Editor’s Note: And earlier version of this article wrongly stated that Spoon University has 175 monthly unique page views. 

College students, like all consumers, care more and more about what they eat, and they want to have a say in their dining hall options. But unlike in restaurants, where diners can vote with their dollars, in campus dining students often lack a way to communicate their preferences and influence dining hall menus.

Empowering students to change campus food

To tackle this problem, Applegate challenge winning team Rumble came up with a“Yelp” platform for campus food. The website enables university students to provide feedback on their dining hall food directly to operators. While empowering students to have a voice in their dining experience, the platform also provides institutions with actionable analytics to help them make the most from student feedback.

Next Steps

The duo behind the hack, Sarah Adler and Mackenzie Barth, are cofounders of  Spoon University, the only food publication for college students, by college students. They are not actively developing of the project now, because they’re focused on growing their one-year-old startup. But if and when they choose to build out Rumble, they’ll already have a captive audience, to the tune of one thousand contributors and 250,000 monthly unique page views (and growing).

Needs

Sarah and Mackenzie say if and when they tackle Rumble head on, they’ll need an iOS developer to build out the front end and a back end developer to help them build the analytics system.  So if you’re a dev or data geek interested in making a difference in campus food and want to get involved, email nina[at]foodtechconnect[dot]com. 

In the spirit of Hack//Dining’s mission to drive open innovation, we hosted Google+ Hangouts with the winning teams. Our goal was to showcase their hacks and share their lessons learned and requests for resources and feedback.

The post Spoon University Creates Yelp for Campus Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Taking on Restaurant Food Safety

Food safety compliance is a major challenge for restaurants. Last week we shared our hangout with Erica Obersi of Kitchen Check, a platform to help operators streamline the process. And today, we’re excited to share that two other members of Hack//Dining’s B&B challenge winning team, Jonathan Judge and Margot Belgorod, who are attacking the the problem from a different angle.

The duo has set out to digitize the NYC health department PDF document for food safety regulations by turning it into an easy-to-use checklist app. They say this rubric provides helpful information for operators, but it’s difficult to find and it’s buried under a lot of legal jargon.

Progress

After talking with restaurants, the pair says they received overwhelming feedback to focus on mobile first. So the developer and designer team decided to build a food safety regulation checklist mobile app for restaurants. They are tackling NYC first and hope to expand in the future. Their goal is to create an MVP over the next few months.

Needs

Jonathan and Margot would love to hear from restaurants about their health inspection experiences. What caught you off guard? What are your recurring challenges with the process? They want to hear all of your health department stories, the good, the bad and the ugly. Jonathan says the operators they’ve talked with so far have said, “Just tell me what to do…Give me everything I need so I can be as prepared as possible when inspection day happens.” Any feedback they receive from the community will only help them build a more comprehensive app that will do just that. So if you have stories or feedback, please email nina [at]foodtechconnect[dot].com.

Learn all about how they plan to make the check list easy to use in the video below.

In the spirit of Hack//Dining‘s mission to drive open innovation, we have been hostingGoogle+ Hangouts with all of the winning teams. Our goal is to showcase their hacks and share their lessons learned and requests for resources and feedback.

The post Hack//Dining Winners to Build Food Safety Inspection Checklist App appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Every week we curate and deliver the latest food tech news, trends and startup resources to our readers’ inboxes. Tracking the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, retail, restaurants, cooking and health, our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

From a breakdown of the best city to start a food company to an inside look at the supermarket of the future, these are last week’s top food tech news stories. Like what you read? Feast your eyes on the full roundup here. Or better yet, sign up for our newsletter and get the latest and greatest in food tech delivered to your inbox every week.

1. KitchenCheck to Simplify Restaurant Food Safety Compliance

Hack//Dining winner KitchenCheck is building the TurboTax of restaurant food safety regulations. Get involved to help simplify food safety compliance.

2. Hive Aims to Empower Healthy Employees with Wellness App

Hack//Dining winner Hive is building a food and fitness app that’s focused on empowering healthy employees and communities.

3. Where’s the Best City to Start a Food Company? – Huffington Post

Bandar Foods’ founders analyze the best city for food startups, based on factors like access to fresh ingredients and community support.

4. Packaged Food Industry to Reach US$2.4 Trillion in Retail Sales in 2014 – Wired

Last week, Euromonitor International released new global packaged food data showing 3.6% growth in value sales over 2013.

5. Hampton Creek’s Strategy Chief Abruptly Resigns Amid Fundraising – Wall Street Journal

The egg-free food alternative startup has lost its chief strategy officer, Ali Partovi, only a week after his arrival.

6. Here’s What Your Supermarket Will Look Like in 50 Years – CNBC

Studio Industries is envisioning what your grocery store will look like in 2065, and you’ll only have to wait a year to find out

7. Smart Recipe Platform Yummly Integrates With Apple’s HealthKit – Yahoo

The integration allows users to send recipe nutrition data to health app and uses healthKit data to personalize Yummly.

