mike through his work at The Future Market, where he developed a concept store of the future for the Fancy Food Show. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mike has a rare ability to imagine the many possible futures of our food system and to understand how technology and social change might intersect to bring those futures to life.

However, it wasn’t until he published his book Mise: On the Future of Food that I fully appreciated the breadth of his thinking and the ways he can masterfully get his ideas across. In Mise, Mike not only describes big potential technologies and changes we will wrestle with in the future, but he gave us stories of how these changes might unfold in our lives.

In short, Mike is not only skilled at identifying early signals and trends, but he’s also a master of using storytelling to illustrate how these futures might unfold, which is why I’m super excited to welcome his new show to The Spoon Podcast Network: The Tomorrow Today Show.

In his new podcast, Mike takes listeners on a weekly deep dive into the future of food, whether it’s restaurants, farming, consumer products, nutrition, or even food hedonism. Each episode features long-form conversations that go beyond surface-level takes, offering nuanced insights from some of the most thoughtful voices in the industry.

In this first episode, The Future of Restaurants, Mike has a roundtable conversation with Kristen Hawley (Expedite), Elizabeth Tilton (Oyster Sunday), David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), and yours truly. We explore everything from the role of empathy in hospitality to why chefs are trading molecular gastronomy for comfort food like pot pies.

Season one is launched, and you can watch the first episode below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Mike is my guest on this week’s episode of The Spoon Podcast, so make sure to listen to that as well to hear a little more about Mike’s background.

ClearCOGS Raises $3.8M its AI-Powered Forecasting Software That Helps Restaurants Reduce Waste

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:54:18 +0000

AI-powered restaurant forecasting startup ClearCOGS has raised $3.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Closed Loop Partners, with participation from Myriad Venture Partners and Hearst’s Level Up Ventures. The funding includes $2.3 million in new capital and the conversion of $1.4 million in pre-seed investments. The company’s software provides predictive analytics to assist operators in making decisions around food prep, ordering, and staffing, with an emphasis on reducing food waste and improving operational efficiency.

Company CEO Matt Wampler told The Spoon that he came up with the idea of ClearCOGS during the pandemic. He’d been being laid off and was exploring coding and analytics, when he discovered his cousin who ran a Jimmy John’s franchise was still using a decade-old Excel forecast. Wampler wondered if AI could help create a better predicitve forecasting tool, and before long he had teamed up with Osa Osarenkhoe to build a solution that uses machine learning and time-series forecasting that currover 100 million data points a day.

When ClearCOGS participated in our first virtual Food AI Summit a couple of years ago, Osa and Matt had started experimenting with leveraging large language models (LLMs) like those from OpenAI to create an interface for their forecasting tool. I asked Matt how those experiments with LLMs had gone.

“We did a whole big thing with it… It didn’t go well,” said Wampler. “And it wasn’t from a technical standpoint. It was from the standpoint of the restaurant brands we were talking to… they were like, ‘Look, my general manager can either just get on and play with your AI bot and it’ll tell them, or you can just send it to them? Just send it to them.’”

Wampler said the LLM interface wasn’t the problem. It was just that operators didn’t want to interact with it at all. Instead, they just wanted the answers delivered to them, simply and directly, through email and integrations with solutions from Toast or SevenRooms. This experience reaffirmed Wampler’s belief that proprietary forecasting (and not LLM-powered conversational AI) is where ClearCOGS can deliver the most value.

“LLMs are kind of a commodity at this point. Proprietary data sets are what really matters… You still have to be able to provide a fundamental business value before that AI is really helpful.”

While many platforms offer dashboards or raw analytics, ClearCOGS focuses on delivering direct, decision-ready insights to restaurant managers. This is central to how he differentiates the company:

“If you’re a brand, you probably have 20 or 30 questions that you have to answer every day… We go really deep on those and provide a systematic way of delivering those to your operators every day.”

With the new capital, ClearCOGS plans to accelerate its product development and customer acquisition efforts, with an emphasis of better positioning itself in the food service sector. The company currently serves a customer base of 100 brands in four countries, and Matt says they plan to continue building a lean team, prioritizing automation and AI over headcount.

Vow Gets Greenlight in Australia As It Hits 1,200 Pounds Per Week of Cultivated Quail Meat

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:24:12 +0000

Vow, the Australian-based startup making foie gras and parfait from the cultivated cells of Japanese quail, announced a couple of big milestones this week, including what it claims to be the biggest ever production run of cultivated meat after harvesting 1,200 pounds of Japanese quail in a single week. This milestone was achieved using the company’s custom-designed 20,000-liter vessel designed entirely in-house.

