In tandem with the launch of the Food+Tech Job Board, we are thrilled to launch the Food Startup Growth Series. This series will give you an inside look at the strategies, challenges and best practices of fast-growing food startups and organizations.

Many foodservice operators are benefiting from the halo effect of sustainability, but it’s hard to tell how truthful their sustainability claims really are. Similar to what LEED certification did for the building industry, United States Healthful Food Council (USHFC) is bringing transparency and guidance to the food industry by creating market-based incentives, programs and tools to increase the profitability of healthy, sustainable food.

The non-profit offers three programs: recipe analysis and menu labeling, nutrition consulting services and a certification program. Through its Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership Certification Program (REAL), it partners with third party registered dietitians to certify that operators’ menus, operations and supply chains are healthful and sustainable. For operators, REAL Certification offers a great marketing tool, as well as access to products from a network of certified ingredients suppliers at a discount. To date, there are 500 foodservice operations have received REAL Certification, including Restaurant Nora, Chipotle’s Shophouse, Bare Burger, Google, Stanford University and Boulder Valley School District.

USHFC is the brainchild of Lawrence Williams, an entrepreneur with a long history of tackling big challenges. Prior to USHFC, he worked with Elon Must to develop a collaboration between SpaceX and NASA to develop a domestic commercial crew and cargo for space travel. He also worked with Craig McCaw and Bill Gates’ Teledesic to negotiate with the FCC to make broadband access ubiquitous through the use of low-Earth orbiting satellites.

Lawrence’s experience in the tech world has always informed how he operates USHFC. Creating a new market and a new certification is no easy feat, but will perseverance USHFC has gotten some of the most reputable brands on board. Now, like any good entrepreneur, Lawrence realizes that its going to take a different skill set to scale the organization, so he is bringing on a new CEO.

I spoke with Lawrence about the biggest challenges he’s faced in scaling, how he’s treated his non-profit more like a startup and how new leadership will impact the direction of EatReal.

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Danielle Gould: What’s keeping your team busy right now?

Lawrence Williams: We are currently in the process of finalizing and rolling out our updated certification standards, which we’re calling REAL 3.0. For the first time, this new certification will include numerous levels of certification (REAL, Silver, Gold and Platinum), which will allow for a deeper dive on some of the more complicated issues. We are also hosting the Eat REAL Roundtable and Eat REAL Kitchen Sausalito next week, where we will gather industry and NGO leaders for a two-day working group to weigh in and finalize the standards. 

DG: What are your growth goals for the next 12-24 months, and how do you plan to achieve those goals?

LW: This is an exciting time for EatREAL! We just completed a merger with another nonprofit (The Institute for Responsible Nutrition), and are working through incorporating their board and leadership team into our organization, as well as the creation of a scientific advisory board to inform our standards. We are also in the final stages of hiring on a new CEO, who will be able to step in and scale our certification program to meet our growing demands. In the next year or two, we are going to work on expanding our consumer-facing brand and expand our footprint with the REAL 3.0.

DG: What does your team look like?

LW: We are a small and self-motivated team distributed between Washington, DC, Nashville, Chicago and San Francisco, supported by a nationwide network of registered dietitians. With fewer than ten people running a nationwide certification program, everyone here wears many hats.

DG: What does your company culture look like? How have you built your company culture?

LW: We have tried hard to act and operate more like a scrappy startup than a typical not-for-profit organization. Even though we are a non-profit, we try to function as a mission-driven business, not a charity.

DG: How are you preserving your company culture as you scale up?

LW: We spend a lot of time making sure we bring in the right cultural fit and we have weekly all-team meetings.

DG: What do you know now that you wish you would have known when you started scaling your company? What are the biggest challenges and lessons learned as you’ve grown your company?

LW: Externally, the biggest challenge in scaling has been working with the foodservice industry, which can be challenging because generally speaking the hours are very long and margins quite small.

DG: What will someone who works for you be able to add to their resume?

LW: Working with EatREAL to help transform our food system provides an opportunity to make a make a huge difference on what is probably the issue of our time. Food is integrally linked to the health of all people and the planet.  

DG: What job(s) are you hiring for, and how will those positions help drive growth in your company?

LW: We are currently hiring a new CEO, which, as you might imagine, is quite pivotal for the development of the organization.  This new leadership will determine the direction of EatREAL in the coming years – for a non-profit at this stage in its lifecycle, the input of our new CEO has the clout to fundamentally influence our brand recognition within the marketplace and to consumers.

DG: What kind of training do you offer for new employees who may be switching from other industries or who are just out of school?

LW: Working for EatREAL offers an opportunity to dive into the flow of an active and expanding organization while still being supported by your teammates.  Here, a new hire or a new graduate will be able to explore a variety of avenues within the nonprofit world in order to discover which of their areas of interest are the most applicable and enjoyable in practice.   

DG: What’s your favorite interview question?

LW: What motivates you to want to join our team?

DG: Why do you think it’s exciting to be working in food right now?

LW: There is no denying that food is a hot-button issue across the board right now.  It is a dynamic time to be involved in the industry as we are confronted daily with new developments, policies, science, and research.  What’s more is that food culture is inextricably linked to a variety of different issues and industries – whether on the side of social dialogue around such topics as race, socioeconomic status, and disease, or around industries such as distribution, education, and technology. As such a central component to our daily lives, food serves as an intellectual and ideological hub for people from many backgrounds and industries to converge and exchange ideas and information.

Check out exciting food tech, design, management, operations, development and food science positions at Food+Tech Jobs.

The post Eat REAL Creates Market-Based Incentives For Healthy, Sustainable Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The food industry is one of the slowest industries to adapt to and incorporate new technologies. The principle cause of this slow adaptation is the acceptance of an age-old system, parts of which work and, ultimately, get the job done, albeit maybe not in the most healthful, sustainable or safe ways.

For many years the drivers of food production have been based solely on increasing food quantity whilst maintaining low costs. This emphasis on cost has progressively deteriorated the health and safety of our food over time, having a detrimental impact on consumers. Importantly, the blind acceptance of the current food system comes in part from the huge lack of understanding of food in general, both by the industry and the consumer. It is the industry’s role to educate consumers, but their focus is more on marketing their products than educated consumers. Thus, we have minimal knowledge about the food we eat, let alone how these foods interact with our bodies.

The era of the Internet, however, has started to change this. Consumers are now more aware of heath and food safety and, as information is more readily available online, they actively seek out healthier products. This shift in consumer preferences is putting increasing pressure on an outdated food industry to adapt and respond to the growing public awareness and demand for healthier, safer foods.

Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Increase Utilization of Food Co-Products & Reduce Waste

Thankfully, some important technologies have been developed in the last 5 years to disrupt the current system. These technologies include new ways of creating healthy foods, such as locating protein from novel sources (i.e. insects), which can be suitably harvested to feed a growing global population. Other technologies are looking at novel means of making foods safer, for example antimicrobial techniques within meat, which in turn is reducing the downstream disposal of such products.

An advancement that is particularly close to our hearts here at Nuritas is the identification of innovative ways for dealing with food co-products, or by-products from food production, by discovering new uses for them within the human food chain. Whey, for example, is a co-product of yogurt production. Today whey is a multibillion dollar industry, but in 2000 it had zero value. This is incredibly significant as an estimated 25-50 percent of food is discarded at the production level. Indeed, this number doesn’t include the further percentage that is thrown away downstream.

The best way to increase the sustainability, safety and health of food is to use technologies like artificial intelligence to examine food and its co-products at the molecular level. Such an approach has never been undertaken in food before.

So what does this mean exactly?

There are billions of molecules, called peptides, found within food and food co-products, which contain functional health benefits for the food industry and consumers alike. Some of the molecules we have found have antimicrobial capabilities which can thus be used as natural food preservatives to enhance food safety and extend shelf life. Another of our peptide discoveries aids in moving glucose into the muscle. This is important because diabetes is associated with a depletion in sugar movement into skeletal muscle cells.

Using a revolutionary technology that combines artificial intelligence and DNA analysis, we are able to extract these and many other molecules from within food and food co-products. This technology is able to not only add value to a seemingly valueless sidestream, but it is able to unlock unforeseen, health-promoting ingredients in such sidestreams, enhancing the safety and health of food products.

At Nuritas, we have discovered that we can use revolutionary technologies to guarantee safety and sustainability, but also to ensure future food products are life-changing in their capabilities. We believe the way forward is to integrate new technologies to ensure we get the most out of our foods by sustainably using the co-products of food production to unlock their molecular potential. This integration of science and technology will ultimately help the food industry become a healthier, safer and more sustainable industry.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Dr. Nora Khaldi is a global leader in the field of food and nutritional technology. She is a mathematician with a PhD in Molecular Evolution and the founder of Nuritas, the first company in the world to use artificial intelligence and DNA analysis to find new disease-beating molecules in food and food coproducts. Nuritas is not only defining the future of food and health with these disease-beating ingredients but also adding incredible value to currently valueless food sidestreams. The company has been recognised as one the most innovative startups in the world.