8. Newleaf Symbiotics Raises $17M for Pink Bacteria Technology –AgFunder

Otter Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors. The funds will be used to accelerate its successful R&D program, ramp up production and go to market with its first products.

The post Hack//Dining Winner Updates, Packaged Food Ind. to Reach $2.4T in 2014 + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Tackling Restaurant Food Safety

Restaurant food safety compliance can be a nightmare. So we are excited to share the progress of one promising project that came out of Hack//Dining, which aims to streamline the process. We talked with Erica Obersi of the B&B challenge winning team, KitchenCheck (check out the team’s final pitch video here), a software program that described itself as the TurboTax of food safety regulations. The program aims to simplify restaurant food safety compliance by making it easy to find the regulations that apply to your food business, maintenance checklists and expert advice, and it also offers a community forum.

In the spirit of Hack//Dining‘s mission to drive open innovation, we have been hostingGoogle+ Hangouts with all of the winning teams. Our goal is to showcase their hacks and share their lessons learned and requests for resources and feedback.

Progress

Obersi has has made major progress on the project since Hack//Dining. KitchenCheck’s initial landing page is up and running, which you can view here. She’s been getting feedback from restaurateurs and building out maintenance checklists.

If you’re a restaurant operator interested in simplifying food safety compliance, you can sign up to be notified when the beta version launches. 

Needs

In the mean time, Obersi is looking for restaurants and food businesses to join KitchenCheck’s beta testing group. She’s also hoping to crowdsource kitchen inspection checklists from restaurants, which will help her develop a kick-ass, comprehensive inspection list for KitchenCheck users. Finally, feedback from developers and designers is most welcome. So if you’re interested in sharing information or resources email Obersi at kitchenchecker[at]gmail[dot]com.

Obersi is gung ho about bringing the product to market.”Information is power, and we need to make this DOH inspection process transparent and easy to understand,” she says.

The post KitchenCheck to Simplify Restaurant Food Safety Compliance appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

In the spirit of Hack//Dining‘s mission to drive open innovation, we hosted Google+ Hangouts with the winning teams. Our goal was to showcase their hacks and share their lessons learned and requests for resources and feedback.

Building an ecosystem of healthy employees

Today, we’re excited to share our Hangout with Google challenge winning team, Hive (check out their final pitch video here), a curated lifestyle guide meets personal training and nutritionist app with an optional employer reward system to incentivize healthy employees.

We caught up with the team via email recently and learned that its members are independently exploring the project further. They’re on the hunt for potential backers and software developers to help them continue development. They are also very open to feedback from the community. So if you’re a food data nerd and want to help them build their hive (had to slip in one pun) or share feedback or resources let us know in the comments below or shoot an email to nina[at]foodtechconnect[dot]com.

The post Hive Aims to Empower Healthy Employees with Wellness App appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Hack//Dining resulted in some interesting insights about the future of dining, as well as some potentially game-changing hacks. More than an event, this is about tackling big problems, so we want the teams to share what they’ve learned and get feedback from all of you as they continue development. And to help the winning teams keep their momentum going and / or share their experiences, we’ll be hosting 30 minute Google+ Hangouts with each of of them this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Our goal with these Hangouts is to highlight the winning teams, their lessons learned and next steps. This is also a chance for our community to learn, share feedback and figure out ways to get involved with the projects.

To participate, all you have to do is RSVP by clicking “yes” in the Hangouts. For those of you who are super pumped about learning more but can’t view the Hangouts live, don’t worry, we’ll be posting them on Youtube, too, and you’ll be able to share comments there.

Descriptions of the wining teams are listed below along with links to their respective Hangouts. We hope you’ll join us for a Hangout or two and get to know our winners.

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Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Rumble: An online interface for university students to provide direct feedback on their dining hall offerings. Students can create profiles and rate their meals, while university dining facilities are able to improve their service through the accumulation of actionable consumer analytics. Hangout Slot: Wednesday, July 16 at 3:00 PM. RSVP to watch here.

Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Hive: An all-encompassing online personal trainer and nutritionist with a nutritional dashboard, digital weigh-ins, before and after selfies, and the option for employer reward systems to incentivize your success. Hangout Slot: Wednesday, July 16 at 6:30 PM. RSVP to watch here.

Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Kitchen Check: A software program that they describe as the TurboTax(c) of food safety regulations. Using an interactive form generated at the county or city regulatory level, Kitchen Check generates a list of requirements for restaurants, food trucks, and other dining facilities to be in compliance with local, state, and federal laws. Hangout Slot: Thursday, July 17 at 6:30 PM. RSVP to watch here.

Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Just Right: An app and rewards program that empowers the consumer to “right size” their burrito, salad, or rice bowl order and rewards them for making sustainable and healthy choices with points that can be redeemed for free Chipotle food. Hangout Slot: Friday, July 18 at 1:00 PM. RSVP to watch here.

The post Come Hangout (Google+ that is) with our Hack//Dining Winners appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Santiago Merea of The Orange Chef Co. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

How might we use technology and design to hack a better future for dining?

