Smart Kitchen Show

Our special guest is Scott Heimendinger for our weekly food tech news wrapup.  Scott is a long-time kitchen tech inventor and entrepreneur who is currently building his next big thing. In this episode, we discuss the following stories: Tovala intro's new oven Why all the sourdough tech now? Do we need tech to make us better bakers? Good and bad way to use generative AI with food  CloudChef Wants to Capture a Chef’s Knowledge in Software to Recreate High-Quality Cuisine Anywhere Facebook wants us to let us know we're out of milk via our AR glasses. This is ok, but how can AR be made actually really useful?   As always, you can find more Spoon Podcasts at our website or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. 

Up until now, every morsel of food astronauts eat in outer space was created and packaged on earth. However, as we embark on the era of long-term space flight, NASA and other space agencies realize that that will need to change.  As the Senior Project Manager for Space Crop Production and Exploration Food Systems for NASA, this is the problem Ralph Fritsche has been thinking about for the past decade. Ralph, who helped develop the Deep Space Food Challenge, works with his team to try and figure out how exactly they'll feed astronauts when they set up camp on Mars over a decade from now.  If you've ever wondered about how we feed space travelers today and far into the future, this is the podcast for you!

In this week's episode we catch up with Rachel Konrad, a former journalist who has spent the last decade-plus working for Tesla, Impossible Foods and now the Production Board. Rachel joins Michael Wolf and Carlos Rodela to talk about her background, the recent controversy around Bloomberg's article declaring plant-based meat a fad, and how she helped Impossible bring food tech to CES in 2019 with the launch of the Impossible 2.0 burger. It's a really fun conversation that you won't want to miss!  

It's almost the end of 2022 and so we decided to catch up with S2G Managing Director Tonya Bakritzes. In this podcast we talk about: -The impact of inflation and global macroenvironmental headwinds on the food tech landscape -The plant-based meat sales slowdown and what it means for the space longterm.  -Some areas to look forward to in 2023 You can find out more about S2G here.  

Ben Leventhal has nothing if not good timing.  In 2004 the New York entrepreneur launched Eater at the dawn of the blogging era, back when food media was still mostly legacy publications and message boards.  After selling Eater to Vox, he went on to launch Resy in 2014 just as restaurants were beginning to bristle at the data practices of legacy online reservations systems such as OpenTable. He'd eventually sell his second company to American Express.  And now Leventhal is looking to create his third founder success story with the launch of Blackbird, a company which he describes as “a new loyalty, membership, and payments technology company.” In this episode, we discuss Ben's journey from those early days, how evolution of food media, the changes to reservation and other restaurant tech platforms, and how he envisions Web3 and other new technologies could change the game for small and independent restaurants.  You can find out more about Ben's new company at Blackbird.xyz. 

Our guest this week on our weekly food tech news wrapup is Clayton Wood, the CEO of pizza robot startup Picnic. We talk food tech news and then hear Clayton's view on where things are going in the world of food robots. Here are some of the stories we covered: The Food tech venture capital market really dropped hard in Q3.: Food tech venture drops 63% quarter over quarter One sector that seems to be somewhat active in Web3 meets restaurants: Seattle's Forum3 announces funding on heels of launching Starbucks' NFT-centric loyalty program.  Two Fast-Grocery Delivery Giants Have Merged: Turkish fast delivery company Getir has closed its acquisition of German rival Gorillas as fast grocery continues to consolidate. Wonder Lays off 7% of Workers: Marc Lore's food delivery unicorn has its first layoff as growth goes slower than expected. Colleges are embracing delivery robots. Grubhub announced a partnership with Kiwi, adding to their partnerships with Starship and Cartken. Is there something about colleg

We're ramping our Friday food tech casual news wrapups back up again, and this week Mike and Carlos got together to talk about some of the stories that caught their attention this week. The stories we talked about include: Will reusable containers take off at colleges? Maybe. What about restaurants? One startup is trying to make it work. A new smart mixer from GE Appliances stood out as an innovative product in a market that has lacked innovation as of late. Has Amazon's Alexa strategy failed? A startup debuts its new driver-optional electronic tractor.  Is this the future of farming? One sidewalk robot company lands a nice deal with Norway's post office, but how are the others doing? Plus: Cocaine Bear! Join us next week on The Spoon's Crowdcast channel to see the live recording. 

In his previous life, Max Elder worked as a futurist, where he helped food brands develop strategies for the future. One of his primary motivations in this work was the hope that he could help steer them away from animal agriculture and towards a future centered around more humane and sustainable foods. Over time, however, Elder realized that to have a meaningful impact, he'd have to create his own product. So in late 2020, Elder left his job as a futurist and created a plant-based meat company. With Nowadays, Elder envisions a future where he can have a bigger impact by scaling meat utilizing production techniques perfected for traditional animal agriculture. In this episode, we talk about his transition from strategist to entrepreneur and Elder puts his futurist hat back on to look at where things are going in the world of alternative protein.

WTF is going on with alternative protein? To find out, we decided to catch up with one of our favorite people in future food, Indiebio's Po Bronson. Po went from being one of the early chroniclers of the dotcom boom via his novels and nonfiction titles to leading one of the most active investors and accelerators in the future of food in IndieBio, and in this podcast, we talk about his journey and how he become a VC. We also talk about the current struggles facing certain sectors of alt protein and where he sees things going. 