The post How Nuritas Uses Artificial Intelligence to Unlock The Full Potential of Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

A lot of people argue that healthy, organic food is expensive and inaccessible to the masses. To challenge this belief and inspire people to rethink their ability to eat better without breaking the bank, Edible Impacts launched a project called #30DAYStoSHINE.

Founders and self proclaimed “edible impactors” Alex Monroe and Brooke Sunness ate all organic, whole food, vegetarian meals on a budget of $5-7 per day for 30 days in New York City. They shopped for ingredients exclusively at Whole Foods and documented their 3 meals a day on their blog including recipes, photographs and daily nutrition and cost breakdowns.

The duo found that it is possible to eat plant-based, organic foods on a small budget, and they published their findings to empower others to eat better too. They drafted a 25 page manual, including recipe ideas, sample shopping lists and tips for eating healthy food on the cheap, as well as a comprehensive budgeting spreadsheet, which helps eaters create cost-plans for ingredients and recipes.

We chatted with Alex and Brooke via email to learn more about their findings from the project, their business model and their current project “exposed,”. Our interview has been edited for brevity.

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Food+Tech Connect: Can you tell me more about the inspiration for Edible Impacts?

Edible Impacts: We both love eating delicious foods including seeds, fruits, leaves, stems and roots, insatiable wild meat from the sea and tree nuts. We spend a lot of time discussing various preparations for these types of foods, shopping for these foods and researching histories of these food. Through our journeys into researching, cooking and consuming whole foods we became inspired by the opportunity to build social communities around food. Our conversations and research then began moving towards advertising, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. Finally, we decided we had some ideas that could create new perceptions about food…and here we are.

FTC: What is your business model?

EI: Through partnerships with small and large businesses and public organizations we are creating non-traditional campaigns and messages, what we call edible impacts, that influence consumers through mainstream marketing channels including online, social, and print media.

FTC: What impact do you hope to have?

EI: We are addressing a need gap that we see in the way in which whole foods are represented (or misrepresented) today. By building greater curiosities around food, challenging the current food system, and rearranging the framework that drives a person’s decisions, we are confident we can reduce the size of that gap.

FTC: What were your key takeaways from the #30DAYStoSHINE campaign?

EI: It’s easiest to write out our findings in list form.

1. How easy it is to cook, shop, prepare and make food once you understand a few insights that the campaign has taught us: Use quality, unprocessed, organic ingredients, pair with a legume or grain and top with quality olive oil and salt/pepper.

2. Organic food is even more affordable than we expected. We have pinpointed which foods drive up the grocery bill (meaning only to be eaten occasionally) and those organic staples that can be turned into many delicious creations.

3. The importance of being curious and willing to take risks in the kitchen – i.e. not following recipes or traditional rules and beliefs like roasting a banana to eat with beans and rice or making pizza out of something that isn’t white or wheat flour.

4. Learning about the short term gains from eating a balanced whole foods diet including increased energy, clarity, satiation, a closer connection to our bodies and a deeper appreciation and gratitude for our food and meals.

FTC: What’s next for Edible Impacts? Can you tell me more about your second project “exposed,”?

EI: We have created a #30DAYStoSHINE Manual, which anyone interested in eating on this budget or taking on the campaign as a challenge can do so. We hope to get more individuals and corporations to take on the effort as a challenge on a larger scale, so our objective is to continue buttressing the American understanding about accessibility, affordability, and tastiness of whole foods.

“exposed,” is the [un]dramatic reintroduction to [good] food.  It is a solution that we believe can create a massive paradigm shift in the way people view [good] food. “exposed,” is a social value collaboration concept–interest groups working collectively to create dynamic social campaigns that represent a shared vision and influence diverse audiences. By collaborating with creative doers, social influencers and industry leaders and aligning them to a cohesive message that challenges our food choices and puts [good] food on the stage, we can make an impact, one that is exponentially influential.

We’ve created three iterations of “exposed,” and are now focused on finding partners who are truly interested in the growth of this message.

• Real People Real Food: challenging identity. what makes you, you.
• Kids Menu: challenging the dismal consistency in children’s food options offered by most restaurants.
• What Lies Ahead: challenging “healthy” food appeal by removing “healthy” from the messaging

The post Edible Impacts Cooks Up Blueprint for Eating Organic on $6 a Day appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

FTC has been producing events left and right this summer. Last Tuesday, 100+ members of the food tech community joined us for our “How Nutrition Tech Personalizes Eating” Food+Tech Meetup. Five innovators who are leveraging technology to make food healthier, more transparent and personalized discussed their missions, business models and technologies, as well as their lessons learned.

Check out our recap of the evening below. We will also be publishing videos of the presentations in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. You can learn more about our Food+Tech Meetup and get notified about future events (don’t miss our Fail Friday Meetup this Thursday, June 25) here.

We’d like to thank our killer food sponsors Ox Verte, Meal Maison, Krunch Kitchen and Brewla and our host R/GA Accelerator. Learn more about R/GA’s new hospitality tech accelerator project Techstars METRO Accelerator here. 

Data-as-a-service startup Edamam sells access to real-time food and nutrition data to food, health and wellness companies including The New York Times, Nestle, Samsung and Epicurious. After launching as a B2C business, Edamam listened to its customers and pivoted to B2B. Founder Victor Penev told the group that his team built its product for consumers because it’s the easiest way to sell a product to other businesses. For other data-driven food startups, Penev says data is an asset and he advises owning it rather than selling it outright. Edamam has raised $1.9M in funding to date.

Ingredient1 helps shoppers discover healthy foods and empowers them to inform the market and make positive food change. Since launching in beta in April 2014, the startup has amassed a database of food product information that’s three times as large as the USDA’s; it contains 30k products and 20k ingredients. For brands and retailers, Ingredient1 offers data and analytics on new and relevant foods, as well as what shoppers care about and what products they are most likely to buy. “Ingredient1 focuses on ingredients now. Later iterations may focus on personalized wellness,” founder Taryn Fixel told the Meetup group.

Power Supply offers tasty and healthy meals made by networks of independent local chefs and delivers them via custom refrigerators at partner activated fitness and wellness communities (i.e CrossFit boxes, yoga studios, etc) in Washington DC and Los Angeles, CA. Its meals cater to people with specialty diets, chronic diseases and those who want to focus on clean eating. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Smith advised the group to have negative operating capital, because it allows your startup to fund itself until it finds product market fit. He also highly recommends focusing on a specific niche like Power Supply does because it limits the competitive field and makes customer acquisition easier. Smith encouraged the group to read Getting to Plan B by Randy Komisar, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Effectuation.org by Saras Sarasvathy and Drive by Dan Pink. Power Supply raised $515K of debt financing in December 2013.

HowGood researches and rates the environmental and social impact of food products and partners with grocery stores to display its ratings in 26 states. Its app helps customers identify products that fit their values and its rating labels enable stores to showcase their commitment to transparency and sustainability. The startup spent 5 years researching and building its database of sustainable food using data from sources including the USDA, Animal Welfare Approved and Seafood Watch, co-founder and CEO Alexander Gillett told the group. Products that have a high HowGood rating have seen in-store sales increase by an average of 31%, according to Gillett. Customers upgraded an average of 3 products to more sustainable alternatives in stores that use HowGood’s ratings, which translates to a $2.31 sales bump per transaction, Gillet noted. HowGood raised $2 million in seed funding in September, 2014.

Meals to Heal offers personalized nutrition solutions for people suffering from chronic medical conditions. Its three tier approach includes personalized healthy food delivery, educational resources and nutrition counseling. Founder Susan Bratton had a lot of advice and lessons learned to share with the group. Regarding product development, she said “listen to what your customers want and build for them.” Bratton recommended following the Lean Startup Method; “Nothing is sacred, fail fast,” she said. When it comes to marketing, Bratton recommended testing in small dollar amounts to see what’s working and what’s not. Meals to Heal participated in Startup Health.

The post Nutrition Tech Innovators Share Business Insights & Lessons Learned appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Image via the National Restaurant Association

Guest post by Lawrence Williams, Chairman of the Board – United States Healthful Food Council This is Part II of a new three-part guest post on the foodservice industry.

“Value meals” are a common marketing tactic to get consumers to buy—and presumably consume—more food and beverages than they might otherwise by providing a perceived “discount” on individual items. This strategy became commonplace in the fast food industry in the 1990’s, and was infamously lampooned in the Morgan Spurlock documentary “Super Size Me.”

A few years ago, I wrote an OpEd about the unique potential of restaurants and the foodservice industry to reshape the American diet. I focused on restaurants and institutional foodservice providers because they play a major role in shaping American dietary habits, often from a very young age.

In today’s society, with most people working increasingly long hours with little time to prepare meals at home, the foodservice industry has an unprecedented amount of influence over the American diet, and little to no transparency. But what if value meals became associated with health and sustainability instead of quantity and palatability?

