This week Mike and Carlos be joined by Future Market’s Mike Lee to talk over some of the most interesting stories of the week. Mike Lee also tells us about his new book Mise,  which paints four different scenarios depicting the potential direction of our future food system.

Here are all the stories we’ll be talking about.

Bored & Hungry Closes – Food & Web3: A check in on where things are

In March 2022, NFT and crypto investor Andy Nguyen purchased Bored Ape #6184 along with three Mutant Apes and soon decided to establish a Bored Ape-themed restaurant named Bored & Hungry. The restaurant opened its doors on April 9, and by the end of its first day, it had served 1,500 burgers and had lines stretching around the block.

Two years later, Bored & Hungry has closed.

Last week, Nguyen announced on Instagram that the restaurant’s original location in Long Beach, California, was closing. He shared that they had sold the concept to a franchising company from Asia known as HUNGRY Dao.

Is AI-Powered Customer Interaction at Fast Food & Retail Giving Up too Much Privacy?

A Fast Company article titled “How fast food is becoming a new surveillance ground” looks at how new customer interaction layers using things like bio-authentication, cameras, profile information, and more are a new risk for gathering information about the public. 

And earlier this week, we saw Steak n Shake launch facial recognition nationwide for check-in.

Are we going through an airport or going to buy a surf and turf?

Vow Thinks Imitating Meat We Eat is Bad Approach. Enter the Quail Parfait. 

Green Queen: The Syndey-based startup is today launching its cultivated Japanese quail in Singapore’s Mandala Club, after the country’s regulator gave it the go-ahead to sell the product. But unlike other rollouts of cultivated meat, where chefs are supplied with the meat itself (which they then incorporate into dishes), Vow is taking a novel approach. What restaurant kitchens get is a parfait containing its cultivated quail.

Mike’s Book about The Future of Food

The four future visions in Mise (pronounced “meez”), which range from the year 2033 to 2067, are created to help people understand the potential long-term impact of things that are happening today in the world on our food system. The book identifies 5 major happenings in society, technology, the economy, the environment, and politics (abbreviated and referred to as the STEEP factors) that will have a profound impact on the way the world produces and consumes food.

We'll be talking about some of these food futures and how it will shape our lives at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. If you'd like to join us, you can use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets at checkout. 

This week on the Food Tech News Show we are joined by Scott Heimendinger, one of the inventors of the home sous vide circulator and a long-time kitchen tech inventor. 

Here are the stories we talk about:

Apple is working on robots for the home! – From Bloomberg: “The original concept for the robot was a device that could navigate entirely on its own without human intervention — like the car — and serve as a videoconferencing tool. One pie-in-the-sky idea within Apple was having it be able to handle chores, like cleaning dishes in a sink.

Google has used its latest AI to create a new tool that creates a fusion recipe between two culinary cultures. Lifehacker: “According to Google,  Food Mood can provide creative inspiration for your next meal. Select two countries and this fusion recipe generator will create one for you. You can choose whether you would like to cook a starter, a soup, a main course or a dessert. For example, why not try a unique blend of flavors from Sri Lanka and Uganda or mixing influences from Oman and Belgium? This experiment was created by artists Emmanuel Durgoni and Gaël Hugo, and uses Gemini 1.0 Pro via Vertex AI.”

Whirlpool has let the entire Yummly team go. Appliance giant Whirlpool has laid off its entire Yummly team. According to industry sources, the company recently laid off all the employees for the recipe and cooking app and website. These sources tell the Spoon that it’s unclear what the company plans to do with the property it acquired in 2017.

Amazon Pulling ‘Just Walk Out’ from Amazon Fresh Grocery Stores – According to a story published in The Information, Amazon is planning to pull its Just Walk Out cashierless technology from its large-format grocery store, Amazon Fresh.

One Robot Pizza Chain Operator Breaks Down the Cost Each Part of the Pizza-Making Process – For small operators (and big ones as well) in the pizza business, Andrew Simmons’s posts on Linkedin have become must-read material.