Food tech industry is built on intellectual property. Whether a startup builds alternative proteins, cooking technology, automation/ AI or another food tech product, a large part of its future success relies on its intellectual property. A big part of a startup's success relies on managing a patent portfolio. But navigating the world of patents is confusing, so why not bring in an expert to answer some of our questions? That's exactly what we do on this episode of The Spoon podcast with Anas Alfarra. Anas managed IP for one of the world's biggest industrial equipment makers, has secured his own patent for a food cooking system, and advises startups on how to manage their IP. Topics discussed on this podcast include: -What are the different types of patents? -What is a provisional patent? -How to understand patent strategies of large companies like Amazon and Microsoft -The process of applying for a patent -And much more! If you are at all interested in intellectual property and have questions about how to man

As the former head of food chemistry for Eat Just, Jasmin Hume thought there was a lot of white space for innovation and thought a company should exist to build the next generation of ingredients for plant-based food. So she created it. At Shiru, Hume and her team make novel ingredients by identifying proteins with function such as taste, texture and more utilizing cutting edge tools like machine learning. So far, the company has raised over $20 million and just recently hired Impossible Foods' former VP of R&D and strategic ingredients. On the podcast, Mike and Jasmin discuss the following topics: -how the alternative protein market is evolving from early fully vertically integrated brands to companies like Shiru that build ingredients and solutions for a variety of companies -the new cohort of food companies utilizing AI and ML to build the next generation of food -how what Shiru is doing with precision fermentation is different from that of Perfect Day and others trying to create animal-identical proteins

In this episode of The Spoon, we are joined by long-time restaurant and restaurant tech journalist Nancy Luna. We thought we would have Nancy on to compare notes about some of the challenges we've seen in the last few months in restaurant tech. Some stories we discuss on the show include: -NextBite's layoffs -The shutdown of Chowbotics and pizza robot pioneer Pizzametry looking for a buyer -the state of ghost kitchen players -QR code startup Sunday and their fast-burn through funding and pull out of markets -and Much More! As always, you can find more Spoon podcasts at www.thespoon.tech via Knit

In this episode of The Spoon podcast, we catch up with the CEO of GRUBBRR Sam Zietz and the CTO of BurgerFi (a 120 location burger chain) to talk about how the two companies worked together to roll out self-ordering technology at BurgerFi locations and how the early results show the technology changing consumer behavior. via Knit

Jordan Thaeler doesn't mince words when it comes to the business of restaurant and retail technology business. Anyone who reads Thaeler's Reforming Retail, which he does in addition to running a retail payments analytics and consulting business, knows that Thaeler likes to break down the cost economics and associated business models of some of the biggest names in restaurant tech. In this episode of The Spoon Podcast, we talk about: -The overall restaurant tech market space and why there aren't more publicly traded companies in this market -How point of sale is still the focus and starting point for the digital transition for many restaurants -The ghost kitchen and virtual brand space -Jack Dorsey's fixation with crypto and the potential impact of Web3/crypto on restaurants -Lots more! You can find more Spoon Podcasts at www.thespoon.tech via Knit

Andrew Shakman had a tough job. After two full days of inspiring talks at ReFED's annual food waste symposium, the CEO of Leanpath was asked to give a closing message that would inspire and catalyze action. He delivered, so we asked Andrew to come on the podcast to discuss how he thinks those delivering food waste reduction solutions can do more to help make a bigger impact. As always, you can find more Spoon podcasts at www.thespoon.tech via Knit

Mike and Ashley get together to talk about some of the more interesting food tech stories of the week, including: -The big food brand metaverse trademark landgrab -An NFT restaurant in San Francisco -The faulty rationale for investing big $ in 15-minute grocery -Roku's big play for shoppable food TV -The Spoon's looking for leaders in the food-tech revolution As always, you can find more podcasts at The Spoon. The Spoon podcast is part of the Spoon Media Network. via Knit

If you are in the alt-protein industry or even just interested in the space, chances are you know about the Good Food Institute. In this episode, I caught up with GFI CEO and co-founder Bruce Friedrich to talk about the evolution of the space, the politics of alternative meat, the regulatory environment and where he sees the market going. You'll want to check it out! You can find out more about GFI at www.gfi.org. As always, find more podcast at The Spoon. via Knit

Can the design of your kitchen change how and what you eat? Electrolux thinks so. In this week's episode of the Spoon podcast's food tech news wrapup, we discuss Electrolux's new kitchen concept called GRO, Taco Bell's restaurant of the future, a new mushroom grow chamber called Shrooli and a new countertop cooking appliance with a built-in freezer called Celcy. As always, you can read about these stores at The Spoon (www.thespoon.tech). via Knit

In this episode, we talk about the state of the food as medicine market and the how Lauren Driscoll built NourishedRX, one of the fastest growing companies in this space. via Knit

So while it may not be surprising that a restaurant concept by alpha-adopter and Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk can raise millions of dollars selling NFTs, what about that mom & pop place on the corner? In other words, how does a small restauranteur that doesn't have the followers, fame and early adopter advantage of a Vaynerchuk take advantage of web3? That's what we talk about with this week's guest, Adam Brotman, the CEO of Brightloom and former head of digital for Starbucks. via Knit