The backlash of Millennials, Gen Y, and Z

I never thought I would see the day when kids would mock their parents in disgust for eating McDonald’s, but that’s exactly what I observed recently in—of all places—the Houston airport. There are actually many signs that the younger generation is demanding higher-quality food, and fortunately, it is also showing a willingness to pay for it.

According to the chain Dig Inn, it is serving more than 1,000 customers a day in some locations, at an average of $10 per check, and is fast becoming one of the biggest buyers of local produce in New York City—last year, the chain bought 124,000 pounds of kale and 142,000 pounds of Brussels sprouts. According to Dig Inn’s CEO, “we were trolling around and the high-level thesis that we were sort of trying to implement at the time was Americans are going to need to eat higher-quality, better for you food, this is a trend that Whole Foods is pioneering and it’s unfolding in front of our eyes.”

Since its founding, Chipotle has done a superb job of marketing its sustainability, but there’s an entire cadre of new emerging chains such as Dig Inn, Plant Cafe, True Food Kitchen and Sweetgreen that have created lifestyle brands centered around health and wellness. AOL founder Steve Case cited the “shift in America’s taste for fast-casual dining” to quick “healthy dining options” as part of the justification in his firm’s recent $22 million investment in Sweetgreen.

And in the same way that Starbucks made it mainstream to line up to pay five bucks for coffee, people are now lining up to pay ten bucks for an organic salad at places like Sweetgreen, Mixt Greens and Chop’t.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered

Despite the warnings that an “increased focus on healthy lifestyles” has been on the National Restaurant Association’s top food trends list since 2005—and virtually every trend for 2015 is related to health and sustainability—many people in the foodservice industry still see “health” as a dirty word and/or simply a fad that will one day disappear.

Distinguishing a long-trend from a temporary fad can be difficult, but there I tend to agree with a recent observation privately shared with me by a senior advisor to one of the world’s largest foodservice companies: food is to millennials what exercise was to baby boomers. And like exercise, once the mindset changes, it rarely goes back.

The following events, all of which have taken place in the past couple of years, are just a few of many indicators that the shift in American dietary preferences is already having profound impacts on the food and foodservice industries:

• There has been an unprecedented amount of venture capital investment in healthier food related startups.
• One of the best performing IPO’s last year was a healthier restaurant chain called Zoë’s, whose stock price has, since, more than doubled.
• Some of America’s biggest processed food brands (Kraft, Heinz and Burger King) were recently taken over by a Brazilian leverage buyout firm because their stocks were majorly depressed.

Actually, one need not look further than some of Jon Stewart’s frequent satire of the fast food industry to get a sense of the Gen X and Millennial conventional wisdom.

The REAL Answer

If you live in a major city—particularly on the east or west coast—it’s fairly easy to miss the fact that 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese and over 10% of Americans are suffering from diet-related diabetes. Fortunately most trends (not fads) begin on the coasts, typically by consumers with the means to become early-adopters. But that can often take decades, and in this case, cost of millions of lives and billions dollars in associated health care costs. But what if there was a way to accelerate this shift?

In any industry, demand has the power to drive quality in the marketplace, but it often happens slowly, especially in a market as highly fractured as foodservice. (Over 600,000 restaurants in the United States and an equally large institutional foodservice industry.)

REAL Certified, or Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership was developed to aggregate like-minded consumers, who value quality, and use them to incentivize businesses that share these values. While this approach is unlikely to change the world overnight, “nudge” strategies such as this have proven to be highly effective in producing long-term, systemic change.

In the same way that the green building certification program LEED has over time helped to transform the entire construction and real estate development supply chain, we believe that REAL can ultimately make healthful and sustainable food the 21^st century “value meal.”

Part I: Creating a Path of Least Resistance to REAL Food

Part II: The Foodservice Industry is Ripe for Disruption

The post Making Healthful, Sustainable Food the 21st Century Value Meal appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Brian Witlin, COO of Yummly. The views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Tackling food issues in the US is not a small feat by any means. With the wealth of knowledge and technology we have today, I began to think about how can we use new technology or design to guarantee healthy, sufficient and safe food for everyone.

To answer that question, I started by exploring new technology tools, incentives and even reimagining the way we produce and regulate food today that could lead to better food for everyone.

It starts with tools to understand and inspire smart consumption and healthy lifestyle and ends with quantified incentives to make change.

In today’s society, sound food education gets overwhelmed and confused by food marketing, fad diets, and general miss-information.  Further, nutrition is not widely understood by a majority of medical professionals. Doctors generally only take 1-2 classes in medical school in nutrition science, yet we turn to them regularly for advice.  The advice is generally reactive and one size fits all. Further, the market for nutrition supplements is unregulated, and the efficacy of many are questionable.

With the advancement in wearables like Jawbone Up and the Apple watch, and personalized nutrition education and planning apps like ShopWell, Fooducate, MyFitnessPal and Yummly, users can both track their general health and activity, learn about foods that are best for their unique diet, and find recipes and meals tailored to their diet.

If you combine these services (which quantify healthy input and output) with an app like Pact, which provides financial incentives for good food and exercise behavior, you can imagine a broader lifestyle tracking system that facilitates healthy food intake and consistent exercise output.  This broader system can connect with an ecosystem of “incentive providers” which can include medical insurance providers, life insurance providers, gyms, food delivery services, and even the government.

By combining education, personalization, and financial incentives together, we can help individuals live healthier more empowered lifestyles. While this may seem far-fetched, this can become a reality in the near future.  More and more consumers are taking tracking their health into their own hands. Sensors are becoming smaller and more useful, products are maturing, and food information companies are collaborating in new and innovative ways.

Link government subsidies and tax incentives to foods associated with healthy lifestyles.

With an active “incentive provider ecosystem” and millions of active users, a wealth of information becomes unlocked about what foods and activities are most associated with healthy changes and outcomes.

Economists and data scientists can mine the large pool of user data to find key drivers of improved health.  Food subsidies, currently going to corn, soy and other less nutrient rich foods, can be more evenly distributed to healthier foods, like fruits and vegetables, to further incentivize producers to grow nutrient rich foods most correlated with quantified healthy consumption and successful health outcomes.

Further, the data for individuals can be used to create “healthy” tax deductions, further reinforcing good behavior.

Food safety is a multi-faceted problem with a multi-faceted solution.

Food safety issues typically arise from the following factors:

1.     Method of production and storage
2.     Temperature and time since production
3.     Unregulated foods and supplements

Method of Production

The first, method of production and storage of food is a challenge.  Food is manufactured behind closed doors.  Imagine, however, we used tools like UStream to broadcast live feeds within food production facilities. To take it a step further we could combine these live feeds with easily read (think geckoboard) dashboards, to allow anyone to view what was happening behind closed doors, and to see the relevant metrics and data about what was being put into their food.  This hyper transparency would both serve to let consumers fully understand how their food is made and it would provide an extra incentive for food manufacturers to produce things that met the standards of the law and consumers.

Temperature & Time

Temperature and time are significant factors for the shelf life of food.  With the advancement in sensor technology, we are reaching a point where fully integrated circuits with temperature sensors and transmitters can be fit into a package sticker.  This will effectively allow us to pinpoint the shelf life of foods.

These portable sticker sensors are already reaching close to viable price points.It is imaginable, within the next years, that these sensors will be cost-effective, communicate wirelessly with other systems, and greatly improve supply chain optimization efforts.  Sell-by and enjoy-by dates will become dynamic, creating less guesswork for the end consumer.

Unregulated Foods and Supplements

With the lifestyle tracking system described before in combination with quantified-self style wearables, users can participate in live trials for supplements on the market. Researchers can mine data to see if there is any connection with the advertised benefits of the product.

A live feed of these results can be connected within store displays, giving consumers up-to-date information about the supplements they are considering.

In closing, while these solutions will not solve these issues overnight or even in the next couple of years, it is safe to say we are already taking steps to make food healthier and safer for everyone in the U.S.

Internet of Food is editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between February 17 and April 2. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using#internetoffood, Facebook or LinkedIn. 

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Brian Witlin is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Yummly. Brian is a serial entrepreneur and design leader who has co-founded and led three companies to successful acquisitions.Brian currently heads all mobile and platform expansion initiatives at Yummly, the fastest growing digital foodtech startup where he launched the #1 iOS recipe app and the leading recipe API platform.

Prior to his tenure at Yummly, Brian served as the CEO and Founder of ShopWell, the first truly personalized nutrition resource (acquired by YottaMark).

Brian holds a Lecturer position at Stanford University’s Hasso Platner Institute of Design, serves as a startup mentor at 500 Startups and works with a portfolio of startups and IDEO’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. He has also formerly held EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) positions at IDEO and StartX. He writes on the subject of entrepreneurship and startups on his blog DesignDoing and guest writes on occasion on VentureBeat.
Previously, Brian co-founded Golaces, LLC, a product company (acquired by a publicly traded footwear company) and LeverWorks, a software development consultancy (acquired by LEO Media – now Quasar Strategies).

