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Yummly App Adds New Features, Reminding Us It’s Still Around Six Years After Whirlpool Deal
Today, recipe and guided cooking app Yummly announced a refreshed set of features, including what it describes as AI-powered recipe recommendations, an improved meal planner feature, and integration with an upgraded Yummly thermometer. Since Whirlpool acquired Yummly, the recipe recommendation and cooking guidance app has largely flown below the radar...
Podcast: Food Tech News Wrapup – Wonder Buys Blue Apron, Elon Breaks Ground on Drive-In
We’re back after a couple weeks off to wrap up some of the top stories of the week. Tesla has broken ground on its Drive In Theater and Diner. You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen by clicking play below.
Pizza Hut Sees Huge Runway for Growth in China, Plans to Add up to 1,500 Net New Stores by 2026 (Sponsored Post)
Pizza Hut is planning to rapidly expand its footprint across China in the coming three years as part of an ambitious growth strategy announced by Yum China Holdings Inc. (NYSE: YUMC; HKEX: 9987), at the company’s recent 2023 Investor Day in Xi’an, China. Following its successful revitalization program,...
Scentian Bio Raises $2.1M for Tech is Says Can Replicate Insect Smell Receptors
Scentian Bio, a biosensor startup that claims to have blended nature and technology by leveraging the olfactory capabilities of insects to develop a powerful new sensory tool, announced a $2.1 million seed funding today according to a release sent to The Spoon. The company’s new investors, which include Finistere Ventures and Toyota Ventures, will join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, bringing their total backing up to $4.4 million.
Hostel Pizzas to Stadium Slices: The Remarkable Growth of MOTO’s Robot-Powered Artisanal Pizza
For most of the past couple of decades, Lee Kindell ran a backpackers hostel and boutique hotel in Seattle where he made pizza for travelers as a way to make them feel welcome and share stories over a good meal. The pizza was so good that guests often told Kindell...
Amazon Details Usage of Generative AI-Created Synthetic Data to Train Just Walk Out Technology
For a while now, we’ve known the basic gist of how Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology works: A combination of computer vision, machine learning, and other sensor data helps enable a friction-free shopping experience in which customers pick items off the shelf and walk out the door without ever having to stop at a cash register.
Meet The Dutch Robotic Kitchen That Makes Five Thousand Meals Per Day
Last month, a Dutch startup named Eatch announced they had built a fully automated robotic kitchen that makes up to five thousand meals per day. The company’s new robot, designed to work in a high-production centralized kitchen, has been making meals in the Amsterdam market for food service and catering giant ISS for the past four months.
On Eve of IPO, Instacart Bolsters Grocery Tech Platform, Including New Features For Caper Smart Shopping Cart
Today, Instacart rolled out a slew of new updates to its grocery technology platform, updating capabilities across its white label turnkey digital commerce platform, its AI-powered search capabilities, and new features for its Caper Cart smart shopping cart. The new feature-set rollout marks further integration of the string of acquisitions the company has made over the past couple of years as it refashions itself from a pioneering personal-shopper service to a technology arms dealer for grocery retailers.
Silicon Valley is Betting Big on Home Electrification. Will It Pay Off In The Kitchen?
This week, news of a new home electrification startup hit the wires. Founded by former Google Ventures partner Rick Klau, Onsemble builds technology to convert electric water heaters into what the energy industry calls a virtual power plant (VPP). VPPs act as aggregators and coordinate between independent distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar and electric vehicles, with the electric grid. While Onsemble won’t enable water heaters to generate energy like a solar panel on your roof, the company believes that connecting and coordinating your water heater with the grid will translate to significant savings.
CoffeeB Hits 200k Households For Coffee Ball Brewing System That Aims to Replace Capsules
Not bad for a first year. After launching their compostable ball-shaped coffee pod brewing system last fall, CoffeeB has already reached a milestone of two hundred thousand customers who are using the system according to company CEO Frank Wilde. In a recent Linkedin post commerating the company’s one year anniversary, Wilde revealed the milestone and says the company has strong momentum ahead.