Scott will be at the Smart Kitchen Summit, talking about some of the lessons he's learned building the kitchen of the future. If you are interested in seeing Scott at SKS, you can use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets. 

On this week's Food Tech News Show, Mike and Carlos welcome Rachel Konrad, former head of communications for The Production Board, Impossible Foods and Tesla. The stories we catch up on include:

People are Scared Sh**tless: It gets real on stage from pessimistic VCs

Startup Polopo shows off tech to create egg-derived proteins in potatoes using molecular farming techniques

Is the Keto Cereal Craze over?

Trader Joe’s opens new small-format store

Robot of the week: The Chefee robot

You can find the video version of this Weekly Food Tech News show at The Spoon and you can find the audio-only podcast on Apple Podcasts.  

A reminder: It's the last two days to get early bird pricing for the Smart Kitchen Summit. Use discount code PODCAST at checkout for 15% off of tickets. 

If you follow the world of kitchen and consumer food tech startups, you know there hasn't been much in the way of venture funded startups targeting food waste in the home.

That changed last year when Mill lifted the veil on the company and its first product, the Mill Bin, a smart food recycler. The company had a unique approach, offering a subscription-based home food waste recycler and an accompanying service that would turn the food grounds into chicken feed. 

We decided to catch up with the company's CEO, Matt Rogers, to hear about the journey to making Mill. During our conversation, we also talk about:

• The early lessons in building a tech-powered food recycling appliance and service
• Why Matt decided to target food waste after building a smart home company in Nest
• The challenges in getting consumers to think about wasting less food
• How better data could help us change consumer behavior 
• The future of food waste reduction technology in the consumer kitchen

If you want to learn more about Mill, you can head to their website or join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit where we will be hearing from company cofounder Harry Tannenbaum. Use discount code podcast for 15% off tickets.

This week, the Spoon crew got together to discuss some of the big stories of the week on a new weekly video news show we’re launching called The Food Tech News Show.

The stories Carlos Rodela and I discuss include:

• Keurig Unveils Plastic-Free Coffee Pods, Developed With A Little Help From The Maker of CoffeeB
• Keurig Takes Another Swing at Cold Beverages With the Launch of QuickChill Cold Coffee Technology
• Not Surprisingly, Starbucks Is Shutting Down Its NFT Program
• Watch The Figure 01 Robot Feed A Human, Sort The Dishes, And Stammer Like Us Meatbags
• Why a Small Startup in the Middle of Valencia May Be Leading the Wireless Energy & Invisible Cooktop Trend
• Bellwether Debuts Small-Format, Countertop Electric Coffee Roaster for $15 Thousand

You can watch the full show on YouTube, or listen to it on the Spoon podcast.

And, if you’d like to watch next week’s Food Tech News Show, join us on March 22nd at 1 PM Pacific on Streamyard, Twitter, or on our YouTube channel.

Music from #Uppbeat 

License code: HKXBEQJCPWPRMN7H

Over the past decade, Fresco has been building technology that helps appliance and housewares brands to create smart kitchen products.

The journey for Fresco started when the company - then known as Drop - created a connected kitchen scale. After finding success selling its scale in the Apple store and other locations, the company started working with other brands to help provide enabling technology to power their smart kitchen solutions. 

Fast-forward to today, and Fresco is now working with some of the world's biggest kitchen brands, including Panasonic and Viking, to help them build out their smart kitchen solutions.

To hear about this journey, we welcome Anthony Sullivan, the Chief Product Officer for Fresco, to the podcast. 

On the podcast, host Michael Wolf talks with Anthony about:

• The journey from a consumer product company to a platform company
• Building software for appliance brands
• The evolution of the mindset of appliance companies around creating solutions that enable cross-brand connectivity
• The challenges of getting consumers to adopt more tech-forward solutions in the kitchen
• And lots more!