Brian holds a M.S. in Engineering and Design from Stanford University and a B.S. in Business and Economics from Lehigh University. He is a classically trained artist/draftsman, an aspiring mixed martial artist, and has a love for his hometown Chicago-style hotdogs and deep-dish pizza.

The post Leveraging Data to Incentivize Healthy Eating & Improve Food Safety appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Alex Greve, founder of KickDish. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Over the past few years, accessibility to food knowledge has increased dramatically thanks to social media, apps, blogs and much more. Many companies, both pre-existing and new market entrants, have introduced inventive business models, which have allowed for simpler and more effective ways to execute the usual methods of grocery shopping.

These innovations have resulted in less food waste, less stress and less time lost. Despite the fact that there have been many advances in terms of grocery shopping in the United States, by no means have innovators exhausted all options and run out of new ideas.

KickDish was founded in order to support and add value to already available processes like online delivery by simplifying the meal and grocery planning process. We firmly believe that if we leverage technology to simplify meal planning and grocery shopping as much as possible, people will be ready, willing and able to opt for healthier options. The key is removing the hassle from the process.

Here’s how we can guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone

Step 1: Food education is an essential first step towards creating a healthier, safer and more economical lifestyle. There is an information gap when it comes to learning the proper eating habits for your body. There are already some meal planning services on the market that help eaters learn and implement habit-forming, healthy routines. Many of us don’t want or need to drastically change our life. We just need the extra push to propel us in the right direction.

Step 2: Continue filling the information gap by finding services that are already out there. There are many new approaches that have been implemented by both existing supermarket chains and new players. New market entrants offering home delivery include AmazonFresh, Instacart, and Google Express. Consumers should allow these services to do the work for them. By ordering only the amount of food they need, it minimizes their impulse buys and lessens their stress.

Step 3: There are quite a few services in the United States that offer delivery or pickup services (a few mentioned above), but healthy eating and convenience can come at a price. In such a rapidly growing industry, it’s vital to not get blinded by the hype and to keep in mind the prices you’re willing to pay for convenience. KickDish offers a meal and grocery planner that price-compares a users grocery basket against online grocers. It also includes a truly collaborative meal planner that allows for sharing shopping lists amongst family members and friends.

We think one will greatly benefit from following the above steps and trying out these new services and features. With the helping hand of grocery tech innovation, eaters can lead healthier, more economical and more sustainable lifestyles.

Internet of Food is editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between February 17 and April 9. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using#internetoffood, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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Alex Greve is a Food+Tech entrepreneur. His personal motivation has always been to make healthy eating as convenient and affordable as possible. He has 15 years+ experience with product & business development across the Internet, Banking, R&D and Publishing industries.

The post Let’s Facilitate Healthy Eating by Simplifying Grocery Planning appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Image Credit: 6SensorLabs

Guest post by Shireen Yates, co-founder and CEO, 6SensorLabs. The views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect. 

Food plays diverse roles in peoples’ lives, including comfort, sustenance and nutrition, as well as survival, addiction and poison. In the U.S., we haven’t agreed on what is healthy, safe and sufficient. Four years ago the USDA replaced the food pyramid, long assumed the foundation of a healthy diet, with new dietary guidelines.

Our relationship with food is partially defined by societal and environmental conditions. Public opinion oscillates over what is good and bad for you when it comes to nutrition. Caffeine is bad. Don’t drink coffee. Drink at least 5 cups of coffee. Drink coffee made from low-toxin beans and throw a chunk of unsalted, grass-fed butter in it. Diet fatigue reflects the noise.

The first step to healthy food is determining what is good for YOU. The second step is gaining access to those foods.

New technology and services reflect the needs of people who want access to a recipe with nutritional value that works for them – a customized formula of food that matches their food identity. People want to feel empowered to eat well and stay healthy. They want to know what’s in their food as they become more aware of how food affects them.

Here are some examples:

• Food Identity: Dietary restrictions have skyrocketed. Food allergies have increased by 50 percent among children over the past 15 years. Over 200 million gluten-free dishes are ordered in the U.S. a year. There’s more awareness of what people can and cannot eat , which is shaping distinct, individual food identities. Services like WellnessFX analyze your biomarkers to connect you with a nutritionist or dietician for a custom plan that fits your body’s needs.

• Transparency: From calories to allergens to GMOs, people want to know what’s in their food. Some menus now have caloric information for their dishes. GE is designing a calorie counting microwave. At 6SensorLabs, we are developing technologies to empower consumers to test their food for allergens. The USDA. recently approved a new Non GMO label for meat.

• Access: The sharing economy makes it possible for people to have access to nutritious foods. AmpleHarvest.org is a great example of this. It connects people with excess food in gardens and pantries. This model minimizes waste (which is estimated to be 30-40 percent of the food supply in the United States) and provides access to people who may not otherwise have access to nutritious foods. Grocery delivery programs also provide more access to foods people want and may not be able to get in their local brick and mortar stores.

My own experience with food highlights the various roles food can play in life.  Food started as comfort; I could eat anything. Ten years ago I was diagnosed with a number of food allergies and suddenly food transformed into potential poison. Foods I had consumed every day for 20 years could suddenly seriously affect the quality of my life. I started to pay critical attention to what I was putting in my body and how I was physically reacting to food. 6SensorLabs was created to enable the millions with dietary restrictions to trust and know their food.

Over the past century, we have seen technology and business models transform to first provide people with food, then to provide people with food that tastes good. As we become more aware of our food identities and how we are affected by food, we enter a new era of eating, asking ourselves, ‘Is this food good for me?’

Internet of Food is editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone?” Join the conversation between February 17 and April 2. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using#internetoffood, Facebook or LinkedIn. 

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Shireen Taleghani Yates has been leading a gluten-free diet for the past 8 years. She is always on the hunt for new gluten-free foods but still finds it risky to eat out safely. After five years in sales and marketing at Google and Youtube, and an MBA from MIT Sloan, she decided to pursue her passion for helping people lead healthier lifestyles by starting 6SensorLabs.

The post Enabling Healthy Eating with Personalized Food Identities 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.

Over the last 30 years, technology has made food less healthy albeit plentiful and affordable. We over-corrected. Food brands today define themselves by what they lack: “non-GMO”, “not treated with growth hormone”, “no added preservatives”. Our 35% obesity rate in the US, which has doubled since the mid-1980s, is a telling statistic.

Food producers, and the innovators amongst them, perhaps didn’t know that chemically enriched, grown, stored and produced food would be unhealthy. They would have no reason to think differently from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approved the first GMO in 1980. Unhealthy, or even unsafe, became collateral damage in the “War on Poverty”. Ironically, today’s war on poverty is a proxy war on obesity.

Consumers are demanding better food, and they’re winning. The lexicon of food is transitioning from reactionary negatives (like noting the absence of a chemical) to positives (like ‘naturally grown’, ‘sustainably raised’, and ‘farm-to-fridge’). Technology’s new role in food is to figure out how to make it natural, sustainable and local, as well as plentiful and affordable.

It’s starting to happen in dining. The first act was the rise of the fast casual business model. Chipotle shed or, more accurately, never adopted the volume-optimization processes of its one-time largest shareholder McDonald’s. In a Bloomberg article from January, the founder of Chipotle, Steve Ellis announced his is the new fast food model: “This model is cuisine agnostic. Any kind of food can be applied. And I think it’s the new fast food model.”

There is an alternative model. The latest incarnation of fast food are companies like Sprig and Munchery. The “new” fast food uses terms like “locally-sourced” and “organic” to describe their product. Technology coupled with process innovation has allowed them to cut out a costly portion of a typical chain’s cost structure – high foot-traffic locations. But still, the first wave of fast food was easier to establish. It relied on a much simpler and controllable thing: price. Chipotle can be picky about ingredients and process because its prices are twice as high as that of McDonald’s.

The big challenge we face is enacting change without changing prices. Eliminating the need for expensive real-estate is a step in that direction. Optimizing the last-mile delivery for perishable food is another step. And a third step is using data to make better decisions. A similar story played out in the retail space as Amazon used data, scale and an online business model to become the most convenient, but also the lowest priced retailer in the world.

Internet of Food is editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone?” Join the conversation between February 17 and April 2. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using#internetoffood, Facebook or LinkedIn. 

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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 solution 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 Bringing Amazon-like Innovation to Healthy Fast Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, grocery, e-commerce, delivery, ordering, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

The momentum continues with six acquisitions in the month of February, and eight investments totaling $75.9m. Grocery was a dominant theme among the acquisitions, with four of the deals adding heft to technology platforms in the grocery sector, while restaurant ordering/delivery was overwhelmingly prevalent among five of the eight investments (perhaps reflecting the anticipation of the upcoming public market debuts). Despite the recent talk of an impending Series B crunch, all but two investments were Series B and beyond, with an average deal size of $9.5m across all deals.