The first thing I am tempted to do with a question that is so open-ended is put it into a more defined context. If we can figure out how to make cooking at home as easy as ordering takeout, we would be attacking a very important pain point, that, if solved, could offer great advantages when it comes to dining.

So let’s start by defining the process one goes through in order to successfully prepare a meal at home. Then we’ll look at where the points of friction come into play:

1. Decide what to have for dinner.

2. Make sure that you have all the ingredients at home.

3. If you are missing ingredients, go shopping.

4. Now that you have all the ingredients, prep them.

5. Start cooking.

6. Enjoy.

7. Clean.

Typically, between actions 1 and 3 someone looks at the other person (or the mirror) and says, “what if we order takeout instead?” The friction of having to pick what to cook and getting set up with the right ingredients is just too much. This is why people end up with greasy takeout pad thai instead.

It is very rare that someone will get to action 4 and decide that instead he or she will order takeout. At that point, the benefits of finishing the home-cooked meal outweigh the drawbacks, as most of the friction is alleviated. For this reason, recipe selection and ingredient sourcing are where technology and design can be used to most effectively hack dining.

Companies like Yummly and Allthecooks have done a terrific job at recipe curation and search, and others like Blue Apron and Plated help with ingredient sourcing by making it super easy to get to point 4 on the list above.

However, according to a recent poll, four in five people like to cook with what they are familiar with and not necessarily with recipes. There is also the problem of personalization. With Blue Apron and Plated your personalization options are limited.

At The Orange Chef Co., we decided to help people make healthy and completely customizable home-cooked meals with our smart scale, Prep Pad. We are still experimenting and exploring solutions, but we have a clear roadmap that will eventually have products and services that will make actions 1 to 3 in our list easy and automated. We should put our energy into developing new technologies and using design thinking to hack this part of dining.

Hacking Dining is an online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2 – July 30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #hackdining, Facebook, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

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Santiago Merea is the CEO and Founder of  The Orange Chef Co. Originally from Argentina, Santiago worked in many different types of organizations: for-profit companies, non-profit organizations, senatorial political campaigns, and the US State Department. Santiago is very passionate about product and customer development and he believes that design thinking is changing the way we create products and services. Santiago’s studies centered around behavioral economics and public opinion research. Santiago is part of Fast Company’s 2013 “Who’s Next” list of entrepreneurs. His favorite thing to make: Asado Criollo

The post The Orange Chef Co. on Using Tech to Streamline Home Cooking appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest article by Taryn Fixel and Eris Stassi, Co-Founders, Ingredient1. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

We’ve all done this: Pick up a package in a grocery store, farmers market or pass by a restaurant menu. Pause.  Read the label.  Mentally calculate interest based on flavors, ingredients, nutrition and countless other claims like local, organic, and non-GMO.  Then either walk away or place the item back on the shelf.

What happened in that 30 seconds of personalized decision-making that isn’t being captured for your future benefit?

People are picky. We have emotional and physical responses to food that are influenced by our genes, taste memory, environment and bio-individual dietary preferences.

If a food triggers an allergy, doesn’t taste good to us or lacks preferred nutritional content – there’s a low barrier to just walk away and look for another product.  Though we are fortunate to have an abundance of food choices, understanding what motivates selection can be a problem for food creators trying to cater to the market.

When we place an item back on a shelf or cycle through four different places before sitting down for lunch – we’re making important decisions that food creators can use to improve their offerings.  Let’s put that information to work!

Determining what consumers want based on point of sale information and social media leaves food creators in a reactionary position. Millions of dollars are wasted each year on developing products that do not satisfy market needs. Smaller manufacturers and restaurants, who have limited ability to test products, are put in the position of creating new products in a vacuum.  With few inexpensive ways to test what the market wants, the chance for failure is significant.

Food creators are learning a lot from the Lean Startup school of thought.  In both software and food, the ability to test market fit and quickly iterate before investing significant time and capital, determines the success of a product. The food industry has found creative shortcuts to A/B test their offerings, such as using food trucks to test variables in different geographic locations or Kickstarter to prove product demand.

The next phase in applying startup methodology can be unlocked by using technology and design to accelerate the consumer/creator feedback loop:

• Give food creators access to predictive analytics on geographic, ingredient, diet and allergen trends.
• Accurately measure and test variables in contained regions and environments.
• Most importantly, make food information and research transparent and easily accessible to consumers.

By consolidating food information and capturing every variable that a person would potentially use to make a decision, we can enrich our understanding of consumer intent.   This will require full transparency around foods on the market, where they can be purchased, allergen warnings, ingredient sourcing, sustainability claims and nutritional value.

We are already making decisions about our foods every day, but with smart apps and smart labeling, we can start to gather ambient data. In doing so, we will make more of what people want, spend less doing it, decrease food waste and expand the options for healthy and delicious eating.

Hacking Dining is an online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2 – July 30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #hackdining, Facebook, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

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Taryn Fixel – Taryn is an award winning documentary and investigative journalist who spent eight years creating original programming for CNN and CBS News with Christiane Amanpour, Anderson Cooper, and John King, among others. Her personal mission became the birth of Ingredient 1.