This news comes the same week the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) officially approved Vow’s application to add cultivated quail to the Food Standards Code. The final step is a 60-day review period by ministers from each jurisdiction within Australia and New Zealand. If no objections are raised, Vow could begin selling its cultivated quail products across ANZ as early as June.

According to CEO George Peppou, the secret to Vow’s rapid progress isn’t just about bigger tanks—it’s about rebuilding the entire factory model from scratch.

“Pharma infrastructure just doesn’t work for food,” Peppou told me in a recent episode of The Spoon Podcast. “We designed our second factory using a completely vertically integrated approach—engineers, welders, software, everything in-house—and built it for a fraction of what others have spent.”

Vow believes its new plant can make cultivated meat at a cost that is 20-50 times cheaper than its competitors, and now Peppou says that the company is now being approached by others as a potential manufacturing partner who see their approach as one that could scale.

“We’ve seen this sort of interesting uptick recently of other companies approaching us to ask about contract manufacturing. We’ve got the capacity. We’re selling continuously and we do have some excess capacity that we can provide to other companies. So we’ve got a few projects underway at the moment, which has been a very interesting insight into how other philosophies have played out.”

You can listen to my full conversation below.

Tariffs Pushing Consumer Hardware Makers into Crisis Mode

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 19:13:59 +0000

During normal times, running a hardware business is tough. Throw in a tariff-driven trade war, and it becomes a full-blown crisis.

Just ask Robin Liss. When the CEO of kitchen appliance maker Suvie saw that President Trump wasn’t backing down from imposing steep tariffs on products from China and beyond, she realized she’d have to move manufacturing out of China or risk her entire business.

Liss told CNBC she’d need to reconfigure Suvie’s manufacturing and supply chain operations on an accelerated timeline or miss out on her most important sales season in the fall.

From CNBC:

Suvie’s products—kitchen gadgets that can whip up dinner in a matter of minutes—are built in a facility located in one of China’s largest manufacturing hubs and consist of more than 500 components sourced throughout the country.

After running the numbers and calculating the costs associated with the new tariffs, Liss headed to Asia in March in search of a Plan B.

“I’m going to run out of appliances,” Liss said ahead of her two-week trip to Taiwan and Vietnam. “I’ve got to figure this out.”

While tariffs impact nearly any company with a global supply chain, consumer hardware manufacturers—from Apple and Google to Suvie—are especially vulnerable. That’s because most rely on Asian manufacturing after decades of offshoring has hollowed out U.S. manufacturing capacity. Bringing production stateside would require massive cost increases and a multi-year transition at best.

Suvie is just one of many hardware makers now scrambling to rewrite their supply chain playbook in response to the tariffs. The question is: how many can actually make the leap—and survive?

Food Recycler Startup Mill Hits $20M in Revenue as It Launches Mill for Workplace

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:02:01 +0000

Today, food recycler startup Mill disclosed (via Axios, scoop by my ex-Gigaom colleague Katie Fehrenbacher) that it has reached $20 million in trailing 12-month revenue. It also announced it is launching a new product line extension in Mill for Workplace.

The company, which makes a home food recycler, made headlines when it launched over two years ago, thanks to both its pedigreed founders (the CEO co-founded smart home startup Nest) and its upcycling service that turns processed food scraps into chicken feed.

Since then, Mill has continued to check off key milestones—an achievement worth noting, especially in today’s tough startup climate and in a niche category like home food waste management. Today, they hit another couple of big ones with the launch of a new product line and positive revenue growth.

The move into the business market makes sense, particularly since, as founder Matt Rogers shared in a LinkedIn post, Mill’s food recyclers are already in use at offices like Duolingo and Bristol Myers Squibb. The company’s Mill for Workplace landing page emphasizes how it will help businesses meet their sustainability goals and highlights Mill’s fleet management software.

As for revenue, while $20 million in sales is impressive, the analyst in me wants to know how much of that is hardware vs. recurring subscription revenue, and what their year-over-year growth rate looks like. My concern for any hardware company right now isn’t just the tough funding environment (though I expect Mill will look to raise another round), but also how their bill of materials and overall costs will be impacted by Trump’s new tariffs.

That said, Mill’s management has proven savvy from the start, offering a digestible monthly rental plan ($35/month as of today). I’d also expect they can command a higher monthly rate for business customers. Given their track record, I expect them to continue to navigate this space relatively well.

If you want to hear more about Mill’s business and their new business line, Mill President Harry Tannenbaum will be at Smart Kitchen Summit in July.