The past couple of weeks have continued to signal there is solid public market appetite for this sector. Coupons.com debuted on the NYSE at $16 per share and closed up 88% at $30 a share on the first day of trading, with a market capitalization of $2.2 billion. Grubhub set the share price range for the IPO at $20 to $22 a share, which would value GrubHub at more than $1.7 billion at the midpoint. And in London, Just Eat is gearing up for an IPO which is expected to value the company at £700m to £900m ($1.2b to $1.5b).

To boot, there is a ton of activity happening in the hyperlocal search sector between Yahoo, Yelp, YP, Grubhub, Opentable, Foursquare, Microsoft, Google, and more. Check out the “Partnerships” section at the end for more color.

M&A

Walmart acquires Yumprint. The Seattle-based startup built recipe search technology that understands recipe semantics, matches ingredients to advertisements, understands consumer taste preferences, calculates nutritional information and prepares shopping lists from recipes, according to the company’s website. The startup will be folded into Walmart’s e-commerce division, @WalmartLabs, and Walmart plans to use Yumprint’s recipe technology for its grocery delivery efforts on Walmart.com and Walmart To Go.

Announced: 2/26/14   Terms: No Disclosed  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: 2011

MyFitnessPal Acquires Sessions. The San Francisco-based behavioral health startup pairs people with personal coaches who train via smartphones. According to the Wall Street Journal, the team will join MyFitnessPal, although the current Sessions app will be discontinued, and the “startup’s team [will] build a new one as part of MyFitnessPal’s larger offering.”

Announced: 2/19/14  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: Seed  Founded: 2012

Kroger Acquires YOU Technology. The San Francisco-based coupon technology company serves digital coupons for more than 20 retail clients including Kroger, representing a network that includes over 10,000 retail stores. Its retailer-centric, cloud-based platform bridges the gap between online engagement and in-store purchases, creating a measurable way for retailers and brands to drive consumer purchase decisions. You Technology will operate as an independent company within the Kroger organization, and will continue to serve existing and future retail customers. In the release, Kroger mentioned its plan to expand its presence in Silicon Valley, and alluded to future potential acquisitions; “Kroger’s accelerated growth strategy includes targeted capital investments to … strengthen its connection with customers through the growing digital and mobile channels.”

Announced: 2/11/14  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: 2008

Datalogix Buys Spire Marketing. The Monroe, CT-based shopper-marketing firm uses analytics from grocery loyalty card data, point-of-sale purchase data, and trade-level data to power in-store marketing initiatives which drive spontaneous purchases. The company handles shopper analytics for 24 regional supermarket retailers, who have a combined 30 million households in their loyalty-card database, or roughly a third of U.S. households. This acquisition adds a powerful new dimension for Datalogix, which examines the offline sales impact from ads on Facebook and Twitter for retailers and CPG clients, as CEO Eric Roza reports to Advertising Age; “We think there’s going to be some really interesting cross pollination, which no one really has tried to do, between mid-size specialty retailers and mid-size grocers, which are two groups of retailers who’ve had nothing to do with each other historically, but we think they share a lot in common.”

Announced: 2/11/14  Terms: Undisclosed (cash and stock)  Previous Investment: Undisclosed  Founded: 2007

MyWebGrocer Acquires Buy4Now. The Dublin, Ireland-based software company provides grocery and retail clients with e-commerce solutions, including customized web storefronts, merchandising, fulfillment, ERP integration, customer communication and more. This acquisition builds upon MWG’s earlier acquisition of Buy4Now’s U.S. subsidiary in 2008. In the release, MWG notes that an integration of Buy4Now’s capabilities, including multi-currency and multilingual platforms, will position the company to accelerate international expansion. Buy4Now will operate as a subsidiary of MyWebGrocer.

Announced: 2/06/14  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: €3m Series A  Founded: August 2000

OpenTable Acquires Ness Computing. The Los Altos, CA-based personalized restaurant recommendations app will be discontinued in April, and its technology will be incorporated into Open Table’s restaurant reservation platform. The team will join OpenTable’s San Francisco headquarters. In conjunction with the announcement, OpenTable announced it would be launching a pilot of a mobile payments service in San Francisco. Although the deal was announced to be worth $17.3 million, the $5m in cash that Ness had on its balance sheet means the net value was actually $11.3 million.

Announced: 2/06/14  Terms: $17.3m (cash)  Previous Investment: $5m Series A, $15m Series B  Founded: October 2009

FUNDING

Dash Raises $1.2m. Brooklyn-based mobile payment platform for restaurants, bars and clubs allows patrons to check-in, view, split, and pay their tab from their smartphone. The company intends to use the funds to expand in NY and launch in Chicago. In conjunction with the announcement, the company released a iOS 7 update for the app which includes iBeacon integration.

Announced: 2/27/14  Stage: Seed (extension)  Participating Institutional Investors: New York Angels, Caerus Ventures  Previous Investment: $700k Seed  Founded: January 2011

Granular Raises $4.2m. The San Francisco-based provider of a cloud software and analytics platform for farmers, formerly known Solum, delivers functionality around four core areas: planning, production, marketing and accounting. The solution captures critical production and financial data from each cropping cycle and uses advanced analytics to suggest opportunities for financial, operational and agronomic optimization. In conjunction with the raise, the company announced it sold its soil science business to Monsanto Company. The proceeds from financing (and the sale to Monsanto) will be used to expand the company’s engineering team, as well as the sales and customer support teams across the U.S.

Announced: 2/24/14  Stage: Venture Round  Participating Institutional Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures  Previous Investment: $2m Seed, $4.5m Series A, $17m Series B  Founded: 2009

Postmates Raises $16m. The San Francisco-based online delivery service is a developer of consumer-facing logistics software that dispatches and guides couriers through major metropolitan areas to deliver local goods including prepared food, groceries and retail goods. The company operates in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and New York, and has partnered with grocers including Whole Foods. Postmates intends to use the funds to grow its operations, design and engineering teams and expand geographically. Of note, in between this round and the Series A, Postmates also added three high profile investors last November for an undisclosed amount to “help to advise as it scales up and continues expansion into even more markets going forward.”

Announced: 2/18/14  Stage: Series B  Participating Institutional Investors: Spark Capital (lead), Matrix Partners, Crosslink Capital, SoftTech VC  Previous Investment: $750k Angel, $1.2m Seed, $5m Series A  Founded: May 2011

iFood Raises $2m. The São Paulo, Brazil-based online delivery platform facilitates the ordering of food online and through mobile apps for iOS and Android, and operates in all major cities in Brazil. In conjunction with the raise, the company also announced the acquisition of rival food delivery platform Central do Delivery (no financial terms were disclosed), which consolidates most online food ordering in Brazil to a central portal ahead of the World Cup and the Olympics. Beyond the expansion of iFood, the most interesting component to this story involves the growth plan of the strategic investor behind the deal, Movile, the largest mobile content and commerce platform in Latin America and Brazil. According to TechCrunch, “Movile’s investment is part of a broader strategy to work closely with and invest in startup companies across the Americas,” and the company is “negotiating with five other undisclosed startups in seed investments ranging from $100,000 to $3 million.” More specifically, as TechCrunch reports, “the company is angling to back companies developing transportation, e-commerce around fashion, and healthcare and lifestyle applications.”

Announced: 2/06/14  Stage: Venture  Participating Institutional Investors: Movile  Previous Investment: $1.6m Series A, $2.6m Series B  Founded: May 2011

Tapingo Raises $10.5m. The San Francisco-based mobile food ordering platform, which is currently focused on university campuses, enables location-aware discovery for consumers and immediate order fulfillment through operational integration for merchants. The service is live at 25 universities, including New York University, University of Arizona and the University of Southern California, and the company will use the funding to build out its network to more campuses.

Announced: 2/05/14  Stage: Series B  Participating Institutional Investors: Khosla Ventures (lead), Carmel Ventures  Previous Investment: $3.5m Series A  Founded: January 2012

Foodpanda Raises $20m. The Berlin-based food delivery company foodpanda and its affiliate hellofood continue rapid expansion. The new capital will enable foodpanda, which now partners with 22,000 restaurants, to expand its delivery marketplace for restaurants by launching in over 40 new markets. Foodpanda hopes to gain an edge over competitors in the space, like Delivery Hero and Just-Eat, by directing its attention towards Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and part of Africa, where launch costs are relatively inexpensive. Expanding in these markets will also give “Rocket Internet a chance to build a massive customer service and logistics network that it can then leverage to grow startups in other verticals, reports TechCrunch.

Announced: 2/04/14  Stage: Venture Round  Participating Institutional Investors: Phenomen Ventures, Investment AB Kinnevik  Previous Investment: Rocket Internet (Accelerator), $20m Series A, $8m Venture Round  Founded: 2012

Noom Raises $7m. The New York-based mobile app developer creates health and wellness apps that provide intelligent nutrition and exercise coaching. Noom plans to use the funds to enhance its products, and expand its audience. Of note, the company was also recently awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund a study in conjunction with Mt. Sinai Hospital on the impacts of smartphone technology in eating disorder treatment.