Eris Stassi – Eris is an industry-leading user experience designer who spent five years creating delightful designs for Apple, Inc in the Bay Area. Designed and led big data transparency as VP of UX for Morgan Stanley after moving to NYC. Believes food is the cornerstone of a healthy community.

Ingredient1 enables shoppers to discover food for their personal tastes & needs.  You can find food based on specific preferences, including diet, ingredients, flavors, certifications, and sustainability claims and then learn where to buy them.  Learn more and sign up for the beta at www.ingredient1.com.

The post How Food Data is Personalizing the Feedback Loop appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Alex Yancher of Pantry. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

A market with a ‘lemon’ problem occurs when there is uncertainty about a product’s quality before the purchase decision is made. For example, a used car is found to be defective only after it has been bought. The lemon problem is a big reason why “Mom and Pop” restaurants have an almost 2 times lower survival rates than chain restaurants. Diners don’t want to take a chance on a lemon so they throw their business to a mediocre, but a “sure thing” chain. Then came Yelp. Yelp has leveled the playing field for chain vs. non-chain eateries. Before Yelp, chains proliferated because of their inherent market advantage: consistency. However, consistency is less important when you can check the ratings of a place before going to it. Yelp bubbles up excellence, while making it difficult for bad eateries to survive for long.

Almost like osmosis, technology has an amazing ability to weave its way into a problematic gap in a market and rectify the situation, whether it’s asymmetric information, like in the lemon example, or just a product short-coming. Therefore, embedded in the question ‘how can technology hack dining?’, there is an overarching question: ‘What is fundamentally broken?’ The answer changes depending on the market. Dining out has a lemon problem, but the issue with delivery, frozen, catering, vending, etc. is that they all have their own unique sets of big problems to work through.

The mushrooming of meal delivery companies like Munchery is a great example of technology entrepreneurs tackling a major problem in the delivery space. Delivered food, aside from pizza, is never great. Napkins and forks are missing, sauces spill and sides mix with the main course. The packaging is unattractive, gets damp and is certainly not conducive to heating up or eating from. This is the reality, because for most restaurants, delivery is an afterthought. Munchery has no physical locations – their whole business is delivery. So they are able to focus on what makes a delivered meal great, from the packaging to the selection to the delivery process itself, i.e. ordering and timing of deliveries.

Another example is in the frozen food space. In terms of taste, one of the biggest problems with frozen meals is that everything gets cooked at the same power level in a microwave. You may prefer your chicken breast hot, but you don’t want the sides steaming. An exciting startup called Goji is building a microwave replacement that will use highly focused RF-waves to precisely cook each individual element on a plate. This transformational cooking technology has the promise of revolutionizing frozen meals. Technological innovations like Goji have the ability to completely redefine product categories. In this example, food producers who normally would not want their brand associated with frozen foods may think differently if the end meal can actually be delicious.

In the startup community, all these examples would be referred to as ‘disruptive’. Paul Graham from Y-Combinator has an interesting heuristic for spotting a disruptive technological idea: Will someone buy this product even if it’s a half-baked version, built by an unknown startup. I’d buy a really, really crappy version of a Goji; it’s called a microwave. So what are these technical and process innovations that will ‘hack’ dining? We have successfully made food accessible and affordable – look for future innovations like Yelp, Munchery and Goji to make it more delectable.

Hacking Dining is online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2-30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter 

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Alex began his career as an Investment Banker with Morgan Stanley. In this role, he was responsible for providing financial and advisory services to a range of clients including California Pizza Kitchen and Peet’s Coffee & Tea. After Morgan Stanley, Alex was Program Manager on the Business Operations team at Facebook, where he managed strategic and operational projects around monetization. In 2012, Alex co-founded Pantry, a self-serve kiosk that enables food producers to sell their food anytime, anywhere.

Alex graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Economics and a BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. He enjoys traveling, comedy clubs and burritos.

The post Yelp, Munchery & Goji Pave the Way for Food Innovation appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Here is a roundup of the fantastic articles that have been written about Hack//Dining. If you care about changing our food system, we hope you will consider checking out and sharing these pieces.

New Yorkers Hack The Restaurant Experience – FastCompany

Tina Amirtha explores how Hack//Dining is paving the way for restaurants to make technology a bigger part of their operations, including interviews with Danielle Gould and API partners Ordr.in, Ingredient1 and The Orange Chef Co.

An App for That: Technology as a Solution to Our Broken Food System? – Civil Eats

Adam Calo dives into our Hacking Dining editorial series. He highlights Joanne Wilson, Krysia Zajonc and Matt Rothe‘s contributions, among others, and stresses the need to build transformative tech tools that address systemic food system problems.

Food + Tech Connect’s Hack Dining Comes to NYC This Weekend – Edible Manhattan

Edible Manhattan interviews Danielle Gould, Google, Applegate, Chipotle, Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group and Studio Industries about their goals for Hack//Dining, how they think it will help catalyze sustainable food innovation and their visions for the future of food.