You can learn more about Fresco at www.frescocooks.com 

If you are interested connecting with Fresco and other kitchen tech companies, you'll want to be at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. Use the discount code PODCAST for 15% off tickets at checkout.

Around 2009, Ralph Newhouse's company hunted down excess inventory of small electrics and would re-sell them into the secondary market. However, it wasn't long before Newhouse realized he wanted to make his own appliances, and that's when the Chefman we know today was born.

Newhouse wasn't done. As he and Chefman started to see how new connected products made their way into the market over the past decade, he realized he wanted to create a brand around more tech-forward connected products, and that thinking led to the creation of ChefIQ, a startup within a startup focused on the smart kitchen.

In this conversation, Newhouse talks about this journey, why he decided to create a separate company for his connected products, and where he sees the future of the connected kitchen going. 

And...for those interested new products, we have a couple reveals by Ralph in this podcast that are heard for the first time. 

Have a listen!

For those interested in checking out where the future kitchen is going, you'll want to be at the Smart Kitchen Summit on June 4-5th in Seattle. Use discount PODCAST at checkout for 15% off tickets.

Ty Thompson and the rest of the Ovie team recently passed a major milestone: They shipped their first piece of hardware.

The product, a consumer food waste management system, was over half a decade in the making. Along the way to market, the founding team faced numerous challenges around funding, finalizing the product concept and design, building prototypes for manufacturing, and finding the right manufacturer to work with.

Ty talks about all of these challenges and the lessons learned, including:

-Battling mission creep around the product's vision

-How to find the right minimum viable product to get it into production

-What you need to do (and what you shouldn't do) when looking to find the right manufacturing partner

-How to balance your life and your day job while hustling to build a startup

And much more. 

Ovie will be at Smart Kitchen Summit, so if you like what you hear and want to connect with the team in person, get your ticket at www.smartkitchensummit.com.

Chris Young is one of the most provocative and interesting thinkers in the future of food and cooking, so any time he visits The Spoon podcast we learn a lot.

This time was no exception. 

In this episode of The Spoon Podcast, we talk about:

• How he has put AI compute into something as small as a thermometer 
• Where he thinks generative AI and other AI is going in the food and cooking space
• How he thinks big companies should approach the AI era 
• Why he's back creating content for Youtube and other channels again
• And much more!

Chris will be back at Smart Kitchen Summit this summer in Seattle, so if you're interested in seeing him there or learning more, head to www.smartkitchensummit.com.

Food delivery through underground tubes?

Sounds crazy, but it's already happening today, and Pipedream's Garrett McCurrach thinks it just may be the future of delivery.

We catch up with Garrett just a week after they announced their first pilot in the Atlanta suburbs, where they have built a system that delivers food and other items underground for nearly a mile.

During this podcast we talk about how Garrett came up with the idea, what it was like to showcase the system to Jeff Bezos, how the company is working with fast food restaurants to rethink drive-thru pickup and what he sees for the future of underground delivery. 

As always, like or subscribe if you haven't already. 

This week SuperGut CEO Marc Washington joins the podcast to talk about why new GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are keeping CPG brand CEOs up at night.

These new drugs, which got their start as a new class of pharmaceuticals that help contol type 2 diabetes, have become very popular in recent years as weight loss drug. They are hugely effective in suppressing appetites and reducing the overall calorie intake of those taking them, so much so that some speculate that they could have a significant impact on overall demand for food if, as predicted, tens of millions begin to take them in coming years as the price comes down and more accessible formats (i.e. not shots) become available. 

 Marc thinks a lot about these drugs because his company, SuperGut, creates a natural alternative to GLP-1 drugs in the form of supplements, snacks and bars. His journey to leading the company was born out of both a personal loss as well as a chance meeting with Dave Friedberg, the CEO of The Production Board. 

You can learn more about Super Gut on their website.

And a quick plug before we go: The Spoon is heading up the food tech conference at CES, the world's biggest technology expo. If you'd like to become involved as a sponsor, just fill out this form and we'll be in touch!