Announced: 2/04/14  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: RRE Ventures (lead), Harbor Pacific Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners, Scrum Ventures, TransLink Capital  Previous Investment: Seed, $2.5m Venture Round  Founded: September 2007

Foursquare Raises $15m. The strategic investment and partnership, which gives Microsoft access to Foursquare’s deep location-based tracking data (see “Partnerships” below), will augment Microsoft’s contextually-aware experiences for Bing and its mobile operating system. The investment was added to the $35 million round Foursquare announced in December, which valued the company at about $650 million. In addition to the $15m, Wired reports that with the license agreement, Microsoft will also “make regular payments to Foursquare that the startup characterizes as a ‘substantial addition’ to its revenue stream” which goes “beyond an advertising share.”

Announced: 2/04/14  Valuation: $650m  Stage: Series D (extension)  Participating Investor: Microsoft  Previous Investment: $1.35m Series A, $20m Series B, $50m Series C, $41m Debt, $35m Series D  Founded: March 2009

PARTNERSHIPS

Microsoft Signs an Extensive Licensing Deal with Foursquare to Power Location Context For Windows And Mobile. The multi-year agreement gives Microsoft access to Foursquare’s new tracking system which passively monitors users’ physical movements and preferences among real-world shops, restaurants, and bars. As Wired reports, using this data, the company can personalize search results (and better target ads) on its Bing search engine. Also, as reported by The Verge, Microsoft will use Foursquare location data in Cortana, a personal digital assistant designed to rival Siri and Google Now, for Windows Phones that will launch this spring.

Yahoo Partners with Yelp to Add Listings and Reviews to Improve Local Search Results. Yahoo closed a deep content licensing deal to bring local data into its search experience, both mobile and desktop. Although this will be deeply beneficial to Yahoo – local search apparently makes up about 25% of Yahoo’s search traffic – Yahoo is still playing catch-up, as TechCrunch notes this partnership comes 2 years after Micorsoft’s Bing partnered with Yelp for a co-branded relationship in Bing’s Local search pages. Yahoo also began integrating OpenTable reservations more deeply into its local search results, however re/code reports this is as a result of a redesign on Yahoo’s part versus a new partnership with OpenTable.

Fortune published a thoughtful article entitled, “What Does the Yahoo-Yelp Partnership Mean for Foursquare?” – it is definitely worth a read. Some highlights: It’s not clear why the Yahoo chose Yelp over Foursquare, though a person familiar with Foursquare says the startup walked away because Yahoo was not interested in the strategic investment part of the deal. And the Foursquare-Microsoft data partnership is not exclusive, so Foursquare could theoretically revisit the topic with Yahoo. Still, this partnership seemed like an easy layup for Foursquare.

… and to complement the above reading (the last of my hidden reading list in this section) StreetFight published a great piece arguing that Yelp, Google and Grubhub are all on a collision course as the three firms look to wrangle local consumers who increasingly expect to search, compare and buy in a single keystroke. Another very worthwhile read.

Yelp Partners with Truecaller, a Caller ID and Reverse Phone Directory App. The partnership will allow Truecaller users to automatically verify business numbers that are calling on their mobile phone, see the Yelp ratings, and the pictures people have uploaded of it. Truecaller partnered with Twitter in December in a similar deal.

Square Partners with Whole Foods and Godiva (and other news). Square will offer its iPad cash register, the Square Stand, at several Whole Foods stores, making the grocer the second national retailer after Starbucks. Chocolatier Godiva will use the Square Register during peak times, such as in the run-up during holidays. In other Square news, the company began testing a Square Pickup app, so that users can order ahead from local restaurants. The company also acquired BookFresh, a San Francisco–based scheduling and appointment booking startup for local merchants.

BrightFarms and Giant Food Partner to Deliver Year-Round Local Produce to Giant Stores Throughout the Washington D.C. Metro Area. BrightFarms will supply Giant stores with produce grown at a 100,000-square-foot greenhouse in Washington, D.C., which will be designed, built, and operated by BrightFarms in partnership with the City’s Department of General Services and the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation.

eat24 Food Delivery Platform Partners with Urbanspoon. The new business venture will integrate Eat24’s platform into the Urbanspoon website and mobile app, allowing Urbanspoon users to order menu items, view personal order histories, and make one-click re-orders.

Revel Systems iPad POS Platform Adds Bitcoin Integration. Revel is working with Bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase to provide a hardware/software solution that allows users to seamlessly accept Bitcoin into the current Revel iPad POS. When a customer is paying with Bitcoin, a QR code will pop up on the POS screen of the Revel iPad POS. A customer will then scan this QR code with their smartphone using a Bitcoin wallet app, which completes the transaction.

CircleUp Partners with Virgin America Help Identify New Snacks and Drinks to Serve on Flights. Thus far, Virgin America has selected two CircleUp-funded companies, the French vintner Le Grand Courtage and San Francisco-based granola bar and snack food company 18 Rabbits. Other partners working with CircleUp include consumer goods giants General Mills and Procter & Gamble.

Google Partners with Singleplatform to Display Restaurant Menus in Search Results. This new feature, which started as a small test, displays the full menu directly in the search results, without needing to click through to an additional page. Search Engine Watch notes that the results also have multiple tabs, so if the menu is in sections (e.g., appetizers, main courses), then you can select any of the tabs to view that particular menu section.

Vice Media Partners with Production Company FremantleMedia to Target Millennial Foodies With New Video Channel. Tubefilter reports the channel doesn’t yet have a name or a specific URL, but will likely have its own YouTube home as well as a presence on the main Vice website.

Tastemade Partners with Ryan Seacrest Productions to Develop Food and Lifestyle Programming for Digital Platforms. Ryan Seacrest Productions has already ventured into food programming with the Emmy-winning reality series “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” and re/code also notes that “RSP has become increasingly active in the digital arena, ranging from an investment in a keyboard for the Apple iPhone called Typo to talks with Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer about possible content partnerships.”

Levelup Partners with Foodler, Users Can Now Choose LevelUp to Pay for Takeout. In addition to giving users another way to pay, Levelup provides loyalty incentives to encourage customers to order more delivery.  LevelUp tells the Boston Globe, “It’s the first time LevelUp will be powering online payments, bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds.”  The partnership is the result of LevelUp’s Developer Platform which allows third parties to add payment and campaign functionality to their apps via a free API/SDK. The Boston Globe also points out that the LevelUp partnership isn’t the first time Foodler is trying a new payments method, as it started accepting bitcoins last year.

IRI (Information Resources Inc.) and Technomic Partner to Create a Joint Service Offering Aimed at Providing a Holistic View of the Food Industry. The partnership will enable customizable, cross-channel analysis, as well as collaboration between manufacturers, retailers and restaurant operators.

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, Rosenheim Advisors created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Check out the 2013 Annual Report and last month’s round-up.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships: February 2014 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. We track the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, grocery, restaurants, cooking and health, so our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

From an inside look at how Mario Batali’s restaurants use tech to fight food waste to the Accel Partners-backed startup that aims to disrupt the global tea market, these are our top stories from last week in food tech. 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.) How Mario Batali’s Restaurants Are Fighting Food Waste

B&BHG sustainability director Elizabeth Meltz shares how their restaurants are working with food tech startups LeanPath and Mintscraps to minimize food waste.

2.) RAFI & Farm Hack Kickstart Open Source Database for Agricultural Innovation

This online library will include a searchable database and interactive maps of farm projects, including detailed plans for things like blueprints and budgets.

3.) Easy Pairings Makes Restaurant Staffing Faster & Easier [Video]

Easy Pairings online job marketplace for the hospitality industry saves restaurant operators 15 days over traditional hiring options.

4.) Flypay Raises £1M To Make Settling Your Restaurant Bill “Waiter-Free” – TechCrunch

Flypay will use the new capital to scale its technology, acquire new restaurant partners and further develop its product line.

5.) India’s TeaBox Raises Seed Funding From Accel To Build An Online Starbucks For Disrupting Global Tea Market – TechCrunch

The startup is raising around $1 million in seed funding led by Accel Partners India. By using an e-commerce platform that allows tea drinkers to browse, select, and order their favorite variant of the beverage, TeaBox is removing the traditional distribution layers of resellers and marketers.

6.) Agriculture Companies Launch Effort to Standardize, Secure Farm Data – Reuters

The Open Agriculture Data Alliance will also seek to set standards on data privacy and security, among the top concerns of farmers gathering and sharing increasingly deep pools of data from high tech farm machines.