Burrito Chain Enlists Hackers To Hack A More Environmentally Friendly Burrito – Food Republic

Food Republic takes a look at Chipotle’s Hack//Dining sustainable design and operations challenge and what it means for the QSR chain’s larger environmental goals.

Hack//Dining on the Radio Waves – Heritage Radio

Heritage Radio interviews our collaborating partners (Applegate, Google, Chipotle and Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group) about their hackathon challenges and why they believe the event is a good forum for food innovation.

The Future of Food: Qualifying Dining – Epoch Times

Catherine Yang chats with hackers about their hackathon projects and explores the role Hack//Dining is playing in cultivating a healthier, profitable and sustainable food future.

Hacking Chipotle: Developers team up to build a better burrito through technology – PandoDaily

David Holmes examines why Chipotle partnered with Food+Tech Connect to design a better burrito-eating experience, showcasing the winning hack, Just Right, an app that allows customers to personalized their burrito portions.

Connecting Food, Tech, And Hackers in NYC  – Forbes

TJ McCue unpacks our “Design Hacking” model and looks at the impact Google’s corporate wellness challenge and B&B’s food safety challenge could have on the dining and foodservice industries.

Start it Up: A Report from Food+Tech Connect’s Hack//Dining Hackathon – Civil Eats

Cathy Erway gets to the heart of the event, highlighting the collaborative, curious and diverse spirit of the hackathon, the organizations who made it possible and the eager hackers who worked tirelessly to tackle major food problems.

Google and Chipotle welcome food hacker ideas – Upstart Business Journal

Upstart compiles a photo montage of the weekend’s festivities, taking a look at the four winning teams.

Hackers Serve Up App Ideas for Chipotle, Google, and Mario Batali – BloombergBusinessweek

Venessa Wong examines the hackathon challenges, the winning hacks and the impact they could have on the dining industry.

Hackers hack monster burritos down to sensible size – Grist

Nathanael Johnson dives into how Hack//Dining winning team Just Right offers a solution for “burrito creep” by stressing portion control and minimizing consumption of carbon-intensive ingredients (like meat).

This Independence Day, Start Your Food Revolution – National Geographic

Mary Beth Albright shares her thoughts on why bolstering the connection between food and tech advocates through events like Hack//Dining will encourage development of new ways to feed 9 billion well and sustainably.

Technology is driving the food and beverage industry forward – Multibriefs

Archita Datta Majumdar takes a look at why and how technology will be a driving factor in the F&B industry in the future, highlighting how Hack//Dining aims to bring more efficiency and sustainability to the industry.

Chipotle Could Cut Costs by Rewarding Its Customers With Burritos – Motely Fool

Eric Novinson highlights Chipotle’s winning hack, Just Right, and explores the impact such a technology could have on Chipotle’s bottom line, if implemented.

Hacking a Future for Dining – Chipotle Blog

Monica Chen gives a behind the scenes look at Chipotle’s Hack//Dining experience, diving into process, winning hacks and much more.

The post Civil Eats, PandoDaily, Businessweek + More Spread the Hack//Dining Gospel appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Erika Block of Local Orbit and Nina Misuraca Ignaczak, writer and editor. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Human brains are wired for story; this is what makes us human and enables us to learn, communicate, remember and act.  In “Wired for Story,” Lisa Cron writes “Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.”

As hunter-gatherers, we learned the value of various food items by constructing and communicating the narrative of our diets: the setting of our landscape, the characteristics of the plants and animals that inhabited it, the timing of their ripening, the details of their harvest and preparation. As agriculturalists, we became authors, writing the stories of the land we cultivated.

Throughout history, each chapter in our food chain story has informed the hunter, the farmer, the processor, the wholesaler, the chef, the food maker, the retailer and, ultimately, the consumer, helping them know what happened before, what they need to do next and when they need to do it.

In our deeply centralized, industrialized food system, the food chain story has become long, complicated and opaque. This is both by design and by accident. It’s a result of both the sheer scale of the system and the kinds of efficiencies that allow it to exist—the details of which factory farmers, large processors and distributors would often rather keep under wraps.

Technology enables our industrial food system. It started with plows and tractors and processing technology, and expanded with the technology required to build highways and bridges and refrigeration. It continues today with GMO’s, RFID’s, precision agriculture and robotic planting. Walmart, which has the world’s largest food supply chain, also has the largest, and perhaps most sophisticated, information technology infrastructure of any company in the world.

We are familiar with the problems created by this system. We see the obesity epidemic around us, hear news reports almost weekly of contamination, foodborne illness and recalls and experience the impact of centralization on family farms and local economies.

We also see nascent efforts to relocalize the food system and fix these problems.

Over the past dozen years, local food sales have grown an average of 18% annually, while conventional food sales have essentially flatlined. New production and distribution businesses, new farms and local supply chains are emerging at a rapid pace. Almost daily, we learn about a new food hub focusing on local products, a new group of farmers joining forces to market their crops, a kitchen incubator that helps foodmakers launch new products or a hospital or university initiative to increase local sourcing to 20% in the next ten years.