Sodexo to Deploy SavorEat’s Plant-Based Burger Printing Robot at the University of Denver
This week, food service giant Sodexo and plant-based 3D printing specialist SavorEat announced they will be rolling out SavorEat’s 3D printing robot at the University of Denver. The deployment of the SavorEat Robot Chef marks the first deployment of the Israel-based company’s 3D printing technology in the U.S.
Food Tech News: Samsung Heads Into the Kitchen, Robot Meets Artisan Pizza
The Spoon is back for another week of food tech news, and this week Michael Wolf and Allen Weiner talk about what’s going on in the smart kitchen, alt protein, CRISPR and more. Here are the stories we talk about:. Samsung and LG play nice in the kitchen, and...
With the Launch of Samsung Food, Samsung Hypes AI & Consolidates Food Features Acquired Over the Years
Over the years, Samsung has acquired and launched several products in an effort to become the king of the tech-powered kitchen. First, there was the launch of the Family Hub refrigerator, the company’s attempt to create a smart fridge built around the company’s own operating system and packed with technology like fridge cams to identify food and help you with your shopping.
Is IdeaLab’s Bill Gross Building a Food Prep and Delivery Robot?
Every now and then, an interesting patent appears in patent searches that make you wonder exactly what someone’s up to. Now, don’t get me wrong. Patents are issued all the time, and most of the time, a real product or business isn’t created. But when it comes to someone like IdeaLab‘s Bill Gross – an inventor known for creating dozens of products and companies – you have to wonder what he’s got up his sleeve.
GFI: U.S. Plant-Based Meat Sales in Food Service Hit All-Time High in ’22, Retail Sales Remain Flat
According to a new report from the Good Food Institute (GFI) examining plant-based meat sales in the U.S. food service sector, sales of meat derived from plants sold to restaurants and other food service institutions hit $730 million in 2022, up 7.8% and $53 million in total dollars compared to the previous year. GFI also says that total U.S. retail sales for plant-based meat – still the biggest overall category – remained flat at $1.4 billion last year.
Delivery Giants DoorDash and Uber Eats Join The Rush to Integrate AI Into Ordering Platforms
Over the last six months, we’ve watched as seemingly every quick-service restaurant chain jumped on the AI freight train, integrating new generative AI technology into apps, chatbots, and voice ordering tools to expedite the customer experience. Now, it looks like food-ordering platforms DoorDash and Uber Eats are taking their...
Podcast: The Anti-Tech Grocery Store & Food Tech News of the Week
The Spoon Podcast is back after a summer hiatus with a food tech news wrap-up discussing some of the most interesting stories of the week!. In this episode, Spoon contributor Allen Weiner and I talk about:. You can listen to the full episode by clicking below or by finding The...
Food Robots Everywhere: Starship Hits Fifty Schools While Yo-Kai Aims for All Fifty States
Just in the last day, two food robot startups have shared some deployment data that make clear they – and the broader space – appear to be getting some traction. First was the CEO of Yo-Kai, Andy Lin, who shared a map of the American cities in which Yo-Kai ramen kiosks are deployed:
When It Comes to Cooking Videos, Gen Zers Love TikTok, Millennials Embrace YouTube
As a former industry analyst, I’m a sucker for survey research exploring how we cook, eat, and shop for food. Luckily for me, word of a new research study landed in my inbox this morning from (of all places) Home Run Inn Pizza. Okay, so not exactly Nielsen, but the study used a good sample size (2,000 US respondents) and had a mix of gender and regional representation. In other words, it seemed to be designed well enough to elicit decent results.
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The Spoon provides daily reporting and insight into the food tech revolution. We talk to the innovators, disruptors and creators helping to reinvent food, cooking and the kitchen and bring those conversations to you in the form of interviews, deep dive analysis, newsletters, podcasts and videos
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