The post Mario Batali’s Restaurants Use Tech To Fight Food Waste, An Open Source Ag Tech Database + More 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. We track the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, grocery, restaurants, cooking and health, so our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

From the whopping $127 million invested in food tech media startups in January to a list of the hottest farm tech startups, these are our top stories from last week in food tech. 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.) Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships: January 2014

With 3 IPOs and $127M+ invested in food tech media startups in January, 2014 is off to a great start for the industry.

2.) Just-Eat Acquires Meal2Go: Brings Electronic POS to 38,000 Restaurant Partners

While the acquisition only adds 1,100 Birmingham-based restaurants to Just-Eat’s existing partners, it allows Just-Eat to expand the reach of the EPOS technology throughout the 13 countries in which it operates.

3.) For New York City Food Start-Ups, Options Abound – Edible Manhattan

AccelFoods, an “accelerator” that invests in up-and-coming food and beverage brands and offers mentoring from experts, like Ed Levine and Tom Colicchio, is looking for its next class.

4.) US food tech firm Aseptia raises $28M in Series C funding round–Venture Capital Post

Aseptia, which has developed a patented technology that maintains the freshness of food outside the refrigerator, secured $28 million in its third funding round from Lookout Capital, Prudential, FB Heron Foundation, and SJF Ventures.

5.) Our Supercomputer Overlord Is Now Running A Food Truck –NPR

IBM has teamed up with the CIA and programmed supercomputer Watson to serve as a sort of a sous-chef.

6.) Conjunction – it. But cleanser-it a stable greasy the.

Modern Farmer

With the agriculture industry earning American farmers $120.6 billion in 2013, it’s a wonder the sector hasn’t been a target for Silicon Valley before. But in the last few years, entrepreneurs have caught on.

The post Last Week’s Top 6 Food Tech & Innovation Stories 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. We track the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, grocery, restaurants, cooking and health, so our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

From our ‘Food Startup Branding 101’ online course announcement and our top SXSW food panel picks to GrubHub’s $100M IPO announcement and a major recipe tech acquisition, these are our top 6 stories from last week in food tech. 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.) Learn How to Make Your Food Startup Stand Out

Last week, we announced our first course, Food Startup Branding 101, and now we’re excited to announce that we’re offering the course online, too.

Guided by brand strategists who have worked with companies like Stacy’s Pita Chips, Seamless and Applegate, you’ll learn how to:

• Better understand your target market’s needs
• Create your brand positioning statement
• Develop your brand voice guidelines and “About Us” copy
• Kick ass on social media

Learn more and sign up HERE.

2.) 2014 SXSWi Food + Health + Tech Panels

From ‘Printing Chocolate: Food on Demand’ to ‘AgriTech’s Promise: Food For 10 Billion and Beyond,’ we’ve culled together a list

of the food focused panels you should check out this year at SXSW.

3.) Going Public: GrubHub Files for $100M IPO

GrubHub plans to put the proceeds of the IPO towards working capital, general corporate purposes and potentially acquisitions.

4.) Ordr.In Intiates $400K Equity Crowdfunding on SeedInvest –Crowdfund Insider

The invested funds will be utilized in globally promoting their API platform, executing pipeline deals, such as building their client enablement team.

5.) Walmart Acquires Recipe Tech Startup Yumprint – Mercury News

Walmart acquired the company to expand its online grocery services. Yumprint has a website and mobile app to search and discover new recipes from thousands of food blogs, plan meals and calculate nutritional information.

6.) New Food Label Aims To Make Healthy Decisions Easier – NPR

The FDA and the White House are expected to unveil a new food label this week. Changed just once since their adoption, these labels need to be less confusing, advocates say.

The post Last Week’s Top 6 Food Tech & Innovation Stories 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. We track the top technology and innovation happenings across agriculture, CPG, grocery, restaurants, cooking and health, so our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector.

From big investments in the international online food delivery and online grocery spaces to a major food media acquisition, you’ll find our top 8 picks from last week in food tech below. 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) Food+Tech Meetup: How New Tech is Transforming Restaurants

Join us this Thursday, January 30th for a behind the scenes look at how tech startups are revolutionizing restaurants. Networking, wine and snacks to follow the presentations. RSVP HERE. 

Presenters:

• Cover– A payment processing app that lets customers seamlessly pay for their meals and saves restaurants money on credit card fees.
• Culinary Agents– A professional network  that offers job matching and networking for culinary professionals in the food, beverage and hospitality industry. 
  
• Easy Pairings –  An online marketplace for the hospitality industry that allows restaurants to lower recruitment costs and find great staff quickly and easily. 
  
• Objective Logistics – A retail/restaurant-focused software company that provides an artificially-intelligent, web-accessible labor performance management platform (MUSE). 
  
• Swipely – An Index Ventures and Shasta Ventures backed service that helps local merchants better understand customers and grow sales by connecting information from the payments network, point-of-sale systems and the social web.
• NoWait – An iOS app that allows consumers to search restaurant wait times, add their names to waiting lists and get texts from restaurants when their tables are ready. 
  

2) ReciPal Generates FDA Nutrition Labels, Saves Food Startups Time & Money

ReciPal does the boring nutrition label work and lets food entrepreneurs get back to what they really love, by enabling startups to generate affordable – $19 or less per recipe – nutrition labels in minutes.

3) Gourmet Food Delivery Service DineIn Raises £310,000 Crowdcube Investment – Startups Co UK

A new start-up that allows customers to order food from London’s top restaurants and chefs and have it delivered to their home has raised more than £310,000 in an oversubscribed Crowdcube pitch.

4) AccelFoods Selects First Class of Food and Beverage Entrepreneurs for Its Accelerator Program – Herald Online

The comapny raised a $4 Million plus investment fund to Support food entrepreneurs. Exo Cricket-Flour Protein Bars, Jaali Bean Indian Side Dishes, KOLAT Nut-Butter Spreads, Whynatte Caffeinated Beverage comprise its first class.

5) Singapore Online Grocer RedMart Raises $5.4M From Investors Including Facebook Co-founder – TechCrunch

RedMart, an online grocery service based in Singapore, announced today that it has closed a $5.4 million bridge round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

6) Macmillan Acquires Cookstr, with Schwalbe In Expanded Role –Publishers Weekly

Macmillan has acquired cookbook and recipe Web site Cookstr. Founded in 2008 by Katie Workman and Will Schwalbe, Cookstr has reached as many as eight million unique visitors a month via its own consumer-facing recipe web site, as well as powering recipe searches in partnership with other organizations.

The post Last Week’s Top 6 Food Tech & Innovation Stories appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This monthly column highlights the most interesting acquisitions, financings and partnerships within the Food Tech & Media ecosystem – digital content, social, local, mobile, grocery, e-commerce, delivery, ordering, payments, marketing and analytics – to give you insights into the latest funding and growth trends.

The deal activity in November picked up a bit from last month with four notable acquisitions, eight early-stage investments (totaling $36.7m) and one Series D (an Indian-based company, Zomato, which raised $27m). The deals represented a variety of categories including health, content, delivery, loyalty and commerce/restaurant technologies.

One theme that dominated news throughout the month was the notion of same-day delivery and solving the problem of the last mile. While it’s still hard to find an article on this topic that manages to resist a reference to the massive failure/flameout/implosion/[insert cataclysmic descriptor] of WebVan and Kozmo.com, the discussion is beginning to evolve. The New York Times calls same-day delivery “a new battleground for e-commerce,” with many companies scrambling to find the right new formula.

Much of the same-day delivery discussion is focused on retail products, but grocery, meals and restaurant delivery are a major component as well. AmazonFresh is launching its third city – San Francisco – in December, and services like Instacart, Good Eggs (see “M&A” section), Sprig (see “Funding” section) and Postmates (see “Funding” section) each expanded their empire in November. Even Whole Foods is testing out online ordering with a new ‘click and collect’ system. And don’t worry, bulk goods haven’t been left out of the fold: Google Shopping Express is now delivering goods from Costco; Amazon is reportedly launching an online wholesale store called “Pantry”; and startup Boxed announced it is launching nationally.

Although the economics are still being tested and it is likely some of the players in this space will disappear, we are a long way from the days of WebVan. For more discussion on recent VC investment in the food space, check out Pandodaily’s article: Software eats dinner: Why VCs are pouring cash into food startups.

M&A

AgSquared Acquires Local Dirt. The New York-based provider of cloud-based farm management software for small farms acquired Madison, Wisconsin-based Local Dirt, a local food marketplace and sales management tool that connects consumers and wholesalers directly with farmers. As Danielle Gould notes in her coverage at Forbes, the overarching rationale for the deal is to bring interoperability among online services for the agriculture sector. According to Gould, “for the next year, AgSquared and Local Dirt will operate as separate tools, but AgSquared will focus on building a basic integration so its users can get their harvest into Local Dirt’s product inventory and get their sales data from Local Dirt into AgSquared. Over time, however, AgSquared will integrate those sales management features into one platform. It has no plans to launch a marketplace.”