Clearly there is a desire and a market for healthier food created by producers in our community whom we know and trust, but the reality is that local food sales currently represent about .0005% of total U.S. food sales. To get beyond this infinitesimal number and truly capture a share of the market that reflects the demand, the people who are rebuilding local food systems need tools that enable them to compete with the industrial food system.

Relocalizing the food supply chain will require more than the vision and passion of individual pioneers or the good intentions of large institutions. Like the industrial food system, robust local food systems will require sophisticated technology infrastructure—but infrastructure that values regional diversity and transparency over consolidation.

Aggregating the New Food Supply Chain Narratives

Local food entrepreneurs are creating an ever-increasing number of shorter, more transparent food chain stories. And because there are fewer players, there are fewer stories to track, which enables greater transparency. But these stories are also as fragmented as they are diverse. How does a large university or a school district deal with hundreds of local producers and suppliers?

The industrial food system solved the fragmentation issue by creating efficiencies through consolidation and standardization.

But it is also built on technological capacity to share information—stories—in real time. Re-localizing the food system requires the same kinds of tools, built not with the opacity of the industrial food system or the current silos that define the disconnected local and regional distribution system we have today, but instead with transparency and openness. We need a new technology infrastructure that connects local markets and builds a collaborative network of trading partners who share these values.

This is the challenge Local Orbit is addressing.

Instead of aggregating commodities, Local Orbit’s technology connects diverse local growers, foodmakers, aggregators, food service purchasers, transportation providers and consumers who comprise a local food system. We help people tell the right story, to the right person, at the right time, so they can make sure the right things happen, safely and openly, as food moves from field to plate. It’s a path for independence and diversity to thrive through connectivity and networks.

We enable the food service managers of large hospital systems to purchase the necessary volume without compromising on quality, while meeting their local procurement targets. We help restaurant chefs be competitive in their communities, making it as easy for them to purchase from local producers easily as it is to purchase from a large distributor—and easier to tell their customers the story of the food they serve. We help small farms collaborate with their neighbors to bring crops to market efficiently. In doing so we help them reduce costs, reduce waste and errors, save time and expand markets.

As this network grows, it will dull the competitive edge of the industrialized food system. Local will become the default, the easy and obvious choice—by tapping into that which makes us most human: our innate capacity for utilizing the power of story.

Hacking Dining is an online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2 – July 30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #hackdining, Facebook, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

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Erika Block is the founder and CEO of Local Orbit, which provides sales and business management tools and services for the people who are building the new food economy.   Local Orbit enable farmers, food makers and aggregators to efficiently sell to restaurants, grocers, and institutions – while maintaining complete supply chain transparency.   Online marketplaces powered by Local Orbit are active in 16 states and Canada.

As demand for locally sourced products grows, Local Orbit has just launched a vendor management service to help institutional purchasers streamline and simplify procurement from multiple vendors, while maintaining a transparent supply chain – and the ability to tell customers the stories of individual producers and products. Follow her at @ErikaBlock.

Nina Misuraca Ignaczak is a metropolitan Detroit-based freelance writer and editor who writes for local and national print and online publications on topics related to community development, including edibleWow, Crain’s Detroit Business, Mode Shift, Shareable.net, Seedstock.com, Model D, Metromode, Concentrate and Orion Magazine. Follow her at @ninaignaczak.

The post Relocalizing Food Supply Chains Through Tech & the Power of Story appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

 

Guest post by Peretz Partensky, co-founder of Sourcery. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

In the future of dining, consumers, restaurants, distributors and producers will all collaborate in food sourcing. Open communication and supply chain transparency will be the norm.

Sound utopian? It’s actually just downright practical! We’re already working towards an economy where supply, demand and consumer feedback flow in all directions.

The biggest challenge we face at the moment is the significant resistance to technology within the food supplier ecosystem. Part of this resistance is due to our current position on the adoption curve. Our challenges aren’t technological, they’re deeply human. Both buyers and sellers are hesitant to transition to an “impersonal” technology and away from a system that has historically thrived on long-term relationships, special deals and information asymmetries.

In the same way that travel agencies were decimated by websites like Kayak, sales representatives working for distributors and brokers representing food brands are understandably afraid of being displaced. As in any sector, there are unfavorable distributors. In general, though, the distributors’ concerns over displacement are short sighted. Unlike airline ticket transactions, the food industry is inherently personal; you couldn’t take away the healthy connections between producers, distributors and chefs if you tried. The human connection isn’t what needs to change.

To succeed in an environment of transparency, suppliers have to evolve their business models.  The comparative advantage in this environment is not what you know, but how you use that knowledge to provide value for your partners and consumers. 

Image via Sourcery

Make it easy to do the right thing!

Consumers are increasingly hungry for knowledge, and restaurants want to address customer questions honestly and openly. But even with the modern glut of nutrition, certifier and advocacy applications, the information on food – its content, its sources – is either lacking, or distributed among many silos. For restaurant staff, tracking down the myriad suppliers, ingredients, and submitting orders by the cutoff time after a long shift is already a chore. While some valiant kitchens dedicate special care to sourcing, most simply can’t afford the overhead.

Why is sourcing so opaque? Why can’t it just be easy to do the right thing?

Distributors are frequently portrayed as the middlemen at fault. But distributors play an indispensable logistical role, much like UPS or FedEx. They stay up all night so we don’t have to, handling orders into the early hours of the morning, receiving deliveries from farms and sending their own trucks out before dawn. They react to the unexpected curve balls, such as the product shortages due to hail on the farm, a storm at sea or the last minute requests from restaurants.

A technology solution must support distributors in their core competency – distributing information and products, and providing customer service – while helping them adapt to the information age. It must help each entity across the entire supply chain make informed decisions, without taking away the human connections that provide intangible value.

In the future of dining, restaurants will turn to open sourcing, revealing their cook’s books, so to speak! A restaurant’s sourcing will become an indispensable part of their marketing. Producer names on the menu will become the norm rather than the exception. As Danielle Gould wrote almost 3 years ago: “hacking the food system requires creating incentives to move from closed, proprietary approaches to open ones.” In this ecosystem, distributors will be incentivized to share as much information as they can, or risk losing business.

An open record of orders and sources across an entire food service marketplace will create lots of additional benefits. By providing consumers with more visibility up the supply chain, sourcing can also shift smoothly to reflect consumer values. Farmers will have an understanding of demand for products and make informed decisions on what to sow. They will be able to focus on what they do best: growing great products.

Nutrition information can then be available at every level and adaptable for health tracking applications, no matter where you eat. In the future of dining, you’ll be able to reconstruct exactly what carrots you’re made of.

Hacking Dining is online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2-30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter 

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Peretz is the Co-Founder of Sourcery. Sourcery’s mission is to create economically and environmentally sustainable food ecosystems by developing products and services that improve communications and commerce between buyers and suppliers.  Prior to founding Sourcery, Peretz coached a basketball team in Afghanistan, got a master’s degree in Literature from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco.

The post Why We Need Open & Collaborative Food Sourcing appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Week 4 and 5 of our future of dining editorial series covered exciting food tech ground. Mitchell Davis of the James Beard Foundation makes a case for a sustainability-driven Yelp, Amanda Hesser, Merrill Stubbs and the Food52 team call for a Github for home cooking, Haven Bourque chats with Siren Fish Co. founder Anna Larsen about how tech can bolster sustainable fishing and much more.

Check out our 10 future of dining posts from the last two weeks below, complete with nifty quote images for your viewing (and social sharing) pleasure, and have a look at all of the submissions we’ve posted so far here.

Due to an outpouring of incredible contributions, we’ve decided to extend the series through the end of July. So if you have thoughts (infographics, illustrations etc.) on the matter, feel free to send them our way. Either forward a link to nina [at ] foodtechconnect [dot] com or share via Twitter (#hackdining),  Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

Mitchell Davis Calls for a Sustainability-driven Yelp

Mitchell Davis, Executive Vice President of the James Beard Foundation, explores how a socially-conscious reviewing app could help producers and consumers bolster a more responsible food culture.

Github for Home Cooking: Food52′s Vision For Hacking Dining

Food52’s Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs envision a future for home cooking where Instagram photos link to recipes and you track recipe changes like Github.

4 Ways Technology Improves The Dining Out Experience

Kristen Hawley of Chefs+Tech believes that standout consumer-facing restaurant technologies should combine these elements into well-designed, unique and useful packages.

Why Casual-dining Restaurants Should Embrace Mobile Tech

NoWait CEO Ware Sykes explores how restaurants can increase efficiency and guest satisfaction while lowering costs by embracing mobile technologies.

Unlocking Data to Create a Better Customer Dining Experience

David Bloom of Ordr.in shares is thoughts on leveraging tech to help restaurants better interact with diners, weather through email newsletters, social media or order history.

Bringing Back the Family Dinner with Online Local Grocery

Zach Buckner of Relay Foods examines how local grocery delivery gives home cooks more time and facilitates knowledge-sharing between producers and consumers, building a healthier future for dining.

Haven Bourque Chats Tech & Sustainable Seafood with Siren Fish Co.

Anna Larsen of Siren Fish Co. discusses how tech helps her run her community supported fishery, explores the sustainable seafood hack of her dreams and shares her fish heros.

Yummly on Hacking Taste with Food Data

Founder David Feller envisions a “food interface layer” that knows your taste preferences and integrates with all of the services you use to make food decisions.

Why We Need a Food Tech Revolution

Mary Beth Albright explores why bolstering the connection between good food advocates and technology advocates is vitally important to the future of dining.

Bolstering Food System Game-changers Through Storytelling

Dan Susman believes showcasing positive stories of people transforming the food system is paramount to the future of dining, and his new documentary, Growing Cities, sets out to do just that.