Announced: 11/19/13  Terms: Not Disclosed  Previous Investment: $1m+ Seed, $600k National Science Foundation Grant  Launched: 2005

Under Armour Acquires MapMyFitness. The Austin-based startup owns one of the largest global mobile fitness communities (20m+ registered users), as well as a suite of websites and related apps, including nutrition tracking. The acquisition will help the athletic apparel company accelerate its plans to build a mobile fitness platform and enter the biometric measurement and tracking arena. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Under Armour, MapMyFitness will continue to operate separately.

Announced: 11/14/13  Terms: $150m cash  Previous Investment: $5m Series C, $12m Series B, $5m Series A, $1.5m Angel  Launched: 2007

Vox Media Acquires Curbed Network (which includes Eater.com). The Washington DC-based publisher of content sites like The Verge (tech) and SB Nation (sports) acquired the Manhattan-based lifestyle publisher of Eater.com (food), Racked.com (shopping/fashion) and Curbed.com (real estate). In an interview with the New York Times, Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff explains the rationale: “Both Vox and Curbed value storytelling and as a result have attracted the otherwise hard to reach young, affluent, social consumers. We think this combined expanded platform will clearly attract premium advertisers.” For a fantastic analysis on the acquisition, which is definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the dynamics (and future) of the digital content space, check out this article by Reuters’ Felix Salmon. Salmon notes that Curbed Network was acquired at a relatively low multiple (less than four times revenues).

Announced: 11/10/13  Terms: $20m – $30m  Previous Investment: $1.5m Angel Round  Launched: 2004

Good Eggs Acquires LolaBee’s Harvest. The San Francisco-based online farmer’s market and food delivery service was acquired by Good Eggs to expand its own online marketplace and network of participating farmers and businesses. LolaBee’s Harvest will shut down its all accounts and move its customers to Good Eggs.

Announced: 11/08/13  Terms:  Not Disclosed  Previous Investment:  Not Disclosed  Launched: November 2011

FUNDING

Mouth Foods Raises $1.5m. The Brooklyn-based curated online store for “Indie” foods. Rather than an open marketplace, like Foodoro or Foodzie, the company searches nationwide for the best food makers and products it deems as “indie,” buys products in bulk, then stores and ships them directly to customers, and of course adds photographs and snazzy marketing/copy into the mix. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company will use the funding to continue to find and add products to its site, market its own brand, and vendors’ products across the U.S., and to continue to improve its Internet and mobile websites.

Announced: 11/26/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Investors: Vocap Ventures (lead), VegasTechFund, Joanne Wilson, Jason Calacanis  Previous Investment: $300k Angel  Founded: 2012

Index Raises $7m. The San Francisco-based analytics software startup helps grocers, restaurants and specialty retailers recognize and reward customers every time they engage with the brand. Index’s software, which integrates with a retailer’s point-of-sale, links customer brand interactions to a unified customer profile. Once customers are identified, the company delivers personalized, targeted news, rewards and offers to build loyalty and strengthen customer relationships. The proceeds will support the company’s continued rollout with retailers and the growth of its team.

Announced: 11/19/13  Stage: Series A  Participating Institutional Investors: Innovation Endeavors (lead), Khosla Ventures, AIMCo, 819 Capital  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: March 2012

Yub Raises $12m. The Mountain View-based offline affiliate network Yub tracks consumers from online click-throughs to offline purchases, directly linking digital marketing spending to offline revenue. The company also partners with restaurants and retailers to offer special promotions so customers can earn rewards while shopping. Yub was incubated within TrialPay, a transactional advertising and cross-platform monetization company, and will launch as an independent company with the fresh financing.

Announced: 11/18/13  Stage: Venture  Participating Institutional Investors: Atomico, Battery Ventures, DFJ Growth, DAG Ventures, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, QuestMark Partners, T. Rowe Price, Visa  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed (Incubated within TrialPay)  Founded: 2013

Postmates Adds New Investors (Undisclosed Amount). In addition to announcing a new launch in Brooklyn with 200+ restaurants, the San Francisco-based 1-hour delivery platform announced the addition of three high profile early stage investors: Yammer founder David Sacks, Path founder Dave Morin, and Remarq founder Bill Lee. The investment amount wasn’t disclosed, and comes eight months after a $5m venture round. TechCrunch notes the new investors will “help to advise as it scales up and continues expansion into even more markets going forward.”

Announced: 11/15/13  Stage: Venture  Participating Investors: David Sacks, Dave Morin, Bill Lee  Previous Investment: $5m Venture Round, $1.2m Venture Round, $1m Angel Round, $750m Angel Round  Founded: May 2011

TouchBistro Raises $4.5m. The Toronto-based digital menu and restaurant management startup provides iPad tableside ordering and point-of-sale technology for the food and beverage industry. According to the Financial Post, the company’s app is currently used in 22 countries around the world, and the company recently inked new deals with PayPal and payment processing giant Moneris Solutions to help integrate its technology with payment processors. The company intends to use the funding to expand its presence in New York, open a San Francisco office, and translate its product into other languages to further accelerate its growth in global markets.

Announced: 11/14/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: Relay Ventures  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: 2010

Qloo Raises $3m. The New York-based “cultural discovery” engine provides personalized recommendations for restaurants, bars, entertainment, travel, fashion and other categories. Pronounced “clue”, the app requires new users to select at least four categories and enter one of their favorite things in each. Users then provide the app with feedback by rating the suggestions. The company earns affiliate feed for recommendations that result in a transaction (make a reservation through OpenTable, book a hotel through Expedia, order a book from Amazon, etc.). The company will use the funds to continue development of the app (and release an Android version), as well as expand into new cities.

Announced: 11/14/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Investors: Kindler Capital, Danny Masterson, Cedric the Entertainer, Tommy Thompson, Samih Toukan, Hussam Khoury  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: April 2011

Sprig Raises $1.2m. The San Francisco-based healthy meal delivery startup prepares chef-made locally-sourced seasonal meals to customers in select neighborhoods of San Francisco (SOMA and Mission Bay). One of Sprig’s distinguishing factors is that customers don’t need to order days or hours in advance; the company’s goal is to deliver the meal 20 minutes of ordering, on average.

Announced: 11/07/13  Stage: Seed  Participating Institutional Investors: Greylock Partners, MHS Capital, Battery Ventures  Previous Investment: Not Disclosed  Founded: April 2013

Zomato Raises $37m. The India-based online restaurant discovery and review site and app currently operates in 11 countries, including the recent launch of its services in Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia. Similar to Yelp, but with more detailed information on menu items, photos and prices, the company currently derives a third of its traffic from non-Indian markets, but that is quickly changing (a year ago 100 percent was in India). According to TechCrunch, the company plans to enter the US in the future, but it will “tweak its feature set so it can offer something attractive enough to crack the market so isn’t going to tackle that market immediately.” The company plans to use the proceeds to expand into 22 additional markets over the next two years.

Announced: 11/06/13  Stage: Series D  Participating Institutional Investors: Sequoia Capital (lead), Info Edge  Previous Investment: $10m Series C, $2.3m Series B, $3.5m Series A, $1m Seed  Founded: 2008

ShapeUp Raises $5m Equity, $2.5m Debt. The Providence, Rhode Island-based health platform provides social networking and incentives-based employee wellness programs that help people exercise more, eat healthier and improve their overall well-being. The funding will be used for investments in mobile technology and capabilities aimed at boosting member engagement and expanding the accessibility of the platform.

Announced: 11/05/13  Stage: Series B  Participating Institutional Investors: Cue Ball Capital, Excel Venture Management.  Silicon Valley Bank provided the debt financing.  Previous Investment: $5m Series A  Founded: 2006

PARTNERSHIPS

Bing Partners With TripAdvisor to Integrate Content Into Search Results. Bing will now display TripAdvisor reviews and photos as well as TripAdvisor’s hotel price comparison tool in search engine result pages. TripAdvisor’s full content library including restaurants, hotels and attractions will reportedly be available to Bing, which could deepen engagement and search frequency on the Bing platform.

Square Partners With Staples To Sell Square Stand Register Replacements. In order to increase use among SMBs, Staples will begin to sell the Square Stand, a piece of hardware that turns a merchant’s iPad into a card-swiping register. The deal covers 1,000 Staples stores in the U.S., as well as Staples.com, and comes on the back of the device also being sold in BestBuy, Apple stores and online from Square itself.

Mobile CRM Suite Punchh Partners with MonkeyMedia Software to Create Restaurant Catering Rewards and Loyalty Program. According to Punchh, the partnership will deliver the industry’s first solution to help restaurant chains grow their catering business by rewarding customers for their repeat catering business.

INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE

As The Food Tech & Media ecosystem continues to see rapid change, we created The Food Tech & Media Industry Map  to help entrepreneurs, participants and investors understand this quickly evolving landscape.

Let us know about your recent or upcoming funding, partnerships or acquisitions here.

Check out last month’s round-up here.

Would you be interested in a round-up of agriculture-related funding, partnerships and acquisitions? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships: November 2013 appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.