The post Future of Dining Editorial Series Week 4 + 5 Recap appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Photo Credit: Ariel Fried

Guest post by Dan Susman, director, Growing Cities. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

We’ve all heard about the problems in the food system, from GMOs and CAFOs to aging farmers and mad cows. But, what all these acronyms and statistics don’t add up to is change.  So, about four years ago, my friend Andrew Monbouquette and I decided it was time to showcase positive stories of people transforming the food system from the ground up. And this is what our inspiring new documentary film, Growing Cities, is all about.

The film follows us as we travel the US, visiting the people who are challenging the way this country grows its food, one vacant city lot and backyard chicken coop at a time. From New York to New Orleans we’ve found urban agriculture has remarkable power on many levels—it connects people to their food, strengthens communities, revitalizes blighted areas and much more.

With 80% of our population now considered urban, we have a unique challenge of educating people about farming, when we’ve moved further away from it than ever.  In fact, I believe one of the biggest obstacles we face in bringing good food to the table of public consciousness are the stories we tell.

Sure, there have been some great examples of good food storytelling, like Anna Lappé’s Real Food Media Project, the beautiful work of the Douglas Gayeton at the Lexicon of Sustainability, and the weekly shorts by Daniel and Mirra at the Perennial Plate. But in the mainstream, the heroes of the good food movement still take a backseat to stories of meat recalls and e-coli outbreaks.

We know there are good food heroes in every community, but we need more effective platforms to tell their stories – whether it’s an app that gives the user a new bite of inspiration each day or a channel that is dedicated solely to good food stories, we can do better.

One solution we’ve created to bring online engagement to on the ground action is a national urban farm map, which helps city-dwellers find food where they live and sort the farms by how they want to get involved.

But what if there was a more detailed map for every city, even every neighborhood and block? Then gardeners could share experiences with one another about growing, chefs could find hyperlocal produce, and residents would know where to go to learn in their communities. The pieces are there, we just need to put them together.

As a filmmaker, I know that inspiring stories lead to action, and this action is what is changing the food system. My challenge to hack dining is to find better ways to communicate crucial stories in the food movement. Chefs have the Food Network, plus innumerable blogs, apps, and platforms to share their work. What about the farmers who are bringing it to the table?

You can help Growing Cities spread its inspiring farmers’ stories to millions on PBS! Learn more and donate on their Kickstarter page.

Hacking Dining is online conversation exploring how we might use technology and design to hack a better future for dining. Join the conversation between June 2-30, and share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #hackdining, Facebook, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

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Dan Susman (Director, Growing Cities): Dan has lived, breathed, and eaten urban agriculture over the past three years making Growing Cities. He has visited countless urban farms and food projects across the country and worked with many leaders in the sustainable agriculture movement. He is also the co-founder of Truck Farm Omaha, an edible education project which teaches local youth about sustainable farming and healthy foods.

The post Bolstering Food System Game-changers Through Storytelling appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Photo Credit: James Collier Photography

Hack//Dining NYC was a weekend of open food innovation, technology hacking and farm-to-fork eating. From June 27-29, nearly 200 hackers came together to see how we might use technology to re-engineer the future of dining. Twenty four teams created hardware and software solutions to industry-wide challenges, and four teams went home as winners. But we all went home excited about a very bright future of food.

Check out the Hack//Dining winners here or take a gander at their pitch videos below. From TurboTax for food safety to Yelp for dining halls, these winners are hacking a smarter, tastier and more sustainable future for dining at restaurants, college cafeterias, work and home.

RUMBLE – Hack//Dining NYC Applegate Challenge Winner from Food Tech Connect on Vimeo.

Rumble developed an online interface for university students to provide direct feedback on their dining hall offerings. Students can create profiles and rate their meals, while university dining facilities are able to improve their service through the accumulation of actionable consumer analytics.

JUST RIGHT – Hack//Dining NYC Chipotle Challenge Winner from Food Tech Connect on Vimeo.

Just Right created an app and rewards program that empowers the consumer to “right size” their burrito, salad, or rice bowl order and rewards them for making sustainable and healthy choices with points that can be redeemed for free Chipotle food.

KITCHEN CHECK – Hack//Dining NYC B&BHG Challenge Winner from Food Tech Connect on Vimeo.

Kitchen Check created a software program that they describe as the TurboTax(c) of food safety regulations. Using an interactive form generated at the county or city regulatory level, Kitchen Check generates a list of requirements for restaurants, food trucks, and other dining facilities to be in compliance with local, state, and federal laws.

HIVE – Hack//Dining NYC Google Challenge Winner from Food Tech Connect on Vimeo.

Hive utilizes the world of smart and wearable technology to create an all-encompassing online personal trainer and nutritionist with a nutritional dashboard, digital weigh-ins, before and after selfies, and the option for employer reward systems to incentivize your success.

Check out “Hacking Dining,” our future of food series dedicated to exploring the innovative restaurant, cooking and foodservice technologies and ideas that will transform the industry. 

The post TurboTax for Food Safety, Yelp for Dining Halls & More: Hack//Dining Winner Videos appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.